The list of pensioners set in very small type, two columns to the page, occupy twenty-two large pages. And this enormous list is made up not of the common soldiers and sailors, but entirely of what are called gentlemen pensioners—men who were foisted into office as the younger sons of the nobility, or “sisters, cousins and aunts,” and after a few years of loafing about the government offices retired upon life pensions.
A fair sample of these pensions is that of the Duke of Schomberg. The duke was killed at the battle of the Boyne, in the year 1690, and a pension of six thousand pounds or thirty thousand dollars per annum was given his heirs. It is estimated that this family, the heirs of a foreign mercenary, has received from the British government the enormous sum of six hundred and eighty thousand pounds, or in American money three million four hundred thousand dollars! And this for his being a favorite of William of Orange, a Dutch King!
THE ROYAL FAMILY.
Rev. J. Smith, whoever he may be, served at the Lord knows what, twenty-three years, at a yearly salary of three hundred and sixty-four pounds, and was retired at fifty-six years of age with the comfortable pension for life of two hundred and thirty-one pounds annually! And so on you go, wading through twenty-two closely printed pages, two columns to the page, of just such cases, the yearly allowance for these excrescencies footing up for the year 1879 the enormous sum of one million three hundred and thirteen thousand two hundred and fifty-eight pounds! It is a good thing to be the favorite of a duke.
MAYO PEASANTRY.