The Sun.
London, England, 1834-06-14 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

It would have been much to the credit of a
reformed House of Commons had one of its
first acts been the removal of all just' grounds
of complaint against any of the machinery of
its own proceedings. By this we need hardly
say that we mainly allude to the enormous
charges which meet whoever may happen to be
suitors before it either for measures or for in-
quiry. Nor will it redound much to the credit
of the house in the eyes of its constituents, if,
while it is cutting down and diminishing other
charges and salaries, those of its own officers
are allowed to assume a sort of hallowed and in-
tactible complexion. As proof that such is
still the case, we .published a few days since the
charges on one Enclosure Bill, and which we
here repeat, viz. :

The Private Bill Office fees
The House fees..
The Committee fees
The Engrossing fees
Housekeepers' and Messengers' fees 710 0

Making in all £274 19 0
exclusive of all the charges of counsel, soli-
citors, agents, King's printer, &c. And of
such bills, varying more or less in length, both
as to time and bulk, there is an average of up-
wards of 200 in every session. It may be
said, and we hope truly, that as the very parti-
culars in question are taken from a Parliamen-
tary return, the house is in the very act of
furnishing itself with the information necessary
to enable it to remedy the abuse. We would
suggest that it would be as well were there a
joint Parliamentary inquiry upon the subject;
that both houses would lay open not only the
whole arcana of the fee trade permitted in each,
but the whole of the several heads of ob-
noxious and enormous charges which the
King's subjects are liable to, who resort to the
one house as appellants or to either as peti-
tioners, either for private bills or for inquiry
into any grounds of complaint calling for length-
ened investigation. What is there, for instance, in
the atmosphere of a committee-room of the House
of Commons, which entitles counsel to be paid
fees double, nay, quadruple, the amount of those
paid in the Courts of Westminster Hall ; and
why should the charges on appeals in the
House of Lords be of such an amount as to
tempt professional cupidity when no other
ground for the proceeding in some cases can be
found to exist ? We repeat that these are ob-
jects of reform which both houses, but the re-
formed House of Commons especially, would
do well not any longer to pause about. As jus-
tice is cheapened elsewhere, it seems preposte-
rous that Parliamentary justice should remain
in its former state of high pressure. We know
of few circumstances which would tend to pro-
duce more general confidence in the legislature,
than that the country should perceive that it is
determined not to permit within its walls abuses
which it is its duty to remedy everywhere. The
reform, like the charity which begins at home,
is generally the most rare, but the most effec-
tual.—Morning Herald.

Mr. Robert Grant will be the new Governor
of Bombay ; and we may congratulate the
country on another popular addition to the Mi-
nistry, in the intended appointment of Mr.
Robert Cutlar Fergusson to the office of Judge
Marshal and Advocate General, in the place of
Mr. Grant.. This appointment, we believe,
will vacate the seat of Mr. Fergusson for the
stewardtry of Kirkcudbright ; and, on Mr.
Grant's departure there will, of couse, be a new
election for the metropolitan borough of Fins-
bury. If Lord Grey continues thus to recruit
his strength from the ranks of the commoners
and reformers, he will re-assure the public con-
fidence in the disposition of his re-formed admi-
nistration. Indeed he has no other choice ;he
must now stand or fall by the advocacy of li-
beral opinions and popular measures. The
coalition with Mr. Stanley, the Duke of Rich-
mond,
Lord Ripon, and the backsliding radical
Sir J. Graham, being dissolved, Lord Grey has
no alternative. The seceders, it is clear, will
throw their weight on the church questions into
the scale of the Tory opposition, if they do not
openly join it. Ministers, therefore, can now
only rest on public opinion, and the justifica-
tion of their professions, by a decided course
of policy. The Tories, falsely calculating on
the cry of " Church in danger"—incensed by
the progressive gain of the popular party—and
flushed with their exclusive exhibitions at Ox-
ford—will commence active operations in Par-
liament, as was demonstrated in the House of
Commons last night. But Lord Grey may
defy the power and stratagems of the conserva-
tives, if he will trust in the strength of the re-
formers. We hope that the vacant offices of
the Postmaster-General and the Lordship of
the Treasury will be soon filled up by the no-
mination of public men in whom the country
can place confidence. The Cabinet and Ad-
ministration yet stand in need of additional
force.—Morning Chronicle.

