Salaries and Pensions Exceeding One Thousand Pounds.

Great as are the salaries, pensions, and emoluments of individuals, it must be constantly borne in mind that these constitute the smallest part of the advantages, or perhaps we may term it corruptive influence, to which official men are exposed. The most important, the most seductive, and most tempting adjuncts to public offices of the higher grade are the vast patronage, the power and personal consideration they confer on the possessors. In this consists the great difference between government employments and the pursuits of trade and commerce. There are, we doubt not, individual merchants and manufacturers who do—or at least have—realized an annual profit equal to the salaries of a first lord of the Treasury, Secretary of State, the Chief Justice, or even the Lord Chancellor. But observe the difference in their respective situations; observe the dazzling and glittering elevation of the state functionaries; observe the good things they have at their disposal—the benefices, bishoprics, commissionerships of customs and excise; the clerkships, registrarships, and secretaryships, worth from £1000 to £10,000 a-year—and think of the opportunities afforded by these splendid gifts for enriching their families and friends—and think, too, of the delightful incense of adulation and obsequiousness the dispensers of such favours must inhale, and of the host of fawning sycophants, expectants, and dependents, they must every where raise up around them. Here are the real sweets of office, the delicious flavour of which can never be tasted by a mercantile man, however successful in his vocation.

What is it which makes individuals seek anxiously to be placed in the magistracy, or sacrifice a fortune for a seat in the House of Commons? It is not the direct salary or emoluments, for there are none; it is the power and the chance of obtaining power, and the personal consideration it gives. A directorship in the Bank of England, or in the East-India Company is comparatively unprofitable, except from opening a wide field for valuable appointments and individual influence. But if objects like these can rouse up to an intense degree human cupidity, how much more must it be excited by a chance of obtaining the great prizes of state, which yield not only great direct emolument, but boundless patronage, and an authority and pageantry almost regal!

In considering, therefore, the salaries of civil and judicial officers, it is always necessary to bear in mind that they form only a single element in the multifarious advantages of their situations. The patronage of most public officers would be ample remuneration; and were it limited to that alone, we have no apprehension there would be a dearth of candidates for official employments, no more than there are for the magistracy, shrievalties, custos rotulorum, lord lieutenancies, and other unpaid services.

We have been drawn into these observations from reflecting on a singular public document before us, and of the contents of which we shall give the reader some account. We have hitherto spoken of placemen and pensioners generally; we shall now direct attention to the highest class, whose emoluments exceed £1000 per annum, and of which a return has been made to parliament. Why Sir James Graham restricted his motion to tax and fee-eaters of the transcendental order, it is not easy to conjecture; perhaps it is the intention of the Whig ministry to make £1000 the maximum of official remuneration,—a proposition which the community would hail with great thankfulness as one of the most effective blows ever aimed at sinecurism, deputyships, and aristocrat idlers. Our opinion indeed is that, with a few exceptions, the emoluments of no public officer ought to exceed £1000; few persons with higher incomes will work, and they only tend to generate a taste for luxury, equipage, club-houses, gambling, and the frivolities and dissipation of fashionable life.

To come, however, to an analysis of the return to which we have alluded. It comprises 956 individuals whose incomes amount to £2,161,927, averaging £2261 each; there are forty-two persons whose incomes are not less than £5000 each, and whose united incomes amount to £339,809; and there are eleven individuals whose incomes are not less than £10,000 each, and who altogether receive £139,817 per annum. Of the whole 956 names the following is a classification, showing the total income of the several classes, and the average income of each individual.

The lawyers evidently profit most by the system; their average emoluments exceed those of any other class; the civilians of all classes are better remunerated than the military; and the officers of the army rather better than those of the navy. The worst paid are employés in the Ordnance; this branch of the service requiring men of science and application, is not sought after by the great families, and hence we observe the working of our aristocratical government in this department as in every other; the most meritorious and arduous duty not being performed by the Oligarchy and their dependents, it is rewarded by the fewest number and least valuable prizes.

It is not, however, by averaging the incomes of public functionaries that we see the iniquities of the System in its most conspicuous light. In the state, as in the church, the most flagrant abuse consists in pluralities, in the power which individuals of title, influence, and connexion have to heap upon themselves, families, and friends, a multiplicity of offices. Next to this abuse is that of patronage. We know that the direct income of a lord of the Treasury, or a secretary of state, is very considerable, and that of a lord chief justice or lord chancellor is enormous; but what is that to the value of their patronage. All their immense patronage is so much direct revenue, and we know that it is applied as such in making provisions for sons, sons-in-law, and collaterals. We might cite the Bathursts, Manners, Abbotts, Scotts, and others; but we think the subject has been already sufficiently illustrated, and further proof will be found in our Place and Pension List.

Of all classes who prey on the community the lawyers require to be most narrowly watched. By the classification above it is evident they have contrived to have more sumptuous pickings than any other description of employés, official, military, or naval. They are talkers by profession, and the gift of tongues enables them to set forth their claims and withstand reduction of emolument with superior effect and clamour. The claim for legal fees has been a principal obstacle to judicial reform, and it has only been by the most extravagant concessions this obstacle has been surmounted. The lavish settlement for the sinecures in equity under the Bankruptcy Court Act we have before noticed. It has been the same in the common law courts. Under the 1 Will. IV. c. 58, commissioners were appointed to ascertain the value of legal fees received in the superior courts, and fix a rate of compensation for them according to their average amount in the ten preceding years. But it was found on inquiry that several fees and emoluments had been received in the courts, the legality of which it was difficult to determine. Here then was a case of doubt, and the question was, who were to have the benefit of it, the public or the profession. The “Guardians of the Public Purse” certainly ought to have guarded the weal of the former; but they did not. Under the same legal intelligence, we presume, as that which advised the continuance of the payment of the Russo-Dutch loan, another act was passed the 1 & 2 Will. IV. c. 35, by which it was provided that all fees, whether legal or extortionate, which had arisen or been received within the preceding fifty years, should be allowed by the commissioners. Further, if any more doubts arose as to the legality or reasonableness of such fees, to whom does the reader imagine the commissioners were to refer?—To the lords of the treasury, to Mr. Gordon, or to some other impartial tribunal perhaps—No! by all that is inept and ridiculous, they were to refer to the judges of the court in which the questionable fees had been received, and by whom the fee-gatherers are appointed!