10 MARCH 1855, Page 13

THE GREAT WANT.

IT is easier to prove that an evil exists than to obtain a remedy; for indeed it is logically inevitable that the design of the remedy must be preceded by a clear knowledge of the disease, and it is often still easier to prescribe the remedy than to induce the patient to accept it. We may, though it is not easy, arrive at last at some conception of the administrative confusion which has been found to exist in all branches of the public service ; but although " administrative reform " is already growing to be a cry, we cer- tainly are not prepared with a plan cut and dried for the reorgani- zation of all the public departments ; and if we could even fasten upon the one point to begin with, we have no confidence that the public, or those whom it may concern, would assist us. The pub- lic has grown used to endure so much, and it does itself so largely share the corruption under which it suffers, that its indifference is part of the evil.

Lord Palmerston said, the other day, that the mismanagement had been proved to exist in departments that were not manned from the aristocracy : but if he thinks that is an answer, he is under a delusion that must be more lamentable to himself and his repute than the public interests. For the public, af- ter one fashion or other, have got hold of the principle, and will not be content until some satisfaction can be attained ; whereas Lord Palmerston is nursing himself in hallucination. There ie no branch of the public service that is free from maladministration, and mostly in one form—the substitution of routine for really ho- nest business. In the very week when we have a new edition of the pamphlet on "The One Thing Needful," we have the Sebastopol inquiry proving even in its earlier days that mal- administration is shared by the higher authorities ; we have the French pamphlet directly accusing the higher officers of the grossest acts of maladministration committed before the public in living action; and we have in the ordinary debates of the House of Commons a new exposure of repeated cases in the departments at home.

The Ordnance debate of Tuesday is filled with instances of the grossest blundering, from large operations down to minute details. We take only the instances admitted by the Clerk of the Ordnance or by Lord Palmerston. When a sick soldier goes into hospital, his rifle goes into store ; although serviceable rifles are wanted, and those laid by become thick with rust. The Board of Ordnance writes a sharp letter to manufacturers at Birmingham, asking in October why a contract has not been fulfilled ; and the firm replies respectfully, that the contract was fulfilled in July, a month before the term. Greatcoats are served out to the men on the principle of giving them little to carry, and they prove to be slight baize worthless for the purposes of a greatcoat. The boots sent out are too small for the men who are to wear them. Six weeks are al- lowed for the erection of huts at Aldershott, and Sir Joseph Pax- ton finds neither the time nor the trains nor the wood to exe- cute the work within the time, unless the expenditure in the estimate be immensely exceeded. It is evident from the nature of these cases that they are only specimens of innumerable other cases illustrating the mode in which one great department works —the Ordnance department. There is no evidence to make us believe that that department differs in its general character from any other part of the public service.

From the results we might suppose that our organization was intended to prevent those things which it professes to aim at. Formerly, the greatest abuse to which the public service was liable was some form of peculation, and hence perhaps one reason why so great a division of authority has been created, so that no man knows what his neighbour doth, or only knows it through some official minute or record. Limited to a minute part of the business, no servant has an interest in the whole transaction, and each man is content to perform his mechanical duty as the quit- tance of his salary. The jealousy of malfeasance has so broken down authority as to have destroyed responsibility. If there is bad administration, it is chargeable to " the system," and no man is answerable ; and the balance of the fault, in most oases, really lies with some other than the man who is called to account. He only answers for one note in the gamut, like any one man in the octave of a Russian horn band.

Well, everybody sees that, but who is to mend it ? Certainly not everybody ; most likely nobody. The official taint is guarded against interference by another taint of the body politic, non- official as well as official. No party will sustain, or even tolerate, decided action. The days of absolute "principle" have passed. Men have learned to make way by making concessions ; that art of " practical " polities has been caricatured, and at last concession has degenerated to habitual compromise, compromise to systematic paltering with truth. Reformers frame measures, no longer " for rejection," but more fatally for acceptance by their opponents; and traitors not only accept but advocate, disbnnouring every "cause" by converting it into a cant and a humbug. Conscious of this degeneracy, impatient of the consequences, the public is now calling out for "a strong Government"—it pines for " a man"; although on the least show of political decision and virility it is alarmed. If a man appears who cares less for the show of doing work than for doing it, a dead set is. made at him, and he is politically barked. A few here and there break away from the system, and move for committees of inquiry, or re- turns,—to get the returns with asterisks, or to have the Committee neutralized by "concessions," arranged in private in- terviews. The remedy for the crying evil of confusion and cor- ruption throughout our adminstrative system is administrative re- form ; but who is to begin the application of the remedy ? The public must cure its own depraved contentment in shams, its effe- minate hatred of reality, before it can force administrative reform down the official throat.

First, then, the public is right in the cry which it raises and does nothing to satisfy; it does need " a man "—a man of business, not corrupted by trade, or office, or the universal disease of com- promise. But the first thing of which "the man" will feel the want will be other men to support him ; and their first duty will be, setting aside party ties, " practicable "compromises, and all the temptations of Armida's garden, to swear an oath of fidelity to each other in breaking the spell—in speaking plainly about plain business, and standing by each other.