they will learn and confine themselves to their subordinate duties, until their services and experience shall sanction their being placed in rank and situations, where they may be allowed to judge of the general and higher duties of the profession. superior! His Royal Highness, therefore, | in support of its discipline usually sanctions, could not but regret, that the Officers of the upon the failure of charges against a Com10th hussars should have been so unmindful manding Officer. Still it is essential that of what they owe to the first principles of conduct so injurious in its nature should be their profession, as to assume an opinion held forth to the army as a warning in supof their Commander's personal conduct, port of subordination; and his Royal Highwhich neither their general experience of ness has therefore commanded that the Offithe service, nor their knowledge of the cers who signed the letter of the 9th August. alleged facts (as appears from their own shall no longer act together as a corps, but evidence), could sanction or justify, and that they shall be distributed by exchange which opinion would appear, from the pro- throughout the different regiments of ca. ceedings, to have been utterly void of foun-valry in the service, where it is trusted that dation, in every instance of implied attack or insinuation upon that Officer's courage and conduct before the enemy, as conveyed by the tenor of the second and third charges. In allusion to the letter signed by the chief part of the Officers, and in which the present proceedings originated, the Prince Regent has specially observed, that, exclusive of the doubt which may be entertained of their capability to form a` judgment, so much beyond the scope of their experience in the service, it was worthy of remark, that some who have affixed their names to that paper, had never been with the regiment during the period in question, and others had never joined any military body beyond the depot of their corps, and it might thus be deduced, that although the Officers have manifested, according to the appropriate remark of the Court Martial, a waut of cooperation in support of their Commander's authority, yet those who have assumed a personal observance of Colonel Quintin's conduct, and those who, though absent, appear to have acted under a mischievous iufluence, by joining in an opinion to his prejudice, have all co-operated in a compact against their Commanding Officer, fraught with evils of the most injurious tendency to the discipline of the service; nor did it escape the notice of his Royal Highness, that this accusation has not been the mo mentary offspring of irritated feelings, but the deliberate issue of a long and extraordinary delay, for which no sufficient reasons, or explanation, have been assigned. In this view of the case (which is not palliated by the very slight censure passed on Colonel Quintin upon the 1st charge) his Royal Highness has considered that a mark of his displeasure towards those Officers is essential to the vital interests of the army; and that the nature of the combination against Colonel Quintin, would call for the removal from the service of those who have joined in it; but as his Royal Highness would willingly be guided by a lenient disposition toward a corps of Officers who have hitherto merited his approbation, and would willingly believe that inadvertency in some and inexperience in others, had left them unaware of the mischievous tendency of their conduct upon this occasion, his Royal Highness is averse to adopt such severè measures as the custom of the service | The Prince Regent has been further pleased to observe, that thoug Colonel Palmer did not sign the letter of the 9th August, he is, nevertheless, by bis declared sentiments on the prosecution, and his ge neral concurrence in the opinion of the Officer, to be considered in the same light as if he had put his name to that paper, and his Royal Highness has therefore commanded that he shall also be removed to another corps.—I am, &c. (Signed) FREDERICK, Commander in Chief. To the Adjutant-General, &c. The Adjutant General then read the names of the following Officers * :— Colonel Charles Palmer; Lieut.-Colonel G. J. Robarts, Captains J. R. Lloyd, B. N. Harding, S. H. Stuart, Geo. Fitzclarence, J. Smith, E. P. Turner, R. Giveen, C. Synge, Lord A. W. Hill, Edw. Fox Fitzgerald; Lieutenants H. Marquis of Worcester, Chas. Eversfield, H. Somerset, G. Wombwell, C. Wyndham, H. Seymour, Henry Fitzclarence, A. F. Berkley, J. H. Powell, J. Jackson, J. A. Richardson, J. C. Green; Cornet R. B. Palliser, And desired them to move forward in front of their respective troops, and to return their swords. He then addressed them as follows : "GENTLEMEN-I have the Commander in Chief's commands to signify to you his Royal Highness the Prince Regent's pleasure, that you no longer belong to the 10th Regiment of Hussars; and the Commander in Chief enjoins you to hold yourselves in readiness to join the different regiments of cavalry to which the Prince Regent will immediately appoint you.” The Adjutant-General then directed the Hon. Major Howard, to take on himself the command of the 10th Royal Hussars, until it shall be resumed by Colonel