The Sun.
London, England, 1865-05-06 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TimES.—There is a good deal to be learnt from
the case of Mr. Edmunds, if any one were disposed
fairly and impartially to consider it. It discloses a
gross abuse of patronage, and though it acquits Lord
Brougham of any blame, the transactions between
Mr. Edmunds and James and William Brougham
really amounted to the sale of an office under cir-
cumstances as discreditable as could well be imagined.
It is bad enough when an office is sold for a sum of
money paid down at the time, but it is a great deal
worse when an office is 'sold for an annuity, and thus
the demands of the creditor upon his debtor are
perpetuated during its whole tenure. The evils of
such a transaction are not to be measured by the
betrayal of public trust which it involves ; they go
much•further, and lead to the creation of fresh and
even more hateful offences. The man who obtains
his office by means of a violation of public trust on
the part of the person conferring it, or his friends,
feels disposed to indemnify himself for the plunder
he has suffered by plundering the public in his turn ;
the dishonesty of his superiors is contagious, and he
considers that he has purchased, not so much the
right to exercise the public office as to levy contri-
butions on all who come within his power. Thus,
corruption begets corruption, and iniquity is the
parent of iniquity. Had Mr. Edmunds obtained his
appointment under ordinary conditions, he would
probably have acted under it with ordinary fairness
and integrity, but the mind naturally revolts against
such extortion, and the transition is an easy one
from indignation at the loss to a determination to
recover it. Again, the case well illustrates the enor-
mous evils which may flow from a lax administration
of Government offices. Certainly we, in common
with most of our readers, believed that all moneys
received on behalf of the public were protected
from embezzlement by every contrivance which
the wit of man could suggest, and that if our
taxes were heavy, at any rate every possible
precaution was taken to prevent their miscarry-
ing in the hands of those who received them.
On this point the report of the committee is
very instructive. The committee; it seems, were
at a loss to understood how Mr. Edmunds should
suddenly discontinue payments he had been in the
habit of making on behalf of the public, and for
twelve years afterwards neither have paid over nor
even accounted for the public money in his hands,
and that yet no notice whatever should have been
taken of the default. They received evidence from
Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Hamilton, and Mr. Arbuthnott,
from the Treasury. These gentlemen stated that
there was no check whatever upon Mr. Edmunds in
his Office of Clerk of the Patents. Mr. Gladstone
said that no audit was provided by the Act, and that
there would be no check beyond the oath of the
Clerk of the Patents, which nobody seems to have
been bound to administer. It is, the Chancellor of
the Exchequer says, the " true description of the
Clerk of the Patents, that he may hold in his hands
just as much public money as he thinks fit, and if he
pays nothing at all there are no means of calling
him to account for such non-payment." The Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer also stated that " as regards
the custody of money and accounting for money the
present state of the law is very deficient indeed, not
with respect to the great branches of revenue, but
with respect to the miscellaneous heads of receipt
relating to a great variety of funds which come into
the hands of public officers without belonging to
the public." Nobody can accuse the officers of the
Treasury of want of candour in the statements they
have made, but we certainly should be glad to hear
how it has come to pass that such a state of
things has been allowed to continue. That it
will be amended henceforth with all speed we
take for granted; but that it should have been
allowed to remain hitherto without amendment
seems to us, in the absence of evidence, a thing
inexplicable. Perhaps, when we come to see the
evidence we shall find some satisfactory reason
why the Treasury has neglected to enforce the
same rules for the protection of the revenue
against the frauds of persons receiving money on
behalf of the public as are practised with so much
success in the case of the collection of the ordinary
revenue. We can only say that we have never
heard a statement more startling or more unwel-
come. We had been weak enough to suppose that
we might sleep secure under the wing of Mr. Glad-
stone, and that though he could not be supposed to
pry into every detail of management, or be answer-
able for the pecuniary honesty of every clerk, we
might feel the utmost confidence that all which the
most untiring vigilance and the most skilful or-
ganisation could effect would be done in order to
protect us from the least risk of plunder or pecula-
tion. Misled, probably, by the immense activity
which Mr. Gladstone has shown in investigating all
the hidden and untrodden paths of finance, we pre-
sumed that with the open ones he would be at least
equally familiar. We have been lulled to sleep, and
awake at last to the conclusion that though con-
fidence is a plant of slow growth it is one of easy
decay. How unfortunate the negligence has been
for the public ser vice a very few words will suffice to
show. Had Mr. Edmunds been subjected to the
proper control and supervision to which all public
officers ought to be submitted, he could never have
been guilty of the embezzlement which has been re-
cently the subject of investigation. We cannot, in-
deed, sympathise with him when he complains of
the want of audit as a personal grievance to him-
self. We think that it is not unreasonable to ask
that a public officer should be honest without the
compulsion of law, or that, if he is not; he should
rather take the blame to himself than impute it to
the carelessness of the Legislature. But how much
evil would have been spared had the simple pre-
cautions which are found so effective in the other
Revenue Offices been applied here ! Had there been
no peculation, there would have been no resigna-
tion under an understanding ; no question as to.the
propriety of suspending legal proceedings ; no con-
cealment for the purpose of procuring Mr. Edmunds
a pension ; and the country would have escaped the
pain of seeing the first judge of the land censured
by a tribunal consisting partly of his colleagues and
political friends. A number of causes have com-
bined to create this great mischief—the cupidity of
some members of the Brougham family ; the low
moral standard upon which Mr. Edmunds seems
to have acted ; and the want of any check on a
person so covetous and so unscrupulous, such as the
public had a right to expect.
