The Press.
London, England, 1855-07-14 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

the Baltio,—bombarding towns, shelling camps, and
harassing the enemy perpetually from one extremity
to the other. But the Admiralty contented itself
with building a dozen or two gun-boats, and
with ordering the construetiou of some floating
batteries, which have now been nearly seven weeks
out of the contractors' hands, and have not yet
left their moorings, because the Admiralty is unde•
cided to whom to give the uncommissioned vessels,
and has not yet made up its mind whether those
which are commissioned, fitted, manned, victualled,
and have been ready for sea for the last week, shall
venture to sea at all.

Without claiming any singular powers of prevision,
we foresee that we must rest content with a war of
blockade in the Baltic this year, enlivened, perhaps,
now and then with a little harmless firing at stray
Cossacks on solitary forts. The Government and
the Admiralty are alike determined that nothing
shall be ready at the right time. Should the war
last, the destruction of Cronstadt will only be
effected at a price of blocd that will scarcely bear
consideration.

THE BOARD OF HEALTH AND THEIR
BILLS.

Soma weeks ago we published In our correspondence
two letters upon the "Metropolis Local Management
Bill," and we have since waited patiently in the hope
of seeing its provisions settled by the committee of
the whole House ; but on Monday last the Bill was
recommitted, and is not yet reprinted, so we can,
therefore, only surmise its enactments. It is said
that the Board will have unlimited powers of raising
money. But it is also said that they cannot
spend 50,0001. without the consent of the Govern-
ment, nor 100,0001. without the consent of Parlia-
ment; so that all plans for new bridges and tunnels,
sewers, &c., will have to wait upon the consent of
Parliament before a brick can be put into the ground.
It is said, moreover, that all persons whose property
will be interfered with by the Bill are to be amply
compensated, so that a heavy charge may be ex-
pected by the ratepayers of the districts.
One of the three Bills which was to be secured
this session, the " Public Health Bill," has been
relinquished already by Sir BENJAMIN HAIL; a
second has been so modified in every clause that its
opponents are quite satisfied ; and the third is, we
understand, to be smuggled through on Monday in
the dark.

Sir BENJAMIN HALL represents this Bill as
"highly popular," but, for our own pact, we should
certainly prefer a clear week for a consideration of
its clauses ; and we trust that it will not only be
printed by the House, bat that the third reading will
be fixed for the following week.

FROM the announcement of the Chancellor of the
Exchequer last night it is to be presumed that he pro.
poses to raise some new taxes, as he has additional
estimates to bring forward, and is precluded from
raisingimore money this year by way of loan. He
makes mention of a Committee of Ways and Means,
which we may therefore take to be nearly equi
vaknt to a demand of "Stand, and Deliver:"

THE ENLISTMENT FOR THE FOREIGN LEGION IS
at last proceeding with some activity. Among the
corps to be raised are 10,000 Germans, 5,000 Swiss,
5,000 Italians, and 20,000 Turks. Beatson's
Irregular Cavalry is to consist of 4,000 sabres.

Junior: will not be done to Lord Raglan's
memory until his private despatches are given to
the world. He had enormous difficulties to contend
with, not the least of them being the ignorance of
the Government at home of his real position. Lord
Panmure signalised his accession to office by a letter
to Lord Raglan, so irritating in its tone as to draw
forth from the Commander-in-Chief an eloquent
despatch, at once an explanation and a protest,
stating the real facts of his position, and the motives
which influenced his conduct. There can now be no
hesitation in stating that the inaction of the allied
forces during the early part of the year watt mainly
owing co the scruples of General Canrobert..

IN the correspondence between Prince Dolgorouki
and Admiral Dundas, relative to the future recep-
tion of flags of truce by Russia in the Baltic, three
places are given by the Prince at which such flags
in future will only be received, viz.:—Cronstadt,
Sweaborg, and Revel. The reason for this unusual
proceeding is asserted to be the "manner in which
the English make use of flags of truce." Admiral
Dundas in his reply begs to be informed of the cir-
cums.tances in which his officers may have acted
contrary to the laws of war; and, as the allegation is
broadly made by Prince Dolgorouki, we have no
doubt that the strictest investigation will take place.

