THE KING UNDERPAID

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 July 1931, Page 12

THE KING UNDERPAID

MAKING ENDS MEET. The King, with an income of £532,000 a year, is perhaps the most underpaid monarch in the world. The King’s salary, or Civil List, as it is officially called, was fixed as long ago as 1901, when nobody foresaw a world war that would double the cost of living lor kings and queens as well as for ordinary people. In the meantime the salaries of the army of Royal servants and the running expenses of the King’s palaces and residences — which have to be paid out of the Civil List allowance —have grown enormously, and the changed conditions have involved the King and Queen in a vast, amount of enforced expenditure for which no provision has been made.

.1 was told recently by one in a position to know the facts that after meeting*all the “official” demands on them, tiie King and Queen have only about £2OOO a year to live on; in other words, that this sum constiutes the King’s real “salary,” says a writer in the “Sunday Express.” Even on paper the Civil List comnares unfavourably with the incomes of other monarchs. It is considerably less than the salary of 15,000,000 lire, or £782,000, enjoyed by the King of Italy, and only a little more than the 4,500,000 yen, or £450,000, paid to the Emperor of Japan. The income of the late Czar of Russia was understood to be £4,000,000, and that of the former Kaiser £770,000. In addition to his Civil List allowance the King has the income from the Duchy of Lancaster. But this has diminished in the last few years to £62,000. Of the £470,000 comprising the Civil List allowance £125,800 is appropriated to pay the salaries of the members of the Royal household, and £193,000 is set aside to pay the expenses of the household. A further sum of £20,000 is earmarked for the maintenance of tho Royal residences; £13,200 is set aside for “Royal bounty”—mothers of triplets, among others; receive the Royal bounty—and £BOOO is “unappropriated.” Only £llO,OOO remains to be paid into the King’s privy purse, and from this he has to make heavy disbursements.

The increased cost of living bears heavily on the King. All kinds of extra costs have arisen, and from 1919 to 1921 particularly, the increase in the cost of the Royal household was exceptionally heavy. In spite of reducing costs the accounts showed a deficit in 1919 of £24,000, in 1920 of £45,000, and in 1921 of £53,000. Until the middle of 1921 the King was able to meet these deficits out of a. fund that he had created for such emergencies. After that his only recourse was to draw on his capital, since he did not feel that he could ask the hard-hit British taxpayer for an increase.

Accordingly, in August, 1921, the Duchy of Lancaster (Application of Capital Moneys) Bill came before Par-

liament. Its object was to enable the. duchy—in other words, the King—-to realise capital to the extent of £lOO,OOO and to use the proceeds as revenue. This meant reducing the King’s personal income from the duchy by at least £5OOO a year. There was no other way out. Parliament promptly gave its assent to the Bill, and thus the King tided over the worst post-war period of high prices/ Travelling represents a heavy item of expenditure. Custom demands that the King and Queen should use special trains, and the public probably imagines that the railway companies delight in providing these free. The truth is, however, that the companies charge the King precisely what they would charge a private individual who desired to charter a special train, the fees being worked out at so much a ’ mile. Many benefactions are also extracted from the King. There is, for instance, the cost of supporting a small army of relatives. The leading members of the Royal Family are provided for separately by the nation, but there are more than 150 other relatives who ’ depend on the King’s own purse. Again, tradition demands that the King and Queen should contribute liberally to all worthy objects and funds to give a lead to the rest of the community. Such contributions total many thousands of pounds a year.