POST.—The much-looked-for report on the Ed-
munds committee suggests two distinct lines of con-
sideration. On the one hand it exhibits the delin-
quency of Mr. Edmunds, the exoneration of Lord
Brougham, and the grievous mistake of Lord West-
bury. On the other it discloses defects in the control
and supervision of the public accounts which reflect
the greatest possible discredit upon the heads of the
particular department to which Mr. Edmunds late
office belongs. The report itself has already been
summarised in this journal, so that we need not here
recapitulate the facts. Our duty is that of comment
rather than of analysis. The investigation of the
committee seems to have been thorough and fair,
and the report is drawn up with great candour and
ability. Considering how large a number of cabinet
and ex-cabinet ministers were on the committee, it
must be acknowledged that all parties concerned—
that is to say, the public, the Lord Chancellor, and
Mr. Edmunds—had every possible chance of fair
consideration. The men concerned in the inquiry
were of the highest public station, of great respon-
sibility, and of practical acquaintance with the de-
tails of official business. Their report is therefore
entitled to public confidence ; and whatever be the
consequences to which it may lead, the culpable
parties have only themselves to blame. The faults
of Mr. Edmunds are the most serious that can be
laid to the charge of a public servant. He was en-
trusted with several distinct offices, and he drew
from them a large aggregate income. A vast
amount of public money passed through his
hands every year, and his duty was to keep the
accounts with scrupulous accuracy, and to accept
no advantage from his position but that openly
awarded to him in the shape of salary.. In all this
he failed. He not only did not account jor all the
moneys which passed through his hands, but he
applied a considerable portion to his private use,
and further trafficked in various unlawful profits
on stamps, and combined with one of his subordi-
nates in carrying on an ingenious system of mal-
versation. These misdoings at last come to light,
and Mr. Edmunds is shown to be a debtor to the
public to the extent of £17,000. In defending
himself against the charges of the able gentlemen
who investigated his accounts, Mr. Edmunds thought
proper to bring in the name of Lord Brougham in
a manner which led the public to suppose that that
illustrious nobleman had given him the office of
Clerk.of the Patents on an understanding that his
lordship was to acquire thereby a beneficial interest
for himself. When the statement was first made
public it was generally distrusted. People were un-
willing to believe that so popular a name could be
tarnished by transactions so unworthy. And they
were right. A published affidavit by Lord Brougham
shows that throughout he acted in the most disin-
terested way ; that he abolished a sinecure of £4,000
a year, and reduced it to a working position of
£6OO ; that he never had, and never could have,
any advantage in any arrangement made by Mr.
Edmunds with anybody for the appropriation of
any part of that gentleman's salary. The report of
the committee confirms all this, and leaves the repu-
tation of the noble lord without spot or blemish of
any kind in relation to this matter. Not the least
of the duties of the select committee was that of
expressing, for the guidance of the public, some
opinion on the conduct of the Lord Chancellor.
It was known that when Lord Westbury proposed
to refer the question of Mr. Edmunds' retiring

pension to the usual quarter for consideratioilf
he was perfectly aware of that person's defal,
cations. And the questions naturally arose, vv LLY
should Mr. Edmunds' delinquencies be passed overt
sub silentio? Is not ape 1%
nsion an acknowledgmen
of faithful service ? By what process can air.
Edmunds have been proved faithful ? And what airie
the grounds of his pension ? The public wow'
have been in doubt to this day on these questios
had not one of the Chancellor's own sons
gazetted to the post which Mr. Edmunds vacated.
Suspicion thereupon arose that the delinquen.
clerk had been allowed to back out quietly 3 il!'
order to make a desirable vacancy for
Slingsby Bethell. How far this is correct there aterue
no adequate means of judging. The cora.nt it
wisely makes no report of probable motives. Jog. vt
emphatically says that it does not concur in the vleit
which the Chancellor took of his duty. In facrit'he
conveys a severe censure on the Chancellor. of
most indulgent construction of language eannit-
make less of it. But the terms in which the Coro
tee speak are obscure and almost contradietq
First, a passage is proposed in the draft report -sale
reflects in severe language upon Lord Nirestbull:
But that is put aside by a majority of one ill flis
of an amendment moved by Lord Taunton' trusted
amendment is so stated by the gentleman
with the drawing up of the report as to leavcls
censure substantially as the original draft had stroll
it. Misled either by the ambiguity or exagger6 lota
of the passage, most of .our contemporaries,
yesterday as if a heavy practical censure had se him
credited the Chancellor's conduct as W leave ce,
no longer in possession of the public confideact,
Lord Derby took the earliest opportunity of corre of
ing that misimpression, and stated, in the Nollseded
Lords last night, that the report was not int° in.
to express more than that the noble lord bad °tog
mitted an error of judgment, and had taken a `r
that
entrus., 0
view of his duty ; and he assured the house
rO)..
fe
IctlY
both the minority and the majority were Pe— .
prepared to acquit him of being actuated by. l 4
proper or unworthy motives. This explanation o'so
be received with great satisfaction, and will disljfion
the public to receive with greater considerao
whatever statement Lord Westbury may feel bo
to make upon the subject. That he owes it W Tai
self to take some notice of it is universally felt blie
there can be no disposition on the part of the Plll3O,
to construe harshly a mistaken line of duty. uiri
whatever may be the consequences of this
Dl~teq in,
to the several parties concerned, one thing is gyp
that there must immediately be some amended Yet
tern of auditing the Treasury accounts. lf,a Neell
check on the accounts of the Patent-office had been
maintained, Mr. Edmunds' frauds would Ilavekor
p
impossible. The worst of it is that we do-Dot udit
that the same carelessness and want of proper ; the
do not prevail in many other departments
public accounts. Some assurance of greater )571c1
lance in future the public have a right to before this
it is to be hoped that it may not be long beßire roved
shock to public confidence is abated by an i 11313
system of audit.