It is improbable, now that the labours and responsibilities of office are ever increasing, that this herculean task will ever be undertaken again. But it shows that our Prime Ministers have never shirked work while enjoying the emoluments of office, to use the consecrated phrase. The chief of the Treasury, in the control of the imposition of taxes and the expenditure of the national revenue, is not the First Lord of the Treasury, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He is a hard-worked Minister and not often is his task of making ends meet brightened by the sunshine of popular favour. “You have held for a long time the most unpopular office of the State,” Gladstone, as Prime Minister, wrote to his fallen Chancellor of the Exchequer, Robert Lowe, who had come to grief over an attempt to impose a tax upon matches in 1873. “No man can do his duty in that office and be popular while he holds it,” he went on. “I could easily name the two worst Chancellors of the Exchequer of the last forty years; against neither of them did I ever hear a word while they were in (I might almost add, nor for them after they were out): ‘Blessed are ye when men shall revile you.’ You have fought for the public tooth and nail. You have been under a storm of unpopularity; but not a fiercer one than I had to stand in 1860, when hardly anyone dared to say a word for me; but, certainly, it was one of my best years of service, even though bad be the best.” The salary attached to this arduous office before 1831 was £5,398, which was made up of fees from different sources. On the recommendation of the Committee of 1831 it was reduced to a fixed sum of £5,000. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has also an official residence, 11 Downing Street. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who assists the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the administration of his department, is paid £2,000 a year. There are also three Junior Lords of the Treasury. As such they have no official duties whatever. What, then, do they do for their salary of £1,000 a year each? According to an amusing definition of their duties given by Canning, they are always to be at St. Stephen’s, to keep a House and to cheer the Ministers. They are, in fact, the assistant Whips of the Party in office. The Chief Whip also fills a sinecure post of £2,000 a year, which used to be styled the Patronage Secretary to the Treasury, and has of late years been called the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury.[2] The Constitution knows not the Whips. They are provided for by offices to which there are salaries, but no duties attached. 3