Their successors are not yet fixed upon. It is proposed to Charles Grant to be one, which I am told he has not yet positively declined, but I can hardly believe that he will accept anything so much lower in the scale of office than what he has previously held. This is unlucky, as it will so much delay my own appointment and the commencement of my salary, which begins to be an object. I also find the finances of this Board in such a state of embarrassment that there is a debt of 2000_l._, and the charges next year likely to exceed the income 1600_l._ a-year, to meet which, a deduction of five per cent. on all our salaries is talked of as the only resource.
Lord Liverpool professes readiness to appoint Phillimore to a seat at one of the Boards, but not to be held with his profession, which is a mere contrivance to negative it.
[78] Right Hon. William Sturges Bourne, Secretary of State in 1827.
[79] Son of the Earl of Haddington. In 1833, he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
THE RIGHT HON. CHARLES W. WYNN TO THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.
I have not yet seen Sir Scrope, but I understood yesterday from Hobhouse that your patents were all in progress, and that it was determined that you should have a new Earldom of Temple, remainder to your own male issue, remainder to the male issue of Hester, Countess Temple, the original grantee, remainder to your granddaughter and her heirs male. I am going to-day to be sworn in and to kiss hands, and shall previously see Lord Liverpool, whom I find very impracticable about Phillimore.
The difficulty about my office is, that the payment by the India Company being limited to 26,000_l._ a-year by Act of Parliament, Canning introduced a new scale of salary for the clerks, increasing according to the number of years' service, so much faster than seniors have dropped off, that there would in the coming year be an excess of 1600_l._, besides the past debt of 2000_l._ already contracted to the tradesmen. This Courtenay proposes to meet by a general deduction of five per cent. from every salary in the office, of which I cannot approve, unless some such system should pervade the public service. It appears to me that the fitter course is to pay the debt out of Bathurst's lapsed salary of last year and to oblige the clerks to revert to a fixed scale of salaries.