GREAT SERVICES

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 74, 24 September 1927, Page 20

GREAT SERVICES

KECOGNISED BY MONETABY TEIBTJTBS. Lord Oxford's friends and admirers are presenting him with a considerable sum of money "in recognition of hisgreat services to the country." Assistance of this kind to public men was more common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries than it is now, states the "Evening Standard." Chatham in this respect scored twice over.

The old Duehoss of Maryborough Jeft him £10,000 as an "acknowledgement of the noblo dofenoe ho had made for tho support of the laws of. England and to prevent tho ruin of his country" but her generosity was prompted less by love of Pitt than by hatred of Walpolo. Twenty years later Sir William Pynseut, a Somersetshire baronet, to whom he was personally unknown, loft Chatham his entire estate, worth some £3000 a year, "in testimony of approval of his political career." His son, whose indifference to money was part of his hold over the country, and whoso patrimony waß under £800 a yoar, allowed his private affairs to sink into hopoless confusion. But he, too, found friends who put up some & 12,000 towards freeing him from dobt ilvc yeara or so before he died. But noither their help nor tho sale of hi 3 country place could bring order into Pitt's economy. He had no family, no exponsive eloctions, find no extravagant tastes outside of port, and his official

income was £10,000 a year. Yet when 'he died he was £40.000 in debt, and Parliament paid it for him. Charles James Fox's friends also rallied round him after Lord Holland had pretty well exhausted his resources in paying Fox's gambling debts. In 1793 after he had given up both cards and the Turf, they raised £70,000 for him and he lived some thirteen years to enjoy it. Sheridan, on the other hand, after being a star of the first order in both politics and letters, found no one to come to his rescue, When he lost h}s seat in Parliament, and with it his immunity from arrest for debt, his creditors closed in on him, ana the last four years of his life were spent in painful destitution. Disraeli enjoyed the munificence of the Bentincks, and was left a fine bit of money by Mrs. Brydges-Williama; but of all the ways of relieving political loaders of financial anxiety I like best the £80,000 publicly subscribed for Eichard Cobden.