The Sun.
London, England, 1865-05-30 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, MAY 30, 1865.

POLICE INTELLIGENCE.—This Day.

Legislative Encouragement to Fraudulent
Dealings with the Public Money.

(From the Economist.)

The accusations made against the Lord Chancellor have
as yet had no effect on that great functionary, and probably
will not have. Nothing is likely to be proved against him
inconsistent with his continuing to hold the Great Seal.
But there is good reason to hope that the revelations of
subordinate matters consequent on those accusations may
insure a very great reform in public money matters.

Nothing can be safer than the honesty of English officials
on the high road. The great sums that are received by all
important departments, by the Customs, or the Excise, or
the Stamps and Taxes, aro entirely beyond question. But
there are a great number of by-ways to the English Exche-
quer. There are many out-of-the-way recipients of the
public money for occasional charges and incidental fees,
who are under no check, who are subject to no audit, who
are often in arrear, who do just as they like.
Mr. Edmunds, who is now so notorious, was one of these.
His mode of dealing with the public money is now on
record by official investigation, and out of his own mouth,
and, therefore, it is easy to speak of it correctly, and duo
to the public to describe what it was. Mr. Edmunds was
Clerk of the Patents,—that is, not only to the patents for
inventions, which, in common conversation, are exclusively
so called, but also to what the law calls patents—that is,
the special licences which are preliminary both to the duties
and the profits of the principal offices under the Crown.
There are very considerable sums annually paid for these
licences, as is natural, since a great number of the best
places in the State cannot be obtained without them. Mr.
Edmunds duly received these moneys, but did not pay them.
over. He placed them in a bank account which is thus
described in the evidence of Mr. Greenwood, the solicitor
to the Treasury, who inquired into the matter, and thus
caused the entire disturbance :
" Lord Chelmsford—What is the title of the book ?
Leonard Edmunds, Esq., Patent-office Account.' The
address is, ' 121, Regent-street,' altered afterwards to 21,
Berkeley-square.' This is the pass-book, headed Patent
office Account, Leonard Edmunds, Esq., with Messrs.
Coutts and Co.,' and this that I hold in my hand is a
transcript of what was handed to me by Mr. Leonard Ed-
munds.

" Earl of Derby—lt begins, I see, in November, 1833 ?
Yes, that is the first entry.

"And is continued down to when ?—lt continues down
to April 27, 1864. In the first page there are three draughts
to private account of £lB7 odd, £lBO odd, and £lOO, and
in the next page, To your account, £l4B Os.'
"' To your private account, £229 lls. ?'—Yes, there is
that entry ; and then in 1835, To your account, £loo.'
" To yourself, £so,' that is in 1836 ; and then on August 3,
To your private account, £99 7s. 6d.' March 7, 1837, To
your private account, £loo,' and in December, To your
account, £150,' and then afterwards to bearer, £5O, and so
forth. I said we should desire to have an account of those
moneys. It had been stated by Mr. Edmunds that the
moneys which had been paid in to Messrs. Coutts' consisted
of public moneys, and then, it appearing that a number of
these sums had, as far as we could judge from the way the
pass-book was made up, been paid to the private account,
we desired to know for what reason they wero transferred
to the private account.
"Lord Taunton—Do you mean transferred from the
public account with Messrs. Coutts to Mr. Edmunds's pri-
vate account with Messrs. Coutts ?—I have never seen Mr.
Edmunds's private account at all ; but it is entered here,
To your private account:'

"Were these transfers from the public account kept by
Mr. Edmunds to his private account ? Is that what you
mean by transferred ?—I cannot tell. I have no materials
except these.

"Earl of Derby—Did you examine Mr. Edmunds with
this pass-book in your hands, and sail his attention to
these payments specially, and ask him to account for them ?
7--Yes, every one of them.

" Did he give you no account of them ?—None."

That is to say, Mr. Edmunds paid the public money to
an account at a private bank, and drew on it for his own
benefit.

We boldly say that this circumstance of itself ought,
under proper management of the national TreasUry, to be a
valid reason and a certain cause of immediate dismissal. A
man ought not to remain a day in the public service who
even began such a practice, much less a person like Mr.
Edmunds who continued the bad custom more than 30 years.
It has been gravely argued that at first at least Edmunds
put back the money.—that the transfer of his "private
accounts" were in the nature of mistake; were somewhat
abnormal,—and other weak defences. But under a tolerable
system of national finance it would be impossible that such
defences should be made. They are a worse condemnation
of our present system than the offences they are offered
to palliate. They show on the part of those who make
them a lax notion of the manner in which public money
ought to be dealt with,—more dangerous than specific
misconduct.

