The Sun.
London, England, 1865-11-09 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TI3IES.-It has sometimes been objected to our
English system of administration that it hardly recog-
nizes the value of official experience. The hig,hest
offices of State not only change hands, as a matter of
course, with every change of Ministry, but are fre-
quently shifted from one member of a Cabinet to
another for no better reason than political conve-
nience. Lord Palmerston, indeed, was for some 20
years at the War-office, and for the next 20 years
held the seals of the Foreign-office whenever his party
was in power. Such a tenure of the same post by one
individual is, however, extremely rare, and most
of our older statesmen have served their turn in
several departments. There are, of course, many
things to be said against this practice, but there is
also something to be said in its favour. It mani-
festly tends to discourage the initiation of reforms
so comprehensive as to require many years for their
development. It accustoms the Parliamentary re-
presentatives of great offices to rely too implicitly
on their permanent subordinates, and gives the lat-
terthe real control of a policy for which they are
not publicly responsible. On the other hand, it
brings a succession of fresh and unprejudiced minds
to bear on the working of the departmental ma-
chinery. It is said that the Russian Generals in the
Crimea seldom exposed the same men to the brunt
of the battle, but confronted the allied armies with
constant relays of new troops. A good hint may be
borrowed from the principle of these tactics for
other than military purposes, and it is quite possi-
ble that successive Secretaries of State have saved
the public from a tyranny of routine and tradition
which might have become intolerable under func-
tionaries appointed for life. At all events, this con-
sideration may help to reconcile us to the changes
which must take place if the present Ministry is to
be strengthened in any material degree. The pro-
cess of reconstruction inevitably involves the remo-
val of one or more persons from positions in which
they have at least acquired experience, the substi-
tution of others who may have their experience to
gain, and perhaps the transfer of some Minister from
a department with which he is familiar to a depart-
ment in which he must at first be a novice. We
have already mentioned, what is no secret, that as
soon as the necessity of reinforcing the Government
in the House of Commons was felt by Lord Russell
and his colleagues, the first example of self-sacrifice
was set by the Duke of Somerset. Without actually
resigning, he announced his readiness to resign at
any moment if he would facilitate a readjustment
of the Ministry. Now, there is nothing invidious or
disparaging to others in expressing the opinion that
the Duke's services are not those which can best be
spared. He is one of few among our public men
who have earned the reputation of administrative
vigour, and, what is still rarer, of entire indepen-
dence. If, therefore, he is to leave the Admiralty
where, however, it will not be found easy to pro-
vide an equally good successor, it s natural to in-
quire in what other quarter his valuable qualities
are most needed. One important office will at once
occur to our readers. The War-office is certainly
weakest point in our whole administrative
system. This overgrown establishment has long
maintained a bad eminence for the costly inefficiency
of its organisation. Within the last year great
scandals among War-office clerks have come to
light, and this disclosure was followed by an almost
mutinous agitation against an attempt to reduce
their number. There is no branch of the Civil Ser-
vice in which a firm hand is more urgently required,
as there is probably none on which so much public
money is wasted. 'Without striking off a single
effective soldier from the muster-roll of our army
or diminishing our means of national defence in the
slightest degree, we might cut down the Estimates
by more than any one outside the office would guess
by a thorough reform in Pall-mall. But this is not
the only or the main consideration which recom-
mends the Duke of Somerset for the Secretaryship
of State for War. The prime requisite for that
most responsible and arduous of posts is an inflexible
preference of public interests to private influences.
What the Duke of Wellington said of commanding
officers is emphatically true of one who not only
exercises enormous military patronage, but stands
between Parliament and the Commander-in-Chief
himself. " The only mode of avoiding party spirit
in the army is for the commanding officer to be of
no side excepting that of the public, to employ in-
discriminately those who best serve the public, be
they what they may, or in whatever service. The
consequence will be that the service will go on, all
parties will join in forwarding it anl in respecting
him ; there will be an end to their petty disputes
about trifles, and the commanding officer will be at
the head of an army, instead of a party." How sel-
dom this ideal has been realised at the Horse Guards
is, unhappily, but too notorious, and it was partly
to check the inveterate favouritism at headquarters
that a new Secretary of State was appointed, with a
power of control over the Commander-in-Chief.
