The Press.
London, England, 1857-06-06 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

Public Education, Great Britain.
18S
1549 125,000
1550 125,000
1851
1852 162,000
1533 260,000
1854 263,000
1855 396,921
1850 451,213
We entreat of our readers to observe these
figures. In 1838, " Public Education, Great
Britain," stood at 30,0001. In 1846 it was
100,0001., and ten years afterwards, in 1856, it
stands at 451,213/.
So much for " Great Britain ;" and " Public
Education, Ireland," shows also an extra-
ordinary increase. In 1816 the charges
under " Miscellaneous Estimates " for " Edu-
cation, Ireland," were 85,0001., and in 1.856 the
item stands at 297,6411.! The benefit of
that expenditure in Ireland has gone almost
exclusively to the Roman Catholics. The in-
crease in " Education, Ireland," for the last
five years is thus recorded

1852
1853
1854
1855
1850
Or to put it in a still more striking light, we
ask our readers to look at these figures sup-
plied by the return :

1816.
Public Education, England £loo,ooo
" Ireland

#!18,5,000

1850.
Public Education, England
" Ireland

£678,854
After ten years there has been an annual in-
crease of 493,8541. on education fur England
and Ireland. Ten years ago we spent on
convicts (1846) the sum of 416,7021., and in
1856 we spend on them 906,374 Z., being an
annual increase of 489,6721.

Let us contrast the rival increases:—
Increase on Education since 1846 .... £493,854
41 "
Convicts II 14 489,672
So that there is almost a numerical equation
between our increase on convicts and edu-
cation, the double increase under the head of
" Law and Justice " standing at 983,5261.
So much for the philosophy of a Whig
theory monger or his continental friend " the
" intelligent foreigner " !
To conclude for to-day. Some years
since, during the agricultural depression,
" the resources of the country " were
investigated, and scientific pretenders of
every degree addressed the public, re-
commending their favourite nostrums.
Amongst other things the public was told that
the mountain-lands of Great Britain could be
cultivated up to the summit, and it was hinted
that with " self-reliance " and " agricultural
energy " the arable acreage of the country could
be increased indefinitely. Chemical analyses
of various soils and strata were produced, and
" professors " became eloquent on " resources."
Their hints were taken. Farmers and proprie-
tors did in some places grow cereal crops on
lands of high elevation. Spring came, and the
green wheat sprouted forth at most picturesque
altitudes. Summer followed, and the wheat
was in ear. Autumn came, but the crops did
not ripen. The yield of wheat was miserably
small, and the speculation failed, because
practice showed that "want of temperature"
had been omitted by the learned professors
who had misled so many exneramentalists.
Have not the flashy Whig philanthropists
made similar mistakes when they have applied
such energy, time, and money, not to the
children of the virtuous poor, or to the honest
and industrious classes, but to case-hardened
criminals? Have they not been trying to
reclaim the sterile, and to improve the in-
tractable? In surveying the result of their
labours we are made to thing of RABELAIS and
the description of Queen Whim's officers—
" How they sheared asses, and thus got long
" fleece wool; and how they taught cows to
" dance, and did not lose their fiddling ; and
" how out of nothing they made great things,
" and made great things return to nothing."

SATURDAY,

Lord MALMESBURY accused Sir BENJAMIN
HALL of expenditure on " fanciful objects,"
and Lord J. RUSSELL denounced the "frightful
increase" in Miscellaneous Estimates. Lord
MALMESBURY gave the right hint to the T.,egjs.
lature ; the increase is the more " frightful"
because it is too purely "fanciful" in its aims,

