The Sun.
London, England, 1865-11-02 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

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betunable to discharge the
duties of the Chancellor
Official business to perfoorfmhe Duchy of Lancaster.
there. is none. H the
holder is one of those whom it thought desirable
to introduce into the Cabinet, heis
intro-
duced ; if not, he can with equal tacc.a.nt be so
in y be excluded.
There are numerous and incontrovertible precedents
both ways. This charming office
is a charming
slipper that can fit any foot, a garment that il
held adapt itself to any shoulders. It has been w by
men of different positions, characters,
and acquire-
ments. It was not thought below the acceptance of
Lord Holland, it was held by Mr. Nisbet Hamilton,
Mr. Strutt, and Lord Granville, and, to come to later
times, by Mr. Cardwell and Lord Clarendon, who
have each in turn exchanged it for the position of a
Secretary of State. As the office has no duties, no-
body can be said to be particularly qualified for it;
and, on the other hand, nobody need be so extrava-
gantly modest as to consider himself disqualified.
Such being the nature of the post, it must needs be a
little surprising, to those who are not behind the
scenes, that it has remained vacant even during the
fortnight whichhassucceeded the death of Lord Pal-
merston. Perhaps it was not wise to call so much atten-
tion to the office at all as has necessarily been
evoked by the omission to fill it up. It is one of
those institutions that may well pass in a crowd, as
it has often done before, but will scarely support a
very rigorous or critical examination. It does, in-
deed, seem singular that it should have survived the
abolition of so many offices,. the salary of which
made them naturally an object of regard to the
Minister of the day, while the absence of all duty
to be rendered to the public in return for that salary
made them just in the same proportion obnoxious
to the advocates of economy and retrenchment.
The office was defended on the ground that those
who held the more important offices under the Go-
vernment were so fully occupied in the discharge of
the duties annexed to those offices as to be unable
to defend in debate the general policy of the
Government ; and it was urged that there was an
obvious advantage in creating a post free from
arduous and responsible official duties, to be held by
a man who would thus be able to give his whole time
to assisting the Prime Minister in the management
of debates in the House of Commons. This idea
was, in fact, an anticipation of the notion which the
logical genius of our neighbours across the Channel
has since produced—the distinction between acting
and speaking Ministers—a distinction as old as the

days when Moses, the man of action, associated to
himself Aaron, the man of words. o extraordi-
nary success has waited upon this new idea in
France, and the same may be most unquestionably
said of it in England. The House listens with much
patience to members of Opposition speaking on sub-
jects connected with public affairs upon which
they possess very scanty information; it knows that
they have not access to official documents and
secrets; it recognises the utility of the functions they
perform, and it treats them with indulgence ac-
cordingly. But from a Minister of State speaking
on behalf of the Government the House of Com-
mons expects to get its information at first hand; it
hears with impatience men who appear to speak from
a brief furnished to them by an office with which
they have no connexion, and seems to regard them
rather in the light of professional advocates than
of authoritative exponents of Ministerial policy.
From this instinct of the House it probably
arises that, with the exception of the law officers
speaking on purely legal points, no Minister not in
the Cabinet has ever made a reputation by making
speeches in defence of the Government beyond the
sphere of his own Department. The feeling always
is that the Department should be defended by its
own representative, and that if any further defence
be needed the Government should find it in the
goodwill and ability of its non-official supporters.
Perhaps from these and similar causes—perhaps
from the non-oratorical tendencies of the men who
have held the office—it certainly does so happen
that the Chancellors of the Duchy of Lancaster
have for many years taken very little share in the
debates of the House of Commons, and that the
purpose for which the office was retained, or said to
be retained, has been by no means fully answered.
