People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 August 1893 — PEERS AND THEIR PERQUISITES [ARTICLE]

PEERS AND THEIR PERQUISITES

They Show Unwillingness to Toll of Salaries and Pensions. The peers were asked by Lord Monkswell recently to assent to a return showing the amounts they severally draw from the public exchequer for salaries, pay, pensions or allowances of any other kind, says the London Daily News. They did assent in the long run, when they were told that it would be perfectly easy to make the same motion in the house of commons, but it was with evident uneasiness of mind. Peer after peer rose to ask Lord Monkswell what he meant to do with the information when he got it. One bitterly insinuated that it was perhaps for the use of the county council. This went on until another noble lord tried to cure hi 3 colleagues of their terror by the well-known expedient of a shock. He suggested the dread possibility of “The Financial Reform Almanac” —and in a tone of approval which must have made the blood of his hearers run cold. Some pleaded for the right to put down what they paid, as well as what they received—as though “horses, servants and subscriptions” would be taken as a sort of offset in the form of contributions to the welfare of the country. It will be a useful return to have the drawer, or the lords would never have made such a fuss about it. We hope it will give no encouragement to low radical politicians by showing that the system of “paid members” already flourishes in rank luxuriance in the upper house. The only course left — and most of the lords may take it with perfect sincerity —is to plead that they are not paid for anything they have done, but only for what their fathers did of old time.