SATURDAY,

6orrtstponttntr.

LOUD PALMERSTON AND THE SECRET
SYSTEM.
TO THE EDITOR Olr " THE PRESS."

Sir,—Allow me to request the correction, in your
next number, of two errors of fact which appear in
the notice, in your last, of a correspondence lately
published between myself and Lord Palmerston.
It is stated that the grounds of indignation are
" totally mistaken." The " mode of seizure "of the
impostor, and " the indignity " she suffered, are
stated as the actual grounds of indignation. With-
out inquiring whether the dignity and feelings of
spies and impostors are the things to be consulted
in reference to tile exposure of such ornaments of
society, it is only necessary to state that the alleged
" mistake" is, at any rate, refuted by the well-known
fact that I had nothing whatever to do with the
proceedings taken against the woman. On the con-
trary, I strongly recommended the taking of a
course, for the exposure of the imposture, which in-
volved no criminal or other technical proceeding at
all. A different course was thought by the imme-
diate victims of the imposture due to themselves.
They took it, declining to adopt the course urged
by me.
You further speak of an " action " against me.
There never was any such action. One of the points
expressly stated in the correspondence itself, to which
your notice refers, is, that I had no concern in the
actions arising out of the matter, and "could there-
fore take no means to defend myself, and could not
prevent the mi.management of the case." Of course,
not being myself a party to any action, it was safer
(though less honest) to attack me. These attacks
were only.at length stopped by the threat of criminal
proceedings against two newspapers, both of which
thereupon immediately retracted.

The actual matter involved is purely a public
question, though a very serious one ; namely, the
abetting, by the English Government, of the spy
system, in subservience to a foreign Government,
and the abetting of a foul imposture in order the
better to carry out this spy system. I regret that
there was no locus standi for getting out the facts
without allusion to the gross personal wrong done to
me. But such having thus become necessary, and
misrepresentations having—however unwittingly—
appeared in your paper on this point, I appeal to
your sense of justice to insert this communication in
your next number, with the same prominence in
which your notice of the correspondence itself ap-
peared last week.—Your obedient servant,

Highgate, July 4, 1855.

TouLmii SMITH.

A CONSCRIPTION UNNECESSARY.
TO THR EDITOR OF 66 THE PRESS."

Sir,—A correspondent in your journal of the 7th
inst. urges that a conscription is necessary to raise
our army to a proper standing for the exigencies of
the war. England, I think, would not tolerate such
a breaking up of homes, and what may also be
termed an invasion of the liberty of the subject; but
England would not grudge her wealth to be ex-
pended in securing her honour; therefore I would
propose that the House of Commons ♦ote sit
millions sterling to be applied as a bounty to all whet
enlist. This sum, at 201. per man, would raise
800,000 soldiers.—l am, Sc., .1. T. 0.
July 10, 1855.

WE have to record the death of Snt Roan?
ABERCROMBY, BART., the Chief of the Clan of Aber-
eromby, which took place yesterday week, at Forglen-
house, the family seat in Banffshire, N.B. The
deceased was son of Sir Geo. Abertramby, fourth
baronet, by the eldest daughter of the seventh Lord
Banff. He was born in 178.4, and was eonsequently
in his 71st year. In 1816 he married Miss Douglas,
only daughter of Mr. Samuel Douglas of Netherlaw.
He is succeeded in the baronetcy by his son George,
born in 1824, who also inherits the large family
estates in Banffshire and Kirkcudbright in Scotland,
and Fermoy in Ireland.
AMONGST the passengers by the Eusine, which
arrived at Southampton on the Bth with the India
mail, was the son of the celebrated Whampoa, the
rich tea-merchant, of China. He is sixteen years of
age. and has been sent to England to be educated.

