He presides at the meetings of the Privy Council ; but
practically the only occasion on which all its members are
summoned is at the demise of the Crown, when it becomes
the duty of that ancient body to meet for the purpose of
proclaiming the accession of the new Sovereign. Formerly
the Lord President was the chairman of certain committees
of the Privy Council, which no longer exist. In 1837, when
Lord John Russell took the first step to establish a system
of national education, a Committee of the Privy Council
was appointed to administer the moneys which Parliament
voted for the purpose, and at its deliberations the Lord
President presided. In 1855 a new office was created —
that of Vice-President of the Council — which in time became
vested with the control of education, and that, too, dis-
appeared when the Board of Education, with a Minister
at its head, was created in 1902. In like manner, the duties
of the Privy Council in regard to trade were transferred to
the Board of Trade, and its duties in regard to public health



182 THE PAGEANT OF PARLIAMENT

were transferred to the Local Government Board. Again,
the Lord President supervised the exercise of the statutory
powers of the Privy Council in connection with the preven-
tion of cattle disease ; but the creation of a Board of Agri-
culture took that work out of his hands and left him
without any business, save that of the nominal supervision
of the administrative functions of the Privy Council. The
office of Lord Privy Seal is a survival from the historic past
when the Privy Council sought to restrain executive acts
of the Crown by insisting that the Lord Chancellor should
not affix the imprimatur of the Great Seal to any grant,
or patent, or writ which the Sovereign desired to issue,
without their authorization in the form of a warrant under
the Privy Seal. In these days of Government by Parlia-
ment, the Lord Privy Seal has nothing to do. Another
office of dignity rather than of responsibility is that of
the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. His duties in
relation to the revenues of the Duchy, which are vested in
the Sovereign and exempt from parliamentary control are
purely nominal, so that he is free to come to the assist-
ance of any Minister when hard pressed in Parliament, or
by departmental work outside. " So far from resembling
an epicurean divinity," said Lord Dufferin in 1871, when
some noble lords called his position a sinecure, " the Chan-
cellor of the Duchy of Lancaster seems to me to be a kind
of charwoman and maid-of-all-work to the Government."



One of the busiest of Ministers is the President of the
Board of Trade. The work of the department is most
diversified. It covers all matters affecting trade and com-
merce, industries and manufactures, the mercantile marine,
and commercial relations with foreign countries. The
salary of the President, formerly £2,000, was raised to
£5,000 in 1909. Attached to the Board of Trade are a
Parliamentary Secretary and a Secretary of Mines (created
in 1920), both of whom are paid £1,500 a year. The Board
of Trade holds a titular position that distinguishes it from
the other Government departments. It was constituted



OFFICE AND ITS SPOILS 183

in 1786 for the consideration of all matters relating to
trade and foreign plantations. As a board it is a relic of
olden and more leisurely times when much of the work
done by the heads of the departments and chief clerks was
revised by commissioners seated round a board or table.
Now, however, only the name survives. The Board of
Trade never meets. It had, as ex-officio members such
exalted personages as the Archbishop of Canterbury, the
Lord Chancellor, the Speaker of the House of Commons,
and also one whose office came to an end as long ago as
1800 — the Speaker of the Irish Parliament. When Mr.
Lloyd George was President of the Board of Trade he was
asked whether the Archbishop of Canterbury had attended
any meetings of the Board, and in an amusing equivocation
replied that his Grace " had not missed a single meeting
to which he had been summoned." Sydney Buxton, another
President of the Board of Trade, was asked why the place
of the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons on the Board
had not been filled up. " After keeping open his place for
more than a century," he replied, " I should be sorry now
to close the door to his possible return to the Board." He
added, amid the renewed laughter of the House, " that
he should also greatly regret losing the Archbishop of
Canterbury as a colleague."

