The salary of the Doorkeeper of the Excise Office had been, by a scandalous job, raised to five hundred a year.

It ought to have been reduced to fifty.

On the other hand, the services of a Secretary of State who was well qualified for his post would have been cheap at five thousand.

If the resolution of the Commons bad been carried into effect, both the salary which ought not to have exceeded fifty pounds, and the salary which might without impropriety have amounted to five thousand, would have been fixed at five hundred.

Such absurdity must have shocked even the roughest and plainest foxhunter in the House.