Royal Expenditure
It is in many ways distasteful that the financial subvel tion to the sovereign and other members of the Royal Family should be made the subject of debate in the House of Commons as it was this week, and particularly distasteful that such a suggestion as the Opposition sponsored, for a decennial review of royal expenditure should have to be argued. It is, of course, necessary that this, like all other expenditure, should be author- ised by the House, but it would be more satisfactory that when a Select Committee has made recommendations on the subject they should be accepted without prolonged debate, even though not all of them were made unanimously. There was 4 time when all the revenues of the country went into the hands of the sovereign personally, and he defrayed out of them the whole of the national expenditure. We have travelled a long way since then, and it has been a wise journey. But it is possible to go too far. No one can decide with accuracy what the different members of the Royal Family may reasonably be expected to need, and to suppose that the moneys voted go to foster personal extravagance would be the grossest folly or ignorance. If there is a general desire to curtail ceremonial drastically, that no doubt can be done. But there is obviously no such desire, as the public interest aroused by so recent an event as the wedding of the Princess Royal's son on Tuesday abundantly evidenced. The total sum involved—just over £405,000, much of it coming from the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall—is not considerable as things go today. We are under a great debt to members of the Royal Family for the admirable way in which they discharge their exacting duties, and if it is a question of treating them generously or treating them grudgingly there can be no hesitation about the choice.
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