"Peerage Patent"

The British Treasury announced last week without comment the significant fact that onetime (1921-26) Governor-General Baron Byng of Canada has refused to pay a so-called "peerage patent fee" demanded by the Treasury. Theoretically this sum, amounting to several hundred pounds, is due as payment for inserting in the Official Gazette a paragraph to the effect that, last fall, Baron Byng was elevated to the style of Viscount. Actually, of course, the "fee" is a time-honored bit of British graft. How did Lord Byng explain his nonpayment?

"My decision is taken," said Viscount Byng, "in view of the recent charges made by Lord Rosebery that many peerages are bought with money which finds its way into party funds. ... I am of the opinion that a titular reward ought not to be conditional upon the payment of any at all substantial sum. . . ."

As many know, the British Treasury usually remits the "patent fee" to men so distinguished as World War General Baron Byng of Vimy. For example, the Earls of Oxford and Asquith, Balfour, and Birkenhead all received "remissions" of between -L-2,255 ($10,813) and -L-330 ($1,603), at the time of their creations. In the case of Viscount Byng, it would seem, someone in His Majesty's Treasury has blundered.