The amount expended on account of the building of Buckingham Palace, to the 5th of April, 1826 The estimated amount of the sum which will be required to complete the building and improvements of the ground round about it, is 4 £90,371 162,319 252,690 Estimate of the cost of the alterations and additions to the King's Palace, in St. James'spark.-June 20, 1825. FOR THE BUILDING. Raising the floors of the basement story 21 feet Raising the ground-floor 5 feet Taking down the wings, forming the quadrangle, and rebuilding them further back, aud forming a colonnade on each side Extending the colonnades to the proposed depth of the quadrangle, and building wings to the eastern extremity The entrance archway and circular railing (proposed sculpture of the archway not included) 8,900 The portico and porte-cochere, and alterations of the entrance front (ex cept sculptured pediments) 6,600 The chapel (not gilt) The hall and great staircase, including the carving and gilding the cap. itals and mouldings 7,500 9,200 The lower gallery, including carving and gilding the mouldings and capi- 3,800 9,400 The raising the library-building, and the other side corresponding with it The alterations of the interior of the house, and the general repairs of the parts not altered The raising the building fronting the flower-garden [north front] The terraces and pavilions of the north and west fronts Supplementary estimate of additions to the original Plans.—Oct. 10, 1825. Additional buildings forming an entrance to the palace from Pimlico, Forming a private court-yard on the north side of the buildings from the Park, and continuing a gallery from the portion of the said court yard, along the north side of the buildings forming the yard, to communicate with the buildings fronting the flower-garden for the private use of his Majesty of buildings fronting the flower-garden an addi Widening the building in the west front, between the centre building and the wings on each side Repeating the colonnade and steps of the south end of the hall at the north end, and forming an entrance to the gallery at the end 6,400 3,600 3,600 1,600 230,400 FOR THE GROUNDS. Forming the ornamental water, and the mound to screen the . Making a brick reservoir at Hyde-park-corner, to supply the £74,700 1,520 3,500 3,200 £262,690 Sculpture not included, except capitals, friezes, and cornices. Estimate prepared by Mr. Nash-The chimney-pieces parquette, and best floors, Scagliola columns, chimney-pieces, slabs, and wood carving at Carlton Honse, have been considered as used again; also the screen of columns on the wall has been considered as forming the pavilions at the ends of the terrace, and the great stairs to furnish the king's private stairs; but the timber, bricks, lead, slates, and common floors, have not been considered as applicable to the new palace." OBSERVATIONS BY THE EDITOR OF "THE TIMES." We have just read a touching petition to his Majesty from the distressed inhabitants of Frome, in the West of England, who pray on behalf of more than 60,000 of their unemployed brethren, the journeymen of the woollen manufacture, for some small glimmering of royal beneficence and protection. When these poor men beseech their sovereign" to impose restraints on all recent and iujurious inventions," as a means of superseding machinery by manual toil, it is needless to say how widely they mistake the nature and causes of the visitation under which they suffer. Whatever tends to lower the cost of production in any country, whether with respect to the necessaries of life or its indulgencies, constitutes a direct encouragement to trade, and an eyentual extension of the market for skill and industry. The cure, therefore, which the journeymen of Frome and its vicinity solicit at the hands of their most gracious sovereign, is a nostrum which would fail of its effect. But what is that to the purpose? Is the patient's malady less real, because the proper treatment of it lies beyond his reach? Is a man less likely to expire of hunger, because he unconsciously importunes his friend for poison instead of wholesome aliment? Let the men of Somerset implore his Majesty to take measures for lowering the price of bread and meat, by a previous reduction of those dreadful imposts which form the true and paramount obstacles to a restoration of our national prosperity; and they will speak a language which must find an immediate echo in the enlightened judgment, and humane disposition of the King. But our poor countrymen, who are shrewd and intelligent in the use of their natural reason, may answer with much appearance of justice, that the taxes which press upon them cannot be reduced, so long as the Parliament stands pledged to maintain a voluminous list of military and civil establishments, and to execute a variety of "indispensable" undertakings, sufficient, in fact, to require the whole sum, and more than