Even if Mr. Edmunds had never been in arrears with his
accounts, we should have considered the system faulty,
though we should not have blamed him. Indeed, we do not
now blame him for what he did. You have no right to
tempt a man with untold gold. You have no right to autho-
rise a public servant for many years to mix up public
moneys with his own moneys, and then to bo surprised if
he cannot distinguish them. The final difficulty of making
the distinction was very great. Mr. Edmunds himself tells
us :

"In July last I employed Mr. Hooper, a professional
skilled accountant, to assist me in making out the accounts
for the whole 31 years, which accounts had never before
been rendered or audited in any shape. I worked with Mr.
Hooper for some weeks upon these accounts. The book con-
taining the accounts of receipts of fees and distribution of
the same, commencing in 1833 and ending in 1846, has been
lost or mislaid by Mr. Ruscoe, the chief clerk, who had the
custody of the books of the office; that book has disap-
peared, and no reasonable account is given of its disappear-
ance. However, it is gone from the custody of Mr. Ruscoe,
who had the custody of the books."
This singular statement is a part, not of the accusation,
but of the defence. Mr. Edmunds, who for 30 years and
more has received a certain part of the public income, ad-
mits he has never during all that time rendered any ac-
count of it, and says he cannot be sure of what he has re-
ceived and what he ought to pay, because of the loss of an
account-book relating wholly to transactions now more
than 20 years past.

_ •
Nor is this the end. It sounds like a jest, but it is a literal
fact, that 13 years ago Mr. Edmunds ceased altogether to
pay over this branch of the public revenue. Before
that he hadpaid over uncertain sums at uncertain intervals,
brit after that time he ceased to pay over at all. The dia-
logue between him and the Solicitor to the Treasury would
be ludicrous if the matter were not so grave :
"Mr. Greenwood—Since August 9, 1852, I do not find
that there hasbeen any payment to the Exchequer, although
there are very large balances; are you in a paition to tell us
why you have not paid any accounts into the Exchequer ?
Mr Edmunds--Not at present. Will you allow me a rea-
sonable time, and I will put in an account of the whole
matter? Mr. Greenwood—These are questions not to be
answered by accounts. No, I am aware of that. Mr.
Greenwood—lt is a remarkable fact that throughout you
pay considerable sums to the Exchequer, and that in
August, 1852, that is more than 12 years ago, you seem to
have ceased to make any payment to the Exchequer, al-
though large balances Are in vonr hands. I went to know
whether you eau explain that F . 'Edmilnds-1 cannot
reasonable." sonabl v

The practice of receiving the people's money without pay-
ing it over or accounting for it is, undoubtedly, difficult of
L, reasonable explanation."

It naturally occurred to the Committee of tho House of
Lords, and it must occur to our readers, to ask how such
gross misconduct should be possible. They inquired whose
duty it was to call such an offender as Mr. Edmunds to ac-
count ; they evidently expected to find, as they ought to
find, some specific functionary charged nith watching Mr.
Edmunds, and seeing that he paid the money over rightly.
They find that there is no such functionary. The law, as
explained by the authorised expositors, is not only one in a
defective state, but in what, to those who aro not familiar
with it, who hear it fee the first time, is an incredible state.
The Act under which Mr. Edmunds was appointed pro-
scribes that the "fees and emoluments" received by him
" shall be accounted for once in every three months, com-
mencing in the first instance from the date of such appoint-
ment respectively, and shall be paid by the said officers re-
spectively into the receipt of his Majesty's Exchequer, and
be carried to and made part of the Consolidated Fund of
the United Kingdom of Groat Britain and Ireland; and the
account of the party so paying such fees shall be verified
by his oath, which oath any one of the Masters in Ordinary
of the High Court of Chancery is hereby required and au-
thorised to administer."

It would strike a person new to the study of English in-
stitutions that the Chancellor of the Exchequer—the head
of the Exchequer—was the person responsible for its busi-
ness. But this is an error. It would be much truer to say
that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was the enemy of the
Exchequer; he is the head of the Treasury, and there is an
entire series of defensive enactments intended to protect the
Exchequer from the Treasury. The true head of the Ex-
chequer is the "Controller," and he is so far from being an
officer under the Treasury, that he is the person to resist
the Treasury. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is the per-
son who spends the public money ; the " Controller" is the
person who prevents its being spent improperly ; his busi-
ness is to see that no money not duly authorized by Par-
liament should ever be expended. Popularly the Exche-
quer and the Treasury are looked upon as one thing, but
they are two things, and even twohostile things ; the Trea-
sury is a paying machine ; the Exchequer is a receiving
machine strictly, and out of abundant caution fenced
against the paying machine. It would be exaggerating to
say that in practical life the Exchequer is an office hostile
to the Treasury, but it is strictly true to say that it is an
office most jealous of the Treasury.
To explain the almost inconceivable mode in which this
separation of offices works, we must give the very words in
the official statement, for we are afraid otherwise it will not
be believed. Mr. Gladstone, with Mr. Hamilton and Mr.
Arbuthnot, two principal permanent officers of the Trea-

my, were examined by the Committee, and answered
thus :

"Lord Chelmsford—When the money is spoken of as
having been paid into_ the Exchequer, which is the depart-
ment of the Exchequer into which the money would be
paid ?—The Exchequer is an entirely distinct and indepen-
dent office, and has no connexion whatever with the Trea-
sury, except such as rests upon law or known usage. The
Exchequer is not a department of the Treasury, nor is it an
office subordinateto the Treasury. There are certain fixed
relations between the Exchequer and the Treasury ; but
beyond those the Exchequer is entirely independent and
separate.