Quintin. Being those who signed the letter to Colonel Palmer of the 9th August, from which the proceedings against Colonel Quintin originated. Printed and published by J. MORTON, 91, Strand, COBBETT'S WEEKLY POLITICAL REGISTER, VOL. XXVI. No. 21.] LONDON, SATURDAY, NOV. 19, 1814. [Price 1s. 641] LETTER A. TO A CORRESPONDENT IN AMERICA, THOSE OF AMERICA. Botley, England, Nov. 15, 1814. DEAR SIR,-Your request would, long ago, have been attended to, if I had had more leisure for the task. For your valuable information, relative to your agriculture, your flocks, and your manufactures, I am much obliged to you; and, if the two countries were at peace, you should receive from me all the useful information, which it is in my power to give you upon several heads, which I shall not touch upon in a letter passing through the press, but which, I hope, the restoration of harmony between our two countries, may, in a year or two, at most, make it convenient for me to communicate to you through the ordinary channel of the post. You wish to know what is the amount of the annual expences of our Government; what is the amount of the taxes paid to the Government; what is the amount of our poor rates; what is the amount of our tythes; and you wish me to shew the comparison between these and the expences and taxes in America. You also wish to have my account of the state of the people here; or, in plainer terms, you wish to know, how we stand as to mode of living, and as to crimes and punishments, compared with the people of your Republic. -[642 through those numerous errors, with regard to your country, into which I see others of my_countrymen continually falling. I am happy, that you have not called upon me for opinions; that you have not called upon me for conclusions, drawn from premises that I am to state; that you confine your request to an account of mere facts; that you have not wished to expose me to the mortification of seeing the effort of my facts destroyed, or perverted, by the superior talents of those, who might, with merciless hands, lay foul of my feeble attempts at an application of these facts to the sustaining of any political theory. It is, I perfectly agree with you, the best and fairest way, in such a case, to content myself with bare facts, leaving the reader, whether public or private, to draw his own conclusions; because the points of contro versy, if any arise, can be at once decided; and, because that reader, who is not competent to draw just conclusions from facts clearly stated, is not worth the attention of the writer, and is of little more consequence in society than a worm or a fly. In speaking of the EXPENCES of our Government, I must confine myself to the annual expences, and, in this case, to the last year's expences; that is to say, the year which ended on the 5th January, 1814. As, in the comparative part of my statement, I must speak of dollars on your side and of pounds sterling on our side, I will, for the sake of easier assimi To perform this task as it ought to be lation, take the dollar at five shillings, inperformed, is, I am afraid, beyond my stead of four shillings and sixpence, which power. I do, indeed, know more about is its real sterling value. But the state of these matters than many of my neighbours; our paper currency will fully justify this but I cannot hope to discharge the task to advance; and, indeed, it would justify a your satisfaction, who are so accurate in further advance. This, however, is not all your statements and calculations, and material enough to induce us to enter into who, with all your indulgence in other re- any laboured calculations on the subject; spects, are not to be satisfied, unless you especially as it is contended here, by a great find others as accurate as yourself. Never-majority of the Government financiers, that theless, I will do all that I am able to do our paper has undergone no depreciation in return for the very valuable information, at all. which I owe solely to your attentive kind- To begin, then, with the expences of our mess, and which serves me as a guide Government, in Great Britain only, for sury on the 1st of July near five millions "of dollars." the year ending on the 5th of January, ["millions of dollars, and left in the Trea1814, the total sum expended was 113,968,610. 16s. 104d. I speak from documents, laid before the House of Commons, and therefore, I run no risk of -error or of contradiction. This was the total sum; exclusive of the expenditure belonging to Ireland. To go into a detail as to the several particulars would fill five or six Numbers of my REGISTER; but the great heads of the expenditure it may be worth your while to know. These were as follow : Now, as to the comparison between the expenditure of this Government and of yours, I must speak of the latest period of which I have any knowledge of your expenditure; and though you are in a state of war and of unprecedented expence, you must bear in mind, that we are in a state of war also. I find an account of your expenditure in Mr. Madison's Speech of the 20th of September, 1814, which Specch, by the bye, many persons here think will be his last, except that which the Times newspaper supposes he will make at his exit from the