The Press.
London, England, 1857-05-23 00:00:00

4.94

by such a Ministry ; and we can easily under-
stand why Lord PALMERSTON'S subordinates
and partisans are most anxious to divert
public attention from the important state-
ments made in the House of Peers by the
Earl of MALMESBURY on the 15th instant. It
is impossible that this subject of the extrava-
gance of the public expenditure can be sup-
pressed. The public voice must speak out
plainly upon it; and while we rejoice that
Lord MALMESBURY has grappled with it in the
House of Peers, we trust that in the House of
Commons the guardians of the public purse
will interpose, and put a timely check on the
enormous secret jobbery which appears to be
taking place in certain departments. Such
importance do we attach to this question that
we shall devote a series of articles to its eluci-
dation in detail.

We shall commence by expressing our
strong suspicion that more than at present
meets the eyes of the Legislature is at the
bottom of all this increased Civil expenditure.
For it does certainly seem most strange, if not
suspicious, that while a great parade has been
made of the diminution of the secret-service
money in recent years, at the same time there
has been a most portentous augmentation of
the Civil Expenditure. That there has been
some adroit manipulation of figures in the re-
turn to the order of the House of Lords (of the
16th of February) we are inclined to suspect.
Might not any one suppose that the secret-ser•-
vice money would have increased during a war
with Russia? Yet we find that while during
a series of years, from 1838 to 1819, votes were
taken on an average of 39,0001., that from 1853
to 1856 the votes were taken for only 3.2,000!.
Has this been done in order to put the econo-
mists on a wrong scent? We shall not now
say more on this curious point, as we shall
have to return to it again. We shall pass on
to the results of the damaging debate in which
Lord MALMESBURY made such startling dis-
closures.

Of these none were more singular than the
discovery of the fact that Sir BENJAMIN HALL
had no authority to show for what " His Mag-
nificence" is doing in St. James's-park. If
any one wants to know what a Radical revolu-
tion means, let him walk to the esplanade
before the Horse Guards, and then make a
circuit of what was not long since one of the
most beautiful public gardens in Europe. A
deep lake has been drained off; its bottom has
been cased over with concrete ; and in future
there will be a shallow piece of water, produc
Live of no picturesque illusions, and growing
no aquatic food for the water-fowl. It. is easy
to see that " Sir Benjamin the Magnificent"
has never studied Gilpin or " Capability
Brown." The park has now for a considerable
period been utterly spoiled. Nobody can tell
when things are to be set right again. The
works seem to have been undertaken without
any settled plan. It was " going the whole
Mill" with a vengeance. Money has been
spent for disfigurement, not adornment, and
beautiful pleasure-grounds have been revolu-
tionised as if the Marylebone vestry had
bivouacked in them.
Let it not be supposed that the expenditure
on these pack deformations is the sole point
connected with this branch of the subject.
Lord MALMESIIURY, like an able political strafe
gist, seized the attention of Parliament and
the public by fixing notice on St. James's-
park, as the expenditure on it comes imme-
Airaie/y,,,under the public eye. But the whole
expenditure on the royal parks is really of a
most extraordinary kind. We have now before
us "The Abstract of Grants for Miscellaneous
Services from, 1838 to Me, both inclusive." In
188$ the grants for public buildings and royal
palaces Iwas ;4,986/. For several years that
s,n2 magetbetween 07,000/. and 112,0001. In
-.46apa

THE PRESS.

the year 1M46 the charge was 126,075/., but
after sonic odd fluctuations the amouut has
stood for the last tour years thus :
P 453. Public Buildings and Royal Palaces £123,320
<A
ISSI. 133,563
1855. n 134,933
1836. 41 1114,375

Total .C608,710
That is, indeed, a most singular table. Hera
we have the enormous sum of 008,7101. spetii
for the last four years under a head of ex-
penses, the total of which for the four years
of IS-1:2, 1843, 18./1, and 1813 (when the Con-
servative party was in office) was only 436,127/.
Or, in other words, there has been an increase
on excess of expenditure of 172,583/. on the
item during the last four years, when the
Liberals were in office !

Or, to put it in another form, Lord DERBY'S
Cabinet was in office in 1852, and the charge
then made was 113,4761. In 18:M, Lord PALM ERS•
TON and " Sir Benjamin the Magnificent," were
in office, and the charge debited to the country
was 194,375/. !

But we must now proceed to a still closer
dissection of these enormous charges. Let
our readers mark the official adroitness with
which " Public Buildings " and " Royal
Palaces " are linked together. Surely these two
heads should not be tabulated together. We
want to know what were the " Public Buildings,"
and which were the " Royal Palaces," on which
these large parcels ofpublic money were spent?
The account is ingeniously confused by mixing
them both together. This consideration de-
serves more attention, as there are separate
charges made on Buckingham Palace, ani the
returns on this latter head even exceed the
former in significance.