The Minister of Health has charge of the public health
and controls local authorities. The Local Government
Board, which was created in 1871, was transformed into
the Ministry of Health in 1918. The Minister's salary is
£5,000, and that of his Parliamentary Secretary £2,000.
In 1889 the Board of Agriculture was established. The
powers of the Board of Trade relating to fisheries were
transferred to this department in 1903, when its title was
changed to that of " The Board of Agriculture and
Fisheries." In 1919 the Board became a Ministry. It is
responsible to Parliament for the Office of Woods and Forests
which administers Crown lands. The Minister of Agricul-
ture is paid £2,000, and his Parliamentary Secretary £1,200.
In 1902 the Board of Education entered upon its independent
existence among the Departments of the State. The Presi-
dent of the Board of Education has a salary of £2,000, and



184 THE PAGEANT OF PARLIAMENT

is assisted in administering the system of national education
by a Parliamentary Secretary, who gets £1,200. The First
Commissioner of Works, head of the Office of Works, which
performs overseeing duties in connection with Royal palaces,
State buildings and Royal parks, has £2,000 per annum.
The Postmaster-General receives £500 a year more, or
£2,500, in consideration of his more onerous duties and
responsibilities in the control of the postal and telegraph
services, and there is an Assistant Postmaster-General, who
is paid £1,200.

Two new Ministries were created during the Great War
to control and administer affairs which arose out of it —
ways and communication, by the Ministry of Transport ;
and the allotment and payment of pensions to disabled soldiers
and sailors, and to the relations of the killed, by the Ministry
of Pensions.^ The Labour Ministry, for the enforcement
of legal regulations in mines, factories and workshops, was
brought into being in the same period. These four Ministers
are paid £2,000 each, and their Parliamentary Secretaries
£1,200 each.

The Chief Secretary for Ireland has £4,425 a year. The
salary was formerly £5,500. The Committee on Official
Salaries, in 1850, recommended its reduction to £3,000,
but it was fixed at £4,000, with an extra allowance of £425
for the special travelling and other expenses of the post.
The Chief Secretary has also an official residence in the
Phoenix Park, Dublin. He is paid double the salary of an
Under-Secretary of State — besides his extra allowance —
on account of being obliged to reside part of the year in
London and part in Dublin. Formerly the Chief Secretary
was subordinate to the Home Office, but he has been for
many years independent of that department. His full
title is " Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland."
The relations between the Lord-Lieutenant and his Chief
Secretary have, however, become inverted in recent times.
The Chief Secretary is now solely responsible to Parliament
for Irish affairs ; and the Viceroyalty has become more

^ Three other Ministries were temporarily created for the purposes
of the War — Munitions and Shipping and 1^'ood. They were brought
to an end in 1921.



OFFICE AND ITS SPOILS 185

and more a position of dignity rather than of power. The
most highly paid office in the Administration is that of
the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, the salary being £20,000 a
year, with an allowance of £3,000 for outfit on appointment,
and an official residence in the Phoenix Park, known as the
Viceregal Lodge, as well as apartments in Dublin Castle.
There is also a political office of Vice-President of the Irish
Department of Agriculture, created in 1899, to which a
salary of £1,200 a year is attached. For Scotland there is
a Secretary, responsible, like the Chief Secretary for Ireland,
for a large number of public departments, paid £2,000 a
year, and a Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health, paid
£1,200 a year.

The salary attached to the office of Lord Chancellor of
England is £10,000— £4,000 as Speaker of the House of
Lords, and £6,000 as Judge. The Lord Chancellor of Ireland
is paid £6,000 a year. Indeed, the best paid offices are the
legal. The Attorney-General gets £7,000, and the Solicitor-
General £6,000 ; and both receive, in addition, high fees
for cases they conduct in the law courts on behalf of the
Crown. During 1913-14, the financial year before the
Great War, the Attorney-General was paid, in all, £18,397 ;
and the Solicitor-General, £19,027. The fees of the Attorney-
General in the year after the War, 1918-19, amounted to
£8,500, and those of the Solicitor-General to £10,300. They
are the confidential advisers of the Cabinet on questions
of law. Both also expound and defend in the House of
Commons the legal provisions of Government measures
and proposals. The Attorney-General for Ireland, as chief
law officer and law adviser of the Crown in Ireland, gets
£5,000 a year and fees ; and the Lord Advocate of Scotland,
who holds a similar position in regard to Scotland, also gets
£5,000 a year, but no fees. Ireland and Scotland have
each a Solicitor-General, who is paid £2,000.

