The Sun.
London, England, 1855-06-18 00:00:00

ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM.

Mr. Layard's well wishers, and they are many, have
had on former occasions to regret that, with a good
cause and excellent intentions, he has not escaped in the
treatment of the subjects he has undertaken faults which
a larger experience of English, and certainly Parlia-
mentary warfare, would have led him to avoid. Feeling
strongly, and giving every one else credit for feelings as
strong and as honest as his own, he has too readily letft
an ear to vague and unsupported statements, and made
himself the organ in the House of Commons of men con-
tent to shoot their arrows under his shield. It was
therefore with great gratification that werea,d his speech
of Friday night, in which we trace a sincere desire to
amend these faults, which detract so seriously from his
usefulness. His tone was moderate and, frank, his ad-
mission of former errors ample and candid, and his invi-
tation to the angry colonels by whom he is confronted
to argue the case with him with good humour and tole•
ranee was irresistibly fair and conciliating. He evidently
spoke under considerable restraint, and it is only just to
him to say that, while he did not shrink, when the course
of his argument required it, from alluding to the cases of
individuals, these allusions were marked by an evident
wish to avoid giving personal offence or inflicting un-
necessary pain.

It has the misfortune of Mr. Layard, as it was
of his predecessors the week before last, that the pro-
gress of events, nouring along as they have done lately
with unexampled rapidity, has outstripped that state of
the public mind which gave rise to his motion. Such part
of that motion as admitted of proof we consider that he
is entitled to the credit of having fully proved. He un-
dertook to show that merit and efficiency have been
sacrifieed in public appointments to party and family in-
fluences and to a blind adherence to routine, and that
undertaking, as it appears to us, so far as relates to the
army and the diplomatic service, he fully and completely
redeemed. We must, of course, wait to hear what
answer can be made on behalf of the former of these ser-
vices by the numerous members of it who occupy seats in
the House of Commons, but we ehall be very, much sur-
prised if anything they can urge shall furnish an answer
to the plain and straightforward charges preferred against
the system of military promotion. If there were no other
fault in it, its enormous and unfathomable complexity,
the existence of privileged corps, and the power of dis-
pensing with rules, which are cobwebs to those who
possess interest, and bars of iron to those who do not,
all render accuracy of attack very difficult, but com-
pleteness of defence absolutely impossible. Equally
successful was Mr. Layard in pointing out the flagrant
abtees of the diplomatic service, which really seems to
be a complete preserve for aristocratic patronage, i❑
. which men are promoted without merit and slighted
without fault, where sinecure stations are kept up obvi-
ously for the benefit of ill health or incapacity, and where
enormous funds are wasted in exchange for the smallest
possible amount of labour and efficiency. We would pa, .
titularly call attention to the case of those unfortunate
young men who have been decoyed from Oxford and
Cambridge into the diplomatic service, have made them-
selves admirable Oriental linguists, have been consigned
to poverty and neglect, and never even allowed
the rank of attache ; and we trust that, whatever
be the result of the debate in other respects, it will,
at any rate, call the attention of Lord Clarendon
to the case of these mnstiiiefortnnate and Untied gen-
tlemen. The recent blue-book furnished Mr. Layard
'with abundant evidence of the state of the civil service ;
so that, upon the whole, having succeeded in most con-
clusively proving his case, had his resolution stopped
there every honest man in the house would have been
bound to support it. But unfortunately the connection
between the speech and the resolution there terminates.
The speech points out the measures that it will be neces-
sary to take with a view to remedying these defects ;
but the motion.begins by expressing deep end increasing
concern at the state of the nation, and ends by an appre-
hension of discredit to the national character, and of
grave disasters to come. These words were very suit-
able when the motion was first made, but have now, in
great measure, lost their force. The mood of the nation
has changed from despondency to hope—from the fear
of coming disasters to the confident expectation of
future triumphs. The despondency has passed away,
but the necessity for reform remains. It is in the
speech, therefore, and not in the motion, we are to look
for the sound logical conclusion from the proposition
Mr. Layard has established, and that motion no longer
expresses the feeling of the House of Commons or the
country.

The speech of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton was, as he
seems to have felt himself,
.in striking contrast with his
amendment. The queetion which he addressed himself
to discuss was not really raised by his motion. His
speech, in great part, was taken up with endeavouring
to account for a fact sufficiently obvious—the rise of the
feeling in favour of Administrative Reform. This inves-
tigation, about the result of which we are not aware that
there exists any difference of opinion, formed an admir-
able text for a bitter party attack, but had nothing to do
with the proposition it introduced. It seems that
parties are as little capable of learning by expe-
rience as individuals, and that the spirit of political ani-
mosity once let loose cannot be restrained even by feel-
ings of self-interest. It is only ten days since the Con-
servative party had ample proof that, by narrowing
down great questions to the limits of a squabble between
placemen in act and placemen in expectancy, they would
fail to conciliate the feelings of the public, and were sere
to defeat and overreach themselves. What Mr. Disraeli
did on the war Sir E. B. Lytton has done on Adminis-
trative Reform ; he has narrowed down a great question
to petty dimensions, and tried to impress the sympathy
for a cause for which the nation cares a great deal into