1820 July 23

From Emancipation Spanish Retrenchment

'. 11. Particualr interests adverse

Retrenchment principles

The interests of the King, of the Clergy, of the Public Creditor all concur in

requiring that thais emancipation should have place. To avoid practical error,

political surveys must be not merely extensive but all comprehensive. Retrench

somewhere is indispensable. For a long time receipt has fallen short of expenditure

exzpenditure has outrun receipt not substraction form but addition to expenditure

will for some time be among the unaviodable results of the auspicious change.

Retrenchment somewhere is therfore indispensable. Retrenchment is this quarter may be

made with less suffering than from any of those other quarters. The greater the

retrenchemtn made in any one of those quarters the less will need to be the

retrenchment from those other quarters taken together In this quarter Retrenchment

may be made with less suffering than is one of those other quarters.

Follow certain principles not as to financial[?] retrenchment. Judge, my friends how

far they are or are not true ones.

The ends in view are - 1. Reduction of suffering to the minimum

2. Giving the maximum facility to the operation

1. As to minimizing the suffering

The suffering will be the less, 1. the less the number of the sufferers; 2. the

intense the suffering on the part of each. In taking the number of suffers, not the

immediate /principal/ sufferers above but those /dependents of all clases/ who

through them are sufferers should be included. Dependents on men of the lowest class

are wives and children and other dependent blood relations. In the higher classes to

these are added domestics, servants, and artists of all sorts who subsist by

ministering ot their pleasures. Were it not for this the King being but one, and the

provision made for him so enormous stripping off /by restricting/ the whole provision

attached to that office, the retrenchment might be made with least injury. But he has

his dependents and they have theirs. The service thus employed /rendered/ being all

of it useless to the public, as the incumbrances drop off the office with its

instruments should be extinguished.
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  • Title: [1820 May 31. Emancipation Spanish]
    Description: 1820 May 31.

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    '.4. Prelim y Considrat[?] continued

    5. Retrenchment this the easiest

    '.4. Preliminary Considerations continued Retrenchment necessary - In no other department is it so easy.

    5. If retrenchment is made, it is in this part of the field of expense that retrenchment may be made with greatest facility be made

    In stating /submitting/ this topic to your consideration, I anticipate that in the account of pecuniary profit and loss, the effect of the dominion in question will be no profit, all loss. On the proof given of this loss will therefore depend the relevancy and utility of every thing /observation/ which under this head you will see advanced /made/

    When your rulers come to take into consideration the subject of finance, they will see the extreme difficulty of adding any thing to the taxes already in existence.

    Instead of addition, they may perhaps see what even to them will appear an absolute necessity of subtraction.

    They will find /see/ that whatsoever has been the amount of taxation, under the old system expenditure has constantly gone on and to the utmost bounds of possibility has continued outstretching it

    They will accordingly see the absolute necessity of retrenchment somewhere.

    Well then if /there in some part of the field of expenditure there/ must be retrenchment, what part can be more suitable than that in which so far from being necessary the expenditure is not productive of any advantage - is on the contrary productive of much evil /evil[?] and/ uncompensated.

    Look all round the field of expenditure, no other part will you find in which the retrenchment can be made with less of inconvenience - with less of real, sensible, indisputable evil, coming home immediate to individuals - felt by assignable individuals.
  • Title: [1820 Omitted Apr. 1822 Emancipation]
    Description: 1820 Omitted Apr. 1822

    Emancipation Spanish

    Lett. 1.

    When you have thought sufficiently of the sufferings which the dominion would would

    produce at a distance, and the interests it would would produce, at a distance, and

    the interests it would have to contend with from without think of the sufferings less

    obvious sufferings it would produce, and the less obvious [...?] interests it would

    hve to contend with at home - the [...?] in some quarter or other - retrenchment must

    be made. In no quarter can it be made with near so little suffering - with near so

    little natural and rational resistence - as in this.

    While matter to this effect was writing, in come the accounts of the proceedings in

    the Cortes. Sittings of July 13 th 1820. According to the Finance

    Minister, Contributions, 470,000,000 reals; expenditure 680,000,000, reals: Royal

    family's expences exclusive of the King's 40,000,000 reals: increased to that sum

    from the 20,000,000 of reals which was the amount in the days of Charles 2 d. Proposed on part of Ways and Means, sale of the whole of the

    National Domains, and 1/7th of that of the Clergy.

    As to the change in the Constitution, for an indefinite length of time it is to the

    exigencies of the state that it will make addition,

    rather than to the resources. The relief which it will

    afford to the finances is sure; but its non-immediateness is not less sure than its

    existence.

    With this retrenchment there must be: and at /from/ what branch of the possible

    subject matter? Those branches above in addition to the one in question have

    presented themselves as capable of being subjected to it: that which regards the

    Monarch and his family that which regards the Clergy, and that which regards the

    Public Creditor.

    How then are those interests, combined against that sinister interest by which the

    pursuit of that dominion is maintained: those interests and no one of them a weak

    one. Four contending interests, and which of them stands forth in the order of just

    preference? To this I have no need to answer: that the one which regards the dominion

    stands last, I have answered without difficulty. King, Clergy, and Public Creditor

    have this in common - that retrenchment can not apply to them, without giving birth

    to suffering: to [...?] suffering. To the daemon of ambition it may apply - and apply

    largely - if not without producing any such effect, at any rate without producing in

    that shape any thing like equal effect.

    See

    Mem? [...?] Aug[?] 1820
  • Title: [1821 Feb. 21 Rid Yourselves]
    Description: 1821 Feb. 21

    Rid Yourselves

    '.1. Interests concerned.

    The worse the state of the /a/ government is in respect of economy,

    the more decided is the impracticability of providing for the difference between

    existing suppliers and indispensable exigences, by additional taxation: in the same

    proportion therefore has place the necessity of having recourse to retrenchment.

    This considered, the following are the classes of functionaries, the

    pecuniary provision for which will naturally present itself as being, in the nature

    of the case, in the greatest degree susceptible of retrenchment: and whose interest,

    in proportion as a decision has place that retrenchmetn is the means f supply that

    can not but be resorted to for the satisfaction fo the exigencies in question, will

    be acknowledged even by themselves to stand in this respect in coincidence with, and

    will operate in support of the universal interest. For this kind may be referred

    I The King, her family, and houshold, including the [...?] of all

    ranks receiving payment for personal services, rendered or supposed to be rendered,

    to [...?] or [...?].

    II. The Clergy. III. The Public Creditors: In relation to each of

    these Classes, considered in an extraordinary degree exposed to suffer from

    retrenchment, a free observation may here be not without this use. 1. As to the King,

    and his personal dependents as justmentioned.

    That, considered with reference to the universal interest the expence

    belonging to this kind is not, in any part of it necessary to the king, nor yet to

    the well-being, of government, as is demonstrated by this circumstance that in the

    Anglo-American United States not a particle of it has place: and beyond possibility

    of critislation[?], in that cluster of two and twenty representative democracies, the

    people, in so far as depends upon the nature of the government are in a state of

    felicity, not to be matched in any other country in any age. If therefore the

    usefulness of the part of the official establishmetn to the whole value taken

    together were the only consideration to be adverted to, here is a mass of constant

    expenditure, from which not merely might ample retrenchment be made, but of which,

    according to the above principles, were these the only ones that bore upon the

    subject, the entire aggregate might be [...?] off with indisputable advantage - and

    without detriment in any shape.