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aTni
HoHldgEraienSvaUanPac
SUPERANNUATION
story. For some years,
in defiance of opposition, and in the face of
discouragement, this most laborious and
useful body has endeavoured to familiarise
the public mind with the history of its hard.
ships and its wrongs. This was all that was
needed in its behalf. Once let the ignorance
which prevailed on the subject be cleared
away—once let the shroud of mystery in which
it had been enveloped by the wilful neglect of
successive Governments be removed—and it
became a matter of certainty that it would be
relieved of its unjust and grievous burdens.
The Civil servants of the Crown, therefore,
strong in this assurance, required only an
honest and a rigid investigation of their
claims to insure their equitable recognition
at the hands of the nation. The discussion
they challenged, the inquiry they induced,
has been prolonged, elaborate, and, it is to be
hoped, complete. For our own part, we con-
sider that the question was ripe for treatment
long since. With characteristic indolence and
dread of responsibility, Lord PALMERSTON, after
introducing through his Chancellor of the
Exchequer two absurd measures which could
not have terminated the controversy, because
they continued the wrong, fell back upon the
old resource of an incapable Minister, and re-
ferred the difficulty to a special tribunal dig-
nified with the title of a Royal Commission.
The facts which were amassed before it have
long been known—the evidence it collected has
been previously taken and tried. Delay, there-
fore, was unnecessary, had the Minister been
active and competent.
Fortunately, however, for the plaintiffs in
this suit, and doubtless unfortunately for the
Government, the labours of the jury are closed,
and the verdict has been given. A crisis has
consequently arrived, a competent and
effective interposition of the Legislature has
become an imperative necessity, and we re-
joice to see that Sir EDWARD LYTTON last night
gave notice of shortly putting a question to
the Government, as to their intentions with
respect to the Report of their Commissioners.
It is /tot to be expected that the general
reader will wade through the dry materials of
a ponderous Blue-book in search of the kernel
it somewhere or other, and somehow or other,
contains. It is the result in which the majo-
rity of people feel an interest. That result
may be briefly communicated. It was in
1834 that the Bill was passed which sub-
jected the Civil servants to an annual de-
duction, as a contribution towards a retiring
allowance. All who were appointed previous
to 18:29 escaped the impost, their pensions
continuing on the same scale as before ; whilst
those whose official connection commenced
subsequent to 1829 were charged with a tax
of five per cent. on incomes of 1001. a year,
and two and a half per cent. upon those
beneath that sum. But the superior advan-
tages of the first did not terminate with their
exemption from the new impost, for their
younger brethren not only had to pay for the
privilege of retirement at some patriarchal age
through the entire period of their service, but
had to pay for it with the prospect of a more
reduced and less liberal provision. It might
have been perceived in the infancy of this
iniquitous enactment that it could not operate
with anything approximating to fairness.
say nothing here upon the principle of saddling
the Civil servants with a burden at all, with a
view to their resignation when far down the
hill of life. That point we may have another
opportunity of discussing. But, whether some
arrangement of the kind be justifiable or not,
it is certain that the contribution levied ought
to be proportionate to the benefits it 1.8 in-
tended to convey. If the State is of ()puce

JUNE 6, 1857.

that its Civil servants have no title to any
retiring allowance whatever, without being
mulcted for it, it surely is bound to make no
greater deduction for this purpose than was
absolutely necessary.
But how stands the fact? The superan-
nuation tax was fixed at so absurdly high a
rate, that with the provisions made and the
precautions taken to protect the country from
premature and excessive retirements, it be-
came nothing more nor less than an act of
fraud and spoliation. The means used were
so out of all proportion to the end desired,
that in a short time it became apparent that
money was being deliberately obtained on
false pretences for Imperial purposes.
This is no wild and exaggerated statement,
but a sober, unadulterated fact. Since this
charge was laid on the luckless shoulders of
the Civil Service, a sum of 900,000/. has been
collected ; and out of this the State has paid
back 82,0001. only ! Or, to give our readers a
clearer idea of the monstrous swindle now
actually iu force, this is the annual position
of the debit and credit account,-75,0001. is
received, and 11,0001. is spent ! That, we should
think, sufficiently illustrates one aspect of this
question.
But then the Civil servants of the Crown not
only suffer under an oppressive impost, but
they suffer under it ‘vith. a very remote chance
of ever receiving any return for their loss.
The period of retirement is so affixed, that it
brings a man down to the very brink of his
allotted space. No one can " superannuate,"
except under very extraordinary and excep-
tional circumstances, until he is sixty-five
years old; and then if he has not served the
full term of fifty years, his pension will be so
small that the probability is he will not be
willing to make that sacrifice of income which
retirement would involve.

But another phase of the wrong now per-
petrated upon this important class is that in
the not unlikely event of a man's dying at
work after a long and faithful service, or soon
after he has retired, the sum he has paid
through the course of his official career is
entirely lost to him and his family. Not one
sixpence of the colossal surplus we have
mentioned is touched to afford the relief so
often very bitterly needed.
This, then, in hurried outline, is the evil
which the Commission was appointed to
expose. The remedy its members propose will
need a special notice. It will suffice to say of
it now that it recommends the abolition of the
superannuation tax altogether, the salaries of
the Civil servants becoming by that means
actually what they have since 1834, with bitter
irony, been only nominally. They lessen also
the period of compulsory service before re-
tirement on full pay by five years, and they
think that this full pay should be granted
free of all contribution in aid of it. They do
not, however, make as liberal an arrangement
in respect to retiring allowances as we should
have wished. They evidently split on the
rook of economy, and were afraid to be
generous. The details of their proposition
s ill, of course, become the subject of a Par-
liamentary scrutiny. In the meanwhile, we
may congratulate the Civil Service that it is
to be relieved of a wrong, and the country
that it is to be cleared of a disgrace.