TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE SALARIES OF VICEROYS.
THE appointment of Lord Tennyson to the Governor- -IL Generalship or Viceroyalty of the Australian Common- wealth " for one year only," if read by the light of the previous correspondence, raises a question of grave portance to the immediate future of the Empire. We may say at once that the selection, viewed in itself, is an excellent one. Lord Tennyson is a man whose considerable powers, great strength of character, and unusual habit of impartiality have been obscured in the public eye by the blaze of his father's reputation. Few Englishmen are better fitted by temperament and mental equipment to. be Constitutional Kings in difficult circumstances, and that is what Australia and the Colonial Office are both asking for. Unfortunately, one of those difficulties cannot be removed either by character or abilities, but only by the possession of large sums of disposable cash. A con- siderable party in Australia and a large body of influential men in England are persuaded that to be completely useful a Colonial Vice-King or Indian Vice-Emperor must live in a " grand " way ; must set an example of continuously stately life ; must, that is, keep up a great establishment ; must count his horses by the stable ; must, above all, entertain " the leading men of the community in that Royal way which, we have been assured, raised Lord Mayo's wine bill in India to £4,000 a year. On the other hand, neither Australians nor Canadians are willing to pay for, a viee- kingship mounted on this scale, and the consequence is that there is an unsettlement of policy in selectino. Viceroys which will by and by be most injurious to the Empire. You do not often get a man like Lord Tennyson, who will consent in the public interest to be a stop-gap ; and when the final appointments are made the Government will have to choose between the efficient, who, as they think, will displease Australian society, and the wealthy and dignified persons,'who may not, prove to be efficient. The difficulty is a grave one, and as it is not settled, as some of our contemporaries seem to think, by condemning the taste for magnificence as " vulgar," or by calling the Australians " mean," we will try to state the solid arguments on both sides.
It is said that the taste for magnificence is a universal one ; that those who gratify it are always more or less looked up to ; and that where we cannot exact reverence for high officials by a delegation of direct power, which is the case in all the white Colonies, " sustained stateliness of life," as Lord Beaconsfield called it, makes the best available substitute. It helps, like the salute and the sentries, to keep up the idea of a headship which is something more than social. The Colonial Vice- roys are Kings, and the world expects Kings to be lodged in palaces and to live amid palatial surroundings. More- over, this kind of life is apt to attract men who at home lead dignified lives and yet are competent politicians, and if the salaries are very large, the Imperial Government is able, at the price, it may be, of a few peerages or steps in the Peerage, to secure precisely the kind of men whom the Colonists at heart most like. They ask, when they speak confidentially, for Peers of some ability, who will spend readily a good deal more than their emoluments of office in keeping up that splendour of life for which the Colonists themselves are unwilling to pay. And lastly, the Crown is enabled when clouds are lowering in a Colony to stoop into its reservoir of ability and pick out the man who can set things right, but who positively could not go out unless the office offered him some chance of " making a. purse " with which to return home in pecuniary security.
It is useless to ask for Macaulay or Sir Henry Maine, when you want a lawgiver, if after breaking his career he is to return home to starve. In the most honorific words he can command, he will decline to go. The Colonial King has large influence if he has not large powers, and it is far bettei, it is argued, to waste on him, say, £100,000 during his•five years' term of office than to send a man who is either unpopular or incapable.
These arguments will appear weighty to most men, per- haps to all who are not of Mr. John Burns's opinion that no man is worth more than £500 a year ; but those on the other side are weighty too. All of them that are based on the necessity of paying good wages for first-class ability may be met by large and liberal but not extravagant salaries, and the adoption of the principle that the Viceroy is to live like an English gentleman and not like an American millionaire. His dignity, which we entirely admit to be essential to his position, will accrue to him from other sources,—from his official rank, from his in.
frequent but recurrent displays of pomp, from his powers as the general referee, and, above all, from his ability to perform his special function, that of one who moderates and regulates from above the strife of parties, which but for him might become virulent. As the representative of the throne, he can have no rival within his own dominion, nor can his favour or disfavour, if only in the social sphere, ever be regarded as of no importance. The mere externals of magnificence, in which any very rich or extravagant man can outshine him, can never add to his real position, while it is very doubtful if they add to his popularity. They may with the shopkeepers, but they will not either with the cultivated, who will not care, or with the mass of the people, who, as they are just now showing in Hungary, cannot be charmed by mere splen- dour out of a secret grudge at a magnificence which, as they know, they pay for. This holds good even of small territories, and when the Viceroy's dominion covers a continent it is a truism. A good Ministry chosen by the Viceroy is welcomed everywhere ; but what possible popu- larity can he acquire from costly entertainments which nine-tenths of his subjects can never share, nor even see? What is the value to Tasmanians of all that champagne in Sydney ? They only grudge the waste. There is, and will be, plenty of difference of opinion as to Lord Dalhousie's policy, but as to his supreme ascendency over the Anglo-Indians under his rule, the men whose chief representatives sobbed as he went down the steps of Government House, there is no question whatever ; and he scarcely entertained at all, spent indeed, we believe, much less than half his salary. The notion, in fact, of buying dignity as Governor throughout a continent by profusion in one city is inept. Even Kings gain nothing by vast expenditure except applause from those immediately around them ; and Colonists ask from their Viceroys good speeches, kindly sympathy, and wise treatment of their Ministers, not wine in rivers, servants in armies, or even horses for everybody to ride. It is not necessary because, like the Canadian Governor- General, you have only £10,000 a year, to be mean, or even penurious ; but a thoroughly competent Viceroy would be popular and dignified if he spent only half of that amount. Men are not, as a rule, so idiotic as by repeating catch-. words they make themselves out to be.
We believe, therefore, though fully perceiving the arguments for the other side, that £10,000 a year is, except in India, where considerations of climate come in, an ample salary for a Viceroy ; that he should be asked to keep up only one house ; and that his instructions should include a hint that he is to live as a gentleman and not as a financial prince. After all, England is the headquarters of rich men, and full of men who lead " stately " lives, and in England we have repeatedly followed poor Prime Ministers—Lord John Russell told the House of Commons that his brother paid his debts—and though we pay them only £6,000 a year, we do not find that it is in dignity they are deficient.
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