There are posts in the Royal Household which are
political, and therefore, .like offices in the Administration,
are vacated at a change of Government. The best paid
of these Ministers is the Master of the Horse, who gets
£2,500 a year, the use of a Royal carriage and horses, and
the services of four of the King's footmen. He has



186 THE PAGEANT OF PARLIAMENT

authority over all matters relating to the royal stables,
the King's equerries, pages, grooms, coachmen, and is
responsible for arranging the details of Royal processions,
such as the procession from Buckingham Palace to West-
minster when the King goes in State to open Parliament.
The Lord Chamberlain, who has the regulation of Courts
and levees, and admission to them ; and the Lord Steward,
who has control of matters *' below stairs," just as the
Lord Chamberlain has of those " above stairs," are each
paid £2,000. Then there are the Captain of the Gentlemen-
at-Arms, and the Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard, who
each draw salaries of £1,000 a year. The functions of these
ancient bodyguards of the Sovereign are now entirely cere-
monial. There are also seven Lords-in- Waiting — one for
every day in the week — who are paid £600 a year each.
Only peers are eligible for all the foregoing Household
appointments. There are three other posts, carrying
salaries of £700 each, which are always given to Members
of the other House — Comptroller of the Household, who
conveys messages from the Commons to the Sovereign,
Treasurer of the Household, and Vice-Chamberlain. The
duties of these offices are practically nominal, and the
holders of them, whether Lords or Commons, act as assistant
Whips in their respective Houses, or do all sorts of odd jobs
for the Government. Finally, there is one unpaid Minister,
and he is, strange to say, called " Paymaster-General."
He is the head of the office which makes the payments
required by the different departments of State out of the
sums voted for the purpose by the House of Commons,
and placed to his account by the Treasury. He issues the
warrants which puts thousands of pounds into the pockets
of his colleagues in the Ministry, but not a brass farthing
into his own. What a tantalizing position ! It is the office
that is the attraction. For the Paymaster-General, though
he gets no salary, is proud to know that he is a Member of
the Government.



CHAPTER XVI

PENSIONS FOR MINISTERS



It appears to be widely supposed that Ministers of the Crown ^^
receive pensions on retirement. The position is that a \
Minister of the CroM^n may obtain a pension if he has held
office for four or five years. But he is not entitled to it
as a right on account of his service. He must apply for it
to the First Lord of the Treasury, and make a declaration
that his private income or resources are inadequate to
the maintenance of the social position proper to one who
has been a Minister of the Crown. Only two Members of
the Government receive pensions automatically on retiring
from, office, the Lord Chancellor of England, whose pension
is £5,000, and the Lord Chancelloi;^ of Ireland, whose pension
is £4,000 a year. These two pensions are payable as a
matter of course, however brief may have been the period
of service. Nor is there any limitation to the number of
such pensions that may be paid at the same time. At the
close of the World War in 1918 there were living four
ex-Lord Chancellors of England — Lord Halsbury, Lord Lore-
burn, Lord Haldane, and Lord Buckmaster — all of whom
are paid the £5,000 a year, and a fifth, Lord Finlay,
who, it was understood, waived his right to the retiring
allowance.

The other political pensions are, as I have said, con-
ditional. Johnson felt it necessary to define the English use
of the word " pension " as : " Pay given to a State hire-
ling for treason to his country." Johnson, however, after-
wards did something to make this form of royal bounty
respectable by himself accepting £300 a year from George III,

187



188 THE PAGEANT OF PARLIAMENT

Undoubtedly in the corrupt stage of political life during
the eighteenth century there were numerous pensions and
sinecure offices for Ministers who were needy, or simply
greedy. A Committee of the House of Commons reported
in 1802 that for twenty years previous a sum of £115,000
had been annually spent on pensions. But as political
morality developed with the progress of the nineteenth
century, or as the taxpayer grew impatient of his increasing
burdens, this system of growing rich or repairing broken
fortunes at the public expense gradually came to an end.
The granting of political pensions was for the first time
regulated by an Act passed by the Reform Government of
Earl Grey in 1834— the " 4 and 5 William V, c. 24," which
is described as an Act, " to alter, amend, and consolidate
the laws for regulating pensions, compensations, and allow-
ances to be made to persons in respect of their having held
civil offices of his Majesty's service."

