From ‘Cabinet Salaries and Cabinet Pensions’, The Spectator, 12 June 1915:
THE National Government have very wisely taken a step which we strongly urged upon the late Government on February 28th, 1914, and again on July 4th of the same year. They are going to pool their salaries just as we then recommended, and make all holders of Cabinet rank, whatever their office, the recipients of £4,246 a year. The only exception is the Prime Minister, who is very properly to keep a salary of £5,000 a year—that is, £754 more than the rest of his colleagues. As the plan of a standard salary for Cabinet Ministers has been so happily carried out, we shall say nothing more on that subject, unless it be to express our indignation and disgust at the ill-breeding with which the debate was conducted by a section of the Government’s critics. We do not wonder that the Prime Minister lost his temper.
We are particularly sorry that such criticisms should have been made, for they render it more difficult for Ministers to take up the second portion of our proposal in regard to Ministerial salaries.
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