BRITAIN'S SINECURES

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 82, 3 October 1931, Page 22

BRITAIN'S SINECURES

Few, perhaps, have ever heard of the King's Cock Grower; or the Surveyor of tho Green Wax; or the "Husband of tho. Four-and-a-Half Per cent. Duties"—since these particular offices are no longer in being. But they, and a number of others almost as quaintly nanied, existed in England in the not very distant past, and were held by persons who drew the comfortable salaries attached to them and paid other people a mere fraetiton: 6f what they themselves received (says the "New York Times"). ' Some people were reminded of these oddly titled' sinecures when Philip Snbwden's Budget revealed recently that the "Lord of the Liberty of Furness in Lancashire"- (of whom few if any taxpayers had ■ ever previously heard) gets £9 a year from the Exchequer. Tho "Lord of the Liberty of Furness" is the Duke of Buccleuch, and the £9 a year is paid him as compensation for an ancient privilege he surrendered in .1866. , , ■•■■-■• But the sum mentioned is a pittance, anyway, and the people who. are asking why it is paid at all and grumbling because, as the Budget also revealed, the community ia still providing' about £13,565 a year in pensions for the household servants of Queen Victoria, ought to thank their stars instead that the Hereditary Admiral' of .'theI'Coasts of, Cumberland and Westmoreland (Lord Lonsdale), the Hereditary Chief Butler (the Duke of No/folk), the Grand Almoner and Grand Falconer and the holders of other high-sounding offices still: in; existence are no longer on the nation's payroll. It was just before the Christmas of 1830 that the then Chancellor of the Exchequer; Lord Althorp, announced: "The Government intend to abolish all salaries of persons who are not doing1 any work. No office that is not useful will be continued." ' . ■ Tho profit,of the Clerk of the Hanaper, after paying his deputy, was £1700 a year. The Chaff Wax had £360 from the Hanaper Office, plus £240 in fees, did' nothing, and paid his deputy £150; the Clerk of the Custody of the Debts of Lunatics drew £510 a year and paid his deputy £130. The Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland received £200 a year in salary and £1000 in fees, and got the work done for £400. : There were also the Chief Proclaina-

THE: BUDGET'S DISCLOSURES

tor of the Court of Common Pleas, the Hereditary Chief Usher of the Exchequer, the Surveyor of the Green Wax in the Exchequer, the Patentee of the Subpoena Office, the. Clerk of Presentations, the Clerk of Dispensations, the Chirographer of'the Common Pleas, and the Four Filacers of the Common Pleas) all doing nothing, or practically nothing, and getting anything from £300 to £2000 a year.. . . When a certain George Arbuthnot, fated to be the last Receiver of the First Fruits and Tenths, was asked by; a Parliamentary investigating committee what his job was, he replied, that he did not exactly know, but it had something to do with the first' year's, income from the livings of certain clergy in the King's Books. He "imagined" these were paid yearly. And perhaps he was not receiver of the tenths, not only of the arrears of the tenths., His deputy, who had an office in the Temple, would, ho blandly asserted, know, better. The one certain thing was that George Arbuthinot drew £220 a year. ■ • This idyllic state of things came to an end in March, 1831. The Government of the day abolished more than j 200 offices. ~ ' ■ i The King's Cock Crower had gone | somewhat earlier. This official's duty in bygone centuries was. to crow the hours in the precincts of the Eoyal Palace every night from Ash Wednesday till Easter. On the first Ash Wednesday spent in England by George 111., however, that monarch," imperfectly acquainted with English customs, took' the performance o.f the crower, as a personal insult. v But the days of money for nothing from the British^ Exchequer have not gone completely. Mr. Snowden's Budget revealed also that the Receiver General'of the Duchy of Cornwall takes the equivalent of £16,216 a year fqr "the loss of duty on the coinage of tin." Earl Nelson and "whoever hereafter shall bear i;he title of; the victor of Trafalgar," gets. £5000 a year from the nation, and • Lord Seaton, whose grandfather fought ably in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, gets £2000. The heirs and assigns of one Thomas Warren in the county of Berkshire receive every year about £12 for some unstated reason. And the , "poor scholars of Oxford," it. seems, have their poverty alleviated by the nation yearly to the extent of £3. '