The Express.
London, England, 1855-08-03 00:00:00

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LONDON, FRIDAY, AUGUST 3.

Mssairrr's Ministers stand in a very peculiar
relation to the House of Commons: they are at once
its masters and its servant.. They are liable to be
deposed by it if they displease it, and yet they are
required to guide it. Though their existence is de-
termined by a vote of the house, they are expected to
prescribe the course of its proceedings. Except uit
resolves to turn them out or keep them in, they
regulate and prescribe most of its business. The
Ministers, therefore, are in a great measure
responsible—as the whole press finds out at
the close of every session, when necessary
legislation has been neglected—for the faults of the
Parliament and any loss of character it suffers. They
take the initiative in all its proceedings, they stop
such as they dislike, and when a session closes—as
the present is about to close—in great disappoint-
ment, they are to blame. This is a serious matter
for Ministers ; for session after session the Parliament
is becoming less and lees respected. It bus lately
become a question whether it be not in the way, sad
if we go on in this downward coarse, to successive
Ministers will be properly attributed the destruction of
the constitution. To stay such an evil, to prevent each
a misfortune, we want something more than ea ad-
ministrative reform—an examination of boys for
public offices, or a selection of superior clerks—we
want a better-informed, a higher-minded, • more re-
solute class of statesmen, who comprehend the exigen-
cies of their position, and whose express business it is
to make rules and not to submit to routine.; and it we
c•asot get such statesmen, the Parliament must want
guide*, the national business must go wrong, and dis-
turbances and convulsions are likely to follow.
These remarks are justified by what has happened
in Parliament this week. The real power of the
House of Commons depends on its control over the
public purse. To it especially the people look to
bargain with the executive, or to curb its expenses ;
and the House is fairly choased out of its power by
the Ministers, degraded still more in the eyes of
the public, when they submit to it the balk, or even
a large part, of the Estimates, at so late a period of the
session that there is no time to discuss them, and no
alternative but to vote them or break up the Govern-
ment. Some cunning men in office may plume
themselves on having quietly brought about such a
contingency, but it tends to degrade the Parliament
and destroy the Government. Even if such a peso-
tice were common, which it is not, enlightened states-
men, with a high-minded consciousness that their
deeds would bear inspection, would break through
such a routine for the sake of preserving the power
and the character of the House; would subm.t to it
all the Estimates, and ask for its votes at the earliest
period. At • time of war the Ministers are not to be
blamed for bringing forward at the close of the session
supplemental estimates for three or four millions. At
Wet we blame them not for this want of prescience.
But we blame them for having at the same time to
bring forward • large part of the ordinary Estimates
for the year, by which they have effectually pre-
cluded the House of Commons from scrutinising
either class of Estimates, and have substantially set
aside its power of controlling either the ordinary or
the extraordinary expenditure. They have known
for weeks and months that they would require sup-
plemental Estimates, and it was their business to sub-
mit the ordinary Estimates to the House in good
time, in order to enable it to exercise its great con-
stitutional function. They have done the contrary,
and if this course were cunningly devised to give them-
selves ease, it has inflicted another blow on the stag-
gering constitution.
On Monday Lord PALMERSTON informed the House
that it would be necessary to prorogue in about a
fortnight ; and on Monday the bulk of the Estimates
for the civil services were required to be voted. They
are, we believe, now all voted at two or three sittings,
and, with the supplemental Estimates, also voted, they
amount together to a sum not far short of 10,000,0001.
Though the supplemental Estimates occasioned most
discussion, we have nothing to say about them, but to
wish that the money may be as well applied as it
was cheerfully voted. The Estimates for the civil
service are all dated " Whitehall, March 27," and
though the date is misleading—for one of the Esti-
mates so dated contains a letter dated July 7, 1866
—yet as the bulk of them were then prepared, the
Ministers ought to have submitted them to
the House before the beginning of August. The
amount of them is 6,556,9631. They consist of a
great number of items, some of them, like the vote
for the Cape of Good Hope, to which we called atten-
tion on Tuesday, of at least a questionable character,
initiating a new and costly system, and, therefore,
very deserving of being examined before being voted.
Nay, they are of such a description that to vote them
unexamined is to derogate from the character of the
House of Commons. Others, again, such as the votes
for consular establishments at home and abroad, and
the votes for science and art, are the founda-
tions of great systems, which just now have
an intense interest for the public, and ought not
to have been passed over as matters of coarse without
explanation. In the vote for public instruction
and the encouragement of art the national character
is involved ; and the Ministers themselves should
have been glad, did time serve, to take the opportu-
nity of giving such an explanation as might have re-
deemed the nation from the unfounded reproaches of
our own and foreign journalists. But it is plain
that neither the Ministers nor the House of Com-
mons, nor even the subordinate offieials at the Treasury,
have had time or takeo the pains to examine the Es-
timates which the House was required by the Minis-
ters hurriedly to vote. We say this from seeing in
the Eatimates facts which should make both the pro-
posing Ministers and the assenting House of °com-
mons ashamed of their work.
The Estimates consist of seven different classes,
with a General Abstract of the whole, and we have
a right to expect that the Abstract should accord
with the Estimates in each class. With the first
clam it agrees, and the sum required for public
works and buildings is put down in the Estimate
and in the Abstract at 816,82 W. for 1854, and 748,7601.
for 1866. So it is with the third class, the fifth class,
and the sixth elms, in all of which the Estimates and
the Abstract agree. But the figures of the second
class, the fourth class, and the seventh class, in the
Estimates, vary from those of the Abstract. The
sum required for 1864 in the Estimate for class 2 is
1,423,1881., and the net decrease in 1866, 108,7981.;
in the Abstract the figures are 1,419,7231. and
10!,3331. In the Estimate of class 4, the sum re-
quired for 1864 in 723,41 W.; for 1866,