The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1869-01-02 00:00:00

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ruioron lit i : "tly Ai tilt ii
Cc U try's wli-;• :t -tI there is a riLy,ht a d
a wrong wey a good thiag. il
there is snch a „iening at the wit: g
cal. This is tYt!. 014 ar io relation to ti e
:reer of linanrial reform on which it is sail the
Gladstone Nlinistry intend to set out. We lately
heard of severe ditret about Woolwich and its
neightennhood iii conseapomee of a Irrge nom-
her if workmen being discharged from the ar-
senal and dockyard ; and unfortunate the expe-
rience of the public tools to show that financial
reform usaally begins front tie lower ranks and
411L10.it always cads there. When reform or, in
other wot i's. redaction takes place among the
rwer classes of Government servants, it alwaiis
Illelllll3 distress, and sometimes ruinatioo, and it
takes a large annount of this distress to eft o`.
any appreciable reform so far as the public re e•
noes are concerned ; whereas reduction in the
higher quarters would not mean distress, at II
less ruination, and by lowering salaries wideh
aro unconscionably high, the public revenue
would lie largely the gainer. In all departme:its
of the State—no matter whether we turn to the
nriuy or the navy, to the Admiralty, the Cll3-
tuais, the law, or any other branch—there are
large numbers of hie:lily-salaried officers, whose
duties are in some eases merely nominal, and in
other eases the offices are positive sinecures.
To refer to only one departaieet, the salaries
now paid to retired Lord Chancellors, to say no-
thing A other retired officers of State. would
pay for a whole army of Government clew in
the lower ranks of service. It is in such abuses
aa unnecessarily largo retiring pensions that it
reforming Goeernment should seek to carry out
reform, atul among the too highly paid heata.
sal:dreads and deputy sub ,heads of departments,
this men whrse duty seems to be confioed to
OCCalliOlially signing their names. The rank and
file of the Government army of workers are not,
as a rule, overpaid. A situation under Govern- •
meat is generally thought to be a good thing;
and so it may be in one respect—its security
compared with an ordinary commercial situation,
but the pay ot the great body of the civil service
of the Crown is, as a rule, not high. lint it is
far otherwise with the officers. In ell the Go-
verentent departutchts there is, in the higher
official raul,, a rate of pay out of all proportion
either to the work that the officers themselves
do, or to the work tint theirumn do; and, even
making all doe allowance for the superior intel-
lect required in the one case as compared with
the other, the disproportion /6 still lunch too
great.
These considerations sonnet be new to such
men as Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Childers, Mr. Fors-
ter, or Mr. Stansfeld. Every one who has had
any experience of official his must know that
such statements are true ; but, unhappily, the
work of reforrn in the npper ranks is infinitely

more difficult than in" the lower ranks. A
hundred men at a dockyard can bo struck out of
work by a, stroke of the pen; a considerable re-
,

duetionw in the staff of el;rks.can be made almost
as easily ; but to reduce the extravagant salary
of a head of a department, to strike off one or
two of his useless assistants, or to abolish a use-
less office which has existed for centuries and has
at last become a sinecure and a sham—all this
is far more difficult. Influential families would
be made enemies; scions of noble houses would
be cast adrift; and the is quque argument would
become unpleasantly strong. We trust, how-
ever, that the present Government will not con-
fine all their financial reform to the lower ranks.
It is apparently a stronger Govermnent than we,
have had for many a year, and it can perhaps do
good service in effecting reform in the higher
ranks, from which former administrations would
have shrunk. The country is ripe for financial
reform ; it ardently longs for it, but it would
rather see reform among the drones than among
the working bees.