The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 02 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
Philosophy
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 02 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
Sir, the House will now see, whether, in praying for judgment against
the minor principalities, I do not act in conformity to the laws that I
had laid to myself: of getting rid of every jurisdiction more
subservient to oppression and expense than to any end of justice or
honest policy; of abolishing offices more expensive than useful; of
combining duties improperly separated; of changing revenues more
vexatious than productive into ready money; of suppressing offices which
stand in the way of economy; and of cutting off lurking subordinate
treasuries. Dispute the rules, controvert the application, or give your
hands to this salutary measure.
Most of the same rules will be found applicable to my second
object,--_the landed estate of the crown_. A landed estate is certainly
the very worst which the crown can possess. All minute and dispersed
possessions, possessions that are often of indeterminate value, and
which require a continued personal attendance, are of a nature more
proper for private management than public administration. They are
fitter for the care of a frugal land-steward than of an office in the
state. Whatever they may possibly have been in other times or in other
countries, they are not of magnitude enough with us to occupy a public
department, nor to provide for a public object. They are already given
up to Parliament, and the gift is not of great value. Common prudence
dictates, even in the management of private affairs, that all dispersed
and chargeable estates should be sacrificed to the relief of estates
more compact and better circumstanced.
If it be objected, that these lands at present would sell at a low
market, this is answered by showing that money is at a high price. The
one balances the other. Lands sell at the current rate; and nothing can
sell for more. But be the price what it may, a great object is always
answered, whenever any property is transferred from hands that are not
fit for that property to those that are. The buyer and seller must
mutually profit by such a bargain; and, what rarely happens in matters
of revenue, the relief of the subject will go hand in hand with the
profit of the Exchequer.
As to the _forest lands_, in which the crown has (where they are not
granted or prescriptively held) the _dominion_ of the _soil_, and the
_vert_ and _venison_, that is to say, the timber and the game, and in
which the people have a variety of rights, in common of herbage, and
other commons, according to the usage of the several forests,--I propose
to have those rights of the crown valued as manorial rights are valued
on an inclosure, and a defined portion of land to be given for them,
which land is to be sold for the public benefit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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