The Sun.
London, England, 1865-07-01 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Mos.—The long consecutive narrative which the-
Lord Chancellor has laid before the Select Com-
mittee of the House of Commons puts it into the
power of any one who chooses to give the requisite
attention to form a judgment on the character of this
great magistrate, so hotly attacked, and hitherto by
all men, himself included, so very feebly defended.
There is no longer any reason for reserve on the
matter. We have got on this case at least as much
evidence as we are likely to have. Certainly, judicial
proceedings may be take at the request of Mr. Wilde,
on the ground that he was intimidated into resign-
ing before the merits of his case had been investi-
gated, and the law officers may miscarry even if they
direct a prosecution against any two of the three
accomplices in the purchase of the office, because it
is usual to direct juries to look narrowly into the
evidence of accomplices ; but there is no substantial
doubt of the delinquencies of Mr. Wilde, or of
Messrs. Bethell, Harding, and Welch. Mr. Wilde
had been reproved for misconduct by Lord St.
Leonards and Lord Campbell. He had borrowed
sums of money from the persons whose accounts
were to be submitted to him. He had audited the
accounts of the messengers and official assignees
without vouchers, and allowed payment for work
never done. He had made returns purported to have
been seen and examined by Mr. Ayrton, which he had
never seen or examined. What is the Chancellor's
view of this flagrant case ? " I did not think," he
says, "it was strong enough to warrant dismissal.
That is to say, it might have warranted dismissal ;
but it would have been a severe sentence." Had
Mr. Wilde not resigned, he would have been let off
with reprove. Most people will consider such a
judgment so lenient to the individual as to be
unjust to the public ; but no one can fairly wonder
that Mr. Wilde was allowed to retire on a pension
who remembers that the same thing was done in a
much more flagrant case, that of Mr. Edmunds.
The Lord Chancellor states that he thought
Mr. Wilde stood in the relation of brother
to the Judge of the Probate Court and his own
Secretary in Lunacy. This, he says, undoubtedly
ought not to have influenced his mind, and by
that expression he admits that it did so. From
these facts we may gather the view the head of
the judicial system of the country takes of his duty
as censor of the officers under his charge. The
gravest offences are not sufficient to induce him to
protect the public from their misconduct, and when
by resignation they deliver the people from the bur-
den which the Lord Chancellor will not lighten, the
gravest misconduct is not sufficient to prevent them
from being gratified with large pensions by the sup-
pression of the truth, as in the case of Mr.Edmunds,
or by acting on evidence ludicrously insufficient, as
in the case of Mr. Wilde. It is very well to say that
no wrong motive can be attributed. The interest of
the public suffers just as much as'if it could. In the
case of Mr. Wilde, the Chancellor himself half sug-
gests a motive of private interest which ought never
to have entered into the mind of an upright magis-
trate. Following the same train of thought, it occurs
to us to ask the Lord Chancellor how he ever came
to appoint his eldest son to the office of Registrar to
the Court of Bankruptcy. Was it only in May,
1864, that he knew the character of his son? Was
he the only person in the society in which he lived
who was not aware of the transactions, to which we
need not further allude, which made the Hon. Mr.
Bethell utterly unfit for such an office ? Was the
public interest considered for a moment in that ap-
pointment, or was it not, on the contrary, flagrantly
and notoriously disregarded? Then as to the appoint-
ment of Mr. Welch. Mr. Welch bought Mr. Bethell's
interest with his father, and he got the appointment.
Was there no connection between these two things?
If there was not, the coincidence is indeed most mar-

vellous ; if there was, it must have been because the
Lord Chancellor acted upon the recommendation of
his son, and acted on it after he had found that son
so unworthy that he entertained the idea of dismiss-
ing him from his office. "My son," he says, " had
also mentioned him in the year 1862, and said he
was a gentleman he should be glad if I would recol-
lect." Was this a recoMmendation on which the
Lord Chancellor ought to have acted? Or was it not
one which ought immediately to have inspired suspi-
cion ? When the peculiar dealingsof Mr. Welch with
Mr. Bethell transpired, had the Lord Chancellor
any reason to be surprised at what he heard ? The
Lord Chancellor is asked whether, if he had known
that Mr. Welch had lent money to his son, he would
have made the appointment. His answer is singular,
—" It is difficult to say what I should have done,
but I think I should not have made the appointment."
The question may be a difficult one to a great
Equity Judge ; an ordinary man would probably
have answered it with less hesitation. Again, the
Lord Chancellor says, " I had determined in my
own mind never to appoint my son to any vacancy
in London, and the only thing I did say I would
consider was this, that, if he could get thoroughly
released from his creditors, I would consider whether
I could with propriety appoint him to an office in
the country." As if such a subject admitted of any
question, and as if a man too bad for London might
still be good enough for the country ! There is a
coarseness of moral feeling in these revelations which
must strike the most inattentive and careless reader.
