has lost a lucrative profession, that he has got nothing but a
costly dignity, that he has been transformed from a prosperous
barrister into a mendicant lord. Such a risk no wise man will
run. If, therefore, the state is to be well served in the highest
civil post, it is absolutely necessary that a provision should be
made for retired Chancellors. The Sovereign is now empowered by
Act of Parliament to make such a provision out of the public
revenue. In old times such a provision was ordinarily made out of
the hereditary domain of the Crown. What had been bestowed on
Somers appears to have amounted, after all deductions, to a net
income of about sixteen hundred a year, a sum which will hardly
shock us who have seen at one time five retired Chancellors
enjoying pensions of five thousand a year each. For the crime,
however, of accepting this grant the leaders of the opposition
hoped that they should be able to punish Somers with disgrace and
ruin. One difficulty stood in the way. All that he had received
was but a pittance when compared with the wealth with which some
of his persecutors had been loaded by the last two kings of the
House of Stuart. It was not easy to pass any censure on him which
should not imply a still more severe censure on two generations
of Granvilles, on two generations of Hydes, and on two
generations of Finches. At last some ingenious Tory thought of a
device by which it might be possible to strike the enemy without
wounding friends. The grants of Charles and James had been made in
time of peace; and William's grant to Somers had been made in
time of war. Malice eagerly caught at this childish distinction.
It was moved that any minister who had been concerned in passing
a grant for his own benefit while the nation was under the heavy
taxes of the late war had violated his trust; as if the
expenditure which is necessary to secure to the country a good