"(To Mr. Arbuthnot).—The word Exchequer' is a mys-
terious word ; can you help us to understand it ?—I think
I can explain it. According to the old usage every pay-
ment of revenue was made at the office of the Exchequer,
which is termed in acts of Parliament the receipt of the
Exchequer, and was brought to account at the Exchequer;
but in course of time the Bank of England became the
bankers of the Exchequer, and people tendering money had
to go to the Exchequer to get a receivable order from the
Controller-General for the Bank to receive it, in order that
it might be carried to the proper account ; but legally and
nominally the money is still paid into the receipt of the
Exchequer as it was before.

" Had, then, the Controller-General any check at all on
the payment of money ? Did he know what ought to be
paid ?—He had no check, exempt from the affidavit of the
person tendering the money.
"It appears that Mr. Edmunds offered an affidavit to the
Exchequer, and that they would not receive it.—He had to
swar the affidavit before a Master in Chancery.
"Earl of Derby—He said he wanted to make the affidavit
before them, and they said it was no part of their business
to take kffidavits.—l think the act prescribes that the oath
was to be taken before a Master in Chancery.
"Lord Chelmsford—After a certain time there was no
Master in Chancery; the office was abolished. Can you give
us any notion at all what sort of check there would be upon
the receipts of Mr. Edmunds and the money to be paid over
by him to the Exchequer ?—I think it is one of the mys-
teries of the Court of Chancery."
So the law controlling Mr. Edmunds worked thus—The
Controller of the Exchequer said, " I can't interfere ; I am
an officer to receive money, but not an officer to induce
persons to pay money. I have no compulsory powers
vested in me ; I can prevent money going out, but I can-
not interfere to make it come in." The Treasury say,
"We cannot interfere. We are not named in the act. The
money is to be paid into the Exchequer. the Exchequer
is over the way ;' we have no authority to interfere there,
and if we did, an interference would be much disliked,
and not at all attended to." The Master in Chancery had
the best defence of all ; he said, " I cannot interfere, be-
cause I am abolished."

It is painful to think that in the 19th century we should
be gravely discussing for an important object such miser-
able technicalities. It passes patience that there should
be two great finance departments, each with power to
counteract the other, but neither with power to stop actual
malversation ; both industrious, rigid, and virtuous, but
both pertnitting a petty clerk to withhold accounts and
appropriate money for years. What is a financial organisa-
tion fit for if it does not even attempt to check the most
frequent, easy, and probably of financial offences ?
This is only, however, one out of very many such cases,
and when we consider how English institutions have often
originated, the continuance of such cases is very natural.
We allowed our institutions to struggle up ; we did not
create them, but let them grow. The whole structure of
our law courts is the history of the gradual expansion of
certain germs which showed themselves capable of ex-
panding, but which were in their origin very different from
what they afterwards became. As long as they did not
cost anything, or come to the Treasury for any money, they
were permitted to enlarge their functions almost as they
liked. Take the case of the Court of Exchequer, which is so
closely connected with the old offwe of the Exchequer that
has been mentioned. This court was originally a court for
deciding revenue cases, in which the Crown was interested
and no others; it is now a court authorised to decide all
cases. By the monstrous and almost incredible fiction that
the plaintiff in every case is rendered liable to pay a debt
to the Crown because the defendant would not pay him,
the Court of Exchequer extended its originally restricted
jurisdiction to an almost universal civil jurisdiction.
The motive for so doing was to increase its income ; every-
body about it was paid, not by salaries, but by fees, and the
more suits increased, the more fees augmented. A very great
number of separate pecuniary entities have thus grown up
in the interstices of English institutions, which claim to
have separate interests, separate rights, separate moneys
apart from the nation. Nothing can, of course, be more
absurd. All the necessary expenses of a department—of a
law department as much as any other—ought to be defrayed
from the national Treasury, and all moneys received by the
department ought to be paid into the national Treasury.
This might seem a truism, but it is a truth on which it has
as yet been found impossible to act. The lawyers steadily
maintain that the Treasury is not to be trusted with their
moneys, that the Executive Government is not to be trusted.
What, then, it may be asked, do the lawyers do with their
money ? And the answer is, perhaps, the most amusing
part of all. They invest it in the securities of the
Executive Government ; they buy Exchequer Bills and
Consols. Having first proved that the Government can-
not be trusted, they immediately proceed to trust it im-
plicitly. Tho alternative is plain. On the one hand, if
the English nation cannot be trusted, Consols are a name
not for a reliable income, but for an unreliable promise, and
then it is absurd to buy them ; on the other hand, if the
English nation is trustworthy, it is absurd, in its own courts
and offices, not to trust it, but to buy into its securities one
against the other, raising the price against each other, and
wasting the public money in useless fees to unnecessary
brokers. In fact, the custody of money is a pleasant thing,
and many lawyers and many other people do not like to
give it up.

