The Express.
London, England, 1868-08-29 00:00:00

BAGEL-TRAVELLING BACK Hand
=Wing ort:OCett 0= Eogni.6ll=BAlll
11l Wars, Loudon.
DUBBING CASES in Walnut and Coromandel
weeeatis Moreooo, nod Solid . tor lLodiol sod
with snow sad Mated boot l's. SA to
43X-IMIIIIME- BROTFIEBA I Diodes.
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DESPATCH BOXES and WRITING OASES in
. non to id. to llOttLY
..0RMA.0843 GREAT
BAG fAlEFlTattreit, 37. Ladrat"bill.

ALLEN'S PORTMANTEAUS. 37, Strand.
ALLEN% DEESSING-BAOB. 37. Straset.
ALLEN'S OVERLAND TRUNKS. 37, Strand.
ALEN'S 131111PAT(Patented.CH BOMBS. 37, Strand.
)
ALLEN'S ILLUSTEATpEDod
two.
CATALOGUE or is
Arti
ALLEN'S mm MEDAL.O awarded for neatest
ensnares.

QANtibirklitB' UId.I3II.IiLLAS, for Bain or dim
1,-7 (nom Prim Medals swiudidt on Toes
All triunes of Pox and 0D..111 estelreten maks!~ the& trade mark.
To prevent mistakes the paha° are impendsill informed Mat
==anibrallse him their name AttoSeked. sad that then* 0111.7
te are 140. Banent.etreet ; Of, Ineeheneet ; ai=
Bids: 10. Royal s°—N.B. Observe the name end

--
s.
WILLI All OHUBTON and SON,
Roams and amantAxia
Lama wirnasaLonium.
1111 sal ox.roiDeramer.

0112 i BEOGDFIVEI CLASSIC JBWELBY.

oARIS FIRST—CLASS SILVER ADIDAL, 1867.

-0I EN WOODEN'S 18-carat OOLD CHAINS.

It becomes doer that bad as London is agreed to be
in hotel socommodation and &ergs% it is a model
of comfort and economy in ooaiparison weer
where else. It is at least statitinaryin its iniquity,
but all other regions are yearly &Avowing in the
flowery path of ;swindling. Priem are rising all
over the world, and the localities which one wwnld
expect to find most simply modest is their charges
are the very regions in which the traveller finds

of tb, df
I

himself more cruelly shorn.
As to those out of the way regions, whether in
the Highlands or the Lakes, in Ireland or in
Svritterland, we have an obvious word to say
which probably every grumbling tourist hears
without paying attention to it. Their season is
abort, and they must make their hay. The ag-
grieved traveller admits the maxim, but thinks
they try to make too much hay. But does he
fairly oonsider the facts of the case ? If he were
to be content with the rode accommodation the
country originally afforded, he might expect
country cheapness. In many such a spot he will
still find a cheapness which staggers him, and
which he generally begins to corrupt by paying
extravagantly for service or for sandwiches at his
departure. But by-and-bye come other tourists ;
the aboriginal accommodation is immanent ; some
complain of small rooms, some of defective ottani-
ance ; some demand civilised luxuries, and an
acute native of the nearest large town sees his way
to the building of a large barrack of an hotel,
the importation of an army of waiters, and
the furnishing of all the customary requirements
of comfortable existence. But for all this extra
work he must be paid extra. It is not only that
the three months' profits must pay the interest on
the building of the house, they must pay every-
body concerned for breaking off from their nine
months' avocations in order to take up for a
quarter of the year a business totally different.
Thus from the master down to boots everyone in
the establishment is reasonably entitled to a far
higher than usual rate of pay. The same with
supplies of all sorts. The demand is intermittent,
and therefore the advantages of purchasing in a
steady market are lost. The same with the means
of conveyance. And again there is not only to be
considered the shortness of the season, but the risk.
All the show places are subject to fits of fashion.
A gust of accidental favour, a visit of the Qumeav,
a popular novel, may turn the great tide of tourists
another year in quite a different direction, and
leave the barrack gloomily tenantless. Whoever
fairly considers these things will not wonder at
exceptional prices in Highland inns for brandy
and soda. The comparison of them with the
Rhine omits one of the most essential points of the
case. The Rhine has been for generations an in-
stitution. Its seasons are as certain as the sun.
Moreover, the ways of its tourists are nearly
uniform. Everyone dines at the table d'hate and
drinks the wine of the country. In the smaller
side routes the traveller has no choice, for if he
does not conform he starves. But let anyone call
for London stout, or demand a separately cooked
roast of beef or leg of mutton at the very beat and
cheapest of continental hotels, and we will not say
what he will got, but we do say that his bill will
be a " caution."
But while in fairness we put in this word for
the maligned native establishments, far be it from
us to assert that they are everything that we
may reasonably wish, or perhaps venture to hope
for. Moreover, even in old-established and in-

