very richest subjects in England. The
Archbishop of Canterbury can hardly have had five thousand a year.
[57] The average income of a temporal peer was estimated, by the best
informed persons, at about three thousand a year, the average income of
a baronet at nine hundred a year, the average income of a member of the
House of Commons at less than eight hundred a year. [58] A thousand a
year was thought a large revenue for a barrister. Two thousand a year
was hardly to be made in the Court of King's Bench, except by the crown
lawyers. [59] It is evident, therefore, that an official man would have
been well paid if he had received a fourth or fifth part of what would
now be an adequate stipend. In fact, however, the stipends of the
higher class of official men were as large as at present, and not seldom
larger. The Lord Treasurer, for example, had eight thousand a year,
and, when the Treasury was in commission, the junior Lords had sixteen
hundred a year each. The Paymaster of the Forces had a poundage,
amounting, in time of peace, to about five thousand a year, on all the
money which passed through his hands. The Groom of the Stole had five
thousand a year, the Commissioners of the Customs twelve hundred a
year each, the Lords of the Bedchamber a thousand a year each. [60]
The regular salary, however, was the smallest part of the gains of an
official man at that age. From the noblemen who held the white staff and
the great seal, down to the humblest tidewaiter and gauger, what would
now be called gross corruption was practiced without disguise and
without reproach. Titles, places, commissions, pardons, were daily sold
in market overt by the great dignitaries of the realm; and every
clerk in every department imitated, to the best of his power, the evil
example.

During the last century no prime minister, however powerful, has become
rich in office; and several prime ministers have impaired their private
fortune in sustaining their public character. In the seventeenth
century, a statesman who was at the head of affairs might easily, and
without giving scandal, accumulate in no long time an estate amply
sufficient to support a dukedom. It is probable that the income of the
prime minister, during his tenure of power, far exceeded that of any
other subject. The place of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was popularly
reported to be worth forty thousand pounds a year. [61] The gains of the
Chancellor Clarendon, of Arlington, of Laud