Eldon's obstinate tenacity of office, was attended with one good result. It saved the nation much money by keeping down the number of ex-Chancellors entitled to L4000 per annum. The frequency with which Governments have been changed during the last forty years has had a contrary effect, producing such a strong bevy of lawyers--who are pensioners as well as peers--that financial reformers are loudly asking if some scheme cannot be devised for lessening the number of these costly and comparatively useless personages. At the time when this page is written, there are four ex-Chancellors in receipt of pensions--Lords Brougham, St. Leonards, Cranworth, and Westbury; but death has recently diminished the roll of Chancellors by removing Lords Truro and Lyndhurst. Not long since the present writer read a very able, but one-sided article in a liberal newspaper that gave the sum total spent by the country since Lord Eldon's death in ex-Chancellors' pensions; and in simple truth it must be admitted that the bill was a fearful subject for contemplation. [19] During the Commonwealth, the people, unwilling to pay their judges liberally, decided that a thousand a year was a sufficient income for a Lord Commissioner of the Great Seal. PART IV. COSTUME AND TOILET. CHAPTER XIX. BRIGHT AND SAD. From the days of the Conqueror's Chancellor, Baldrick, who is reputed to have invented and christened the sword-belt that bears his name, lawyers have been conspicuous amongst the best dressed men of their times. For many generations clerical discipline restrained the members of the bar from garments of lavish costliness and various colors, unless high rank and personal influence placed them above the fear of censure and punishment; but as soon as the law became a lay-profession, its members--especially those who were still young--eagerly seized the newest fashions of costume, and expended so much time and money on personal decoration, that the governors of the Inns deemed it expedient to make rules, with a view to check the inordinate love of gay apparel. By these enactments, foppish modes of dressing the hair was discountenanced or forbidden, not less than the use of gaudy clothes and bright arms. Some of these regulations have a quaint air to readers of this generation; and as indications of manners in past times, they deserve attention.