The Sun.
London, England, 1864-12-01 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIM ES.—A report has lately teen current of which
the invention and circulation are highly creditable
to the vigilance of those who keep a watch on our
public departments. The statement was that the
War-office had appointed a barrister at a salary of
£l,OOO a year to revise its regulations, and the
amount of indignation wasted on this imaginary job
ought to be a salutary warning against the perpe-
tration of real ones. Good old-fashioned place-mon.
gering must, indeed, be rare, when an unfounded
rumour that a superfluous office of this value has
been created excites so much scandal. Such a
rumour, like a false alarm of fire on board ship,
may serve to keep our officials up to the mark, but
it is satisfactory, after all, to find that it is tine
founded. No barrister of seven years' standing,
or of any other standing, has been added
to the overgrown establishment in Pallemall,
and no permanent charge will have to be
defrayed out of the Consolidated Fund,
What has happened comes to no more than this—
that Mr. Hughes, a conveyancer, who had already
been employed by the Office professionally, has
been requested to classify, once for all, a tangled
mass of " Regulations" which it requires a lawyer's
mind to digest. We have reason to believe that the
account of the matter furnished by Mr. Hughes
himself to a weekly contemporary is the whole
truth, and we therefore quote it rerbatim:—" The
present regulations governing the pay and allow-
ances of the Queen's forces are scattered through
six volumes" (containing, he might have added,
some 850 circulars and warrants), " out of which
officers, soldiers, and all other persons interested
have to pick the law as they best can. Many
of the earlier of these regulations have been
wholly or partially repealed by later ones, others
are very obscure in their wording; in short, there
is the greatest confusion on a subject which above
all others should be as simple and clear as
possible, as our soldiers are the persons chiefly in.
terested. The present Secretary of State for War,
among other necessary reforms, has resolved on
codifying and embodying in the most intelligible
form in one Regulation all the Regulations, Memo-
randa, and Circulars now in force as to pay and
allowances, The codification has been begun in the
Office, but it has seemed desirable to the authorities
There that some person outside the Office, ignorant
of its traditions, but familiar with this kind of work,
should be employed to revise and (in conveyancing
language) settle the new Regulations." We need
only add that Mr. Hughes,being the person selected
for this task, will be paid for it "by the piece," and
expected to complete it with all possible despatch.
This is the very simple transaction which has been
trumped up into the proportions of a gross job.
What the-objection to it is we cannot even conjec-
ture. The inconsistencies of military law, so far as it
is contained in War Office Regulations, will certainly
not be disputed by any one who has had occasion to
test them by some individual case. The incompetence
of War Office clerks to throw all these stray ordi-
nances and ree,cripts, crossing and overlapping each
other, jute a methodical form, capable of being
acted upon without injustice, cannot be doubted,
without believing that their legal qualifications are
superior to those of trained lawyers. Codification
is notoriously a most difficult work—so difficult
that many despair of effecting it on a large scale
with the aid of all the rising Trebonians at the
English Bar. There would be more sense in
questioning Mr Hughes's capacity to make a
perfect code out of these six volumes than in
asserting that it can be done well enough with.
out going out of the office. It might be worth
while to consult the Civil Service Commissioners
on this subject, and to ascertain whether their
experience of examinations for clerkships in the
War-office justifies any sueh opinion. If so, the
sooner the abilities of gentlemen who without legal
education possess its highest results are secured for
the codification of our Common and Statute Law,
the better for the country. Copying letters, and
writing a pricis of formal documents, is degrading
drudgery for a constructive genius of such an
order. We can only hope that Mr. Hughes, with
the advantages which his censors affect to despise,
may succeed in a very arduous and responsible
undertaking. Every experiment in codification,
however limited its range, has a special interest at
the present time. The process must be the same,
whether the materials be more or less voluminous
and chaotic. An army of 100,000 men must be
handled in much the same way as an army of
10,000 men, if both are self-complete and indepen-
dent forces; and a code of English law would be
nothing but a revised edition of separate digests.
It is quite as absurd to maintain the impossibility
of the greater work as to underrate the difficulty of
the less. It requires one extraordinary qualification,
and one only—that of gauging the relative compre-
hensiveness of principles and subordinating the
secondary to the primary. Legal studies, as now
conducted, do not favour the development of this
faculty, and great care would be needed to engage,
if possible, the services of men who should combine
it with deep learningand practical experience. Such
persons, however, do exist among the many thousand
members of the English bar, and we retain an un-
shaken conviction that the same time and a hundredth
part of the money which were expended on the new
Houses of Parliament would suffice for the comple-
tion of a far nobler and more durable fabric. But
it cannot be done without a number of " jobs "
very similar to that mythical one which has
just been " exposed." " Appointments" must be
" created," with " emoluments" sufficient to remu-
nerate the ablest jurists that we can procure. These
appointments must be given away by some one,
and if they are given away by merit the party out
of office may say they are given away by favour.
History does not inform us whether the same objec-
tions were made to the compilers of the famous
Code which has become the type of imitation for
all after times; but we have little doubt that they
were, and will be, reiterated on like occasions, so
long as the world lasts. The mare's nest in which
Mr Hughes figures so prominently is but one of a
class which has enveloped greater names than his,
and obstructed more important reforms than this
little scheme of Lord De Grey.

POST.—Of the various and numerous material
circumstances that affect the welfare of the labour-
ing classes in our larger towns, probably none ex-
ercises an influence at once so strong, so direct, and
so incessant as the condition of the dwellings in
which they live. No doubt the condition of the
dwelling depends very much on the character of the
inhabitants; but nevertheless, as character itself is
developed and confirmed by external circumstances,
these circumstances can never be a matter of
indifference. The nature of the occupations of the
labouring classes, healthy or unhealthy, refined or
coarse, varies much as we move from family to
family, and pass from one district to another, but it
tells directly only on those who are actually and
immediately engaged in the work. Generally the
wife, and more universally the younger chi'dren
feel its effects only indirectly. On the other hand

all the members Of the family are affected by the
condition of their home ; husband and wits and
children feel the influence of it, all of them in a
very great degree, though some of them in a diffe-
rent way from the others. And here it is worth
while to mention an important fact, to which
wealthier persons often fail to give due weight in
discussions concerning this subject. Accustomed as
they themselves are, all of them, to several weeks'
holiday in the course of the year, and many of
them to longer annual visits to the country or the
seaside, they frequently underrate the influence of
the dwellings of the poorer classes on their inha-
bitants, who have within their power no equal
means of recruiting their energies and gathering in
a store of health and strength. Seldom does the
family of an artisan, very seldom does the family
of a labourer, spend a period of twenty-four
hours in anything like those scenes of fresh air
and natural beauty which invigorate the bodily
and mental powers, and are often not without a
ben finial influence even on the moral sentie
ments of those who are able to pass some weeks
among them. One or two summer excursions of a
few hours' duration is the utmost which the families
of the labouring class can. enjoy. Many, perhaps
most of them, not even this, and at night they are
back again at home: if that home be of sufficient
in size, comfortable in accommodation, and healthy
in sanitary arrangements, then so far well—but if
it does not satisfy these conditions—and how often