§ MR. OSMOND WILLIAMSI beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether his attention has been called to the case of a Mr. Austin Dobson, who now receives a pension of £533 6s. 8d. in addition to the sum of £250 from the Civil List-in all £783 6s.8d. or very nearly full pay, his salary on his retirement being £800 a year; and whether he can explain why this gentleman has such a pension.
In putting the Question the hon. Member said he regretted that, owing 641 to an inadvertence, the letter "a" had been placed before Mr. Austin Dobson's name. He had no intention of making this a personal matter. The question was levelled against the principle, or want of principle, on which these pensions were granted.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURI am sure the hon. Gentleman would be the last man in the House to offer a deliberate insult to one who has been a distinguished Civil servant and is a distinguished man of letters. We shall all accept his disclaimer of the letter "a" with absolute confidence. The course that has been pursued on my responsibility in this matter is one that, I believe, will have the approval of every man interested in English literature. The hon. Gentleman appears to suppose that there is some incompatibility between a Civil Service pension and Civil Service office. That is not so. Mr. Gladstone gave the late Mr. Matthew Arnold, while in full employment and not on a pension, a pension on the Civil List, and I think it was a proper course for Mr. Gladstone to pursue. In the present case, Mr. Austin Dobson, I think immediately after or immediately before this pension was offered to him, left, on grounds of health, the Board of Trade, of which he was a Civil servant. I do not suppose the hon. Gentleman means to suggest that the pension was not deserved by Mr. Austin Dobson's great literary qualifications. It would, if I may say so respectfully, be a condemnation, not of Mr. Austin Dobson, but of the hon. Gentleman's familiarity with recent con-temporary English literature if he was to form an unfavourable judgment of this transaction.
§ MR. OSMOND WILLIAMSasked whether this pension was intended only for men who had little or no fixed income and were doing, or had done, good literary work.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURThe hon. Gentleman will see, if he looks at the original statute under which the grant is given or at the actual practice of the First Lord of the Treasury, that he has not given anything like a full or accurate account of the mode in which that fund is administered. 642 I have had great difficulty in administering it during my tenure of office, but never have I given a pension with less doubt than I gave it in the case of. Mr. Austin Dobson.