Westminster on account of the plague, actually rewarded him for so doing. There has been preserved a curious indenture of agreement between John Strange, member for Dunwich, and his constituents, made in 1463, by which it is witnessed that "John Strange granteth by these presents to be one of the Burgesses for Dunwich, at the Parliament to be holden at Westminster, for which, whether it hold for longer time or short, or whether it fortune to be prorogued, the said John Strange granteth no more to be taken for his wages than a cade full of herrings, and a halfbarrel full of herrings, to be delivered on Christmas next coming." Had it been only a matter of expenses, Strange and the electors would hardly have bargained. 1 Wages were regularly paid to the end of the reign of Henry VIII, but thereafter the practice rapidly waned, because the desire to serve in Parliament grew so much that for the sake of getting elected men gladly undertook to pay their own expenses, and indeed went beyond that and paid for the privilege. We read, for instance, that one Thomas Long, "a very simple man, and unfit to serve," had crept into Queen Elizabeth's Parliament of 1571. When questioned how he came to be elected, he confessed "that he gave the mayor of Westbury and another £4 for his place." The House was greatly shocked, in those primitive days, at the notion of their member paying, instead of being paid, for a seat, and immediately ordered the mayor and town council to disgorge the money, to appear to answer such things as should be objected against them, and to suffer a penalty of £20 for their scandalous attempt. This was a precursor of the payments a thousand times as large that became common two centuries later. By Pepys' time the practice of payment to members had almost disappeared. His Diary records, March 30, 1668: "At dinner we had a great deal of good discourse about Parliament; their number being uncertain, and always at the will of the King to increase as he saw reason to erect a new borough. But all concluded that the bane of the Parliament hath been the leaving off the old custom of the places allowing wages to those that served them in Parliament, by which they chose men that understood their business and would attend to it, and they could expect an account from; which now they cannot: and so the 1 Quoted by Townsend, Hist. of the House of Commons, 1, 242. Parliament is become a company of men unable to give account for the interest of the place they serve for." Andrew Marvell, the poet, who died in 1678, and who had been a member from the time of the Restoration, has frequently been credited with being the last person who accepted wages for his attendance as a member, but one or two later instances are now said to have been found. A story is told of Marvell that may point a moral in an argument for the payment of legislators. Charles II, wanting Marvell's powerful support, sent Lord Danby, the Lord Treasurer, with offers of place and money. The royal messenger found Marvell in obscure apartments and evidently in narrow circumstances, but all the courtly blandishments could not move the poet. At parting the Treasurer slipped into Marvell's hands an order on the Treasury for a thousand pounds, and was moving toward his carriage when Marvell stopped him, and taking him again up-stairs called the servant-boy. "Jack, child," he asked, "what had I for dinner yesterday?" "Don't you remember, sir, you had the little shoulder of mutton that you ordered me to bring from the woman in the market." "Very right, child, what have I for dinner to-day?" "Don't you know, sir, that you bade me lay by the blade-bone to broil?" "'Tis so, child; go away. My lord, do you hear that Andrew Marvell's dinner is provided? There's your piece of paper; I want it not. I knew the sort of kindness you intended. I live here to serve my constituents; the ministry may seek men for their I am not one." purpose; IN THE COLONIES It will be observed that when legislative assemblies began meeting in America, the custom of compensating members had not died out in England. Furthermore, the conditions of colonial life, with its privations at the outset and with its lack of wealthy men or a leisure class in most of the colonies for many years, postponed the time when any considerable number of representatives could afford to waive compensation, much less to pay for the privilege of election. So here the custom of wages began naturally and came to be looked on as an inevitable adjunct of election to representative office. IG. H. Jennings, Anecdotal Hist. of Parlt., 85, quoting Cooke's Hist. of Party. The question at the start was not whether payment should be made, but who should make it, colony or town. The General Court of Massachusetts Bay ordered in October of 1636 "that the charges of the deputies of the townes bee borne by the townes which they came from, to ease the publike." In the following March, an entry reads: "The order for each towne to beare their owne deputies charge was reversed; & the former order, for the charge of the deputies to be borne by the country is reëstablished." 2 A year later the opposite view again prevailed, and it was ordered, that "every towne shall beare the charges of their owne magistrates & deputies, & to alow for a magistrate 3s. 6d. a day, & for a deputy 2s. 6d. a day, from the time of their going out to the Court until their returne, for their dyot & lodging." 