A CURIOUS LETTER: PRECEDENTS.
London, 26th May 1857. Sin—Statistics, it has been said, can be made to prove anything : a coach and six can be driven, it is well known, through an act of Parliament: what of precedents, if they be well managed?
Why, what is no precedent at all may be made the proper precedent.
Without hero expressing any opinion one way or the other with regard tothe Princess Royal 's dowry, let me, if you please, draw attention to the' Chancellor of the Exchequer's recent illustration of the value of. precedents properly managed. Great Britain gave to George the Third's daughter 80,000/. Ireland gave her 5000/. per annum, the interest at 4 per cent of 126,000/. Now Irdand is a very poor country compared with England—wee poorer. Why was she so lavish ? The Union—at hand at the tune the grant was made—eximerated her from her own extravagance, and saddled the United Kingdom with the annuity. At most, Ireland paid but 20,0001.—and that, in her circumstances, a most incommensurately large sum : Great Britain paid 80,0001.: total, 100,000/. This amount was the sum for which there was a precedent. If on these grounds, now, Mr. Roebuck had gone to a division, I think the Chancellor of the Exchequer would have been outflanked. Whether the Irish Parliament voted an annual grant at first, or whether the vote was an annual one, I know not. I presume it voted an annual allowance at first—either because it could pay that more easily, or because the Union was close at hand, or for the combined reasons. But there must have been clever Chancellors of the Exchequer in those days, and perhaps very clever unseen movers of the pieces in the financial game. We do not degenerate. The exceptional and extraordinary mode in which Ireland managed the dowry is made the precedent; and no honourable Member points to the absurdity. I am, Sir, your old reader, AN ELECTOR OF MARYLEBONE.
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