world. -Mr. Ma Taking your expenditure without fractions, then, it would be for the last year, 47,550,000 dollars, while ours was 455,874,443 dollars. So that our expenditure, exclusive of poor-rates, tythes, and county and corporation government, is more than nine times as great as yours. The population of the two counties, leaving out our paupers, is, as I shall shew, by and bye, nearly equal, the greater population being, however, I believe, on your side. The paupers must be left out, as you will perceive, because it is impossible that they can contribute, in any way whatever, towards the means of meeting this expenditure. But expenditure is of little importance when compared to receipts, or taxes. Here it is that we touch closely upon men's pockets. The means of expending consists, in part, of loans. These loans may, or may not, ever be paid off. You may, perhaps, pay them off by lands; we may pay them off by some yet unknown means. What we have to look at, in the most attentive manner, therefore, is, the amount of the TAXES; because this is what the people really pay. The amount of our taxes, paid into the Treasury, during the last year, was We are very 74,027,5837. 17s. 8d. was precise in the keeping 66 of management," that is to say, for the purpose of paying the persons employed in the assessing, the supervising, the surveying, the inspecting, the collecting, the receiving, the transmitting, &c. of money paid into the Treasury. Now, 3,504,938/. 11s. 5d. is 14,019,754 dollars. So that dison speaks thus on the subject of your Inances:-"The monies received into the "Treasury, during the nine months ending the 13th of June last, amounted to 32 millions of dollars, of which 11 millions "were the proceeds of the public revenue, " and the Drinder derived from loans. the bare expence of the getting together Public Expendi-of our taxes amounts, you see, to very * も saperiod exceed 34 | nearly as much as the whole of the taxes 232 REP raised upon you; that is to say, if Mr. Madison's statement be correct. And suppo e each of these persons, one with the other, to receive 50 or 200 dollars, a year, here are wages for 70,098 men, constantly employed in the business of the taxes, while, supposing you to pay your tax-gatherers at the same rate, you have only 3,504 persons constantly employed in this way. | coming at the exact amount of the poor- whole nation, and also the poor-rates of Bishop's Waltham parish; and the statement was as follows, observing, however, that, as to poor-rates, we speak of only England and Wales, Scotland not being under the poor laws. The POOR-RATES form another item of English taxation, in addition to the above; and a very important item it is now become. If you do not know the nature of this tax and of its application, it may be necessary to state, that this is a bax levied upon all householders and land-report of 1803 took the poor rates of the holders, for the support of such persons as are too poor to support themselves. It is assessed and collected by persons, appointed by the taxed people, in every parish, called Overseers of the Poor; but, before they can proceed to collect any rate, they must have the approbation of a Justice of the Peace, who is, as they all are, appointed by the Crown. In the distribution of this money, the Overseers are again liable to the controul of the Justices of the Peace; for they may, upon the application of any pauper, order, without appeal, the Overseers to relieve the said pauper, in any manner that they please. This, therefore, is a tax, not paid into the Treasury, but disposable under the jurisdiction, and at the discretion of his Majesty's Justices of the Peace. The office of Overseer is performed without any pay. It is a duty, or service, which every taxed householder is liable to be compelled to execute. England and Wales. | Bishop's Waltham. In the Year 5,348,205 It is quite surprising to observe how exact are these proportions; how regularly this parish kept pace, for twenty-seven years, with the whole nation in the increase of its poor-rates. But, in order to leave no room for cavil on this head, the subject being one of the utmost importance, we will see what proportion this parish, according to its population, had of paupers in 1803, there being no account of the nation's number of paupers previous to 1803, and there being no likelihood that we shall ever see another. England and Wales. Bishop's Waltham 236 Now, then, as to the amount of this tax, which, you will observe, forms an addition to that of the Taxes already noticed, it was, in the year 1803, when the Report was laid before Parliament, 5,348,205. For the last year I have only computation to guide me; but, that assures me, that the nation paid in poor-rates, last year, 7,896,556% or 31,586,224 dollars, being Now, if you multiply the paupers by more than twice the amount of all the taxes seven in both instances, you will find that which you paid during the last year, if they amount to nearly the whole of the poMr. MADISON'S statement be correct. pulation, making it appear, that in 1803, But that I may not expose myself to the there were nearly one pauper to every seven risk of being charged with a wrong com-persons in the parish of Bishop's Waltham, putation, I must first state, that no official account of this important matter has been laid before Parliament, since 1803; and that, therefore, I am forced to resort to computation, the grounds of which I will Now explicitly state. I have the means of as well as throughout England and Wales.. It was said, in our newspapers, that the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prus sia expressed their surprise at seeing NO POOR PEOPLE in England. If this was true, it is clear, that their Mujesty's did not look in the right places. We now come to the result. The poor-rates in Bishop's Waltham parish, instead of the 1,595%. to which they amounted in 1803, amounted, last year, to 2,3551. 