all, that can be reckoned upon as the result of our system of taxation, however prolific its amount. The sufferers ought to frame their petitions, therefore, with a view to engage the Royal attention in an inquiry into the nature and necessity of those multifarious objects, for and through which they have no doubt a general idea that the money raised in taxes is consumed. We can ourselves supply them occasionally with materials for such a prayer to the Sovereign. There are, we grieve to say, plans for employing the revenue exacted from the poor in England in manifold but circuitous imposts upon every article of human convenience and enjoyment, to which the people themselves are blind, from the ignorance appertaining to their humble condition, and from the indifference growing out of hard and desperate want. Of many of these schemes of expense it is easy to imagine that our gracious Monarch is also retained in a state of ignorance, equal to that of the most oppressed and broken-hearted of his subjects, by the dexterous artifices of men in power, who well understand what would be their own fate, if even by accident a remote suspicion should cross the mind of a Prince so generous, that there are hourly wasted in wreckless prodigality, sums more than sufficient, if well employed, to save whole thousands and ten thousands of brave but prostrate Englishmen, with their wives and infants, in whom the consciousness of life itself is prematurely quickened by the agonies of hunger. The King can know nothing of these abominations. It is therefore to gain for our petitioning fellowsubjects an alliance so powerful, and a sympathy so delightful, as that of their common friend and father, that we present them with a copy of a document, believed to be official, an official but scarcely credible document, professing to be an estimate of sums expended and to be expended, on the building, repairing, and adorning of a number of Royal Palaces. The malice of those with whom such projects have originated, will be seen at once to derive immeasurable aggravation from the expedient of connecting the name of our excellent Sovereign with the ruin of his people, at a time so awful as that which now threatens to overwhelm both him and the community. We repeat, that it is quite dreadful to reflect on the stratagem of devising jobs for ministerial creatures, and palming them upon the nation as so many methods of diverting the Royal cares, or of animating the ennui of an existence, which, on this side the grave, can have no new Occupation but that of preparing for another. How must it rouse the virtuous indignation of HIS MAJESTY, to learn, that, in his name, behind his back, in defiance of his inevitable displeasure, and contempt for his tender affection towards a broken-down people, there are persons who place to the account of his Royal pleasure an outlay of more than HALF A MILLION sterling, for throwing down, building up, carving, gilding, decorating palaces, excavating hills, elevating vallies, making earth and water change places, with a hundred other extraordinary metamorphoses, as if these were days for lavish profusion-as if this day, on which five hundred thousand people are starving, was a fit one for the utter demolition of five hundred thousand pounds. Ninety thousand pounds have been expended on Buckingham Palace! and there is called for, in addition, the sum of one hundred and sixty-two thousand pounds! There is, besides all this, another palace, and near the same spot. A grand house, it appears, was projected by one, whose name we shall hold sacred, as a residence for the Duke of YORK. The illustrious Duke borrowed money from a friend, to enable him to commence this palace. The loan was absorbed in little more than the foundations of the edifice, and where was another loan to be obtained? Alas! nowhere. The illustrious personage, after a long course of anxiety and of bodily suffering, increased, we have no doubt, by sharp uneasiness of mind, had recourse at length to that expedient which seldom fails where Royal distresses are to be mitigated. The Cabinet was appealed to; the "dead weight" was taken off the shoulders of the Heir Presumptive, and it was agreed that the labour which he could not execute should be accomplished for him. This vast Corinthian building was bought from his Royal Highness, that it might be given to him. It was not merely taken off his hands, but as the history goes, the mortgage was first cleared off, and the house was to be finished by Government, for the purpose of being forthwith restored to the Heir Presumptive: then, as the account goes, the interest of His Royal Highness in the lease from the Crown, was bought from him, that Ministers might have a right to grant him leave to live in the habitation, from the embarrassment of which they relieved him-and thus his Royal Highness is on his legs again. Other debts are said to have been discharged with money given out of the public treasury, for these over-mortgaged premises. And what addition has been made thereby to the half million voted for the palaces, properly speaking, royal, we shall doubtless hear, before many weeks have elapsed. We repeat, however, our firm conviction, that when these proceedings are fairly submitted to HIS MAJESTY, and placed in proper jurta-position, with the complaints and remonstrances of his much-suffering people. such a perversion of the means of procuring bread will be at once rebuked and countermanded, and the frightful consequence averted of so daring and unseasonable a public wrong. › ५ NOTE BY THE EDITOR OF "THE REPUBLICAN." 