CIVIC REPUGNANCE TO SALARIES.
THEORY and practice are curiously at odds in the City ; and, strangely enough, the practical men of that state stick to theory rather than to practice. The City needs a Sheriff, but there is the utmost difficulty in finding one ; nay, so great is the reluctance to accept the office, that a trade has positively been carried on in threats to elect a man for the very purpose of extorting smart- money. This scandal has been exposed, but the whole difficulty has arrived at such a point that the election is positively sus- pended in default of a fit candidate.
Now there is a practical saying current amongst mercantile men, that you can procure anything which you will pay for. But the
bare idea of paying for a Sheriff has created an unintelligible re- vulsion in the civic mind. Alderman Farebrother speaks of pay- ment as a thing that "no man of character" could accept it would place the Sheriff, he says, "on a level with Jack Ketch "; and he utters that parallel to the Court of Aldermen, as a self- evident proposition !
It is a curious coincidence, that at the very time when Alderman Farebrother is proclaiming that to give the Sheriff a salary would reduce him to the level of Jack Ketch, the House of Commons is augmenting the salary of the President of the Board of Control in order to raise him to the level of a Secretary of: State. How are we to understand this mercantile view of official dignity in West- minster, and this poetic view of pecuniary indignity in London City ? If it is that the Sheriff has to deal with the criminal busi- ness, so it is with the Home Secretary ; and we are to presume, therefore, that there is only one level for Jack Ketch and 'Viscount Palmerston.
It is a significant circumstance, however, that for posts which are contaminated by the indignity of a salary, such as that of Home Secretary, there is no lack of candidates ; while for the honorary post of Sheriff there is the greatest aversion. Nay, it is remarkable that the very gentleman who shudders at the salary for a Sheriff was himself a candidate for the office of Chamberlain with a salary. He was positively advertised on large posters—"Farebrother for Chamberlain "; on a level, we might say, with the Eureka shirts or "Standard and Natural Sherry " ! It occurs to us as possible, that Alderman Farebrother can scarcely appreciate the motives of those around him, perhaps not even his own. Whatever may be the theory, it is very likely that in practice a salary of a few thou- sands would prove as powerful a bounty in the case of Sheriff as it does for any of the high officers of Guildhall or Whitehall.
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