House of Commons.[1] The Whig Peers in 1776 took a very bold and extreme view of the question. They asserted, that the Crown had no independent right to the Civil List whatever, and that the Ordinary Revenue of the Crown was part of the national revenue, in the same sense as the money arising from the land tax or any other duty, and that Parliament consequently had the same right to inquire into the expenditure of the money they had voted which it possessed in other cases. The argument, it is to be observed, implied the abolition of the practice of seeking the permission of the Crown whenever the Royal domain is about to be dealt with by Parliament. From enforcing this extreme demand Parliament has hitherto shrunk, and the present practice reposes on a compromise. Whenever the Ordinary Revenue is about to be dealt with, the royal permission is still sought, but Parliament, under the resolution moved by Dunning in 1780, claims an independent right to inquire into the expenditure of the money given to the Crown in exchange.[2]
Shelburne concluded his speech on the Civil List with a general account of the degeneracy of Parliament, owing to patronage, borough-hunting, contractors and their contracts, peculation and corruption at home, vacillation and weakness in public matters, and the increased influence of the Crown. The last, he said, would bring the country to slavery, destruction and ruin. Corruption had spread beyond Parliament into the general mass of the community; the nation was composed of buyers and sellers; contracts and inexhaustible influence, derived through these fruitful channels, had done wonders, and had succeeded in cases where bribes, places, and pensions, from insuperable impediments, must have for ever failed; and they not only answered purposes in Parliament, but, from their fertile and happy nature, flowed through twice ten thousand channels. The great contractors had their different contracts; those again were divided and subdivided almost ad infinitum among sub-contractors; and
