The Press. — London, England, 1857-05-23 00:00:00

4.94 by such a Ministry ; and we can easily under stand why Lord PALMERSTON'S subordinates and partisans are most anxious to divert public attention from the important state ments made in the House of Peers by the Earl of MALMESBURY on the 15th instant. It is impossible that this subject of the extrava gance of the public expenditure can be sup pressed. The public voice must speak out plainly upon it; and while we rejoice that Lord MALMESBURY has grappled with it in the House of Peers, we trust that in the House of Commons the guardians of the public purse will interpose, and put a timely check on the enormous secret jobbery which appears to be taking place in certain departments. Such importance do we attach to this question that we shall devote a series of articles to its eluci dation in detail. We shall commence by expressing our strong suspicion that more than at present meets the eyes of the Legislature is at the bottom of all this increased Civil expenditure. For it does certainly seem most strange, if not suspicious, that while a great parade has been made of the diminution of the secret-service money in recent years, at the same time there has been a most portentous augmentation of the Civil Expenditure. That there has been some adroit manipulation of figures in the re turn to the order of the House of Lords (of the 16th of February) we are inclined to suspect. Might not any one suppose that the secret-ser•- vice money would have increased during a war with Russia? Yet we find that while during a series of years, from 1838 to 1819, votes were taken on an average of 39,0001., that from 1853 to 1856 the votes were taken for only 3.2,000!. Has this been done in order to put the econo mists on a wrong scent? We shall not now say more on this curious point, as we shall have to return to it again. We shall pass on to the results of the damaging debate in which Lord MALMESBURY made such startling dis closures. Of these none were more singular than the discovery of the fact that Sir BENJAMIN HALL had no authority to show for what " His Mag nificence" is doing in St. James's-park. If any one wants to know what a Radical revolu tion means, let him walk to the esplanade before the Horse Guards, and then make a circuit of what was not long since one of the most beautiful public gardens in Europe. A deep lake has been drained off; its bottom has been cased over with concrete ; and in future there will be a shallow piece of water, produc Live of no picturesque illusions, and growing no aquatic food for the water-fowl. It. is easy to see that " Sir Benjamin the Magnificent" has never studied Gilpin or " Capability Brown." The park has now for a considerable period been utterly spoiled. Nobody can tell when things are to be set right again. The works seem to have been undertaken without any settled plan. It was " going the whole Mill" with a vengeance. Money has been spent for disfigurement, not adornment, and beautiful pleasure-grounds have been revolu tionised as if the Marylebone vestry had bivouacked in them. Let it not be supposed that the expenditure on these pack deformations is the sole point connected with this branch of the subject. Lord MALMESIIURY, like an able political strafe gist, seized the attention of Parliament and the public by fixing notice on St. James's park, as the expenditure on it comes imme- Airaie/y,, , under the public eye. But the whole expenditure on the royal parks is really of a most extraordinary kind. We have now before us "The Abstract of Grants for Miscellaneous Services from, 1838 to Me, both inclusive." In 188$ the grants for public buildings and royal palaces Iwas ;4,986/. For several years that s,n2 magetbetween 07,000/. and 112,0001. In -.46apa THE PRESS. the year 1M46 the charge was 126,075/., but after sonic odd fluctuations the amouut has stood for the last tour years thus : P 453. Public Buildings and Royal Palaces £123,320 <A ISSI. 133,563 1855. n 134,933 1836. 41 1114,375 Total .C608,710 That is, indeed, a most singular table. Hera we have the enormous sum of 008,7101. spetii for the last four years under a head of ex penses, the total of which for the four years of IS-1:2, 1843, 18./1, and 1813 (when the Con servative party was in office) was only 436,127/. Or, in other words, there has been an increase on excess of expenditure of 172,583/. on the item during the last four years, when the Liberals were in office ! Or, to put it in another form, Lord DERBY'S Cabinet was in office in 1852, and the charge then made was 113,4761. In 18:M, Lord PALM ERS• TON and " Sir Benjamin the Magnificent," were in office, and the charge debited to the country was 194,375/. ! But we must now proceed to a still closer dissection of these enormous charges. Let our readers mark the official adroitness with which " Public Buildings " and " Royal Palaces " are linked together. Surely these two heads should not be tabulated together. We want to know what were the " Public Buildings," and which were the " Royal Palaces," on which these large parcels ofpublic money were spent? The account is ingeniously confused by mixing them both together. This consideration de serves more attention, as there are separate charges made on Buckingham Palace, ani the returns on this latter head even exceed the former in significance. We pray tho attention of our readers to these facts, as admitted by the return. In 1841 the Conservative party obtained power, and neither in that year nor in 1842, 1843, 1844, or 1845, was any charge made for Buckingham Palace. In 1840 there was a grant given for 20,000/. In the next year the Liberal party took a grant of 30,000/. on ac count of Buckingham Palace, and in 1848 the grant was 30,0001. ; in 1849, 14,2001. ; in 1850, 11,0001. ; anal during the interregnum of 1851, when the Russell Ministry was in sufferance, there was no grant asked. In 1832, Lord DERBY and the Conservatives