-THE GOVERNMENT are stated to have resolved upon
appointing a commission to inquire into the subject
of decimal coinage, to be composed of Lord Monteagle,
Mr. Hubbard, and Mr. Norman.

Two of the five new Manchester daily newspapers,
the Manchester Halfpenny Express and the Man-
chester Penny Express, have already laces discon-
tinued.

JULY 14, 1855.

V torccbings in Varlianunt.

ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM.
Mr. V. Scuum on Tuesday moved the following

- .
resolution
That a humble address be presented to her Majesty, thanking
her Majesty for her moat gracious order iu council of the 21st
day of May last, by which certain persons were directed to ex-
amine into and certify the qualifications of all young men pro-
posed to be appointed to junior situations In any department of
the civil service, and praying that her Majesty will be graciously
pleased to direct the examination to be an open one, and held in
public, and that the examiners do have regard to superior quail-
Aoations and merit.

The object of his resolution was, he said, simply an
extension of the recent order in council. His two
main objects were, first, to establish the system of
competition for all appointments to Government
offices; and, secondly, that such competition should
be public. In support of the first, he dwelt at some
length on the mischiefs and difficulties arising out of
the seeking for appointments through parliamentary
interference—the waste of time to the cand►date, and
the created between the Government and the
recommending member. He instanced cases from
his own experience, and quoted the authorities of
persons of experience who had urged the absolute
necessity for getting rid of this vexatious system.
Viscount GODZRICH seconded the motion, observing
that as matters stood the orders in council were posi-

tively mischievous, as relieving those who made ap-
pointments from a certain degree of responsibility
without providing any adequate check upon those
appointments. He defended the plan proposed
against its objectors, saying that examination would
be a security to some extent for the moral fitness of
the candidates ; and that the two objections—that the
remedy was too small for the evil, and that it would
endanger our institutions—mutually destroyed one
another.
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER, in a long
and discursive speech, contended that the order iu
council was a sufficient step in the right direction to
induce the house to give it a further trial, and pause
before it recommended a revocation of that order,
and proceeded upon new and untried principles with-
out further experience. He argued that, if the sys-
tem of competitive examination were adopted for the
junior branches of the service, they might apply it
to grades of all kinds, till they reached the judges of
the superior courts themselves. He could not find
any precedent for such a system, referring to the
old Italian republics, and more especially to the
United States, where the appointment of public ser-
vants was made, upon principle, a matter of political
and party patronage. No private companies adopted
the system of competition in their appointments.
He then defended in detail the working of the exami
nation adopted in consequence of the order in coun-
cil, objected to the terms of the motion as vague and
unsatisfactory, and met it by moving the previous
question.
Mr. Wimerssox had not joined the Administrative
Reform Association, not thinking that such reform
should have beeen founded on our Crimean disasters,
and believing that it could only be carried out by the
Government itself. He yet trusted that the Govern-
ment would in the end abolish the system of patronage.
Mr. LINDSAY took the opportunity to defend in
detail his own statements on previous occasions, and
the exactitude of his conduct in commercial matters
which had been attacked. His speech, a very long
one, was entirely made up of technical matters as zo
the fitting up of certain ships and getting them ready
fur sea.
•

---
Sir C. WOOD replied with a series of assertions
equally technical, establishing his former allega-
tions, and contending that they had been exaggerated
and misstated in the attempt to disprove them.
Sir J. NORTHCOTE did not see why the order in
council should be made an argument against the
motion, which was only intended to extend them.
He cited the newspaper " douceur " advertisements
as proofs of the abuse of the patronage system, and
instanced the French examinations, lately extended
to appointments in the marine departments, as a
precedent for our own country. He denied that the
examination system would destroy the responsibility
of appointments; it would only shift it to the
examiners. There wziuld be the test of proba-
tion, in addition to that of examination. He denied
that the system would injure our political or social
relations, and pointed to the Crimean disasters as
proving that the evil lay, not with the heads of de-
partments, but with the inferior branches.
Sir F. BARING, from his own experience, declared
that the sweeping charges brought against official
clerks were unjust. The present system offered
opportunities of providing for the relatives of those
who had died in the public service, an advantage
which would be utterly lost by its abolition. The
proposed system would fill the offices with over-
educated men, rendering their management ex-
tremely difficult. On his own recommendation the

