The Express.
London, England, 1868-12-29 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, DEC. 39.

HOLY DAYS AND HOLIDAYS.

A BIORNDUI contemporary ventured yesterday
to prophecy that on Monday, the 28th of De-
cember, 1868, " ordinary observation would pro-
" bably discern in the aspect of the day nothing
" inconsistent with the usual ' work-a-day ' ap-
" pearance of Monday." This was a natural pro-
phecy, but facts have contradicted it. The holiday
spirit had not yet exhausted itself, and streets,
which at fuur o'clock in the afternoon at this time
of year usually present one unbroken line of gas-
lit /Shop-front., presented yesterday a very dif-
ferent spectacle indeed. The odd part of the sight
was that while stationers' shops and drapers' shops
were ssi n open as usual, those of butchers and
grocers were in large numbers closely shut. Old
Londoners cannot remember anything like such a
prolonged Christmas holiday. Trade dull, little
confidence in the City, starvation at the East-end,
burglary and garotting almost everywhere
London has found time, spirit, and money enough
to give itself up to the blandishments of three
holidays, with a holy day interposed to boot.
Two things were so obvious and yet so interest-
ing in the history of these three days that they
should be noted in passing. One is, that there
was lies drunkenness proper, with more half-seas-
overishnces than usual ; the other is that tho cur-
rent talk about the universal influence of the spirit
of the season is not humbug, whoever chooses to ridi-
cule it. The unbending and the kindly cheerful-
ness which tradition assigns to Christmas manners
were very generally visible, were evidently sincere,
and were quite refreshing to see.
The turn the holiday question is taking in this
country is curious. A considerable portion of the
respectable working-men, and, with them, of clerks
and ebopmen, are now not so very far from hav-
ing realised that secular holiday and sacred holiday
which some people think the week should contain.
The lower portions of the working-claims (in very
great numbers, it must be admitted) still stick
to 14aint Monday ; even if they also take a
sneaking slice out of the Saturday half-holiday.
One thing we have not yet learnt—the art of
leaking the sacred holiday, the holy day, at-
tractive to the vast multitudes who are still Chris-
thus in name. Our Puritan forefathers made
Saturday afternoon tho " preparation for the
Sabbath," and after sun-down, a truce was pro-
claimed, not only with labour, bat with amuse-
ment. Not satisfied with reversing this, and il-
lustrating our dead walls with pictures of Satur-
day afternoon cricketers, Crystal Palace-goers,
and volunteers on the march, we have threatened
to carve a slice out of Sunday for
scientific lectures, and Mr. IT...ENItY WAND
Bigzenza appears already to have taken the idea
tinier his patronage in his own chapel by ad-
mitting some physiological lectures. We have

no doubt that Mr. Barium

imbed the physiology in n

service; but, ono then, not

turn in his grave (as has been ,
an innovation ; but there are serious
neither Judaism; nor Puritaia. '

nor Surday martinets, who will
some alarm at the public appropriation

part of Sunday to any work but that of cultivat-
ing the religious motive powers of conduct. These
good folks will not be appeased by your telling
them that Science is "holy," for they will im-
mediately profess that they know that as well as
you do ; but they will maintain that the institution
of a Holy Day, in which, without gloom or aseeti-
clam, every man shall be at liberty, up to the
farthest verge of what is practicable, to lay his
whole nature open, through religious and social
influence, to the free spiritual currents which
wait for those who seek them, is an institution
so unspeakably beautiful and useful that it
is scarcely possible to be too jealous over
it. In whatever direction the current may finally
set it is impossible to help respecting the scruples
of those who, while they rejoice that the Sunday
" ream of Hon " (to employ a modiievalism) has
been robbed of its terrors, would grieve and tremble
to see it stripped of its ono shred of gentle amenities
and unspeakably soothing immunities. But, how-
ever our readers may incline to lean in regard to
this topic, in one thing they will rejoice along
with us—namely, in the vigour which the holiday
spirit has evidently developed in England.

MR. GLADSTONE'S RETRENGIIMENTS.

Tax abolition of the

ip of InLind

Revenue, made vacant by the death of Mr. JA1169
DisneEli, indicates the line in Civil Service reform
about to be taken by the government. These
commissionerships are among the few good things
left. A salary of twelve hundred pounds a year,
together with duties which are not excessive, and
the power of doing practically what you like, is no
bad reward for political or personal service. Ac-
cordingly few appointments have been more
coveted, and though it has been long rumoured
that sweeping changes have been in contem-
plation in connection with tho revenue
departments, the news published this morning
is the first earnest of what will surely come. The
absence of definite responsibility which almost in-
variably attaches to corporate forms of govern-
ment is just the evil to press strongly upon the
minds of practical statesmen. The Board of Inland
Revenue, shorn as it is of one member, yet consists
of a chairman, a deputy-chairman, and three other

