Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 January 1894 — TOPICS OF THESE TIMES. [ARTICLE]

TOPICS OF THESE TIMES.

QBANT3 TO ROYALTY. Few people In the United States •re aware that the munificent grants of money and other valuable concessions to the royal family of England are made as a result of a fair agreement between the nation and the ancestors of the reigning Queen. Originally the crown held in fee simple vast estates, comprising mining royalties, forests, lands in country and in cities, water rights and other property, in all of almost fabulous value. These were made over to the nation, and in return the nation was to provide the sovereign and the sovereign’s family with a civil list, and to maintain them in a manner compatible with their rank and the dignity of the English nation. The Queen and her children have, therefore, received the numerous grants, of which the American people have heard and wondered at so much, not as a gratuity but rather as an annuity founded upon the enormous capital once surrendered by their ancestors to the State. The nation got the best of the bargain in many ways, as is shown by the discussions that always arise in Parliament when one of the good Queen’s numerous descendants is to be provided for. The property surrendered has long ago vastly overreached the original amount on which the probable outlay by the nation was based, and each succeeding grandchild on receiving his grant, large though it may seem, is only receiving a por tion of his patrimony instead of the much larger amount that time and the accumulations of a well-admin-istered trust would have surely brought him. These facts have recently been brought to public notice by a discussion in Parliament concerning a decision by the Duke of Coburg, the second son of Victoria, who recently succeeded to the ducal throne of Coburg, to retain $50,000 a year out of his grant of $125,000 a year from the English nation as Duke of Edinburgh. There was no legal or valid reason why he should not -have retained the entire amount of his annuity, and his voluntary surrender of $75,030 per year was an act of patriotic generosity 'or which he has received little credit at home and noneat all abroad. The widowed Empress Frederick of Germany has received $45,000 per annum from the English nation since her marriage, and several of the sovereigns of Europe retain their English grants because of their descent and because they are entitled to it as a matter of common justice.