MINISTERS AND THEM SALARIES.
l'illiOUGH we touched on the matter last week, we 1. feel we must return to the splendid gift made to the nation by Sir Arthur and Lady Lee. It is the most far- seeing and imaginative political benefaction of our time. For once we see rich people doing something on the grand scale, something worthy of what Aristotle called "the magnificent man." Sir Arthur and Lady Lee are doing their country almost as good a turn as the men who are "going over the top " or hurling bombs into German trenches. That is the highest praise which can be given to any one just now, but the donors of Chequers deserve it..
The Spectator may claim to be especially moved by this notable public act, because it works in with a scheme which we have urged again and again in these columns, though so far without much response. Let us make the connexion between our proposal and the Chequers gift a little clearer. Any rich man can throw his money about, but the striking thing about the gift of Sir Arthur and Lady Lee is that their action is based upon clear and wise thinking in regard to the future position of the holder of the great office of Prime Minister. They realized that if the Prime Minister is to do the best work of which he is capable, he must be placed as far as possible in a situation in which his physical surroundings will make for efficiency. Ille ought, whether rich or poor, to have his " Sabine farm " to retire to—u place where he can not merely rest, but think out in peace and quiet the problems which beset a statesman. In old days, and when Prime Ministers were usually drawn from the richer classes, the head of the Executive was almost certain to have such a country place of his own. Now, however, to our good fortune
as we believe, we are going to see an epoch in which the chances will be against the Prime Minister possessing a country house of any kind, or at any rate one adequate to the position
of the head of the Ad tration. And yet the hard- worked statesman must have the possibility of doing a good deal of his work out of London. But the last thing which one desires for him is that he should be dependent upon the hospitality of the stray millionaire. That suits neither the repute nor the convenience of our public life. The Prime Minister should have a place of his own, and a place, moreover, of sufficient size to make it easy for hint to entertain those distinguished guests, whether foreigners or his own countrymen, with whom he wishes to con- sult in private. Chequers, when the scheme has come into full operation, will provide the Prime Minister with exactly what is required. The house is big, but not too big, and, owing to the care and skill with which the scheme has been worked out, it can never prove a white elephant to the Prime Minister. The generous endowment of money and land will maintain it in such a state that it will cost nothing to the temporary occupier. It will he no more embarrassing to him financially than a fine suite of rooms in a public Olen But though Sir Arthur and Lady Lee have done so much to give health, rest, and a consequently increased efficiency, to the Prime Minister of the future, there is something more to he accomplished. A Prime Minister practically without private means, such as a Labour Prime Minister might very well be, wants not merely an adequate residence in London and ahouse in the country. Ile wants also to be given a sense of security for the future. Let a man be as great a hero as lie will, and let his habits and desires be never so simple, he is bound to be worried by the sense of financial insecurity —by the thought that he has placed himself and his family for four or five years in a position of greet dignity and great responsibility, but one in which it is almost impossible for a man to save, or at any rate to save without the charge of avarice being brought against him. No matter how plain a man's mode of life may be, we defy any one with a wife and family to be Prime Minister of this country, even for a fairly long term of office, and yet save during that term sufficient money to provide for the period when he will be out of office. Therefore, in order to make good the Lee bequest, the nation, if it is wise, will give permanent financial security to the Prime Minister. It can do so by adopting that system of " half- pay for-Cabinet Ministers out of office" which we have often urged in these columns. We want to " establish " our Prime Ministers of the future not only physically but mentally and morally. The man who has once been Prime Minister of the United Kingdom ought to feel that as long as he lives he will have sufficient to keep bins as a high personage in the State. It cannot be good that the Prime Minister should be forced by circumstances to be always looking over his shoulder as it were, and wondering what is going to happen pecuniarily to bins and to his family when the Ministry goes out of office. He ought to feel that he can then not merely
• rest, but can take . up• the work of Opposition—i.e., of criticism, and of working out new plans for national amelioration, undeterred by the necessity of earning his daily bread. • • The case of the Prime Minister is the strongest,- but we would apply the system to all Cabinet Ministers, using that term, not in its old sense of one of a body of twenty, but one of a small Council of, say, ten or twelve at the most who are the real rulers of the State, • and many of whom may properly be regarded as Prime Ministers in the making. When the first Coalition was formed in 1915 we strongly appealed to that (lovernment to take advantage of a mixed Ministry to set Cabinet salaries on a sound .foundation. Here are the words we then employed :—
