Why do every Government cling so tenaciously to the responsibility and drudgery of office? Wherefore the feverish eagerness of every Opposition to take the burdens of the Empire upon their shoulders? Do the “Spoils of Office” account for the great trouble there always is in compelling the “ins” to get out, and the little persuasion necessary to induce the “outs” to come in? Surely here is a matter of high public interest, which is well worth investigation.
The salaries of most of the chief offices of the Ministry were settled at their present figures by an arrangement made so long ago as 1831. During the Administration of Earl Grey (better known as the Reform Ministry) fixed incomes of £5,000 a year for the Secretaries of State, and £2,000 a year for the Presidents of Boards were agreed to on the recommendation of a Select Committee of the House of Commons. In 1850 the emoluments of office were again reviewed by a Select Committee, and they reported in favour of the retention, practically, of the 1831 settlement. Included in this Committee of fifteen members were such rigid economists as Molesworth, Cobden, Bright, and Ricardo, who grudged almost every penny spent for State purposes. “For these offices,” they said in their report, “it is requisite to secure the services of men who combine the highest talents with the greatest experience in public affairs; and considering the rank and importance of the offices and the labour and responsibility incurred by those who hold them, your Committee are of opinion that the salaries of these officers were settled in 1831 at the lowest amount consistent with the requirements of the public service.”
The differences in the emoluments of the more important offices of Cabinet rank have been a source of embarrassment to many a Prime Minister engaged in forming a Government. It has often happened that a man offered a post with the lower salary has considered himself slighted by his political chief. To give one conspicuous instance, the appointment of Joseph Chamberlain to the Board of Trade by Gladstone in 1880 was resented by the Radicals, if not by Chamberlain himself, as a belittling of his services and abilities. This feeling did not tend to the harmony of the inner councils of the Liberal Government; and yet the only foundation for it was that the Presidency of the Board of Trade had only £2,000 a year as compared with the £5,000 of a Secretary of State, for intrinsically it was a high and important office.
In 1915 the Cabinet Ministers of the first War Coalition Government, under Asquith, decided to put their varying salaries, big and little, into a common fund, and then divide the amount equally among all. The “pooling” was entirely novel. Its purpose was to mitigate the personal hardship caused to certain Ministers who, in the reshuffle of offices necessary in order to include Unionists in the Coalition Government, had their emoluments reduced, or else to afford a salve to their offended dignity. To give one example, so distinguished a Minister as Winston Churchill would otherwise have lost £2,500 a year by his transfer from the office of First Lord of the Admiralty, paid £4,500, to the office of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, paid £2,000. But the general effect of this adoption by the combined Liberals and Unionists in the Cabinet of the trade union principle of paying one rate of wages, was to more than double the salaries of some Ministers, and more than half the salaries of others. The sum that each received was £2,446. The chief sacrifices were made by the Lord Chancellor, whose salary is £10,000, and the Attorney-General, whose salary, exclusive of fees, is £7,000. The Prime Minister’s salary was excluded from the pool. In the House of Commons the arrangement was criticized on the ground that it was come to “behind the back of Parliament,” and altered the remuneration of Ministers which Parliament had sanctioned. Mr. Asquith strongly deprecated the discussion. He absolutely declined to admit the right of the House of Commons to inquire how Ministers proposed to spend their salaries. “For my part,” he added, “I will never consent to hold office in this House under the Crown, subject to the condition that the House of Commons or any other body in this country is entitled to inquire how I spend the money which I receive. If my right hon. friends and colleagues—for I have no concern in the matter myself—choose by domestic arrangement among themselves to determine how their particular salaries are going to be allocated, I submit that that is not a matter for the House or the public.” The payment to each Minister of the salary attached by Parliament to his office was resumed under the second Coalition Government formed by Mr. Lloyd George.
The Prime Minister, head of the Government and its maker, receives no salary. The position was even unknown to the Constitution until 1905, when it was formally recognized and given high precedence by King Edward VII on the appointment of Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman to it in succession to Mr. Arthur Balfour. Some office of State carrying a salary is accordingly held by the Prime Minister. It is usually that of First Lord of the Treasury, or, as he is fully described, “First Commissioner for executing the Office of the Lord High Treasurer of his Majesty’s Exchequer,” which carries a salary of £5,000 a year and that famous official residence, No. 10 Downing Street. There is a country house, “Chequers,” in Buckingham, the gift in 1920 of Lord Lee of Farnham. The post is a sinecure in the departmental sense, no duties being attached to it, which leaves the holder of it free to discharge his most responsible, varied, and laborious task as Prime Minister. This includes the general supervision of every Department of the State, domestic, colonial, and foreign, and the direction and control of the political policy of the Government.