There is, besides, a total absence in the Lord Chan-
cellor's mind, as depicted by himelf, of the slightest
tincture of public spirit. His moral creed seems to
have been to provide for relations, friends, and the
friends of friends and relations, and the only curb to
unbounded nepotism was the necessity of avoiding
public scandal. There is not the trace of a wish that
these important offices should be placed in the best
hands ; not a semblance of zeal for the service of
those by whom he is so highly paid and so deeply
trusted. Patronage seems to be regarded in pre-
cisely the same light as salary—as a property and
not as a trust. As to the charge of having been a
party to the sale of an office within his gift,
we consider that the Lord Chancellor is entitled
to a verdict of " not proven," using these words
in their strict sense. His son sold the recom-
mendation, and the recommendation procured the
office; but there is no proof that the Lord Chan-
cellor knew that the recommendation had been
paid for. At the same time such exculpation
as the Lord Chancellor has he derives from his own
statements, and not from the facts and probabilities
of the case. He says he never saw the certificate
which he was bound to read in a case to which his
attention was particularly drawn. He says he did
not direct the threat which induced Mr. Wilde to
retire, and, though he is, contradicted by Mr. Miller,
he is entitled to the benefit of the assertion. All that
can be said is, that had there been a corrupt inten-
tion this is pretty much the way in which the thing
would have been done, but of that corrupt intention
we have no evidence. We wish we could extend
our acquittal further, but, guiding ourselves by the
Lord Chancellor's own statements, we are unable
to do so.

POST.—Although the report published by the
Select Committee on the Leeds bankruptcy appoint-
mentsembodied the pith of the testimony on which
it was founded, still the unabridged details of the
entire evidence which have now been published
enable us to form a much more correct idea of the
grounds on which the committee arrived at their de-
cision. Substantially- the facts disclosed in the com-
mittee's report remain unmodified, but they are now
for the first time placed in a light which admits of
their being regarded in all their bearings. The com-
mittee found themselves obliged to pass a severe
censure upon the Lord Chancellor in consequence
of his having, without due consideration, allowed
Mr. Wilde to retire from his office with a large pen-
sion ; and having stated the grounds on which the
censure was based, persons were at a loss to under-
stand why it was not, under the circumstances,
even more severe. The committee absolved the Lord
Chancellor from the imputation of having been
actuated by improper motives, but, in the presence
of the extreme negligence which he manifested in
connection with Mr. Wilde's retirement, such an
absolution appeared incomprehensible. Now, how-
ever, that the entire evidence is before us, we see
not only those portions which were adverse to Lord
Westbury, but those which may fairly be appealed
to in his favour, and are no longer under any diffi-
culty in understanding how it came to pass that the
committee should have exonerated the Lord Chan-
cellor of any more serious charge than that of care-
lessness in allowing a gentleman to be pensioned as
an invalid without having satisfied himself that he
was justly entitled to claim that indulgence. In
reference to the circumstances under which Mr.
Welch was appointed to the office vacated by Mr.
Wilde, and the supposed arrangement by which Mr.
Richard Bethel was in his turn to have taken Mr.
Welch's place, the committee unhesitatingly pro-
nounced Lord Westbury blameless ; and there is
certainly, in the copious evidence now published,
not a single fact deposed to which would have war-
ranted them in arriving at a different conclusion.
The retirement of Mr. Wilde from the office of
Registrar to the Leeds Bankruptcy Court, the
appointment of Mr. Welch, and the subsequent
arrangement by which it was intended that Mr.
Welch should be removed to London to make way
at Leeds for the eldest son of Lord Westbury,
are, so far as we can gather, connected together
by those who constitute themselves the accusers of
the Lord Chancellor into one continuous trans-
action, the objects of which were the preferment
of a man who had assisted Mr. Richard Bethell in
his difficulties, and the subsequent appointment of
Mr. Bethell himself at a convenient time to a
lucrative office. In other words, the "improper
motives," of which it is urged that the Lord
Chancellor ought to have been convicted, were
the desire of benefiting a man who had placed his
son under pecuniary obligations, and of retaining

in the office of registrar at Leeds a " place-warmer"
who would at a fitting opportunity vacate that
office in favour of his son. Now, these being the
chargeS, it only remains to be seen how they are
borne out by the evidence. In the month of May,
1864, when Mr. Richard Bethell held the office
of Registrar of Bankruptcy in London, it became
known to his father that he had become deeply in-
volved in consequence of some unlucky speculations
on the Turf, and, as appears by correspondence
which at that time passed between Lord Westbury
and Mr. Miller, the Chief Registrar (the genuine-
ness of which is beyond suspicion), the Chancellor
insisted on the immediate resignation of his son.