But for the disgraceful break-clown of our military
system during the Crimean War, and the general
conviction that our national honour was being tar-
nished through jobbery, we should probably be still
under the old regime. The Secretaryship for War
would still be united with that for the Colonies,
Woolwich would be what it used to be, there would
be no Staff College and no Council of Military.
Education. If we have gained much by these re-
forms, it behoves us to be ever on our guard lest
they should be insensibly, but effectually, undone.
Let the Secretary of State for War once become
subservient to the Commander-in-Chief, or forego
any part of his own superior responsibility, and we
may at any time relapse into the abuses of that
period when the British army was commanded by
the Duke of York. It would be unjust to Lord Do
Grey if we failed to acknowledge the laborious
assiduity which he has brought to the other duties
of his office, but in that paramount duty to which
we have alluded he has been found lamentably want-
ing. Those who are aware of the efforts that have
been made to weaken the Council of Military Edu-
cation well know the nature of the influences which
he was called upon and bound to resist, but to
which he has apparently yielded. This institution,
so distasteful to the dispensers of militarypatronage,
is the great security for impartiality in the entrance
examinations for the army, and an indirect guaran-
tee for promotion by merit. Last year a blow was
aimed at it under the specious pretext of the appli-
cation of the rule, which would have made its mem-
bers removable after five years, and so dependent
on that very favour against which it is their special
business to protect the public. 'We have reason to
fear that, although this measure was reserved for
further consideration, another attempt of the same
kind is contemplated, and that at the Horse Guards
the hostility to all safeguards against jobbery is as
strong as ever. To stem this current steadily flow-
ing in a direction contrary to the public interest a
less pliable Minister than Lord De Grey is greatly
wanted. For the sake of the Duke of Cambridge
himself we should rejoice to see at the War-office a
man who would steadily exert his constitutional
authority against the pressure of the Horse Guards,
and thus support him against that which is always
being applied to the Horse Guards from without.
This requires a fearless temperament, as well as an
assured social position, and there is, perhaps, no
other member of the Cabinet who combines these
gifts with administrative ability in so high a degree
as the Duke of Somerset.

HERALD.—The negotiations for a treaty of com-
merce between England and Austria are, we are as-
sured, upon the point of attaining a satisfactory con-
clusion. Of the character of the treaty, however,
even those well-informed persons who profess to
know the number of articles it contains can tell us
nothing definite. The reductions of her tariff to
which Austria has pledged herself may be only nomi-
nal concessions to free trade, and we are very much
inclined to fear that they will prove so. It has been
said, indeed, that the Austrian Government has
agreed to impose only a maximum ad valorem duty
of 15 per cent. ; but this ad valorem duty is to be
converted into specific duties, and everybody knows
that in the course of that process the 15 per cent.
may easily be raised to 50. It is difficult to believe
that the Austrian Ministry has ventured upon a bold
advance towards free trade, and unless the advance
is a very bold one it will profit nothing to Austria or
England. The Austrian empire is now in a condi-
tion in which no half measures can be of the slight-
est service, and no tariff reform, whether general or
particular to England, will be worth the disturbance
it must create in Austrian industry, if it does not
proceed on the principle that customs duties are
only to be imposed for the purposes of revenue and
in that end should be fixed as low as possible. What
hope can we reasonably entertain that the new
.treaty
will be framed in accordance with these principles ?
The Austrian Government is, no doubt, very anxious
to conclude a treaty of commerce withEngland,and
would concede a great deal rather than fail. What-
ever may have been its real desires when Mr. Hutt
was at Vienna, it has now the most urgent motives
to expedite the negotiations. It is not that the nego-
tiators now at Vienna have proved more successful
than the Vice-President of the Board of Trade in
converting the Austrian Ministers to a sense of the
blessings of free trade. The new treaty will be due,
not to any conviction on the part of the Ministry
that free trade is a good thing in itself or for Aus-
tria, but to the belief that by means of such a treaty
the capitalists of England may be e allured into lend-
ing their money to the Austri▪
an GAvernment or
embarking it in Austrian rai▪ lways, docks, and
mines. For the last two months the Government
has been vainly endeavouring to secure a loan.