The proper remedies are two—first, that all persons per-
mitted to receive money should be bound to pay it over
without delay to the Exchequer at the Bank of England ;
and that the Treasury should be bound to see it is paid.
Secondly, that as few persons as possible should be per-
mitted to receive money, all minor charges, all fees, all
but the great productive branches of the public money,
should be paid, not in money, but in stamps. Nobody will
misuse these, and their custody is not so pleasant that
people will cling to it at the risk of any absurdity.
Persons who have not attended to the subject think that
such abuses as those could not stand for a day; but, in
fact, the most influential people in England have been
trying to alter them for years, but have failed. Tho pre-
sent Chancellor says :--
"I believe that the root of the mischief lies in this Act
of Parliament, and not only in this Act of Parliament, but
in a rather wide-spread system under which there are vast
sums of money in this country in various categories for
which the public would be ultimately responsible, and with
regard to which, if they disappeared, the Housa of Com-
mons would be called upon for a vote for their replacement,
and with regard to which, nevertheless, the Treasury has
no power whatever.
"Chairman—Will you state some of the instances to
which you refer ?—I may mention the Chancery funds, to
begin with ; the Suitors' Funds.
"Did you not once attempt to deal with that fund?—
The Cabinet, at my instance, and the instance also, if I re-
member right, of the Lord Chancellor, who was then At-
torney-General, advised the Crown to issue a commission
for the purpose of inquiring into the condition of that fund
with a view to a change, and the commission has reported.
They reported after a long inquiry, but no measures have
been token upon the subject of that report, and the commis-
sion has not touched the question in its report whether the
control, as far as custody is concerned, should or shouldnot
be given to any department of the Executive Government
over those moneys.

" Is there any jealousy of the Treasury with regard to
interference with any of those branch funds ?—lf I were
asked my own private opinion, I should say undoubtedly
there is very great jealousy of the Treasury whenever it
shows an inclination to interfere. It would not be difficult
to show, from reports of discussions in the House of Com-
mons, the jealousy of the Treasury ; which, perhaps, not
unnaturally arises when it endeavours to .got into its hands
and under its control money which is not there now."

In fact, if you talk to the parties interested, they say—
"Ah ! Gladstone has been trying for years to get hold of
our moneys, but he has not got hold of them yet. We have
beaten him, and we hope we may beat him. When he goes
away perhaps wo may get a quieter man.

JOSIAH WEDGWOOD AT COURT.—A most charm-
ing anecdote has come down to our day in relation
to ono of Mr. Wedgwood's visits at Court. Ho was sum-
moned to St. James's, and, on arriving at the appointed
hour on a sunny spring or summer's morning, was ushered
into the royal presence. The Queen stood with her ladies
beneath an unshaded window, and here it was that Mr.
Wedgwood advancing made his obeisance, and, displaying
the ware he had brought, answered the royal questions.
But as her Majesty thus stood examining some exquisite
specimen of the art, which years of ceaseless toil and un-
repining obscurity had brought to this perfection, the
sun's power increased, and its rays, falling on her free,
caused her obvious annoyance. The possible etiquette
was to have mentioned the matter to one of the unobser-
vant ladies in attendance, who in turn would have sum-
moned a page or royal footman. But Mr. Wedgwood
thought only of removing the intruding glare, and that
speedily. He simply walked straight to the window, and
pulled down the blind. The Queen, aware in an instant
of the relief and its cause, looked up from the object she
was regarding, and, inclining her head, smiled her thanks.
"Ladies," she said, addressing her attendants, "Mr.
Wedgwood it; you see, already an accomplished courtier."
It was courtesy, however, learnt in the school of nature
—the offspring of a manly and generous respect for woman
—and he would have shown it as much to a peasant as to
the Queen, who was his foremost patron.—The Shilling
Magazine.
FATAL BOAT ACCIDENT ON THE RIVER LEA.--
On Sunday evening a gentleman was rowing in an out-
rigger on the River Lea, when, by a false stroke of the oar,
the vessel was upset near Lea-bridge, and 10 minutes
elapsed before the deceased was got out.' He was then
found to be dead.