THE POSITION OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 6, 30 May 1884, Page 13

THE POSITION OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

The following is the first of a series of letters which are now appearing in the London Echo. It is addressed to Lord Salisbury :— Mt Lobd,— Fifty years ago the House of Lords, through its opposition to the first Reform Bill, drove the country to the very brink of revolution t< Before I review the conduct of the peers at that memorable crisis, it is desirable to show that they were animated not so much by a desire to defend the ramparts of the British constitution, as to maintain a va*t Augean stable of corruption. As we shall see hereafter, the struggle of the Lords was for the perpetuation of their power ; but it was also a selfish struggle for pelf. Let us t»k«» a erlance at the House of Lords shortly before the passing of the bill. Burke and ethers had effectually attacked rome of the most outrageous scandals, so that it was no longer possible for a noble teller of the Exchequer to draw his £25,000 per annum, as was the case at the beginning of the present century. There had been a show of purging the pension list, so that I only deal with it in a somewhat mutilated form ; but I shall demonstrate that the pecuniary interests at stake were enormous, the Lords being quite shrewd enough to perceive that, as soon as the people began to have some control upon the public puree-strings, the lengthy list of sinecurists and pensioners wonld soon be curtailed. The peers who fattened upon the Treasury were so many that it is impossible to glance at them all ; let me present you with a few specimens. In the first place I must note that those officers of the Crown who had least to do were extravagantly overpaid. The Master of the Horse received £3,350 annually, and the Master of the Buckhounds £2,606, these offices being always held by members of the House of Lords. The Secretary for the Colonies, who was often a peer, had £6,000. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, generally a peer, bad £3,563. The Lord President of the Council had £2,835 ; even the Groom of the Stole. had £2,130. Other offices held by noblemen were overpaid in proportion, and I need hardly add that almost every high appointment in the diplomatic or colonial seiviees was held by a peer or by some cadet of an aristocratic house. Now for the mere placemen and pensioners. The Earl of Abergavenny drew £1,145 a year as compensation for loss of office as Inspector of Prosecutions in the Customs ; Lord Arden drew £13,562 as Registrar of the Court of Admiralty ; Lord Avonmore drew £4,199 as compensation for loss of office as Registrar of the Irish Court of Chancery. Earl Bathurst held two sinecures worth £3,805 annually, and five of his relations divided £7,000 mere between them. The Marquis Camden had a sinecure value £2,700 ; Lord Cathcart another worth £1,015, beside a paid colonelcy. Lord Donougbmore had two sinecures worth £2,100. beside a pension of £2,000 ; Lord Ellenborougb, as Chief Clerk in the King's Bench, drew £9,625 : Lord Farnborough drew a pension of £1,500. The Duke of Graf ton, as the descendant of a king's bastard, had hereditary pensions to the amount of £11,900, and a sinecure in the King's Bench which brought him £2,888 more. Lord Greville, as Auditor of the Exchequer, drew £4,000 ; Lord Henley, as Master in Chancery, £4.644 ; Lord Hereford, a pension of £600, for causes unknown : Lord Hood, another pension of £1,875 ; Lord Kinnoul. another of £1,000 ; Lord Lake, another of £2,000. The Earl of Leitrim, as Searcher of the Port of Dublin, drew £1,359 ; Lord Loughborough, as Clerk of Chancery in Scotland, £1,135; Lord Ludlow in various capacities £1,182 ; Lord Lyndoch in various capacities £2,777. Evon the wives of some noble lords dipped deep in the public purse. The Countess of Mansfield, for example, had a pension of £1,000, and the Duchess of Manchester drew £2,928 for compensation for loss of a sinecure office formerly held by her deceased husband as Searcher of Customs. Lord Mayo had a pension of £1,332 as Chairman of Committees of the defunct Irish Parliament. I am afraid the list grows wearisome, though I have omitted a score or two of peers who [only took from the Exchequer a few paltry hundreds each. I must, however, proceed. Lord Northland, Joint Prothonotary of the Irish Common Pleas, drew £3,575 annually ; Lord Norihesk, for two sinecures, £3,290 ; the Dowager Duchess of Newcastle. £780 for what I know not. The Earl of Rosslyn held three offices, value £5,450; the Duke of St. Alban's two, value £2,100 ; the Earl of Shannon, as Clerk of the Pells in Ireland, £3,133 ; -Lord Stowell, Master of the Faculty, made no return, but his office at one time produced £10,000 a year. Loid fyrconnel had a pension of £1.045; Lord Walsingham another of £1,045; the Duke of Wellington and the Marquis of Wellesley each drew over £12,000 a year in places and pensions. Hereditary pensions were then plentiful. Besides the Duke of Marlborough, who, like the poor, is always with us, we had Earl Amherst, £3,000 ; Earl of Atblone, £2,000 ; Viscount Colchester, £3,000 ; Earl Cowper, £1,600 ; Lord Duncan, £3,000 ; Viscount Exmouth, £2,030 ; Lady Nelson, £2,000 ; Earl Nelson. £5,000 ; Viscount Rodney, £3,000 ; Earl St. Vincent, £2,000 ; Lord Saumaurez, £2,430. Lengthy as is the list, it is far from exhausted.

