The Sun.
London, England, 1855-05-24 00:00:00

ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM

ASSOCIATION.

The following address of;the Administrative Re-
form Association to the People of England has been
forwarded to us for publication :

ADDRESS.
Fellow-Countrymen,—The Administrative Re-
form Association has been brought into existence
by the exigency of the time. Its members have
no interest in agitation ; they have no personal
ambition to serve, no individual advantages to
gain ; they intend no personal attack—they can
only enter upon the movement, which involves a
long and arduous struggle, at a large sacrifice of time
and means. They have long seen the absolute need
of such a movement, but have delayed to under-
take it, in the hope that it would have been
set on foot by others ; the work has, however,
been placed in their bands, and they are deter-
mined to spare no effort /or its accomplishment.
There never was a period when, under simi-
lar emergency, the people so long remained silent ;
there has been a positive sense of danger in the
quiet. It has been matter of wonder that, with
daily accumulated evidence of mismanagement, the
most general and of the grossest kind, there have
been so few meetings ; that, with proof that mil-
lions of pounds have actually been thrown away,
an increase of taxation amounting to more than
thirty millions has been submitted to without a
murmur ; that, though every post has brought let-
ters to thousands of the poorest in the land, de-
tailing the horrors of the winter before Sebastopol,
there has been no organised movement. The want
of forethought, the incapacity, the mismanage-
ment, the complication of duties, the adherence to
routine at the cost of human life, the thousands
of brave men wasted by overwork, by exposure,
by insufficiency of clothes and shelter, by un-
wholesome food, by hunger, by lack of medicine
and medical attendance, by neglected wounds,
by starvation in the very hospitals, have called
forth no popular outburst. There has been no
protest against those in command, against the Mi-
nistry, against the Parliament. We believe that
this silence is not safe ; that if some organisation
were not set on foot to give utterance to the pent-
up indignation of the people, and to give hope of
a better future, some movement would speedily
show itself, of which it would be impossible to fore-
tell the results. " Where there is abuse," says
Burke, "there ought to be clamour, because it is
better that our slumbers should be broken by the
fire-bell than we should perish in the flames."
Fellow-countrymen, the war is the first thought
with all ; it is almost impossible to divert at ention
to anything else than that actual battle has swept
down 5,000 men, mismanagement 15,000 ; that, of
6,000,0001.8 spent upon transport, ships, fully
2,000,0001. were as utterly wasted as if the money
had been thrown into the Black Sea ; that ships
filled with essential stores, provisions, and clothing
were exposed to the fury of a foreseen storm, and
wrecked and sunken from sliter obstinacy. Tho
recent addition to the income tax, the increased
duties upon tea, sugar, and coffee have been ren-
dered necessary by the grossest blundering and
mismanagement. It is difficult to dispel the doubt
that we have not yet before us the entire account
of the year, and are still in ignorance of the total
cost of the war.
We wish it, however, to be distinctly understood
that the Administrative Reform Association is no
mere war organisation. The association has abun-
dant matters to deal with which have no connection
with the war, and whether there be war or peace
its work will be continued.
The mismanagement of the war has served to
reveal the inefficient condition of several important
departments of the State ; but the defective con-
dition is not confined to the departments having
concern with war. The whole system of the
Government offices is such as in any private busi-
ness would lead to inevitable ruin. The non-Mi-
nisterial heads hold office for life, and are virtually
not responsible for the efficiency of their depart-
ments. It is not in their power to dismiss for in-
competency or promote for merit. Many depart-
ments are not called upon to make systematic re-
ports of the condition of their offices, or of the
work done either in the whole or parts of offices.
It is not the duty of any one to be acquainted with
the actual state of all the Government offices.
They are never treated as a whole. There is no
one to mark the ablest men, the real workers,in each
department—no one to point out where men are
egregiously misplaced. There are scattered through
the Government offices men of very great ability ;
some are admirable accountants—some well ac-
quainted with European and Oriental languages
—some have an aptitude for organisation and su-
pervision—some are practical business men, who,
in the right places, would save whole departments
from endless blundering. Such men are continually
needed, but there is no one to be found with any
official knowledge of the existence of such special
ability, and the most incompetent persons are ap-
pointed to posts that these men would have filled
with infinite credit to themselves and advantage to
the State. It is clear, then, that if for no other
reason, to discover what availatle talent for par-
ticular departments is to be found in them, there
should at once be made a thorough inquiry into
the qualifications of the entire staff of every Go-
vernment office.
But this is not all. There are very few people
who really know what Government offices there
are, or even where they are ; and there is no one
at all who knows, as a whole, their responsibilities,
duties, and mode of conducting business. In many-
instances, it is either altogether imnpossible, or at-
tended with endless trouble and delays, to discover
to what department, or officer of a department,
any duty (it may be, requiring the most urgent
despatch) really belongs. The same separation and
confusion of duty exist in the civil departments
that have been so glaringly exposed in the military
departments. It is admitted that the consequent
delays double the expense of the transaction of the
public business ; and that there are twice as many
persons employed as would be required under a
proper system of original appointment, arrange-
ment of business, and fairly-earned promotion. Nor
is the evil confined to the conduct of business in the
offices. We have it on the authority of Lord J. Rus-
sell that, under existing arrangements, "the time
of Ministers is so very much absorbed with the du-
ties of their offices that there are very few of them
who can give their attention to a great subject, an cl
look at the consequences to the country of the mea-
sures which are adopted." It is clear, therefore, that
almost as a first step to Administrative Reform,
there is needed for the information of the public
and their representatives in Parliament a succinct
account of the Government offices as they are, with
as accurate a digest as is obtainable of their several
duties, their manner of conducting business, the
expenses of conducting it, and the time it takes.
In addition to this, it will be essential to obtain
information as to the duties, privileges, and official
patronage of the Ministers of the Crown. The
public information upon the subject amounts .
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