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

ONDAY EVENING, JUNE 16. 1855.

ONE OF THE ROOTS OF THE EVIL.

The Administrative Reform Association wisely holds
that the country can afford to pension off incapacity and
to pay the full price for capacity, but that it is not rich
enough to afford to pay for what it does not get in re-
turn, and so to lose both the money and the service re-
quired. The true economy is to have nothing that is
not wanted, but to have everything that is wanted good
of its kind, and at the fsir price. The most thriftless of
errors is to mistake low price for cheapness. Cheapness
is a compound of quality and price, but as price is too
often looked to in the figure only, without reference to
the worth of the thing to be had in exchange, the
Spaniards have a proverbial saying, that cheap things
are dear.
The tendency for many years past has been to make
the public service rather a low-priced than a cheap
service, and paradoxical as it may appear, the conse-
quence has necessarily been to throw it very much
into the 14ands of the aristocracy, and the affluent
classes. A young man cannot enter the army
without some means besides his scanty pay. And
few are the youths who enter the civil service upon
clerkships of 901. a year without some kind of assistance
from their families, or independent resources, immediate
or in prospect. There may be exceptions here and there,
but they are painful examples, and to make the matter
worse, the persons who have to live solely on such insuf-
ficient pittances often owe their appointments to merit
(being either friendless or of poor friends destitute of
interest or influence), and are wholly devoted to the
duties for which they are so poorly requited. This small
class of public servants work for the reason assigned for
the growth of trees, because they have nothing else to
do. Their narrow means deny them any indulgences,
any pursuits that might draw them from their occupa-
tion. But wb repeat, they are but a few, and their lot
does no honour to the service, and would deter all in the
same circumstances. km enteric -it who could fincl.bread
elsewhere. And it is notorious that private companies
pay better than Government, taking care to get better
served for the better pay. Yet we may be told that
the pay of the English service in all its branches is
higher than any other nation, and at the opposite ex-
trem eof the scale is Russia, with salaries and wages
hardly more than nominal, but what is the consequence ?
Universal peoulatioa. The emp oyed pay themselves by
hook or by crook. And this is a result which is un-
avoidable in some shape or other in cases of bad pay.
Corruption is unknown here, but if a public servant is
conscious that the appointed pAce of his day's work is
short of its. fair value, he will contrive to adjust his
work to its pay, as he despairs of getting his pay ad-
justed to his work. And this is a consequence which in
our system cannot be grappled with. It is easy to say
the superintendent should correct it, as the officer in
the army or navy takes his measures against skulking,
or any ruisperforninncs of duty. But in the army and
navy there are two motive powers, rewards and punish-
ments, while in the civil service there are no rewards,
and but one punishment, dismissal. As recourse to
this extreme expedient is necessarily rare, there is
no way of dealing with short-comings detrimental
to the service, but not amounting to a neglect
of duty for which it would be warrantable to take away
a man's bread. As coercion cannot be applied, as there
are no blackboles, or drill, or cats in public offices, the
next expedient is the creation of some motive to exertion.
Zeal cannot exist in the hreastvof men who have neither
reason to be satisfied with their present condition, nor to
look for anything better in the future ; and who know
that whether they do well, or ill, or indifferently, their
treatment is precisely the same, or that if there be any
difference it is merely this, that more work is thrown
upon them in proportion to their proofs of efficiency.
As we, have before stated, if the establishments of our
great departments were taken by contract, the first step
of the contractor would be to reduce the number, cutting
off the inefficient, lopping away the dead wood as it were;
and his next proceed►ng would be to put the situations
of those retained on a fair footing of emolument, and to
hold out the prospect of advancement to those who
ehoyed themselves worthy of it. In the present system
no deviation can be made from dreary sleepy routine
without the consent of the Treasury ; but how can the
Treasury, witbout the attribute of omniscience, be a
judge of the deserts of persons in the different public de-
partments, some of them having very spbcial functions,
and, moreover, the tendency of the Treasury is naturally
to look jealously at the claims for money, having at best
only very hazily in its view the corresponding claims of
merit.

We are very glad to see, by the report of the last
meeting of the Administrative Reform Association, that
Mr. Layard hits the right nail on the head in noting one
of the radical faults in the system of the civil service, and
condemning the keeping of so many steeds upon mighty
scanty provender :

" One of the first objects of the society ought to be to
assist in getting effective meu placed in every branch of
the civil service. At present, he believed that the num-
ber of civil servants employed was too large, and many
of them were unpaid. They ought to be paid liberally,
and he believed that it was a great mistake to press too
much. for ,a, reduction of salaries, -because the enormous
salarieirof greatmen were left untouched while the small
salaries'a the really hard-working and deserving men
were cut down. (Hear, hear.) At present there were
about 60,000 persons connected with the civil service,
and the appointments of these men were influenced more
or less by political motives. A sort of current of elec-
tricity ran between Mr. Hayter and the representatives
of various constituencies. The Secretary to the Trea-
sury had only to touch the electric wire, and it ran
through the whole of the country. That, however, was
a system which must be put a stop to ; and in consider-
ing what means ought to be adopted to put a stop to it,
he came to what he conceived to be one of the chief ob-
jects of the meeting. He bad been told that he had
made a great mistake in the terms of the motion which
he was about to bring before the House of Commons,
and that instead of having said, Ths house views with
deep concern the state of the nation,' he ought to have
said, The nation views with deep concern the state of
the house.' (Lauehter and cheers.) Upon the whole,
he believed that such a motion would have better ex•
pressed the feeling of the country, for the people of the
country wore beginning to lose faith in the House of
Commons."

