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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.