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.
2
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.
3
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.