commissioners. The Board of Customs has also
commissioners and head commissioners, who are
similarly paid, and the outlying spheres of those
two departments are, it is clearly proved, so dif-
fused as to ensure a double service for work which
might and ought to be performed singly. All
ovcr the country there are officers of customs and
officers of Inland Revenue performing their work
side by side ; and with two sets of chiefs, or col-
lectors, two sets of offices, and two sets of clerks,
and two boards with whom to correspond, it is
not difficult to see how labour and expense are
unnecessarily and inordinately increased. But
the Revenue department itself is said to employ
officials all over the country, who are performing
the duties of collection without reference to each
other, keeping separate books, haying distinct
establishments, and making independent returns
to Somerset House. Worse than all, there
are a considerable number of these officials
who are not directly amenable to control, and who
from the circumstance' of their appointment and

the nature of their post are in4iscipline3 and
irregular. The distributors of stamps, the collec-
tors and surveyors of taxes, the collectors and
officers of excise, represent three divisions of Revenue
servants. The duties of the former have in cer-
tain instances been transferred to the other offices,
and it would be interesting to know with what re-
eult. For it has been notorious that these dis-
tributorships were slices of political patronage,
some almost valueless, others extremely profitable,
but all out of the regular order of official
preferment or appointment. The amalgamation
of the several Boards of Excise, Stamps, and Taxes
which took place when Mr. Joint WOOD was
Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue was so
far incomplete that many anomalies in the
three servises remained unredresood. It seems clear
that when what are broadly the same duties, i.e.,
gathering in the taxes of the country and bringing
them to account, are performed under the same
headship, uniformity of system should be in-
sisted on. The Board of Inland Revenue has
made several efforts to bring the distributor-
ships of stamps more immediately under their
control, and when Mr. GLADSTONE intro-
duced a measure to secure this it was only
defeated through the parliamentary pressure
brought to bear by the attornies throughout the
country, who trembled for their emoluments as
clerks to the local commissioners. But matters
will run differently with the present liberal
majority in the House of Commons. The Revenue
Department, its consolidation and efficiency, will
be one of Mr. GrAnsToNE's first cares, and it is
far from unlikely that the abolition of Mr. JAMES
DISRAELI'S oommissionersbip may foreshadow a
single chiefship in place of the present board.

THE EXPRESS, TUESDAY

OUR OONTEMPORARIN3.
(THIS DAY.)

MI LATI

Of POLIOIL

TUB EUCATIOY OF wo=l.

min, Mends wndoU

things ; but they are worth saying at a time when
anything is publicly made known which tends to
emphsaize the policy of breaking a morbid tra-
dition in the individual consciousness, not by ham-
mering away at it, but by cutting clean athwart it
with sonic now antagonistic force.

The Tiffin thinks that by the death of Sir
Richard Mayne the public have lost a valuable and nand
meritorious servant. The present aeration knows
little of the circumstances under which he entered upon

his post, or of the difficulties be encountered end
overcame. When appointed one of the two chief com-
mireicners of police in 1829 he had before him the task of
orgsnuing • totally new force, and of subjecting the in-
habibuts of London to the control of • novel power, of
which they felt not a little suspicious. The present
gemination happily has no idea of what London was in
thus days, and nothing but great ability, industry, and
patience could have =cumin''y encountered the difacul-
ties with which he had to contend. The truth is that Sir
Richard Mayne bad rendered the police at once so useful
and so inoffensive • force that we accepted them
as part of the natural order of things, sod never
thought of asking to whom we were indebted for
their efflcteney. The Timms dose not say that
his administration wu free from fault ; but it ought to be

recognised that the defects for which he was most severely
criticised were chiefly due to the system he had to ad-
minister.

The Daily Nero remarks upon the efforts which are
being made to raise the ideas of the sphere and duties of
woman, and to elevate the character of her education in
accordance with those new ideas. Every day (it
says) brings fresh evidence of the genuine-
ness and growth of this demand for a higher
culture than can be met by the traditional
and conventional arrangements for female education in
England and America ; and that something similar has
manifested itself even in catholic Europe may be gathered
from various facts, not the least significant among them
being the necemity the Pope has twice within the last few
years felt himself under to utter vehement anathemas
against innovations upon the old drill—it cannot be called
education—which had so long trained women to be passive
devotees of the church of Rome and victims of supersti-
tion. Thus far it is • healthy sign that the demand has
shown • tendency to create and shape its own channels of
supply

wig, in some wow sinned the unpardonable min, Mends oondole
diet ooly religiose end quote texts T2.i.scl •
only WM kis father - gad* in 1110 f
s predielei) at such a would be elertb 17aeTeito • • •to
none people, who are very great Osnrifloes•unia
is, not pesseontoes. purpose et Averting. by some- inernimep,
will yet look with ushappy ereature's mind. It is from on °sterna-
ppropriation of any tion of wisdom after the event that we say these