The duties of the office, such as they are, consist in
the management, upon certain very well understood
principles, which leave very small discretion to the
holder, of a certain portion of the domains of the
Crown, and might, without any conceivable injury
to the public service, be transferred to the Office of
Woods and Forests, to which they seem properly to
belong. We do not here enter into the question
whether it is desirable that the Crown lands, the
income from which during the life of the present
Sovereign is the property of the nation, should be
administered by a person directly responsible to
Parliament, or by a permanent official. One thing
is quite certain, that both plans cannot be right,
and that we should either extend the jurisdiction of
the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to all the
lands of the Crown, or put an end to the anomaly
of managing one part upon one system and another
part upon another by placing the whole of them in
the hands of the same office. It seems from these
considerations that the Chancellorship of the Duchy
of Lancaster is just one of those offices which exist
simply because they have existed, and because plau-
sible reasons were advanced for their maintenance,
which experience has failed to justify. The attention
drawn to this office may be of good service if it shall
put an end to a sinecure from which, tracing its history
from the year 1848, when it was last called in question,
the public seems to have received very little advan-
tage in return for an expenditure of some thirty-five
thousand pounds. It does not follow, however, that
if the office should be abolished the Government
should lose a place in the House of Commons. It
would be very easy to find departments which might
be created, the head of which would be much more
profitably employed than in the sinecure of the
Duchy of Lancaster. Some of the great Departments
of State—the Treasury, the Home-office, and the
Foreign-office, for instance—complain of being
overworked ; the duties discharged by the Secretary
of the Treasury, who has gradually engrossed to
himself almost all the powers of the Board, are
larger than his official position iu the House of
Commons warrants. It might not be thought too
much, considering the great importance of the sub-
ject, should a. Cabinet Minister answer for the
Foreign-office in each House of Parliament. Or, if
such an innovation be thought too bold, there are
many new Departments which might be suggested.
The Ecclesiastical Commission would probably have
given much less dissatisfaction, and been exposed
to much less obloquy, if its defence had not always
been allowed to go by default in the House of Com-
mons, and if the Government of the day had felt
itself responsible for its proceedings. The affairs of
the metropolis and its environs might well furnish
occupation for a Minister of State, and it is pro-
bable that its inhabitants would view with much
satisfaction any measure that should rescue them
from, the present anarchy of boards and vestries, and
place them under the guidance and direction of a
single able and efficient Minister. It would not be
difficult to enumerate other cases, but we have said
enough to show that the money now wasted on a
sinecure might easily be employed in a manner
highly beneficial to the public. One of the most
valuable political discoveries of the present day, far
surpassing anything which the gentlemen of the
Social Science Congress even profess to have effected,
is, that affairs bungled and mismanaged by a board
may be placed with the very best results to the pub-
lic service in the hands of a single responsible
Minister. We do not press for the abolition of the
office of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, we
only suggest that to the position and the salary
some kind of duty useful to the public should be
added, and if none such can be found we are pre-
pared to acquiesce in the saving of the salary to the
public. Our taxation sits easier on us than it did,
but we are not yet rich enough to maintain offices
which add nothing to the dignity of the Crown and
confer no advantage on the subject.
POST.—In America, as in England, the unofficial
speeches of Cabinet Ministers not unfrequently
furnish correct indications of a future Ministerial
policy, and what have been termed the extra-parlia-
mentary utterances of those in power are listened to
with equal attention on both sides of the Atlantic.
Parliament is in no country in constant session, and
the occasions on which a Minister is called on to
respond to a toast at a dinner-table, or reply to a
complimentary speech in a town-hall, are perhaps
as good as could possibly be selected for affording
to an inquisitive public some inkling of the manner
in which a Ministry either are conducting, or pro-
pose to conduct, the affairs of the nation. Now, it
so happens that Congress is not at present sitting
in the United States, but there are nevertheless a
variety of questions, both of foreign and domestic
policy, on which the American public are desirous
of being enlightened, and Mr. Seward, the Secretary
for Foreign Affairs, has availed himself of an oppor-
tunity which recently presented itself of affording
some little insight into the possible action of the
Cabinet in that department of the State over which
he presides. The American Government have of
late had so much to do at home, that, however, de-
sirous they might have been of intermeddling in
foreign matters, the possibility of doing so was vir-
tually denied o them. Now, however, that they
have succeeded in bringing to a termination a se-
rious family quarrel, even though they have not as
yet swept away the traces of the recent struggle,
they seem to have found the much-desired leisure
for reviewing the state of their foreign relations.
