From Lady Knightley's diary

There are many interesting comments in the diaries of Lady Knightley of Fawsley and a longer posting will appear in due course, as well as many more snippets, I have no doubt. This struck me as sadly ironic. Writing on March 8, 1906, almost two months after the catastrophic (for the Conservatives) election that also brought in twenty-nine Labour members (Lady Knightley thought as she heard the results in January that there would be forty to fifty) she mentions that a Resolution in favour of payment of Members brought in by William Hesketh Lever, Liberal MP for Wirral, had been passed in the House the previous evening. She was discussing this with William Ryland Dent Adkins, barrister, who was,  by this time a Liberal MP for Middleton, Lancashire but still active in Northamptonshire politics, as they were waiting to be seen by the Board of Education.

He [Mr A.] one good point when discussing a payment of Members (a resolution in favour of which was passed last night). He siad it would make the Labour members more independent of the trade unions.

Ho-hum thought I, as I read that. It is fair to say that practically none of the effects that payment of Members was supposed to produce came about.