Of the Prime Ministers who have sat in the House of Commons, some have been not only First Lord of the Treasury, but Chancellor of the Exchequer also. Pitt was Chancellor of the Exchequer as well as First Lord of the Treasury in his long term of office from 1783 to 1801. Henry Addington, who succeeded Pitt as Prime Minister, was also Chancellor of the Exchequer and First Lord of the Treasury. Pitt, on returning to power in 1804, again filled the two offices; and the precedent was followed by Perceval and Canning when each was Prime Minister. Sir Robert Peel, in his first brief three-months’ administration of 1834-35, was also First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Gladstone, both in his first Administration, 1868-74, and in his second, 1880-85, was for a time Chancellor of the Exchequer as well as First Lord of the Treasury. The Prime Ministers, from Pitt to Canning, who were Chancellor of the Exchequer and First Lord of the Treasury, drew the salaries of both offices, then amounting to £10,398; but it was decided by the Committee of 1831 that in the event of the two positions being again filled by one Minister, half the salary of the second office should be withheld. Peel and Gladstone, accordingly, were paid only at the rate of £7,500 a year—the full salary of each office being fixed at £5,000 in 1831—for the time that each was First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lord Salisbury made a new departure as Prime Minister by acting as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in his three Administrations, 1885, 1886, and 1895, at a salary of £5,000. The labours of these Prime Ministers, who, in addition to supervising everything, administered a special Department, and particularly a Department so onerous as that of the Treasury or the Foreign Office, must indeed have been immense. It is improbable, now that the labours and responsibilities of office are ever increasing, that this herculean task will ever be undertaken again. But it shows that our Prime Ministers have never shirked work while enjoying the emoluments of office, to use the consecrated phrase.
The chief of the Treasury, in the control of the imposition of taxes and the expenditure of the national revenue, is not the First Lord of the Treasury, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He is a hard-worked Minister and not often is his task of making ends meet brightened by the sunshine of popular favour. “You have held for a long time the most unpopular office of the State,” Gladstone, as Prime Minister, wrote to his fallen Chancellor of the Exchequer, Robert Lowe, who had come to grief over an attempt to impose a tax upon matches in 1873. “No man can do his duty in that office and be popular while he holds it,” he went on. “I could easily name the two worst Chancellors of the Exchequer of the last forty years; against neither of them did I ever hear a word while they were in (I might almost add, nor for them after they were out): ‘Blessed are ye when men shall revile you.’ You have fought for the public tooth and nail. You have been under a storm of unpopularity; but not a fiercer one than I had to stand in 1860, when hardly anyone dared to say a word for me; but, certainly, it was one of my best years of service, even though bad be the best.” The salary attached to this arduous office before 1831 was £5,398, which was made up of fees from different sources. On the recommendation of the Committee of 1831 it was reduced to a fixed sum of £5,000. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has also an official residence, 11 Downing Street.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who assists the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the administration of his department, is paid £2,000 a year. There are also three Junior Lords of the Treasury. As such they have no official duties whatever. What, then, do they do for their salary of £1,000 a year each? According to an amusing definition of their duties given by Canning, they are always to be at St. Stephen’s, to keep a House and to cheer the Ministers. They are, in fact, the assistant Whips of the Party in office. The Chief Whip also fills a sinecure post of £2,000 a year, which used to be styled the Patronage Secretary to the Treasury, and has of late years been called the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury.[2] The Constitution knows not the Whips. They are provided for by offices to which there are salaries, but no duties attached.
Very important Ministers are the six Secretaries of State. For a century before 1782 there were two joint Secretaries of State. One had the management of affairs relating to the northern States of Europe; the other dealt with matters affecting the southern countries of the Continent, and Home affairs, which included Ireland and the Colonies. In 1782 there was a redistribution of their duties, and each got a distinctive title. The former was called “Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs,”[3] and was given control of the relations of the Kingdom with all foreign States; and the latter was styled “Secretary of State for the Home Department,” which included Great Britain, Ireland, and the Colonies. There was also at this time a Minister called “Secretary at War,” responsible for the land forces of the Crown, who, by a singular arrangement, was a subordinate of the Home Office. In 1794 the Secretary of State for War was created; and in 1801 the affairs of the Colonies were by another strange arrangement transferred to him from the Home Department. But in 1854, on the outbreak of the Crimean War, the War Minister was relieved of all Colonial business, which was vested in a new Secretary of State for the Colonies. In 1858, after the Indian Mutiny, when the authority and power of the East India Company were taken over by the Imperial Government, the Secretary of State for India was first appointed. The office of Secretary of State for Air which, as I have already said, was created in 1917, during the Great War, is held conjointly with the Secretaryship for War. The Air Minister, as President of the Air Council, is responsible for the administration of the Air Force and the defence of the realm by air. The salary of a Secretary of State is £5,000 per annum. Each is assisted in the work of his department by an Under-Secretary of State, who is paid £1,500. The War Office has an additional parliamentary official known as the Financial Secretary, who also receives £1,500. In 1919 a new Under-Secretaryship was attached to the Foreign Office, called “Secretary of the Overseas Trade Department” (it has relations with the Board of Trade also), with a salary of £1,500 a year. The First Lord of the Admiralty is paid £4,500 a year for directing the affairs of the Navy. He, like the Secretary of State for War, has two subordinates in Parliament—the Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty, concerned chiefly with the men and the pay and conditions of service, who gets £2,000, and the Civil Lord of the Admiralty, responsible for harbour works and docks, who gets £1,000 a year.
The Administration includes three offices of high standing, having little if any departmental duties, but carrying salaries of £2,000 each, which are usually given to elderly men of long service, so that the Cabinet might have the advantage of their ripe experience and sage councils. The first in dignity is the Lord President of the Council. 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, disappeared 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 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 prevention of cattle disease; but the creation of a Board of Agriculture 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 Parliament, 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 assistance 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 Chancellor 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 commerce, 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 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 Agriculture 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 President of the Board of Education has a salary of £2,000, and 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.[4] 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 Phœnix 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 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 Phœnix 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 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 Westminster 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 ceremonial. 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.