Due honour was done in the House of Com-
mons on Mr. Wallace's motion on Thursday
to the conduct of the Duke of Richmond. His
Grace has left the Post-office department from
motives honourable to his character, without
probably having accomplished all the reforms
he could have wished, but with the reputation
of being the only Postmaster-General who for
:the last 20 or 30 years has accomplished any
important reforms at all. Since the grand
change of system effected on the plans of Mr.
Palmer, this department of the public service
has remained more stationary than any other.
Indeed, its discriminating characteristic has
been a decided resistance to nearly all sug-
gested ameliorations. It was only by loud
and continued complaints from without that
the attention of the general Government could
be exacted to the abuses of which the public
complained, and then an appeal to the subal-
tern direction of the establishment for the truth
of charges affecting itself brought, as was na-
tural, only satisfactory evidence that these
charges were groundless I Though we had no
less than two joint noble Postmasters-General
for England, a Postmaster-General for Scotland,
and another for Ireland, the duties of inquiry and
of improvement were rather retarded than pro-
moted by these high functionaries. They took
their large salaries, exercised their immense
patronage, and franked to any extent the corre-
spondence of their friends,without ever thinking
of the public interests which they were appoint-
ed to superintend, and without knowing any
more of the machinery of their department, than
a general officer at home knows of the move-
ment of the regiment of which he is colonel,when
on foreign service. The real director of the
machinery, the real commanding officer of the
post-office troops, was the active secretary, who
held all the moving springs of the establishment
in his own hands, and who by his superior
knowledge of detail could evade or resist at
pleasure the most determined purposes of reform

or change in his superiors. We ourselves have
had many struggles with this department re-
specting the postage demanded for foreign jour-
nals—the monopoly of these journals in the
hands of the Post-office clerks—the undue in-
fluence exercised by the English Post-office over
that of our neighbours in France, in interrupting
our supply of Paris papers, commissioned and
transmitted by our own agents—the necessity of
being satisfied with the Post-office translation of
documents of which we ought to have received
the originals ; the time of delivery of our papers
.'orrespondence—and other circumstances to
us of great importance. In these struggles we
had sometimes powerful assistance both from the
Governments of England and France ; but for
a time the Secretary's influence and dexterity
defeated us all. Such a conflict is now happily
at an end. We have ultimately succeeded in
compelling attention to necessary reforms, and
we merely record the allusion to our former po-
litical allies and defeats, in order to show the
strength of that resistance to change which the
subaltern direction of the office could, at all
times, call into exercise, and which the late
Postmaster-General had to overcome. Though
we are grateful to the Duke of Richmond for
his late improvement, and are disposed to be-
stow every praise on his zealous exertions as a
Post-office reformer, we are still convinced that
more might have been done, if so intelligent a
Secretary as Sir F. Freeling had been zealous
to forward the views of his Chief. With
regard to the promotion of intercourse be-
tween France and England, not one-half of
the French propositions, which always appeared
to us just and reasonable, have yet been agreed
to. The propositions discussed between the
chiefs of the Post-office of London and of
Paris last year related to five points,—lst, a
daily post ; 2d, the free transmission of journals
on equal terms ; 3d, the optional franking of
letters ; 4th, the transmission of pamphlets,
literary manuscripts, proof-sheets of books,
&c. ; and, sth, a security for money transmitted
in post letters on a declaration made, and an
insurance given, by the parties sending them.
Of all these propositions, the first is the only
one yet unconditionally adopted. On the other
four points negotiations are still going on, and
to the three last the subaltern direction of the
English Post-office is said to be averse as ever.
The French, we have heard, are resolved to
agree to all the four or to none. It seems,
therefore, that as regards our intercourse with
the Continent, our intercourse with America, our
intercourse with our own colonies, reform has not
been carried to any satisfactory extent. It will like-
wise appear, upon examination—a circumstance
for which the Post-office is not solely answer-
able—that our postage both for home and fo-
reign correspondence is too high, and that the
revenue would improve, as much as public con-
venience would be promoted, by a considerable
reduction. Nor are we insensible to the extent
of the saving of expenditure promised on the
plan of Mr. Wallace, or prepared to doubt the
correctness of his estimates. The idea of having
a great State officer at the head of this depart-
ment, if his salary could be saved by a com-
mission, is quite preposterous, though the ex-
ample of the last noble Postmaster-General
makes us almost forget the anomaly. In France
only one director and a sub-director, with mo-
dest salaries, which we should almost be
ashamed to name, manage the whole business
of the Post-office department for 32,000,000 of
inhabitants.—Times.