that the revenues of the crown estates, on which our sovereign might live with as much right as the Duke of Bedford, or the Duke of Northumberland, has to his estates, are now paid into the public exchequer.  All this, upon the present occasion, I am not going to insist upon.  What I now say is this:  that there is no sovereignty of any first-rate State which costs so little to the people as the sovereignty of England.  I will not compare our civil list with those of European empires, because it is known that in amount they treble and quadruple it; but I will compare it with the cost of sovereignty in a republic, and that a republic with which you are intimately acquainted—­the republic of the United States of America.

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.  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 pounds 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 pounds per annum.  That makes 389,000 pounds, 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 thirty-seven States is also paid.  There are, I believe, five thousand and ten 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 pounds sterling a year.  So you see, gentlemen, that the immediate expenditure for the sovereignty of the United States is between 700,000 and 800,000 pounds 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.