public feeling I will not omit the Pension List. I resisted
--and, with the opinions I entertain, I should again resist--
a retrospective inquiry into pensions granted by the Crown
at a time when the discretion of the Crown was neither
fettered by law nor by the expression of any opinion on the
part of the House of Commons; but I voted for the resolu-
tion, moved by Lord Althorp, that pensions on the Civil
List ought, for the future, to be confined to such persons
only as have just claims to the royal beneficence, or are
entitled to consideration on account either of their personal
services to the Crown or of the performance of duties to the
public, or of their scientific or literary eminence. On the
resolution which I thus supported as a private member of
Parliament I shall scrupulously act as a Minister of the
Crown, and shall advise the grant of no pension which is
not in conformity with the spirit and intention of the vote
to which I was a party.

Then as to the great question of Church Reform. On
that head I have no new professions to make. I cannot give
my consent to the alienating of Church property, in any
part of the United Kingdom, from strictly ecclesiastical
purposes. But I repeat now the opinions that I have already
expressed in Parliament in regard to the Church Establish-
ment in Ireland--that if, by an improved distribution of
the revenues of the Church, its just influence can be
extended and the true interests of the Established religion
promoted, all other considerations should be made sub-
ordinate to the advancement of objects of such paramount
importance.

As to Church property in this country, no person has
expressed a more earnest wish than I have done that the
question of tithe, complicated and difficult as I acknowledge
it to be, should, if possible, be satisfactorily settled by the
means of a commutation, founded upon just principles, and
proposed after mature consideration.

With regard to alterations in the laws which govern our
Ecclesiastical Establishment, I have had no recent opportunity
of giving that grave consideration to a subject of the deepest
interest which could alone justify me in making any public
declaration of opinion. It is a subject which must undergo

-141-