18s. 6d. as I know from the poor book now lying before me, and of which sum I myself paid more than 100% or 400 dollars. If, therefore, this criterion be a good one, and such, I think, it cannot be denied to be; if, in 1803, Bishop's Waltham paid 1,5957. while England and Wales paid 5,348,2057. England and Wales must, last year, have paid 7,896,556. seeing that Bishop's Waltham paid, in the same year, 2,355. throwing aside the shillings, pence, and farthings. and Wales. Our poor-rates alone amount to this on the whole of our population; while, according to Mr. Madison's ac-, count, the whole of your taxes of every sort, paid into the Treasury of the United States, do not amount to more than 2 dollars a head on your population, even supposing your population to be now little more than 7,000,000. The TYTHES form another part of our taxes. I do not mean to speak of them, as some most loyal men do, as being peculiarly odious; or, indeed, as being odious at all, either in their nature, or the mode of their collection, in which latter I have never experienced any thing severe or vexatious; nor do I believe, that, as far I return, then, to my former statement, as the clergy are the owners of the tythes that the poor-rates alone of England and (for they do not own more than about the Wales, exclusive of Scotland, where, how-half of them), their rate, or collection, is ever, there is something paid in support of the poor, amounts to more than double the sum, which was last year (a year of great expense,) paid by the whole of the population of America into the Treasury, in taxes of all sorts, direct and indirect. Then comes another question; namely, what is the relative population of the two Countrics? I have not the account of your last Census at hand. I think it made your total population amount to between seven and eight millions. At this time I cannot suppose it to be less than 8,000,000. Take, then, the 5,348,205. of poor-rates in 1803, observing that then there were 1,256,357 paupers, and you will find, that we must have now upwards of 1,800,000 paupers, provisions being, at this time, as cheap, if not cheaper, than they were in 1803.-Deduct, therefore, from the 8,872,980 (the population of England and Wales), the 1,800,000 paupers, and there are left, to pay the 7,896,5561. of poor-rates, only 7,072,980 persons, incinding women and children. The paying population, as to poor-rates, is, at any rate, smaller than the population of your Republic; and the sum paid exceeds, as I have before stated, twice the amount of the whole of the taxes of every sort, which you paid, last year, into the Treasury of the United States, if Mr. Madison's statement be correct. often severe, or unfair, or even troublesome. Still, however, the tythes, which Arthur Young, in 1792, estimated at 5,000,000/. in England and Wales, must be looked upon as so much money raised from the land; and, certainly, it would not be raised, if there were no Established Church; no State Religion. In short, the tythes, as far as the clergy are the receivers, must be looked upon as so much money received and expended by the Government; so much money given by the Government to a description of persons, eminently calculated to repay it in support. Nevertheless I will not include the tythes amongst the taxes of the nation. Lord Sheffield, indeed; he who predicted, in his book, published in 1783, that you would soon wish to return to your allegiance, which, as he made it out, would be found necessary to your very existence as a people; that same Lord Sheffield, in a speech to a meeting of wool-growers, lately reckoned tythes amongst the causes of our farmers being unable to maintain a competition with those of neighbouring countries. I do not give so much weight to tythes; but, still, they must not be forgotten; and when a Report to the House of Commons, made in 1803, states the whole rental of the kingdom of Great Britain at 28 millions, you will perceive, that if we take the tythes at Mr. Arthur Young's estimate of 1792, the Turning towards another view of this in-tythes amount to more than a sixth of the teresting subject, we perceive, that, if we exclude the paupers, as we rationally must, phe poor rates alone amount to more than one pound sterling, or four dollars, a head n the whole of the population of England whole rental. Indeed, they must amount to a great deal more; because the tythe consists of a tenth of the whole of the produce of a farm; and, of course, it is a tenth of the rent, the labour, the taxes, |