We pray tho attention of our readers to
these facts, as admitted by the return. In
1841 the Conservative party obtained power,
and neither in that year nor in 1842, 1843,
1844, or 1845, was any charge made for
Buckingham Palace. In 1840 there was a
grant given for 20,000/. In the next year the
Liberal party took a grant of 30,000/. on ac-
count of Buckingham Palace, and in 1848 the
grant was 30,0001. ; in 1849, 14,2001. ; in 1850,
11,0001. ; anal during the interregnum of 1851,
when the Russell Ministry was in sufferance,
there was no grant asked.
In 1832, Lord DERBY and the Conservatives
were in office, and there was no grant taken.
But in 1853, when the Conservatives were out,
the charge was made for 20,0001., and 1854, for
19,437/.! Murmurs and expressions of sur-
prise began to bo heard, and no vote was
taken in 1855 ; but in 1850 another charge was
made of 7,868/. The total sum expended ou
Buckingham Palace since 1838(the date when
those returns commence) is U 2,5051., and of
that sum onl) 20,0001. was asked for while the
Conservatives were in office. On the royal
parks and pleasure-gardens the charges have
(as Lord MALMESBURY demonstrated) amounted
from 41,829/. in 1831, to 89,114/. in 1850!

These figures tell their own tale as to ex-
penditure, but a graver matter remains as to
the power and the authority by which these
moneys are disbursed. We may be suspected
of party prejudice and of political bias in
favour of a distinguished Conservative states-
man like Lord MALMESBURY, but we are able
to cite in support of the charges of Lord
MALMESBURY the opinions of a thorough-
going Whig. Lord MONTEAGLE has had long
official experience, and his Lordship was for
many years connected with the financial
department of the State ; and let it be observed
what Lord MONTEAGLE said. His Lordship
stated that "no audit whatever was applicable
" to the accounts which appeared in the doeu-
" ments before the House." Lord MONTEAGLE
then stated the extraordinary circumstance of
2:),000/. surplus remaining from expenditure
on the Duke of WELLINGTON'S funeral " having
"been applied to a totally different purpose."
He did not say to what " jobbery of Libe-
ralism " this public money had been applied
And finally Lord MONTEAGLE frankly stated
that " the works which formed the subject of
" the present discussion had been commenced
" without the sanction of Parliament. The
" course which had been adopted by Govern-
" meat was not a constitutional course."

SATURDAY,

Enough. Here we have an "old Whig"
admitting the case brought forward by Lord
MALMESIIIIRY. The Liberals are not satisfied
with extravagant expenditure, but they order
public works without the authority of Par-
liament. If Conservatives had done such
unwarrantable acts, we tian conceive with
what indignation " Sir tienjamin the Mag-
nificent" would have inirtiked the democracy
of Marylebone. But no iivo beings on earth
differ more than A Libttill in from a Liberal out
of office. Thel Member for Marylebone is cer•
tainly a man of progress. From Mr. HALL to
Sir BENJAMIN HALL, Bart. ; then to the Right
Honourable Sir BENJAMIN HALL, Bart., First
Commissioner of Public Works; and then to
the title, not of " Lord Llanover," but of " Sir
" Benjamin the Magnificent." In order, how-
ever, to earn the title conferred on him by the
Earl of MALMESBURY, it was not necessary that
Sir BENJAM7N HALL should have grasped at
the Royal Prerogative. A politician striving
for a coronet ought to show more respect fur
the CROWN.

Other considerations of a still more serious
kind remain for discussion.

GROWTH OF COTTON IN INDIA.

Is our last issue wo took up the subject o
cotton, which had been discussed at a meeting
of the Society of Arts on the Wednesday pre-
viously. We showed that not only was cotton
indigenous in India, but that an almost inex-
haustible supply might be obtained from our
dominions there, if only the proper measures
were taken by the Government to secure to
capitalists those legitimate advantages without
which no man in his senses would invest his
capital in the improvement of the soil. At the
same time, we explained that without capital
no one could undertake the growth of cotton
on an extended scale. The pauper ryot neces-
sarily confines himself to raising the coarsest
grain which requires the minimum expendi-
ture of money, and labour, and time to secure
a return. Of cotton he merely grows the
quantity wanted by his household for domestic
use, and this is done, in the simplest manner,
by sowing a small patch of it on the border of
his field of grain. Cotton-growing for the Eng-
lish market is quite a different thing. It must
be produced in quantities large enough to
command the attention of dealers; for small
samples of any article of raw produce are use-
less for purposes of commerce, and unable, of
course, to command a remunerative price.
Then, again, the finer kinds of seed have gene-
rally to be brought in the outset from a dis-
tance, and much more labour has to be ex-
pended in the preparation of the soil for it
than is required for the growth of the ordinary
country grain. The best and highest rented
lands arc alone fitted for it, and heavy rents
involve heavy risks. The tending the plant
during its growth, and the picking the produce
when it is ripe, require, moreover, an outlay
for labour which it is not in the power of the
pauper-tenant to make.
Iu the meantime the cultivator and his
family must live, and they have to pay a large
price for food which, had they been grain-
growers instead of cotton-growers, they would
have raised themselves. Money advances
have also to be taken up from the village
money-lenders, and for these they have to
pay interest at a rate varying from twenty-five
to forty-five per cent. Nearly every ryot in
India is on the books of these people to some
extent, but the cotton-grower more than
almost any other from first to last ; and as the
only security he has to give is a mortgage of
his crop, he is generally compelled to dispose
of it, after all, at the money-lender's price.
But not only has he all these difficulties to
contend with—there is besides the fear of
blight. And those who have been in India
have informed us that nothing is more com-
mon than in riding along a road on a pecu-
liarly cold morning to see whole fields of
cotton utterly destroyed, which the owners
would have refused hundreds of rupees for if
the offer had been made to them or the pre-
vious day. True, the man who could afford to
run these risks might, if he stuck to cotton-
planting, make a fortune in the end ; for when