Some little alfferenueo betwoon the Unifsd states
and Great Britain, arising out of the late war,
still remain unsettled, and an intervention by a
foreign State in the affairs of a Republic which,
though not part of the Union, still took its root, if
it did not flourish, on American soil, has until
now been completely disregarded. Both these
matters must be looked to, and Mr. Seward in a
speech, evidently intended for publication in
Europe as well as in America, has given—in that
rather obscure language in which statesmen delight
when indicating a policy which is subject to modi-
fication by future events—some significant hints
which it would be impossible to disregard. In re-
spect to the attitude which will be assumed by Mr.
Johnson's Cabinet in regard to the claims made
upon the English Government on account of the
depredations committed by Confederate cruisers,
the language of the American Secretary may be re-
garded as reassuring. A declaration that the Pre-
sident will conduct the settlement of those claims
without compromising the national dignity and
honour certainly seems not only to exclude the idea
of having recourse to the ratio ultima regum in case
the satisfaction of the demands made by the Ame-
rican Government is refused, but appears to con-
template the possibility of a course of action on the
part of Mr. Johnson, which by some might be' in-
terpreted as amounting to a concession: Mr. Seward
and the other advisers of the President have long
since had before them the voluminous correspon-
dence which was published about a 'fortnight since
in the London Gazette, and have probably come to
the conclusion that the complaints addressed to the
British Government were groundless, and the claims
with which they were accompanied untenable. It is
now placed beyond a doubt that it was the Ameri-
can Government which first created their opponents
belligerents, not only by proclaiming a blockade of
the Soulhern ports, but by proceeding to enforce such
blockade before the English Government had ac-
corded to the Confederates a belligerent status. It
also appears that Mr. Seward himself was the
first Minister who, in an official despatch, made use
of the word " neutrals," a term which can have no
application except during the existence of a war.
The demand for compensation rests on grounds by

no means so substantial as those on which the
Spanish and Portuguese Governments based the
claims which, in 1818, they submitted to the Go-
vernment of the United States, and which that Go-
vernment declined to satisfy-. Mr. Johnson can
scarcely deny the appositeness of a precedent created
by one of his own predecessors, and we may there-
fore reasonably expect that the course resolved upon
by the Government at Washington will be one
which, "without compromising the national dignity
and honour," will amount to a frank withdrawal of
demands which could not equitably be sustained.
The language in which Mr. Seward treated the
Mexican question was far different in its tone. " The
influence of the United States on the international
conduct of foreign States, particularly on the Ame-
rican continent," would, he told his hearers,
"though impaired by the civil war, be now re-
newed," and "he expected to see republican insti-
tutions, wherever heretofore established throughout
the American continent, speedily vindicated, re-
newed, and invigorated." Unless Mr. Seward em-
ploys language for the purpose of concealing his
thoughts, instead of expressing them, these words
only admit of one construction. It is no secret that
the famous doctrine which has received the name of
President Monroe is one which specially recom-
mends itself to the national vanity, and any action
taken by the Government with the view of uphold-
ing it, even though at the cost of a foreign war,
would be viewed with almost universal satisfaction.
Hitherto the American Government have contented
themselves with refusing to recognise the new Mex-
ican empire—they have simply remained passive—but
now, to quote the language of their spokesman, "their
influence will be renewed." One can hardly suppose
a Cabinet Minister, even in America, would give
utterance to what certainly sounds very like threats,
if his Government had no intention of carrying
those threats into execution ; and when Mr. Seward
declares that he expects to see a republic where an
empire now exists, people are justified in thinking
that those with whose intentions he must be pre-
sumed to be acquainted have resolved on endea-
vouring to effect that change. American Ministers
are so frequently betrayed into " bunkum" that we
would willingly believe that in the present instance
Mr. Seward had no other object in view than that
of gratifying his audience by expressing sentiments
which they would be sure to relish. But the Mexi-
can question is one, of all others, which ought only
to be touched seriously. The present is certainly,
not the occasion which the Government at Wash-
ington would be likely to select for embarking in
another war ; and, whatever may be their designs,
it is likely that the time for putting them into exe-
cution has not been determined upon. A distant
policy must, however, be to a great extent depen-
dent on the course of events, and we may be per-
mitted to hope that, ere the subversion of the
Mexican empire is resolved upon, the American
people may be brought to regard in a different light
the exclusive doctrine of President Monroe.