evitable halting places, in our greet cities for ex-
ample, or at our seaports, where the hotels are
always nearly full and often overflowing, the
accommodation is lees, and the charges greater
than we might fairly expect. No doubt we now
demand more than we did. The frowsy old-
fashioned inn pleases us no longer. The venerable
waiter and the joint which made the round of
every sitting-room are alike gone. We must
have large and lofty bedrooms, a magnifi-
cent dining-room, numerous attendants, and
a cook prepared to furnish every possible
dish at the shortest notice. We have also
established two important reforms. There is a
ladies' coffee-room, so that it is not necessary for
families to take always a five-shilling parlour when
they want tea on arriving or breakfast before
starting. Then it is equally unnecessary now-a-
days to comply with the ancient obligation to
order wine " for the good of .the house." But
granting all these how much have we still to com-
plain of 1 Wine, if we do order it, fa four times
its natural price. If the dinner is uneatable there
is no landlord to appeal to, and we can only vent
our indignation on the waiter, who has no more
relations with the 000 k than he has with the Grand
Lama. If the bill is enormous we are invited
to the window of the tureen, where an engaging
young woman, with a sweet smile just tinged
with a haughty languor, proves to us that every-
thing is quite correct according to the " tariff of
" the company." Lastly, though attendance is
duly charged in the bill, we are generally re-
minded, with more or less directness of appeal,
that the waiter or the porters expect a private
shilling, which last imposition let everyone act his
sternest face against.
Now if we grant that in big hotels we cannot
have personal supervision, and that so large and
expensive buildings and establislunaate must in-
evitably involve high prices, we must yet insist
; that the prices are for the most part utterly too
high. The conclusive proof of this is that hotels
' of equal comfort are to be found in which the
rates are not above one-half of the figures of
others. Perhaps the extravagant ones do not
show a greater amount of profit in dividend, but
I then there must be mismanagement and waste,
if not peculation, to account for it ; and
there is no reason that the public should
pay for carelessness in hotel directors. But the
public, as we have said, is powerless. The faults
are patent, bat there seems ao remedy. A
moment's thought will, however, show
whence arises this helplessness. There is plenty
of competition among hotels to produce the usual
remits of free trade in good and cheap service ;
but travellers are essentially a migratory and dis-
integrated class. They do not learn by each
others' experience, for they have no means of
ascertaining it. They have no way of eommuni-
eating to each other that one hotel is dear and
bad, and another cheap and good. So the dear
and cheap stand on equal terms. The rare in-
stance of an establishment being denounoed by
name in a letter in the newspapers does
nothing to remedy the general evil. One or
two persons are thus warned to avoid it, but
even these do not learn where to find a better. Then
there is no encouragement to improvement, for
nobody writes to recommend good hotels, and if
they did, their lettere would not be printed.
Commercial travellers act differently. They hang
together and stand by each other. The conse-
quence is that they get far better attendance at
far cheaper rates than the general public. This
proves what is wanted. Tourists and travellers,
instead of writing to the newspapers, should form
an association. Each should send up his bills and
his comments to the head office. A register would
there be kept which every member might inspect,
and select from the list the establishments on his

THE EXPRESS, SATURDAY EVENING, AUGUST 29, 1868.

4*.ititp which bore the beet character. I
ie not now; but it ie obviously
find weeommond it to thoimeidoralisst
ineontalinf. •
A CHARITY* AUDIT HOARD.