1 If we admit all that the alarmists about machinery advance or ask, as to the injury which it does to the labourer, we ask them in turn, whether the attempt to check the invention, manufacture, and use of machinery, would not be the greater of the two evils; whether other countries, with less taxes, America for instance, would not improve machinery and profit by our stupidity; and whether, if such were the case, either by an open or a smuggled trade, their production and sale of an article, at a small price, would not operate in the same ratio to lessen the demand for hands to produce it at home, as it is assumed that machinery has done. But, says Thomas Single and others, allow the free use of machinery and tax its producing powers up to the point of subsistence to the labourer, whose demand for labour is lessened. Do so, and you will have no market for your taxed article, if other people can use machinery without the tax. Prevent the use of machinery, or tax its means of cheap production, and you will produce precisely the effect, or a worse effect, than that, which you wish to counteract. The advantage of machinery is cheap production; the advantage of cheap production is greater consumption; the advantage of greater consumption is a more active state of commerce and more personal comforts, the advantage and comfort of clean garments instead of filthy rags. It has been asserted. and proofs to the contrary have been challenged, that, in no one manufacture, say of woollen, cotton, linen, or silk goods, has the introduction of machinery lessened the aggregate number of individuals before employed in that manufacture. Individuals or numbers might have been thrown out of employ for a time; but other individuals or numbers have received a demand for more active labour. Machinery rather changes the position of the demand for labour than lessens labour; and it is this change of position that creates all the clamour which we hear against machinery, a clamour, which though it be founded on distress, arises from a mistaken view of the cause of that distress. It is a clamour misapplied, and, as such, can produce no beneficial change. If the spinning jenny have removed the spinning wheel, it has but made the worker in iron one of the necessary labourers for the production of wearing apparel. A spinning wheel was merely the work of a day; a jenny the work of weeks to a number of hands, with a constant demand for repairs. Therefore, in the demand for labour for the production of wearing apparel, the smith is now wanted instead of the spinner. To say, that these changes ought not to be allowed, or to say that compensation should be made from the taxes to those who suffer from such changes, is to raise barriers to the common welfare. In all changes of long existing circumstances, there will be individuals who gain and individuals who lose. It is the foundation of commerce and of all social relations. The principle is a a natural one; for health and stability, whether in an animal, a vegetable, a mineral, or a planet, consist of unimpeded motion of the parts among each other, that constitute the whole, and an exchange of parts with other bodies, The change, the motion, is the life of the thing, its food, its preservation. The grower of wheat says to the community, "you ought not, and shall not, if I can influence the legislature, buy any other wheat than that which, by tillage, I produce, and, for that you shall pay me a profitable price, even if a neighbour, belonging to another community a few miles off, can supply you at the half of that price." That is evidently unfair, cries the manufacturer. To support you, your landlord, your tithe and tax gatherer, I must give a double price for my bread. And I, cries the agriculturist, do not I pay you, in the same proportion, for my wearing apparel ? The inference, then, must be, that our mutual produce is doubly taxed, compared with the taxation of similar produce among our neighbours. Can we support each other, upon any scale of prices? No, cries the manufacturer, your consumption is not equal to my power of production, and I must seek a foreign market; to do which, I must partake of what these foreigners produce. I, |