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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 846: REGULATION OF THE SALARIES OF THE JUDGES.
By Edward Farr
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The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

REGULATION OF THE SALARIES OF THE JUDGES.

During this, session the chancellor of the exchequer brought forward a measure for augmenting the salaries of the judges, and at the same time for prohibiting the sale of those ministerial offices which the chiefs of the respective courts had been allowed so to dispose of. It was proposed at first to allow the puisne judges £6,000 a year; but the scheme ultimately adopted was to give £10,000 a year to the chief-justice of the king’s bench; £7,000 to the chief-baron of the court of exchequer; £8,000 to the chief-justice of the court of common pleas, and £5,500 to each of the puisne justices of the courts of king’s bench, common pleas, and the exchequer. This arrangement met with considerable opposition, some of the members as Messrs. Hume, Denman, and Hobhouse, arguing that the dignity of a judge did not depend upon money, and that the cheapest mode of doing the judicial business of the country was the best. On the contrary, Mr. Scarlett argued that the arrangement was improper because it diminished the emoluments of the lord chief-justice of England; and he moved an amendment, which was lost, that the sum of £12,000; should be given to him. Mr. Brougham, in a different spirit, proposed that £500 a-year should be taken from the salary of the puisne judges, but that alteration was also rejected.