For every member of the House of Lords who was quartered upon the country, there were at least half-a-dozen sons and brothers and sisters, nephews and cousins and aunts. A complete catalogue would fill a whole page of this newspaper, for they were like the Band which is upon the sea-shore frr multitude. The annual value of sinecure offices alone, shortly before the passing of the First Beform Bill, was £356,000, and nearly the whole of this was absorbed by the House of Lord? or by the relatives and dependents of its members. Let us take a few typical examples. Four Seymours drew between them £6,400 annually ; the Seymours are of the family of the Duke of Somerset. Three Grevilles drew between them more than £8,000 annually ; the Grevilles are of the family of the Earl of Warwick. Four Beresfords drew between them £9,500 annually ; the Beresfords are of the family of the Marquis of Waterford. Three Courtenays drew between them £2,200 ; the* Courtenays are of the family of the Earl of Devon. Three Edens drew £4,800 ; the Edens are of the family of Lord Auckland. Four Pagets drew £8,500 ; the Pagets are of the family of the Marquis of Anglesey, Three |Ponsonbys drew £6,000 ; the Ponsonby^are of the family of the LordDe Mauley. Three Somersets drew £5,000 ; the Somenetg are jof tin family of the

Dnke of Beaufort. Two Wyndhams drew £5,500; the Wyndhama are of the family of the Earl of Egremont. This list, my lord, m£ht be almost indefinitely extended. ' g ' T W r?Tw vßenv Be n2 h °18%l B %P BB 1m" 1 m"m "f t Hot * for gotten. At the time of which I wnte, the Church of England was a kind of outdoor relief officefor the KfJ^ Ofn * f f at J! h0 TT 8'!8 ' ! who . were b * no means satisfied with P" l ft th « *$ o f th ? k?»ly "Jto the family living. From 1805 to 1828 the Archbishopric of Canterbury, at that period worth £32,000 a year, was held by Charles Manners Button, grandson of the third Dqke of Rutland. The Archbishopric of YorL was held by the Hon fc. enables- Vernon, son of Lord Vernon ; the bishopric of Carlisle' ™ *» eld £y » sot » o« «be Karl of Beverley ; the bishopric of Lichfield by a brother of the Earl of Harrowby ; the bishoDric of Salisbury by the brother-in-law of the Marquis of Winchester. The Church swarmed with deans, prebends, ami canons who belonged to the great houses, and many of these aristocratic pluralists held their lour or five livings at the same time. The Irish Church, I m-*y add was even worse than the English. I am sorely tempted to dwell upon some of thfse at length, but I must refrain. Enough, I think has been said to show that the Lords had used their powers to plunder the nation without mercy ; and that their hatred of reform was largely due to the fear that in the future they might be able to continue their systematic peculations. -Next week I propose to ahow by what galling tyranny this robbery was upheld. . Noblesse Oblige.