3 Plymouth, instituting representation in that year, made the charges of the "committees" also two-and-six a day, and put them on the townships. In Massachusetts Bay in 1639 it was ordered that "the charge of dyot of the magistrates & deputies should, after this Court, be borne by the fines." What fines were meant does not appear, but it may have been fines for absences. The change may not have been satisfactory or the amounts may have proved inadequate. Anyhow there is proof of a movement in 1644 for higher salaries and more of them. It was ordered, May 29, that "it shall & may be lawfull for the deputies of the Court to advise with their elders and freemen, & take into serious consideration whether God do not expect that all the inhabitants of this plantation alowe to their magistrates, & all others that are called to country service, a proportionable alowance, answerable to their places & implements, & all other that are called to country service, & (if so) upon what grounds, & that they send in their determinations & conclusions the next Generall Court." 5 No record appears of any report on this, but at the General Court May 14, 1645, it was voted: "This Court, being sensible of the many publike imploiments that the magistrates are called to, which dayly increaseth, and which necessarily occasioneth much expence of their time, to the prejudice of their families & estates, knowing also the straitnes of things in the country, & the just care that this Court ought to take to see 1 Records of the Colony of the Mass. Bay in N.E., 3 Ibid., 228. 5 Ibid., II, 67. that none ought to be unequally burthened, or discouraged from doing service to the country in such places as they may be called to, do therefore hereby order" that the Assistants should have five hundred pounds of estate free from taxes for three years. Five months later the court returned to the system of having each town bear the charges of its own Deputies, and this was reiterated in 1653 when it was ordered2 that "such townes as have not more than thirty ffreemen shall henceforth be at libertie for sending, or not sending, deputyes to the Generall Court, & all such townes as shall send deputyes into the Generall Court shall beare the whole charges of their respective deputies." Thus it was recognized in New England as it had been long before in Old England that poor places ought not to be required to carry the burden of representation. 3 In Rhode Island at first there was no payment. Although its handful of towns were close together, presently it was found hard to get the Deputies to attend, and this led in 1666 to the passage of an act to pay all the members of the Assembly, and of the Courts, three shillings a day, while employed on these duties. The per diem of the Assemblymen was not paid in cash, but their accounts, certified by the Moderator, were to be allowed in offset of taxes levied in their respective towns. Six years later came one of the rare instances of lowering the pay of lawmakers. It was reduced to two shillings a day. Massachusetts, on the other hand, in 1692, began what has become the normal practice of raising salaries, providing that the towns should pay their Representatives, "during their attendance upon the Court, and for the necessary time in their journeying to and from thence, three shillings in money per diem." 5 In New Hampshire the Councilors received nothing for their services when sitting as a Council of State, but were rewarded when officiating as members of the Legislature, receiving like the Representatives, a per diem allowance while they were engaged on legislative business during the session of the General Assembly. As the amount was not named in the commission and instructions, it had to be determined by a vote of both branches of the Legislature, and, as each Assembly had the right to name the amount to be paid, it could be changed. 1 Records of the Colony of the Mass. Bay in N.E., 101. Ibid., 365. Generally, however, the Councilors received two shillings more a day than the members of the lower House.1 In Pennsylvania likewise the members of the upper branch were made more expensive than those of the lower. By the Frame of Government of 1696 the wages of members of the Council were put at five shillings a day, those of members of the Assembly at four, with payment to be made by the counties. Perhaps to anticipate the criticism of taxpayers, not uncommonly the provisions for wages were accompanied by reasons, as we have seen in the almost deprecatory language of the General Court of Massachusetts in 1645. Of more far-reaching significance was the explanation in "The Concessions and Agreements of the Proprietors, Freeholders and Inhabitants of the Province of West New-Jersey in America," setting the allowance to each member of the Assembly at a shilling a day "that thereby he may be known to be the servant of the people." Contrast the flavor of high hope therein with the sorry proof of result given by the depressing explanation of the Virginia Assembly: "Whereas the excessive expences of the Burgesses causing diverse misunderstandings between them and the people occasioned an injunction to make an agreement with them before their election which may probably cause interested persons to purchase votes by offering to undertake the place at low rates and by that meanes make the place both mercenary and contemptible, Bee it therefore enacted by this present grand assembly that the allowance for their maintenance be ascertained to one hundred and fifty pounds of tobacco per day besides their charge in goeing and comeing." That seems to have been thought inadequate, for in the codification of the following year they put after the word "rates" "by which meanes the candour and ffreedome which should be in the choice of persons credited with soe honorable and greate a trust might be very much prejudiced and that place itself become mercenary and contemptable." 3 2 The salaries, however, proved to be by no means "contemptable," at any rate from the point of view of the recipients, for we find that in 1673 the wages and expenses of the two members from Lancaster County were burdening it to the tune of $25 1 W. H. Fry," New Hampshire as a Royal Province," Columbia Univ. Studies, XXIX, 2: 105 (1908). 2 Hening, Statutes at Large, 11, 23 (1660-61). Ibid., II, 106. |