The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-07-17 00:00:00

THE ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM.

WHILE Conservative statesmen claim, and claim
truly, great credit for the purity of their motives, the
sincerity of their patriotism, and the high and honour-
able principles by which they have been actuated in
their public conduct, they have allowed themselves to
be overreached by their political opponents in the de-
tails of office and the exercise of patronage, which
forms one of the strongholds of Ministerial influence.
One of the movements of the day is the agitation for
what is called Administrative Reform, got up chiefly,
if not wholly, by Whigs and Radicals ; and yet the
abuse of which they profess to complain is one of
which Whigs and Radicals have been peculiarly
guilty ; which they have even reduced to a system ;
and which, indeed, constitutes the chief ground upon
which that party has been so long enabled to keep in
office. It has often perplexed observers, not in the
secret, to understand how it is that the Whigs,
enjoying so little of public sympathy, and being
known to be actuated by thoroughly selfish motives
in almost all their proceedings, should have continued
so long to preserve an available majority in the House
of Commons. The secret of their success is to be
found in the organised system of patronage against
which the Administrative Reformers profess to com-
plain. From the year 1831, when the Whigs, under
Earl GREY, attained their desires, down to the present
time, they have laboured indefatigably and unceas-
ingly to Liberalise the State, by filling up every avail-
able vacancy with their own creatures. From the
Primate of All England, down to letter-carriers and
door-porters, Liberalism have been the passport to pro-
motion ; while the workings of the system in its nu-
merous ramifications have enabled many a seat for a
borough to be purchased for a Radical and his vote to
be purchased for the Ministry. It is this fact which
accounts for the apparent anomaly between speeches
against the Government and votes in their favour ;
but the evil is of far greater extent, for so many places
have been filled by Whig creatures---so much of the
machinery of the State is carried on by officials of
Whig appointment, that the Government in the hands
of Conservatives has been rendered almost impracti-
cable. It is this which accounts in some degree for
the brief duration of the last Conservative Adminis-
tration, and which may in some degree influence that
change which so many members of the House of
Commons appear to dread. There is a clamour for
Administrative Reform, and why P Because the
Whigs have had all the appointments, and they have
preferred the incapables of their own party to the able
men of the Conservative side. We want Adminis-
trA4x,-, Ppform hill- ;1- chnuld ho a clear sweep of the
doings of the last twenty years. If, then, the Govern-
ment places were filled without reference to party,
but solely with regard to personal qualifications and
individual merit, we might hope to see the public
affairs of the country conducted in a more efficient
manner, and the ground cut from beneath the feet of
the present agitators, who, on the plea of a plausible
grievance, are endeavouring to forward those wild
schemes known as Vote by Ballot, and Universal
Suffrage. The country, no doubt, feels the evil con-
sequences arising from Whig-Radical nepotism, and
which never, perhaps, was more apparent than in that
gross mismanagement which, last winter, almost
annihilated the British army in the Crimea, The
danger, however, now to be avoided is in choosing an
erroneous remedy, the only effectual one being that
which we have pointed out. It is from the Whigs
that all the mischief has sprung, and the obvious
remedy, therefore, is a return to Conservative policy
not for the elevation of this or that
.individual, but
the promotion of those principles under which Grea

Britain attained the pinnacle of national greatness,
and without which no country can prosper.

OUR LATE MINISTER TO VIENNA.

WHEN Lord PALMERSTON despatched Lord JOHN
RUSSELL as Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister
Plenipotentiary to the Conferences at Vienna, there is
no doubt that the chief object was to get an unma-
nageable colleague out of the way, in order to avoid
inconvenient explanations. The characters of both
had been so compromised, that the least that was said
about their principles or their consistency would be
the best for their ephemeral reputations, while the
danger of recrimination was not beyond the bounds of
possibility, considering recent antecedents. If, how-
ever, the PREMIER really intended to destroy effec-
tually the already damaged reputation of his Envoy,
he could hardly have been more successful than in
entrusting to him a mission in which duty and incli-
nation have come into such violent collision. While
the whole country was intent upon the objects of the
war being gained—desirous for peace, but at the same
time determined that conditions should not be yielded
Incompatible with the prospect of peace being perma-
nent—we find Lord JOHN RUSSELL, to whom the
interests of the country had been so foolishly entrusted,
not only entertaining proposals from Russia, which
should have been immediately and indeed indignantly
rejected as a palpable evasion of the object of the Con-
ference, but actually recommending to his colleagues the
acceptance of these proposals as sufficient concessions,
Here then we have aproof from his own confessions that
a member of the Cabinet, which is pledged to prosecute
the war with vigour, is of opinion that we ought to have
made peace according to the terms offered at Vienna ;
and yet, while thus ostensibly differing in opinion with
the rest of his colleagues on the subject of the greatest,
if not of sole importance, as far as the present Admi
nistration is concerned, he clung to office with *a
tenacitywhich was essentially and peculiarly Whiggish.
No wonder that even Radicals were disgusted with such
political turpitude, and loudly demanded his dis-
missal. It would be an effort of administrative reform
far more useful than interference with the appoint-
ment of treasury clerks, to go a step further
and include the rest of the ministry in the condemna-
tion, not for the temporary triumph of any party dis-
tinction, such as have too often on previous occasions
led to ministerial changes, but in order to justify the
honour of the country from the obloquy which has
recently attached to it through the trafficking of
Whigs, Radicals and Peelites. There is hardly a vari-
ation of political feeling which has not been attained
by Lord JOHN RUSSELL at some period of his life,
and yet, in spite of this political harlequinade, he has
contrived by a species of tact peculiarly his own to
keep himself in a certain position before the public eye,