COUNTERFEIT ECONOMY AND REAL ECONOMY. LORD ELLENBOROUGH is playing towards
the party of Messrs. Hume and Cobden the part of a free ally—a knight-errant who enters the field to fight on their side, and rides off again without claiming companionship. The Ex-Governor of India seeks glory by an onslaught on the increased expenditure of the Imperial Government. The expenditure, he shows, under certain heads, has augmented : but so has the population, and so also have the demands of the country on the attention and exertions of public servants. It is not the gross amount of expenditure under any particular head which shows that the payments are in excess ; nor does the absolute increase prove extravagance : to make out either case, you should show that the increase has been in a ratio greater than that of the population, and that a proper return in duties performed is not made for the expenditure. Every payment by the state ought to be reproductive; in other words, it ought to appear that the.duties pessformed are such that if they were pre- vented by ths Prevention of..thcpaymesit, the country would be a loser.
To take an example' or twisTat random, we call the salary of Mr. Charles Buller as Chief Poor-law Commissioner, or of Mr. Waddington as Under-Secretary at the Home Office, a reproductive expenditure, because the services performed are of such amount and value, that if the country were to go with- out them, and save the salaryra public loss would accrue upon the whole transaction. But we find a difficulty in perceiving that the country derives any adequate return for the services of 1,200/. paid to an hereditary Grand Falconer who has no falcons, for the 1,700/. paid to the Master of the Royal Buckhounds, or even for the coachman, four footmen, and six grooms in the private ser- vice of the Master of the Horse for which the country pays 400/.*: if these offices were suppressed, the country would lose little or nothing in the way of services, and would gain the amount of the salaries saved. Lord Ellenborough's doctrine is that all ser- vices which can possibly be dispensed with just now ought to be postponed : ours is, that it would be a bad economy to postpone any services that would be really advantageous to the country. It is said that the Committee on the Miscellaneous Estimates has been planning wholesale "reductions"—lopping off large slices of everybody's salary : a clumsy and questionable method of set- ting the finances in order. The plan should be to revise the whole of the offices as well as the whole of the salaries; to ascer- tain what offices render a proper return for the payments, or otherwise ; to determine what are the duties to be performed henceforward, or not, and to set down the proper payment for those duties at a just value. A gross reduction of salary, the sup- pression of an office, or the abnegation of an important service, may be a real loss. The test which should be used to justify the existence of every office should be a clear balance of gain to the public.
That is not the test used by the official Fates who decree the existence or non-existence of offices ; which is almost always determined by considerations beside the merits of the case, or of the individual destined for the post. Take the latest instance —the uncompleted creation of the Sanatory Commission ; an office respecting which the intentions of Government have varied in the most opposite directions, and have at last been determined
* See a little volume called "Sketches of her Majesty's Household," recently Roilished by Mr. Strange, in which the ,dutias and salaries of all persons in the zolel Household are sot forth. . —if indeed they are determined—by considerations " wholly im- pertinent to the real question. Lord Morpeth will not be sus- pected of any intention to delude the country by advancing ts measure merely to abandon it ; and therefore we presume that his original proposition really represented his own wish. There was a certain set of onerous duties to be performed—too much to be added to the duties, already overgrown, of the department of Woods and Forests : it was resolved to establish a Special Com- mission' and it was adjudged that three Commissioners would not be too many—adequately remunerated, of course. There was at once the usual outcry about " patronage" ; and Ministers, panic-stricken, declared that they abandoned all the paid Com- missioners; concluding to leave the duties to the Woods and Forests. Then there was a louder and more natural outcry at the absurdity of setting duties to be performed without properly ap- pointing persons for the purpose, with proper pay ; and Ministers finally propose, by way of compromise, to establish one paid. Com- missioner. It is to be observed that Government has acted on no formal motion, on no explicitly declared opinion, but only on noise. Neither has it been governed by the facts of the case, but still by the noise ; for the filets suggested the original plan of three paid Commissioners, and no new facts are alleged : the pro- ject of having no Commissioners was suggested by panic ; so was the compromise of one paid Commissioner. It is understood that the single paid Commissioner is to be Mr. Chadwick,—a very na- tural appointment; but what becomes of Dr. Southwood Smith, his claims to employment, and the rights of the public to his services ?
This compromise involves gross injustice towards individuals, and impolicy no less gross as respects the public advantage. The present state of opinion on the subject of sanatory matters has been matured mainly by the exertions of Mr. Chadwick, Mr. Toy nbee, Dr. Farre, and others ; but most especially by Dr. South- wood Smith, who may be regarded as the father of the move- ment, and as its directing mind throughout. To those gentlemen are due the public acknowledgments for a great amount of labour, continued for years, in ransacking an obscure and neglected sub- ject, in collecting the evidence that made it plain, and in shaping i practical measures. To those gentlemen s it owing that the country knows the evil of bad sanatory regulations, and that measures are at last before Parliament; to them is it owing that official and independent Members concur in recommending ac- tion—to them that so prominent a position is taken by Lord Mor- peth and Lord Lincoln, Lord Ashley and Mr. Henley. Yet the principal labourer in the past, the author of the present, is set aside !
But there is a future : if there is to be a measure, it must be worked. Mr. Chadwick is a lawyer, and medical counsel will be particularly necessary : the natural referee will be Dr. South- wood Smith ; either his advice must be perversely avoided, or it must be extracted from him, as before, without return ; either he must continue to give his services gratuitously, or he must be reimbursed by some indirect means ; either the public ac- counts must be tampered with, or the nation must accept the Doctor's services as an eleemosynary contribution. Either, there- fore, the "won must be dishonestly paid, okill_performed, or per- formed' at the private expense of Dr. .Southwood Smith. We have simply stated facts known to everybody: we need not cha- racterize the alternative.
The influence of acts like this gradual abandonment of the pro- mised Sanatory Commission cannot but be disastrous to the Go- vernment. They prove its utter want of strength. They con- vict it of a moribund and debilitated organization, which cannot keep up the existence of the Government by a healthy repro- duction of its parts. They form a standing rebuke to any public- spirited men who forget Talleyrand's heartless injunction—" pas de zele."
It is such spectacles as this which make people draw an contrasts between the Whigs and the Minister that has al- ternated with them in office. Every statesman that hopes to be strong, must devote all his energies to the particular task of work before him. Whatever may be his motives for undertaking it, bad or good, pure or corrupt, as soon as he has undertaken it, his very existence must be pledged to fruition and success. People, even old and stanch adherents of the present men, remember that when Peel is in power, such is the rule ; they cannot but admit, now, that if the Premiership were transferred from Russell to Peel, the actual conduct of the Health Bill from Morpeth to Lin- coln, something effective would be done ; that a measure would be carried, and that the Government would not be afraid to ap- point the proper officers for carrying it into execution.
Previous page