The suspension of the constitution has closed the
money markets of Germany—where that measure
is seen in its true light—against it; and although
the Liberal press of England and France have hailed
that coup d'itat with loud applause, the capitalists

of London and Paris have shown no readiness to
fling in their money bags to fill up the yawning gulf
of Austrian deficits. In vain have the most roseate
pictures of the economies offered by the new
Finance Minister, and the most positive assurance
of the excellent spirit of the Hungarians, been dis-
seminated throughout the two countries ; there is
no confidence in either of them in Austria, except
in those persons whose confidence is cheaply given
because it costs them nothing, and, consequently, is
worth nothing to Austria. In this dilemma it is
hoped that a commercial treaty with England--
which is certain to be declared by the organs of the
English Government a very wonderful measure, to
be hailed as the opening of a new era for Austria,
to be proclaimed as proof positive that the einPire.
has entered upon a career of peace and internol
development—will stimulate the enterprise and
generate the confidence of Englishmen with money
to invest, and that a loan, and ever so many great
schemes of improvement, may be floated in London
on the conversion of the empire to free trade.
The Austrian Government has had, therefore,
every interest to make great concessions if conces-
sions were required ; but, on the other hand, it has
been placed in this difficulty, that great concessions
would not fail to create for it great oppositi3n:
The constitution has, indeed, been suspended, tug'
it has no need, therefore, to fear the Reichsrath.
The Emperor governs absolutely, and does not
need the assent of his people to any measures 101
may take; but although deprived of the means I°'
giving legal effect to their objections the Protec-
tionists have still the means of creating difficulties
for the Government, and the explosion of opposition
which a thoroughly free trade policy on the part of
the Government would provoke would be awkward
in the present critical position of the empire. It
not likely, however, that the Austrian Government
has had to choose between losing the treaty Mau
adding to its difficulties at home. The English Ge-
vernment has shown itself so anxious to make
treaty of some kind that its representatives, instead
of asking more than Austria could venture to give,
have in all probability taken much less than col'
have been obtained from her. We doubt very much
whether the treaty between Great Britain and Aus-
tria will do much more than give the former some"
thing like the advantages which are already 00,n1
the Zollverein' and if it does nothing more it vi
not be worth the cost of Mr. Hutt's journey t°
Vienna. Austria must, treaty with England or no
treaty, make a sweeping reform of her tariff within
a very few years, and it is not worth the while of aj.
great commercial nation like England—it is net
consistent with its dignity—to pay for a trifling on:
ticipation of other nations even so small a PriCe
the humiliatian of asking the favour. What Eng'
land can have offered to Austria in this treaty as ,
the equivalent for the concession we are at a loss ""
imagine. We have no longer any protective duties,
and Austria already enjoys all the advantages 9Cb
corded to the most favoured nation. There are bu
two complaints against our tariff made by foreignere/
the one not altogether devoid of reason, the other,
perfectly without warrant, and in the satisfaction of
neither of these complaints can Austria be said.,„te,4
have any particular interest. She is no doubt a woo
country, but her wines are mostly of the
kind that would bear transport in the cask, and elle
has nothing like the interest in the reduction of the
duty on wine in bottles which France or the States
of the Zollverein have. She is not a very large ree"
nufacturer of raw spirits, and she has no great teraP"
tation, therefore, to ask the withdrawal from the
English distiller of the few pence per gallon given
him by Mr. Gladstone when the duty on foreign,,
spirits was assimilated to that on home-made, a;
some equivalent for the restrictive interference
the Excise, and the obligation to pay the duty int;
mediately after the manufacture of the spirit, whilke,,
the foreign competitor only pays it when he sells the
article. We have nothing to concede Austria by
treaty, although there is much which our capital can
do to increase her wealth and the welfare of her
peoples. The Austrian Government naturally de-
sires that English capitalists should invest theft
money in the construction of Austrian railways, all,o
something more than petty tariff reductions a',3
needed to secure their co-operation. The elnrrd
must become a constitutional State in reality an t
not in name, and ample security must be given tito
its institutions shall not again be set aside at
.mere pleasure of the Sovereign.