were in office, and there was no grant taken. But in 1853, when the Conservatives were out, the charge was made for 20,0001., and 1854, for 19,437/.! Murmurs and expressions of sur prise began to bo heard, and no vote was taken in 1855 ; but in 1850 another charge was made of 7,868/. The total sum expended ou Buckingham Palace since 1838(the date when those returns commence) is U 2,5051., and of that sum onl) 20,0001. was asked for while the Conservatives were in office. On the royal parks and pleasure-gardens the charges have (as Lord MALMESBURY demonstrated) amounted from 41,829/. in 1831, to 89,114/. in 1850! These figures tell their own tale as to ex penditure, but a graver matter remains as to the power and the authority by which these moneys are disbursed. We may be suspected of party prejudice and of political bias in favour of a distinguished Conservative states man like Lord MALMESBURY, but we are able to cite in support of the charges of Lord MALMESBURY the opinions of a thorough going Whig. Lord MONTEAGLE has had long official experience, and his Lordship was for many years connected with the financial department of the State ; and let it be observed what Lord MONTEAGLE said. His Lordship stated that "no audit whatever was applicable " to the accounts which appeared in the doeu " ments before the House." Lord MONTEAGLE then stated the extraordinary circumstance of 2:),000/. surplus remaining from expenditure on the Duke of WELLINGTON'S funeral " having "been applied to a totally different purpose." He did not say to what " jobbery of Libe ralism " this public money had been applied And finally Lord MONTEAGLE frankly stated that " the works which formed the subject of " the present discussion had been commenced " without the sanction of Parliament. The " course which had been adopted by Govern " meat was not a constitutional course." SATURDAY, Enough. Here we have an "old Whig" admitting the case brought forward by Lord MALMESIIIIRY. The Liberals are not satisfied with extravagant expenditure, but they order public works without the authority of Par liament. If Conservatives had done such unwarrantable acts, we tian conceive with what indignation " Sir tienjamin the Mag nificent" would have inirtiked the democracy of Marylebone. But no iivo beings on earth differ more than A Libttill in from a Liberal out of office. Thel Member for Marylebone is cer• tainly a man of progress. From Mr. HALL to Sir BENJAMIN HALL, Bart. ; then to the Right Honourable Sir BENJAMIN HALL, Bart., First Commissioner of Public Works; and then to the title, not of " Lord Llanover," but of " Sir " Benjamin the Magnificent." In order, how ever, to earn the title conferred on him by the Earl of MALMESBURY, it was not necessary that Sir BENJAM7N HALL should have grasped at the Royal Prerogative. A politician striving for a coronet ought to show more respect fur the CROWN. Other considerations of a still more serious kind remain for discussion. GROWTH OF COTTON IN INDIA. Is our last issue wo took up the subject o cotton, which had been discussed at a meeting of the Society of Arts on the Wednesday pre viously. We showed that not only was cotton indigenous in India, but that an almost inex haustible supply might be obtained from our dominions there, if only the proper measures were taken by the Government to secure to capitalists those legitimate advantages without which no man in his senses would invest his capital in the improvement of the soil. At the same time, we explained that without capital no one could undertake the growth of cotton on an extended scale. The pauper ryot neces sarily confines himself to raising the coarsest grain which requires the minimum expendi ture of money, and labour, and time to secure a return. Of cotton he merely grows the quantity wanted by his household for domestic use, and this is done, in the simplest manner, by sowing a small patch of it on the border of his field of grain. Cotton-growing for the Eng lish market is quite a different thing. It must be produced in quantities large enough to command the attention of dealers; for small samples of any article of raw produce are use less for purposes of commerce, and unable, of course, to command a remunerative price. Then, again, the finer kinds of seed have gene rally to be brought in the outset from a dis tance, and much more labour has to be ex pended in the preparation of the soil for it than is required for the growth of the ordinary country grain. The best and highest rented lands arc alone fitted for it, and heavy rents involve heavy risks. The tending the plant during its growth, and the picking the produce when it is ripe, require, moreover, an outlay for labour which it is not in the power of the pauper-tenant to make. Iu the meantime the cultivator and his family must live, and they have to pay a large price for food which, had they been grain growers instead of cotton-growers, they would have raised themselves. Money advances have also to be taken up from the village money-lenders, and for these they have to pay interest at a rate varying from twenty-five to forty-five per cent. Nearly every ryot in India is on the books of these people to some extent, but the cotton-grower more than almost any other from first to last ; and as the only security he has to give is a mortgage of his crop, he is generally compelled to dispose of it, after all, at the money-lender's price. But not only has he all these difficulties to contend with—there is besides the fear of blight. And those who have been in India have informed us that nothing is more com mon than in riding along a road on a pecu liarly cold morning to see whole fields of cotton utterly destroyed, which the owners would have refused hundreds of rupees for if the offer had been made to them or the pre vious day. True, the man who could afford to run these risks might, if he stuck to cotton planting, make a fortune in the end ; for when