The salaries of most of the chief offices of the Ministry were settled at their present figures by an arrangement made so long ago as 1831. During the Administration of Earl Grey (better known as the Reform Ministry) fixed incomes of £5,000 a year for the Secretaries of State, and £2,000 a year for the Presidents of Boards were agreed to on the recommendation of a Select Committee of the House of Commons. In 1850 the emoluments of office were again reviewed by a Select Committee, and they reported in favour of the retention, practically, of the 1831 settlement. Included in this Committee of fifteen members were such rigid economists as Molesworth, Cobden, Bright, and Ricardo, who grudged almost every penny spent for State purposes. “For these offices,” they said in their report, “it is requisite to secure the services of men who combine the highest talents with the greatest experience in public affairs; and considering the rank and importance of the offices and the labour and responsibility incurred by those who hold them, your Committee are of opinion that the salaries of these officers were settled in 1831 at the lowest amount consistent with the requirements of the public service.” The differences in the emoluments of the more important offices of Cabinet rank have been a source of embarrassment to many a Prime Minister engaged in forming a Government. It has often happened that a man offered a post with the lower salary has considered himself slighted by his political chief. To give one conspicuous instance, the appointment of Joseph Chamberlain to the Board of Trade by Gladstone in 1880 was resented by the Radicals, if not by Chamberlain himself, as a belittling of his services and abilities. This feeling did not tend to the harmony of the inner councils of the Liberal Government; and yet the only foundation for it was that the Presidency of the Board of Trade had only £2,000 a year as compared with the £5,000 of a Secretary of State, for intrinsically it was a high and important office.