For the purposes of the act, political offices were divided into three classes: For service in these offices there may be awarded pensions for life in the following scale: The service need not be continuous, and the act makes provision for counting service in lower classes as a qualification for pension in a higher class.
To obtain a political pension, the applicant must file a declaration stating the grounds upon which he claims it and that his income from other sources is not sufficient to maintain his station in life.
[1] Similar 'golden cage' arrangements were often made later by other (not only British) governments.
An extreme case was the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, for whom the Italian island of Elba was turned into an operetta 'empire' until his escape, Hundred Days revolt and miserable banishment to St. Helena.
Political pensioners were formerly reigning dynasties of Indian princely states that had been dethroned and their states annexed by British India under the doctrine of lapse.