" Cabinet Ministers hold the fate of the nation and of each one of us in their hands, and it would therefore be madness not to give them every opportunity to discharge their high offices with quiet minds, unworried by those economic troubles which, say what we like, must, even with the most virtuous, be attached to sorrow mans, and still more without those temptations to betray the public trust which, the more prominent a man is and the more powerful, necessarily become the more intense. Again, wo want our rulers as far as possible to be economically beyond the reach of that intangible dominance which is exerted by the very rich man over the man who is in narrow eiremnstances—that is, troubled for money. It may well be that if sour Cabinet Minister with the salary of a bank clerk is a hero, he can mix with millionaires and man of great possessions on equal terms and not be affected by the fact that at every turn his action is limited by want of money. 'But mew if we-expect suchlteroisM in hint. can We expect it in hit family f It we cannot, that dominance of -which -we have spoken will grow tap in a social association which it is impossible to prevent between those who wield great political power and authority in the State and those who are rich. We are not thinking of ordinary corruption in the crudest and most vulgar sense, or of money passing, but of that subtle influence which makes it very difficult for a man with 1,009 a year, a large family, debts, and no prospect, to stand up to the mar of £30,000 a year, let alone of L100,000. . . And hero we may once more urge what we have urged before on several occasions—we fear to deaf ears—that the whole system of Cabinet salaries ought to be revised, and that in circlet to give Ministers that security which is absolutely essential to good government there should be a retiring allowance of half their pay for all Cabinet Ministers who have held office for more than two years. We put the duties and obligations of Cabinet office, both from the point of view of the office-holder and of the nation, very high indeed. in our opinion, it is a sacred trust, and as such it must be treated. Any man, then, who has been found worthy to serve his country as a Cabinet Minister ought to be regarded as a man set apart for public service—a person to be treated with generosity and distinction. He ought, therefore, when in the active or the potential service of the nation, to receive payment which would gave him security. Whilst he was a Cabinet Ministet lw should, we hold, never have a salary of less than £4,000 a year. and when out of office—when not actively engaged in administering the affairs of the nation, but waiting, under our system, for the possibility of another call for such service—we would give him half-pay ; i.e., £2,000 a year. It would not, however, be reason- able to make such posts and such salaries unlimited in number, and we would therefore enact that the members of the Cabinet should never number more than twelve, a limit which would carry advantages far greater than those of finance. Thu first advantage of this arrangement would be that the Cabinet Minister, especially if, as we should like to see, he had in addition an official residence, furnished, warmed, and lighted, would have a salary which even in these days would place Lim well above the line of narrow circum- stances, more particularly as he would not be forced to save against the time when he would be out of office. The lmowledge that he would never come down to absolute poverty, and have to look out in a Inure for some way of making an income by which to support his wife and family, which is literally what must happen to many Cabinet Ministers in existing circumstances, would be an enormous gain. (It is not pleasant to write in this way, but every- body knows that there are a certain number of Cabinet Ministers now in office who have given up lucrative professions in order to serve the State, and who when they go out of office must either suffer the degradation of having to pick tap a living as company directors, orehrweshl;,t Ise thought uilforrCri ,g asgriff publfiebarsi hacks.) The knowledge that he would retire on half-pay would give a man a sense of security that nothing else would give. Another advantage of the system would be that, if men who had once reached the rank of Cabinet Ministers were not merely thrown out to sink or en-fm in the ocean of the national life, but were kept on a waiting- fiat tit-half-pay, Ministers in office could without any hesitation ask their opponents to do a great deal of that unpaid non.partisan work which can be so usefully dorm by ex-administrators. There are always Committees, Royal Commissions, and inquiring bodies who want Chairmen, and it is very often of Ow utmost importance that these Chairmen should know time way in which the machine works, and should, in effect, be ex-Cabinet Ministers.
Though personally we should like to see a salary of £.1,000 a year fur Cabinet Ministers, with half-pay when out of office, we suggest as a compromise that £4,000 should be the regular salary and £2,000 the half-pay, prpvided that the Cabinet Minister placed on half-pay should have held office for a period of not less than two years. Next, we would make the Frime Minister's salary, as is only reasonable, £1,000 a year. In addition to this, we would allow those Cabinet Ministers who, as representatives of the nation in certain great Departments, are bound to do a good deal of official entertaining, to draw for such entertaining an allowance of £1,000 a year. Those who would be entitled to this allowance would naturally be time Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the Secretaries of State for War, the Colonies, and India, the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Lord Chancellor, and the Home Secretary. All these officials should, in our opinion, be offered an official house, furnished, warmed, and lighted, free of charge, in order that their official entertainments might have a setting worthy of the nation."
We once more ask the House of Commons to considei these arguments, and to make the Lee gift the occasion for acting wisely and generously, not only towards the Prime Minister, but towards our statesmen as a whole. We are well aware that it would be a rather difficult and invidious task for the present Prime Minister, or indeed for any Cabinet Minister, to propose our scheme. But why should it not be proposed and supported by private Members of weight. in the House of Commons ? If this opportunity were taken to put the matter on a sound basis—i.e., to found a scheme allowing half-pay when out of office to all men who had held high Cabinet. rankthe benefit to the nation would be enormously great. We should not only have treated our rulers fairly, but we should have given our Executive strength and solidity. We should also have done something, nay, a very great deal, to lessen the handicap which now tells so heavily against the poor man in politics.
We have a postscript to add. It is a particularly pleasant thought that Lady Lee is by birth a woman of New England. The gift is thus brought within that happy alliance of race and blood which-is to be consummated in:tbe trenches of the Western Front.- _ .
Previous page
