Representative British Orations Volume 3 (of 4): With Introductions and Explanatory Notes
History
Representative British Orations Volume 3 (of 4): With Introductions and Explanatory Notes
Speeches, addresses, etc., English
Gentlemen, there is no analogy between the position of our sovereign,
Queen Victoria, and that of the President of the United States. The
President of the United States is not the sovereign of the United
States. There is a very near analogy between the position of the
President of the United States and that of the Prime-Minister of
England, and both are paid at much the same rate—the income of a
second-class professional man.[45] The sovereign of the United States
is the people; and I will now show you what the sovereignty of the
United States costs. Gentlemen, you are aware of the Constitution of
the United States. There are thirty-seven independent States, each with
a sovereign Legislature. Besides these, there is a Confederation of
States to conduct their external affairs, which consists of the House
of Representatives and a Senate. There are two hundred and eighty-five
members of the House of Representatives, and there are seventy-four
members of the Senate, making altogether three hundred and fifty-nine
members of Congress. Now each member of Congress receives 1,000_l._
sterling per annum. In addition to this he receives an allowance called
“mileage,” which varies according to the distance which he travels, but
the aggregate cost of which is about 30,000_l._ per annum. That makes
389,000_l._, almost the exact amount of our civil list.
But this, gentlemen, will allow you to make only a very imperfect
estimate of the cost of sovereignty in the United States. Every
member of every Legislature in the 37 States is also paid. There are,
I believe, 5,010 members of State Legislatures, who receive about $350
per annum each. As some of the returns are imperfect, the average
which I have given of expenditure may be rather high, and therefore
I have not counted the mileage, which is also universally allowed.
Five thousand and ten members of State Legislatures at $350 each make
$1,753,500, or 350,700_l._ sterling a year. So you see, gentlemen, that
the immediate expenditure for the sovereignty of the United States
is between 700,000_l._ and 800,000_l._ a year. Gentlemen, I have not
time to pursue this interesting theme, otherwise I could show that
you have still but imperfectly ascertained the cost of sovereignty in
a republic. But, gentlemen, I cannot resist giving you one further
illustration.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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