[145] "History of the Political Life of C. J. Fox," pp. 76-7.
[146] "The Chancellor of the Exchequer exists to distribute a certain amount of human misery," he once remarked, "and he who distributes it most equally is the best Chancellor."
[147] See Bagehot's "English Constitution," p. 200.
[148] Among the offices in the Royal Household which are filled by the Prime Minister, the most important are those of the Master of the Horse, the Lord Steward, the Lord Chamberlain, the seven Lords in Waiting, and the Mistress of the Robes.
[149] A complete list of the salaries and offices of Ministers does not lie within the scope of this volume. It will be sufficient to enumerate briefly the most important members of the administration. First in order of precedence stand the Prime Minister, the Lord High Chancellor, the Lord President of the Council, the Lord Privy Seal (an office to which, like that of the Prime Minister, no salary is attached), and the First Lords of the Treasury and Admiralty. After these come the five Secretaries of State: for Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs, the Colonies, War, and India. These are followed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Secretaries for Scotland and Ireland, the Postmaster-General, the Presidents of the Board of Trade, Local Government Board, Board of Agriculture, and Board of Education, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and the First Commissioner of Works. There are, besides, eight Parliamentary Under-Secretaries, four Junior Lords of the Treasury (one of whom is unpaid), a Patronage Secretary, a Financial Secretary, a Paymaster-General, Attorney-General, and Solicitor-General. Scotland is represented by a Lord-Advocate and a Scottish Solicitor-General; Ireland by a Lord-Lieutenant, a Lord Chancellor, an Attorney-General, and a Solicitor-General.
[150] Exceptions are made by Statute in favour of the Secretary of the Treasury and some other officers, or of a Minister who is transferred from one office to another in the same Administration.
[151] Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal are very prone to puns. When Lord Campbell replaced Lord Plunket as Chancellor of Ireland he had to cross the Channel in a storm. Plunket's secretary remarked that if the new Chancellor were not drowned, he would be very sick. "Perhaps," said Plunket, "he'll throw up the seals!" Lord Chancellor Westbury once told an eminent counsel that he was getting as fat as a porpoise. "In that case," replied the other, "I am evidently a fit companion of the great Seal." Lord Lyndhurst is another Chancellor who made a joke of this sort. There must be something, too, in the atmosphere of a change of Ministry which evokes bad puns. When Disraeli was appointed to Lord Derby's Cabinet in 1852, more than one eminent politician facetiously remarked that now Benjamin's mess would be five times as great as that of the others. And, fourteen years later, when the same statesman was bidden to form a Ministry of his own, Lord Chelmsford, whom he had relieved of the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, shamelessly observed that if the old Government was "the Derby," this new one was certainly "the Hoax" (see Martin's "Life of Lyndhurst," p. 481 n., and the "Life of Lord Granville," vol. i. p. 479, etc.).
[152] If Pitt had been dismissed from office "after more than five years of boundless power," says Macaulay, "he would hardly have carried out with him a sum sufficient to furnish a set of chambers in which, as he cheerfully declared, he meant to resume the practice of the Law."—"Miscellaneous Writings," p. 347.
[153] Lord Ellesmere observes that in the 8th Chapter of Samuel, Jehoshaphat the son of Abilud, the Chancellor among the Hebrews, was called "Mazur," which, translated into English, becomes "Sopher," or Recorder. "Whether the Lord Chancellor of England as now he is, may be properly termed Sopher or Mazur, it may receive some needlesse question, howbeit it cannot be doubted but his office doth participate of both their Functions."—"Observations concerning the Office of Lord Chancellor," p. 2.
[154] The Seal was stolen from Lord Thurlow by burglars in 1784, and the offer of a reward of £200 failed to retrieve it. When Lord Chancellor Eldon's house at Encombe caught fire in 1812, he buried the Seal for safety's sake in the garden, and then forgot where he had buried it. His family spent most of the next day digging for it before it was finally recovered. Eldon seems to have taken the fire very easily. "It really was a very pretty sight," he wrote, "for all the maids turned out of their beds, and formed a line from the water to the fire-engine, handing the buckets; they looked very pretty, all in their shifts." Campbell's "Lives of the Chancellors," vol. vii. p. 300.