The statute which now governs the granting of pensions
to ex-Ministers is the Political Offices Pension Act, 1869.
It was Gladstone, then in the first year of office as Prime
Minister, who brought in the measure. The only serious
opposition to it came from Henry Fawcett (afterwards
Postmaster-General in Gladstone's second Administration),
who thought that no Minister should be entitled to a political
pension unless he had been obliged to give up his profession
or business on taking office, and found it impossible to
resume it on retirement. Gladstone explained that his
scheme was no more than a necessary amendment of the
Act of 1834, which authorized pensions varying from £800
to £2,000, according to length of service and the emoluments
received, and after a short discussion, with one division —
94 to 15 — the Bill was passed.

Three classes of pensions for ex-Ministers were thus
created :

First-class pensions of £2,000 for four years' service
in an office of not less than £5,000 a year.

Second-class pensions of £1,200 for five years'
service in an office of less than £5,000 a year and
not less than £2,000 a year.



PENSIONS FOR MINISTERS 189

Third-class pensions of £800 for five years' service
in an office of less than £2,000 and more than £1,000
a year.

The period of service may be continuous, or at different
times, and in different offices of the same class. " No new
pension shall be granted in any class while four pensions
in that class are subsisting," says that Act ; " nor shall more
than one pension be granted in the same year."

The Political Offices Pensions Act, 1869, embodies the
following section of the Act of 1834 :

And whereas the principle of the regulations for granting allow-
ances of this nature is and ought to be founded on a consideration
not only of the services performed by the individual to the State,
but of the inadequacy of his private fortune to maintain his station
in life ; be it therefore enacted that from and after the passing of this
Act, whenever any person shall seek to obtain one of the pensions
before mentioned his application for that purpose shall be made in
writing to the Commissioners of his Majesty's Treasury, to which he
shall subscribe his name, and which shall contain not only a state-
ment of the services performed by him and the grounds on which
such pension is claimed, but a specific declaration that the amount
of his income from other sources is so limited as to bring him within
the intent and meaning of this Act and the principle hereinabove
declared, and without such declaration no pension as hereinbefore
provided or authorized shall be granted.

2

It is not generally known that Benjamin Disraeli was
a pensioner under the Act of 1834. There is but an obscure
and passing reference to it in Buckle's Life of Lord Beacons-
field. Lord Derby granted him a first-class pension in
June, 1859. Disraeli was the only Prime Minister of modern
times who received a political pension. He was in receipt of
it when he died as Lord Beaconsfield in April, 1881. The
pension was, of course, suspended while he was in office
as Chancellor of the Exchequer or First Lord of the Treasury
(including his two terms as Prime Minister), but the total
amount drawn by him in pensions, between 1859 and
1881, was £26,456 6s. 7d. Other distinguished pensioners
under the Act of 1834 were Spencer Walpole, three times Home



190 THE PAGEANT OF PARLIAMENT

Secretary, who from May, 1867, until his death in May, 1898,
received in the aggregate a sum of £62,032 19s. 4d. ; Sir
George Grey, four times Home Secretary, who from 1857
to 1882 drew £39,070 2s. 6d. ; and Thomas Milner Gibson,
President of the Board of Trade, who was paid £35,275 Is. 3d.
between 1866 and 1884.

The first beneficiary under the Act of 1869 was Charles
Pelham Villiers, the associate of Cobden and Bright in the
agitation for Free Trade. He entered Parliament for Wolver-
hampton in 1835, and sat for the same constituency until
his death in 1898 at the great age of ninety-six. For some
years at the end of his long career as a member of Parliament
he was Father of the House of Commons. Villiers has a
place among the few public men who have had statues
erected to them in their lifetime. He was so honoured by
Wolverhampton ten years before his death. Villiers held
office in two Liberal Administrations, having been Judge
Advocate-General for six years, and for the same period
President of the Poor Law Board, an office long since
merged in the Local Government Board, now the Ministry
of Health.

