CURIOSITIES OF PUBLIC WORKS EXPENDITURE.
CRITICS of Civil Service expenditure are apt to complain not so much of specific acts of extravagance as of a general tendency to reckless outlay. The reins, they say, are too loosely held, and every one permitted to bring in a bill makes a fortune. If those criticisms were ever justified, they are by the accounts of the Board of Works just presented to Parliament. The department is sup- posed, since Lord Llanover's reforms, to be one of the best organized in England, but its ideas of economy seem to be still but partially developed. The department expended last year 619,3361., or very nearly the expected deficit of 1860-61, on some hundreds of different works, varying in magnitude from the new bridge at Westminster to St. George's Hall, Isle of Man. One half of the items it is, of course, impossible to submit to any but a professional test, but others are patent to anybody with a head and a slate, and through all there runs a very suspicious tendency to extravagance. We find, for example, 14,416/. set down as expended on palaces in her Majesty's occupation ; 4921/. on palaces partly in occupation ; and 15,515/. on palaces not in her Majesty's occupation at all. Surely 43,000/. is rather a large sum for an ordinary bill of repairs, even though they extend over a dozen palaces. It is, at all events, nearly double the sum expended on all the public buildings and offices in the kingdom, which is set down at only 25,9781. The charge for lighting these buildings runs up to 9074/., while the cost of coals is rather less, or 87061., not at all the proportion ordinary housekeepers believe 1%4- timate. Then there are the parks, all, but two, in London or its suburbs, which cost no less than 85,7071. The parks are so valuable to London, that almost any amount would pass without cavil; but we suspect any of the great English landlords would raise his eyebrows at such a bill, though it does include 13,2821. for the Kew Botanical Garden. The New Houses of Parliament are, of course, expected to cost as much as possible, but 2613/. for hair-cloth mats seems to overleap even that wide limit, and for buildings supposed to be already furnished, 11,5601. seems to be a liberal additional item. The account of these trifles is oddly drawn, too. Thus the nation paid 5580/. "for warming, ventilating' and lighting the building," and 4031/. more for "gas, oil-lamps, &0., and 1728/. for coal." If the gas, oil, and coal neither warm nor light the building, what are they for P
The account of the expenditure on embassy buildings is not much more explicable, being among other things wholly at variance with the Index. The expenses on "British embassies abroad," we are told, will be found at page 8, and there we find a tolerably economical account. Only 588/. have been spent on the embassy- house in Paris; 1783/. on the edifices in Constantinople ; and 1193/. upon those in Madrid. But there is another little item of 85531. at page 17, not referred to in the Index, for repairs of embassy- house at Paris, which cost thus not 5001. but 90001. during the year. So, though the embassy at Constantinople draws but slightly on the department, the consulate in the same capital expended 6151/. on works and fittings. Then there is a little account which suggests the money value of decision of character, viz. 5640/. "paid to the Architect and Surveyor for professional services rendered by him in connexion with undertakings contemplated but not carried out." Day-dreaming is obviously an expensive amusement at the Board of Works. We have noticed only a few of the items comprehensible by understandings not specially trained, but the total of the sums recorded of which private paymasters would probably save the half, is 185,0001., or just three times the sum which Lord Clarence Paget declared it impossible to grant for the improvement of the Navy.
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