This correspondence is especially valuable as a key
to the possible motives which actuated the Lord
Chancellor in the subsequent proceedings, because it
was written at a time when Mr. Bethell actually
held a lucrative office, and when jobbery in his in-
terest was absolutely motiveless. What is the pic-
ture those letters present ? The Chancellor is the
inflexible judge, the unrelenting parent. Mr. Miller
is the persevering but unsuccessful mediator. Mr.
Miller was the confidential adviser and friend of
Lord Westbury, and in communicating with him
the Chancellor had no inducement to act the hypo-
crite. Lord Westbury declares himself stunned by
the disgrace impending over his eldest and, as we
understand, in times now unfortunately past, his
dearest son ; but, nevertheless, he unflinchingly dis-
charges his duty. The Hon. Richard Bethell is com-
pelled to resign his office, and flies the country,
having been outlawed in a public court, and de-
clared a defaulter on the Turf. From that time
until now the Lord Chancellor has never seen his
son. This occurred in May, 1864. In the following
month the Lord Chancellor was made aware of cer-
tain iiTegularites in the conduct of Mr. Wilde, the
Registrar in Bankruptcy at Leeds, and thereupon
followed the correspondence which led to his resig-
nation and the subsequent appointment of Mr.
Welch. We have already had occasion to notice
the remissness of Lord Westbury in assenting to the
retirement, on a pension as an invalid, of an official
whom he had threatened with dismission on account
of malpractices, without having read the certificate
with which the petition was accompanied. But
we are now dealing with his motives. It is sug-
gested that Mr. Wilde was got out of the way
to make room for Mr. Welch, the purchaser of
Mr. Richard Bethell's interest. But what
ground is there for supposing this? The Chan
cellor had not seen his son for a month previously,
his son was on the Continent, and there were no
means by which he could bring his influence, even
supposing he had any, to bear in favour of Mr.
Welch. In the appointment of Mr. Welch, there-
fore, the Chancellor, if influenced at all by any re-
presentations made by his son, must have been so
by representations made before that son himself fell
into disgrace, and the weight of such influence may
be estimated by the fact that the father did not
hesitate to dismiss his own son from office in the
month preceding, though such dismission brought
in its train the flight and disgrace of that unfor-
tunate young man. Taking the events in the order
in which they occur, the next which attract our
notice are those which took place in the February
of the present year, when Mr. Bethell had returned
from his continental: pilgrimage. Mr. Welsh had
held his office of Registrar at the Bankruptcy Court
at Leeds since the preceding June, and, owing to
the appointment of Mr. Slingsby Bethell to the office
of Reading Clerk in the House of Lords, a regis-
trarship in London was vacant. The friends of Mr.
Richard Bethell prayed. the Chancellor to appoint
his erring son to the vacant office in the House of
Lords, but the latter was inexorable. Subsequently
yielding to renewed entreaties by his daughter-in-
law, Lord Westbury held out hopes of giving his
sou a country appointment. A few days later, on
the 27th of February, in consequence of informa-
tion he had received respecting his son, he altered
his intention, and refused to give him any office
whatever. This argument, it is urged, would, had
it been carried into effect, have been the culmina-
tion of a job which had commenced nine months
previously, and was alone prevented by the explo-
sion at the very moment of the Edmunds scandal.
We seek in vain, however, for any evidence to
justify these inferences. It can hardly be contended
that the Lord Chancellor would not have been
justified in receiving in February, 1865, the prodigal
son whom he had dismissed from (Ace in May,
1864, and appointing him to a lucrative situation
in his gift, on condition of his making an ar-
rangement with his creditors. Surely the appoint-
ment of Mr. Richard Bethell on such terms
would not have been an abuse by his father of the
patronage which he possessed. If, however, this be
conceded, it will appear to have been immaterial
whether, a registrarship being vacant at the time,
Mr. Bethell obtained it or not. Mr. Bothell had no
partiality for Leeds, and, as stated by Mr. &arrow,
whose veracity is not impugned, Bristol was the
district to which he would have preferred being ap-
pointed. Had the Registrar at Bristol been re-
moved to the vacant registrarship in London, and
the Chancellor's son appointed in his place, no occa-
sion for scandal would have been supplied. But it
would seem not improbable that by a private
arrangement between Mr. Bethell and Mr. Welch,
of which the Chancellor could have no knowledge,
it was made mutually advantageous that Leeds
should be selected as the scene of Mr. Bethell's
future official duties. It is unfair to suggest that
this arrangement could have come to the Chancel-
lor's knowledge, because neither of the parties had
any motive for acquainting him with it, and with
his son Lord Westbury, as already stated, he never
held any communication. The whole superstructure
of the family job accordingly falls to the ground;
and although the Lord Chancellor cannot excuse
his remissness in regard to the grant of Mr.
Wilde's pension, he may fairlf ask to be acquitted
of any improper motives, either in causing that
gentleman to vacate his office or in appointing his
successor.