THE PRESS.

examination system had to some extent been tried
by Lord Melbourne, and had worked so ill that it
was given up. That system would be more exclu-
sive than the present, requiring an expensive
education. The evils of the present system were
the advancement by seniority and the difficulty of
removing inefficient officers, neither of which was
obviated by that proposed.
Mr. GLADSTONE said that the proposed resolution
was required as a proof that the house was in
earnest when it adopted that of Sir B. Lytton. Re-
plying to the objections to it, he ridiculed precedents
derived from the Romans, and denied that those
taken from the Americans were applicable. Private
companies did not resort to competition, because the
pressure of private interest was in itself a sufficient
guarantee. As to the actual state of the civil
service, the higher offices were well, and in some
cases admirably, filled; but, on account of the utter
deadness of the lower branches of the system, they

had to go outside of the civil service to find these
superior officers. He would not make the civil ser-
vice a monopoly, still he thought that the higher
branches of the service, as a general rule, should be
chosen from the lower, which could not Ks done as
things stood at present. All this caused a series of
mischiefs, which pervaded the whole service. The
great principle was, the public had a right to the
best man for its money, and that was not obtained
under the actual system. He proceeded to comment
at length on the moral evil of the pressure exercised
upon members of Parliament by constituents seeking
appointments, and of patronage in general, and read
the preface to the " Guide to Official Appointments,"
amidst much amusement, to the house. He dis-
posed of the argument as to the granting of public
offices to the relatives of public servants, by declar-
ing himself jealous of hereditary appointments, and
of giving places to bad officers from charitable
motives. It had been urged that the proposed sys-
tem would lead to disappointments. As it was, can
didates for office often wasted their lives in disap-
pointment; and he thought that freedom of demand
and supply would be the best regulator in the num-
ber of applicants, and would considerably reduce the
number of disappointments. He denied that com-
petition would give over-educated men ; but a line
would be drawn so that the examination might give
the right sort of men for their respective duties.
The discontent now existing in the civil service was
a serious evil; the same could be said of no other
class in the country, because in all others there was
a clear stage and no favour. Taking the mass of
public employments, they were paid on a scale above
that of private employments; but it was the distri-
bution which was at the root of all the discontent.
As to the question of removability and promotion by
seniority, he could not trust to the first for securing
good officers ; for the second, contrivance of every
kind had been attempted to supersede it without
success, the reason being that the basis of the sp.-
tem was favour. Let the man come in by merit, and
he might be promoted by merit. He answered the
objection to the proposed system as new-faugled by
instancing the many undoubted reforms of which
the same might have been said. He believed that
examination would be a fair test of the moral
character of young men, and it would besides in such
cases be safe to trust to testimonials. He concluded
by expressing bis satisfaction at the progress which
the question was evidently making.
Mr. TITS, though an Administrative Reformer, re-
commended Mr. Scully to withdraw his motion.
Lord PALMERSTON said that the real question—that
of providing competent persons to fill public offices—
had been somewhat forgotten in that of relieving
members of Parliament from importunate corre-
spondents. He argued that the evils both of promotion
by seniority and of disappointment would be greatly
increased by the adoption of open competition.
However the system of examination might be carried
out, it should be modified by placing the ultimate
power of selection in the hands of the chief of the
department. Again, the principle of appointing men
bred to the civil service to the higher offices must be
modified by a power of selection from without, if men
suitable for the situations were always to be appointed
to them. In opposing the motion, he said em-
phatically that the Government was anxious to ob-
tain the best men for the public service, and urged
the trial of the system of the orders in council for
another year.
Mr. V. SCULLY, in reply, amused the house by
reading several letters from his constituents, accom-
panied by good humoured comments.
The previous question was carried by 140 to 125.