Villiers was awarded a second-class pension of £1,200 by
Gladstone on August 19, 1869, a few days after the Political
Offices Pensions Act became law. Although this amount
was reduced to £450 a year until January 5, 1874, as Villiers
had also a pension of £750 from the Suitors' Fee Fund of the
Court of Chancery — is there not quite a touch of eighteenth-
century sinecure in this ? — Villiers received altogether,
under the Act of 1869, the large sum of £30,810 12s. 8d.,
and was drawing the pension at his death in 1898. It may
be said that no man better earned a pension than Villiers.
His record of public service is unparalleled in the annals
of the House of Commons. But on the proving of his will
it was found that he had been a very wealthy man. He
left, in fact, a fortune of £250,000.

Gladstone, subsequently to the award of the pension
to Villiers, made a rule by which every cx-Minister to whom
he, as First Lord of the Treasury, granted a pension was
required not only to make the statutory declaration that
he was unable to maintain his social station, but was also



PENSIONS FOR MINISTERS 191

obliged to engage to surrender the pension should he come
into a private fortune, or obtain a highly paid appointment.
Villiers, it seems, had an accession of fortune, but evidently
he did not consider that the new engagement applied to
him, as he had not signed it. -j

As these pensions are paid, not out of monies voted by
Parliament, but directly out of the Consolidated Fund,
like the salaries and retiring allowances of the Judges, they
cannot be raised as a subject of debate in the House of
Commons. Attention, however, was drawn by means of
questions to Villiers' case, and subsequently to the case of
Viscount Cross, who died in March, 1914, leaving a personal
estate of the value of £72,299, after having drawn a second-
class pension of £2,000 for over twentj'^ years, which amounted
in the aggregate to £40,760. It appeared that Lord Cross,
like Villiers, did not sign the declaration to surrender his
pension in the event of an improvement in his pecuniary
circumstances. As Lord Beaconsfield left £84,000 at his death,
his case differs only in one respect from those of Villiers
and Cross — he had been twice Prime Minister of England.



The First Lord of the Treasury is restricted by precedent
to granting these political pensions only to ex-Ministers of
his own Party. In 1883 an application was made to Glad-
stone for a pension for a Conservative ex-Minister. It
was refused on the ground " that no political pension has
been granted by any Minister during the last fifty years,
except to one with whom he stood on terms of general
confidence and co-operation." The Prime Minister went
on to say, " the examination of private circumstances, such
as I consider the Act to require, is, for its nature, difficult
and invidious ; but the examination of competing cases
in the ex-official corps is a function that could not be dis-
charged with the necessary combination of free responsible
action and of exemption from offence and suspicion."
Gladstone therefore declined to " create a precedent of
deviation from a course undeviatingly pursued by my
predecessors of all Parties." Lord Morley, who gives this
letter in his Life of Gladstone, observes in a note : " Mr.



192 THE PAGEANT OF PARLIAMENT

Gladstone had suffered an unpleasant experience in another
case of the relations brought about by the refusal of a political
pension, after inquiry as to the accuracy of the necessary
statement as to the applicant's need of it."

We are told also in the same work that Gladstone,
in his last term of office, came to hold strongly the view
that these political pensions, which he himself created,
should be abolished. Lord Morley says he was only deterred
from trying to carry out his views by the reminder from
younger Ministers, not themselves applicants, nor ever
likely to be, that it would hardly be a gracious thing to cut
off benefactions at a time when the bestowal of them was
passing away from him, though he had used them freely
while they were within his power.



y\ do not think it can be maintained that the salaries
of banisters are more than fair remuneration, considering
the weighty and absorbing duties and responsibilities of
the offices, and also the difficulty of attaining to them and
I the uncertainty of their tenure.^ It is far from being an

easy matter to become a Minister of the Crown. The posts
are few, and the competition among the many aspirants
to them is very keen»^ Most Members of Parliament never
reach it, even thougH they may have had long and brilliant
careers in public life. Fox, who was forty years in Parha-
ment — having entered the House of Commons when he
was nineteen, and retained his seat until his death at the
age of fifty-nine — held Cabinet office for only about eighteen
months. In 1782 he was Secretary of State for three months
in the Rockingham Administration ; in 1783 he filled the
same office for nine months during his coalition with Lord
North, who was tlje joint Secretary of State, with the Duke

1 A Committee of the House of Commons appointed to consider the
salaries iof Ministers, owing to the greatjjtise in the cost of Uving,
following the World,, War, recommended, in 1921, that the salary