PENSION, an annual sum granted by the state to an individual. The grounds upon which pensions are granted by the state differ according to the nature of the government. In a monarchy the ser vices rendered to the sovereign by those who surround his person will recommend them as fitting objects of reward : where a mixed form of government prevails, attempts will be made to establish some standard of reward independent of personal bias or caprice. In this country the distribution of pensions is now almost entirely subject to the control of the legislature; but the following notice will show that persevering and long continued-efforts have been necessary to place it upon this footing.
Before the reign of queen Anne, the kings of England alienated or encumbered their hereditary possessions at pleasure, and the courts of law sustained them in the exercise of this power. In 1690-91, Chief-Justice Treby, in answer to the objection that such power might lead to the destruction of the revenue, said, "This might be some reason to induce the making of an act of parliament to restrain the king's power of alienation; but since here the parliament has thought fit to give the king such a power, we ought to acquiesce and submit to it." (` State Trials,' vol. xiv., p. 30.) By the 1 Anne, c. 7, the right of burdening the revenue of the crown with improvident grants, to the injury of the successors of the throne, was materially abridged. This statute, after reciting that " the necessary expenses of supporting the crown, or the greatest part of them, were formerly defrayed by a land revenue, which had from time to time been impaired and diminished by the grants of former kings and queens of this realm," enacts that no grant of manors, lands, &c., shall be made by the crown from and after the 25th of March, 1702, beyond the term of thirty-one years or for three lives, reserving a reasonable rent. As this clause applied only to the land it was enacted by another clause that no portion of other branches of revenue, as the excise, poet-office, &c.,
should be alienable by the crown beyond the life of the reigning king. On the accession of Georgein consideration of the surrender of the larger branches of the hereditary revenue, a civil list was settled on his majesty, amounting originally to 800,0001., and afterwards increased to 900,000/., on which the pensions were charged. There were no limits, except the Civil List itself, within which the grant of pensions was confined ; and at various times, when debts on this list had accumulated, parliament voted considerable sums (Sir Henry Parnell, in his work on 'Financial Reform,' says" some millions") for their dis charge. In February, 1780, during the administration of Lord North, Mr. Burke introduced his bill for the better security of the independ ence of parliament and the economical reformation of the civil and other establishments. In this bill it was recited that the pension lista were excessive, and that a custom prevailed of granting pensions on a private list during his majesty's pleasure, under colour that in some cases it may not be expedient to divulge the names of persons on the said lists, by means of which much secret and dangerous corruption may be hereafter practised. Mr. Burke proposed to reduce the English pension list to a maximum of 60,0001., but the bill, as passed, fixed it at 95,0004 This act (22 Geo. III., c. 82) asserted the principle that distress or desert ought to be considered as regulating the future grants of such pensions, and that parliament had a full right to be informed in respect to this exercise of the prerogative, in order to ensure and enforce the responsibility of the ministers of the crown. Mr. Burke's speech on introducing his bill will be found in the third volume of his ' Works,' ed. 1815.
Up to this time the Civil List pensions of Ireland, the pensions charged on the hereditary revenues of Scotland, and the pensions charged on the 4i per cent. duties, had been regulated by parliament.