The public would be rather surprised if it saw the
small number of salaries of 1,0001. a-year in the Civil
Service compared with the number of the same amount
in the Law and the Church. And we do not refer to
,he professional incomes in the law, but t 3 the salaries
of appointments. The same comparison might be pur•
sued with the same result with regard to the Bank, the
liidia Holise, and the great companies, all of which
eschew a penny-wise and pound-foolish parAimony, and
pay well for efficient services and probity. The slop sys-
tem illustrates the opposite fault, bad wages for bad work
to produce a bad article.— txamincr.

covered the superiority in the field which we incontest-
ably proved at the Alma and at Likerman. In short, all
present opportunities are with the allies, and a faint-
chance of conquest was never offered to brave men than
the Crimea now presents. Since it is inconsistent with
Russiag greatness to limit the number of its ships, let
the answer be to deprive it of the power of keeping ships
at all. Let the Crimea be taken and retained. The
French at Sebastopol, we in the peninsula of Rertcb,
the old Tartar princes reigning in their old capital of
Bakshi-Serai, will sufficiently declare to the world which
is finally to predominate, the civilisation of the west or
the barbarism of the east.
In thus proposing to contract the territories of Rus-
sia no question of honour or dishonour to her is in-
volved. Fairly might such language be employed in
dealing with an ancient power that had long attained
its natural limits, and to some degree rendered even

its outlying provinces its own by centuries of care and
assimilation. But the regions which form the south-
ern portion of the Russian empire are but the fruits

of yesterday's rapine. In some-instances they outatep
any natural frontier to which the most gigantic empire
might lay claim. There was not a Government in
Europe which did not feel, as Lord Aberdeen bas for-
cibly expressed, that the new territories and advantages
grasped so late as Mt were incompatible with the in-
dependence of Turkey and the peace of, the world. We
could not then recur to war to remedy the crying evil,
but now, when war has been forced upon us by further
encroachments, shall we not set right in 1855 that
which was so, universally declared to be wrong and a
peril to Europe in 1829 ? We have insisted upon the
necessity of annulling treaties, and why not annul,
also, if we are able, the territorial demarcation of those
treaties? The best guarantee against renewed aggres-
sion is to wrest from Russia those countries which she

invariably uses as instruments of aggression—her places
d'armes . prepared (or making sorties as well against
the West as against the South. We can only do it
by defeating .Russia. No doubt of it. But without
defeating Russia we , cannot defend . Turkey or Asia.
SucCess in thii war is matter of vital moment to England
and to France, for if they fail of it they sink to weakness
in the east of Europe ; but .failure to Russia implies no
corresponding humiliation. The dishonour to her is in
the attempted aggression; not in being beaten back from
it. The check we would now administer may even prove
to be a wholesome one, 'for she is little likely to enter
upon any true path of civil improvement or internal pros-
perity until she is compelled to admit that her empire is
large enough, and must, like that of other powers, be
held to have reached its normal limits.

The events of the war bring such questions near.
The last advantages gained before that portion of
Sebastopol in which the arsenal is situated are almost
decisive. Not only has the Mainelon with upwards
of sixty guns, commanding all the defences, been car-
ried, but other batteries which touch the waters of
Careening Bay;have been also taken. These command the
northern entrance to Sebastopol which crosses those waters,
and the necessity of closing which we pointed out bast
week. The great mistake committed by General Can
robert is now become plain enough. BY confining his
operations to the town, he permitted the Russians to
concmtrate almost all their force within its walls, anl

hence their obstinate re-istance. On the other hand
General Pelissier has t ,ken up a position beyond the
Tchernaya, rnensoss Inkerman and Baksß.3erai. and
compels the Russian General to keep an army in Vie
field to oppose him. From what was !e reed in the late
reconnaissance he is reported to have not less tha
100,000 men among those hills. And thus, without
countinz more frightful reductions by typhus fever ip
the hospitals, the garrison of Sebastopol has been of late
so much thinned as to brim,. the French and Eoglisb, in
their attacks on the Mamelon and the Quarries, face to
far,. with no more than a fair proportion of enemies.
The occupation of Kertch makes another draught on
the Russian force', and now that Anapa is evacuated the
allied troops can march westward to attack Arabat by
land as well as sea, and perhaps take possession of Kaffa.
From Kaffa to Simpheropol is a distance of hardly 70
miles by a good road north of the mountains, and pre-
senting few natural impediments to the advance of an
army. The troops of General Brown can be increased
in any proportion within a very few hours, and whether
they march upon Simpheropol, or merely threaten it,the
Russians must keep a very considerable force in that po-
sition. All these are advantages quite as great as the
destruction of magazines and the interruption of supplies.
The allied commanders can now prevent the enemy from
concentrating an overwhelming force in any one posi-
tion, whether within the town, at Inkerman, or in the
east of the Crimea. This gives them choice and oppor-
tunities of attack, which hitherto they did Rot enjoy,
and the decisive moment is very probably near at hand.
—Examiner.