The Express.
London, England, 1850-04-15 00:00:00

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stsALARIES COMMITTEE.
_ _ :of genies are always norm-
male. This I to be I teeth old as Prometheus,
the first pales Perla record And this granted,
Mr. Disraeli is course obnoxious to the charge of
waywardness. • Sewing his laurelled head, he may
consider himself reprimanded for his amendment of
Friday. With the ecoenteicity of his gifted and ex-
travagant class, be required too much of the Prime
Minister ; and he unblushingly sought to impose
upon the legendary good nature of a whig statesman.
Lord John Russell, with a self-denying modesty that
astounded even Mr. Hudson—naturally in his seat
upon every money question—moves for a committee
to reconsider the salaries of civil, Judicial and diplo-
matic officers, with a view towards equitable reduc-
tion. This is not enough for Mr. Disraeli. No :he
requires the Minister himself to name the amount of
iaczifice. Antonio is coolly desired to out off his own

There is a place—it is not lotria, and certainly not
Belgravia—where pigs, though roasted, have the
faculty of !speech and power of locomotion. These
porkers of the blest—on oldest authority—with a
knits+ and fork in either flank, present their fragrant
pigs' flesh to the noses of wayfarers, and with hospit-
able, but most distinct grunt, exclaim, " Tarry,
traveller, and carve and eat me." Is it possible even
in fairy land for swinish multitude to be more kindly,
more pol►te P And yet, judging Mr. Disraeli by the
exacting spirit of his amendment, Mr. Disraeli, even
thus pig-invited, would refuse to help himself. The
pork must be carved for him; and that, too, by the
hog itself, or the member for Bucks disdains to touch
a morsel of the whole animal.

Lord John Russell is this fabulous pig. With a
sweet, a touching iogenuousnew, he stands upon the
floor of the house, a knife and fork in either side for
a committee to carve where they will. There is a
true modesty in this, akin to true wisdom. Had
brutes a llouse of Commons—with another )!iop to
report them—the moral bearing of the minister
would be worthy of the representative espitnce of a
Toby. Nevertheless, Mr. Disraeli is obdurate to the
invitation :he will not help himself. No: Benjamin's
mess must be served out for him. This is harsh, un-
kind; but Mr. Disraeli claims a hearing for his
reasons: they are these; he does not believe in the
knife and fork. They are shadowy, air-drawn,
moonshine weapons ; by no mens tangible things
to be clutched by a committee for a carving purpose.
The ministerial pig—it is the belief of Mr. Disraeli—
will go up stairs and CM(' down again without any
porcine diminution. In the vocabulary of the sages
of the Commons, "committee" is synonimous with

"gammon."
Sir, I cannot believe this. Having a voice, as I
have, in the making of the laws—just, Mr. Editor, as
a single grain of gunpowder has its own small voice
in the awful roar of a cannon cartridge—l cannot
believe that the motion of the Primo Minister, like
schoolboy's soap-bubble, was made only to amuse and
—burst. No, sir. The honourable men—those pillars
of chrystad that support and glorify the legielative
character of the Commons—are now profoundly
touched with a sense of shillings. Yoa will see, sir,
that they will cut down the salaries of ministers,
judges, and ambassadors with a hand, str ng
yet wise and tender, as the hand of surgery.
My only fear is, they may go too f.r. I love rico-
' nomy, sir—as I frequently observe to fie. Oakapple ;
but true wisdom studies true comfort. l)iogenes is
not a bit more of the true philosopher to me, becalm
like a yard-dog he lived in a tub ; and unlike that
vigilant and useful animal, never took water. There-
fore, I hero the committee, when they have the civil,
judicial, and diplomatic officers at their mercy; when
they have ell the government roast pigs bekre them,
wilt help the country with moderation, not cutting
too deep into the willing porkers.
I am afraid there are men who would rejoice, as at
the adv, nt of true political liberty, were they to have
a prime minister reduced to the decee.cy of a
hired cab on his visits to the Commons, and a
second•class retern ticket when summoned to Windsor.
In the eyes of some men, I fear, justice herself would
look all the batter if made so cheep that she was elm-
polled to don rabbit ieste id of ermine ; and our foreign
relations be deemed all the more amicable if enter-
tained by our ambassadors on ears eiterj and water-
b4cuits. I earnestly trust, sir, that the committee
moved for by Lord John will have in it no such par-
simonious level!ere. Nevertheless, when we consider
.he new-born spirit that has arisen among certain
parties—all of them heretofore so lavish, so gaily
liberal of the public purse—the extreme of meanness
may succeed the extreme of waste. Great are human
contrasts. Who knows? Had he only been spared to us
a Geo7ge the Fourth might have been a Juhn Elwes
the Second. Nothing more droll than the prodigal
turned miser! Very whimsical to make the spend-
thrift tory pause in his pa'rio:ic rage to pick up a
pin !