FROM time to time propositions havo been made
to ensure a fitting control over the sums extracted
from the pockets of the benevolent public. A
more complete satire upon the professedly business
habits of a practical nation, than the system
tolerated now, it would be difficult for the most
ingenious to devise. There is absolutely no oheok
upon the professedly pious or charitable quack
who chooses to advertise for contributions. He
may be a disgraoe to his cloth, s harpy who has
been morally convicted, time out of mind, of
obtaining money upon false pretenoes--a clerical
vagabond, shunned by his brethren, ors broken
down professional man, who finds it easier to beg
than to work. If the advertisement and the plea

De but specious enough the money is certain to
pour in, and it is but the other day that the re-
cords of our police-courts showed that a brougham
and horse, ivory hair-brushes, and other articles
were readily obtained upon the mere assertion that
a new philanthropic association was being formed.
It is not, however; the mere vulgar swindler whose
depredations do meet harm. Our criminal law
allows many of these to escape through its meshes,
but when conviction follows detection the punish-
ment is sufficient for ite purpose. It is the "Society"
with an amateur committee and an expensive secre-
tary and staff against which the public requires
protection most. It is such items as " working
" expenses," " rent of chambers," " office
" charges," " cost of travelling," and the like,
which need an independent audit ; and for the
control of which the average committeemen are
ridiculously inadequate. There are hundreds of
societies the affairs of which would bear the moat
rigid examination ; there are hundreds more
to which publicity would be death. A charity
asidit board composed of volunteers, or delegates
from the leading societies, with a professional ad-
viser at their elbow, would be an effectual instru-
ment for separating the wheat from the chaff. The
constitution of this board is, moreover, of far lees
consequence than that it should have a recog-
nised existence. If it were once known that
all individuals or associations asking for sub-
scriptions or donations from the public for any
charitable purpose could claim the periodical
certificate of an independent body that they were
expending their money honestly, the absence of
such guarantee would be a fatal testimony in their
disfavour. This is really all that is required. The
good impulse; of the many kind-hearted affluent
people who subscribe on hearsay, and from a
hearty but wandering desire to do good, require
the commonest protection from the wolves in
sheep's clothing who are ever on the watch to
turn those impulses to their personal benefit. The
more trustworthy the names under which a reli-
gious or benevolent society is launched, the
greater the necessity for its officers being subjected
to indifferent and unimpulsive criticism. To
those who know the routine of " charity work,"
who understand the lax management and dele-
gated trusts which form part of its conditions, it
is simply amazing that so large a proportion of
the subscribed funds should ever find its way to its
destined objects. In the ordinary affairs of life
unaudited accounts, or accounts audited only by
those responsible for expenditure and receipt, are
found to lead to one inevitable and natural re-
sult. If the worthy people who are habitually
ready to give help either to the poor and suffering,
or to the advancement of religion, would but de-
vote their attention to seeing that their money is
not misapplied, it is certain that existing sub-
scriptions might produce double their present re-
sults. It is comparatively easy to give a guinea to
a smiling or importunate secretary, or in reply to
a touching advertisement. Let it be held to be a
still more important duty to ascertain precisely
how that and similar guineas are distributed ; and
though the comforts of a certain specious class
might be diminished, the course of real charity
would be proportionately advanced.

CONTEMPORARIES.
(THIS DAY.)

Thk3 Times ratan's to the charge of extravagance
which it preferred Or other day against the government,
with the elsjeelsew of proving that, although Mr. Wad-
stone and Mr. Childers had a perfect right to ooitmst the
results of their own policy with that of Mr. Disraeli and
his colleagues, yet the late government had oertainly
not reached a standard of administrafivo sirtue.
It is, the Timm argues, not the money spent,
but the work produced which is the important
matter for consideration, and our contemporary
emphatically denies, especially with regard to the navy,
that the results are at all commensurate with the cost.

We want, not a curtailment of our effective expenditure,
but a wise and unflinahing reduction of our ineffeotive
expenditure, and the Times trusts that the statesmen of
the ensuing parliament may deal with a bolder hand than
they have ventured yet to show with the abuses of the
great speeding departments.
The Deily News also makes a comparison of the financial
policy of both governments, and sums up the results of
its investigation by observing that, with a tory govern-
ment in power, the estimates, under some pretext or
other, are always creeping up, and the expenditure is
always in excess of the estimates, while under a liberal
administration the estimates are reduced, and the ezpeadi-
ture kept rigidly within them.
The &or still protests against the appointment of Lord
Mayo to the Indian viceroyalty. There is a levity, a frib-
ble-like insensibility to momentous interests, about the
whole affair which is thoroughly characteristic of Mr. Dia.
raeli

Referring to the prevalence of robberies with violence in
the streets, the Teierap4 suggests that the pollee force of
the metropolis is not only numerically inadequate to cope
with this particular development of crime, but is not sufh-
ciently rapid in adjusting itself to the altered circum-
stances.