WILLIAM THE THIRD.

29

alone suffice to support a peerage: his peerage is per-manent; and his tenure of the Great Seal is precarious.In a few weeks he may be dismissed from office, and mayfind that he has lost a lucrative profession, that he hasgot nothing but a costly dignity, that he has been trans-formed from a prosperous barrister into a mendicant lord.Such a risk no wise man will run. If, therefore, the stateis to be well served in the highest civil post, it is ab-solutely necessary that a provision should be made forretired Chancellors. The Sovereign is now empoweredby Act of Parliament to make such a provision out of thepublic revenue. In old times such a provision was or-dinarily made out of the hereditary domain of the Crown.What had been bestowed on Somers appears to haveamounted, after all deductions, to a net income of aboutsixteen hundred a year, a sum which will hardly shockus who have seen at one time five retired Chancellors en-joying pensions of five thousand a year each. For thecrime, however, of accepting this grant the leaders of theopposition hoped that they should be able to punishSomers with disgrace and ruin. One difficulty stood inthe way. All that he had received was but a pittancewhen compared with the wealth with which some of hispersecutors had been loaded by the last two kings of theHouse of Stuart. It was not easy to pass any censure onhim which should not imply a still more severe censureon two generations of Granvilles, on two generations ofHydes, and on two generations of Finches. At last some

ciiAr.

_xxv.

1700 .