Lori' John Russell very cautiously reminded the
hou9e of the wisd im of Lord Althorn, that type of
dull and decent statesmanship, in 18;10; wt.° warned
parliament 11,4 to make the salaries of the superior
officers of sate so low, that men of large private
me in% could done, with fitting splendour, rill them.
I think, sir, nay ant confident, that whatever the com-
mittee may ultimately determine, high office will still
be doubly gilt. Indeed, what is there of office that
is not sufficiently recommended by extraneous
money? There is, simple whi'e stick; the wand—
enrol( es as angel's feather—of Lord Steward. About
that wand plays there not a halo made of two thou-
sand yearly scvereigrs ; a continual glory from the
mint ?

Tne kind of persons ordained, begetten and burn,
for English statesmanship may be a glad assurance to
the timid that office will ever be a sufficient prize to
the whig or tory of moderate fortune and large
genius. I have no fear, ler, that the premiership, or
home or foreign secretaryship, will ever be taken se
a thing of honour—with little extrinsic value, like
garter or blue riband—by the magnificence of here-
ditary weskit; the office at once too poor and too
onerous for genius with a shallow pocket. I
repeat it, sir; the sort of people vouchsafed
to our otturivise forlorn condition to govern, comfort,
elevate and protect us,—is a sustaining certainty that
the salary will never be below the minister. For,
with such pecuniary unfitness in high places, farewell
to the glory of England. Who knew. how much of
our real greatness, as a people, may be attributable to
the pension of an ex-chancellor?
Certain families grow statesmen for the country,
just as certain Battersea gardeners grow sirup:es. It
is at once their pleasure and their business. The
game of English statesmanship, like the game of
chess, is made up of two parties; in form and purpose
alike, and only differing in colour. Sometimes, too,
they take one side of the hoard; sometimes the other.
But the men are all of the same substance, of the
same mould; moved with the like end, and for the
same winnings. And whilst the pieces are of this
sort, good Lord Althorp may—even with the pending
committee upstairs—sleep undisturbed ; the salaries
of ministers—the state chessmen; now whig ivory,
now tory ebony—will, even in the olive days of peace,
be at little below gunpowder prices.
And then, Mr. Editor, consider the costly stuff
whereof we mike ambassadors. The nobility of the
blood, sir, will always keep up the nobility of the pay.
We grow our aristocracy alike for export as for
home wisdom; and we must pay the utmost fur
the advantage. It is very, true that an ambassador at
Paris might enjoy something more than the " inevi-
table decencies" of diplomatic life even upon 6,0001.
per annum; but the vital question is—would the half
salary be worth the acceptance of a most noble mar-
quis pleasant hospttals,with
fortunes; therefore is it only a debt of gratitude to
most salubrious Beiide6
changeemba saio air, for weak or shattered esf
are
noblemen of invalid pockets that John Bull should
have his Guy's at Paris, his St. Thomas's at Vienna,
and even his St. Luke's at St. Petersburg.
However, the committee will be empowered to ex-
amine; and John Bull will of course have to swallow
another blue pill: with, as =nal, great credit to the
parties concocting it, and great benefit to himself, re-
ceiving and digesting it. Still, Mr. E litor, the mo-
tion of the prime minister does not go far enough.
Wherefore stop at the civil, diplomatic, and judiois.
bodies? I am aware that Mr. lioreman—who is,
somehow, as restless at a bishop's purple as any
turkey at a scarlet cloak—Mr. Horsmiut d .sired
to dignify the inquiry by making it embraceo
the
this, abeirrabeesoluse biwshitohps.a
hI opearuminy
that
I confer, it, constitutional with me, do expect on
re r
is,
the part of the right reverend bane'', spontaneous
movement in the direction of
the growing enthusiasm foe. nos ,nom is it to be ex-
pected that men, in the unwdi taenchment. With
ling possession of wealth

—wealth forced upon them by the corruption of pri.
mitive Christianity—will not gladly anticipate any
profane motion to undraw their purse-strings? Whet,
men are resolved to relieve themselves of cumbroua
and remorseful profits, no consideration (the old
specious plea of bigot thrift) of their successors can
arrest them. Hence was it unseemly in Mr. Hon.
man to touch upon the average 50,0001. left by 29
bishops in evidence of Christian moderation : 50,000
pounds • and every pound even as a pound of epis-
copal frankincense to purify the selfishness of a mam-
mon-loving world ! But a new spirit is awake upon
the bench, and Doctors'-Common, will never again be
startled by such ominous thousands!
Again, and in conclusion, to speak to Lord John's
motion. It is too limited—too smalL Wherefore
does it not include the places of high folks who, for
doubtful honour only, vail their greatness by conde-
scending to menial office ? Why not make the ser-
vice one of pure glory, unmixed with baser con-
siderations of quarter-day ? A week kr, I
read a letter signed " One of her Majesty's Servants ; " an enthusiastic, glowing thing, in
which even the maids of honour weie made
to glisten like spiritual presences. Court duties
were gloriously burnished into " a series of duties
leading one to another, down to the humblest, and
thence upw ird to the highest, like the ladder of 'he
patriarch's dream." Imagine white wicks, gold sticks,
and silver sticks, ascending and descecclng the back
stairs, and in the goodly show c,,nc- ire a Jacob's
dream. Truly, a marvellous vision of—the court
newsman.

With respect to the prem7cr's motion, the pig--
with knife cud fork—will soon be ready for tie com-
mittee. How much will the committee e:rve
Yours, &c.,

Ivy Tod.