On the Estimates, as I have often explained, every single
penny spent in the public service has to be entered. Whether that sum be
large or small makes no difference. For instance, there is a charwoman
at the Foreign Office; the charwoman's salary appears in the accounts
just as bold and just as plain as the five thousand a year which the
country has to pay for Lord Rosebery--who is cheap at the money, I must
say, lest I be misunderstood. There is associated with Buckingham Palace
a most worthy and useful individual called the ratcatcher. Everybody can
see why in such a vast and generally untenanted barrack, there should be
a ratcatcher. Well, Master Ratcatcher appears on the Estimates for
Buckingham Palace just as regularly, as plainly, in as much detail, as
my Lord High Chamberlain, Lord Carrington. There is no reason whatever
why a whole evening should not be spent in the discussion of the
ratcatcher's salary. Perhaps the reader may have heard that, in common
with many sobered and middle-aged gentlemen, I have had a pre-historic
period when I was accused--of course, unjustly--of interfering with the
progress of public business. In that period, I remember very well, the
ratcatcher of Buckingham Palace loomed largely, as well as many other
strange and portentous figures now vanished into the void and the
immensities.
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