HISTORY OP ENGLAND.

• peer was estimated, by the best informed persons, at aboutthree thousand a year, the average income of a baronet atnine hundred a year, the average inoome of a member of theHouse of Commons at less than eight hundred a year. * * Athousand a year was thought a large revenue for a barrister.Two thousand a year was hardly to be made in the Court ofKing’s Bench, except by the crown lawyers.** It is evident,therefore, that an official man would have been well paid ifhe had received a fourth or fifth part of what would now be anadequate stipend. In fact, however, the stipends of thehigher class of official men were as large as at present, andnot seldom larger. The Cord Treasurer, for example, hadeight thousand a year, and, when the Treasury was in com-mission, the junior Lords had sixteen hundred a year each.The Paymaster of the Forces had a poundage, amounting toabout five thousand a year, on all the money which passedthrough his hands. The Groom of the Stole had five thousanda year, the Commissioners of the Customs twelve hundred ayear each, the Lords of the Bedchamber a thousand a yeareach.*** The regular salary, however, was the smallest partof the gains of an official man of that age. From the noblemenwho held the white staff and the great seal, down to thehumblest tide-waiter and gauger, what would now be calledgross corruption was practised without disguise and withoutreproach. Titles, places, commissions, pardons, were dailysold in market overt by the great dignitaries of the realm; and

Museum. (Lansdowne MSS. 885.) The gross revenue for the threequarters was not quite four thousand pounds; and the difference betweenthe gross and the net revenue was evidently something considerable.

* King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on the Ba-lance of Trade. Sir W. Temple says, “The revenues of a House ofCommons have seldom exceeded four hundred thousand pounds.” Me-moirs, Third Part.

•* Langton’s Conversations with Chief Justice Hale, 1612.

*** Commons’ Journals, April 21. 1689; Chamberlayne’s Slate of Eng-land, 1684.