FREEMEN OF LONDON

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 290, 6 December 1929, Page 3

FREEMEN OF LONDON

PREMIER AND CHANCELLOR Not the Mother of Parliaments herself has more regard for precedent than the corporation of London. But the City Fathers, expert as they may be in finding past instances for present practice, may be hard put to it to name, offhand, a previous occasion on which Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer of the same Administration were selected to receive the Freedom of the City, states the “Daily Telegraph. ’ ’ London has jealously reserved the honour of her freedom, but once before Premier and Chancellor were deemed worthy of the privilege. To Mr MacDonald and Mr Snowden it will be an acceptable circumstance that the precedent now to be followed was created a century ago to do honour to the heroes/ of the Reform Bill struggle — Lord Grey and Lord Althorp. No Prime Minister would disdain to fill the post in history won by the Min» ister who placed on the Statue Book the charter of modern democracy. Among Chancellors of the Exchequer, however, the reputation of Lord Grey’s colleague docs not stand particularly high. Such fame as Lord Althorp won was thrust upon him. We remember him as the man whose succession to his father’s peerage was made the pretext for King William IV, to dismiss the Me 1 bourn o Mini st ry. There have been other statesmen whose names were added to London’s roll of famp who had served in the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer, but they were not, I think, so honoured during the time they actually were Chancellor. The Younger Pitt, the first, and the late Lord Oxford, the last, Prime Minister of England, to be honoured in the City had both held office as Chancellor, but it was before the time they were made Freemen. The same applies to Mr Baldwin and Lord Beaconsfield.