The Sun.
London, England, 1860-11-21 00:00:00

STATE 07 AUSTRIA.

Every one who has visited Vienna is aware that
no European Government makes more extravagant
pretentions to extraordinary morality and virtue
than the Austrian. On almost every public build-
ing is inscribed a motto telling us that justice and
incorruptibility are the sole. stable foundations of
lkingdoms ; yet, be it said in passing—however
irreverent it may appear to the partisans of the Aus-
trian system—that there is no European country,
with the single exception of Russia, in which there
is more flagrant dishonesty and immorality than in
Austria. A widespread corruption exists among all
the bureaucracy, civil and military, and this corrup •
Lien has been hitherto winked at, if not covertly en-
couraged, by some very high-placed functionaries.
Many circumstances have contributed to foster and
perpetuate the corruption and immorality of official
men in the Austrian dominions. In the first place,
they are inadequately remunerated, as in Russia;
and in a capital insufficiently supplied with house-
room, and in which, as a natural consequence, rent,
lodgings, and provisions are dear, it is impossible
for the enzployes to live on their salaries. The taste
for extravagance, high living, and the pursuit of
pleasure also pervades all classes of the population.
Men and women desire to fare sumptuously every
day, to wear purple and fine linen, to drive in the
Prater in handsome equipages, to dine at the most
extensive restaurants, and to visit nightly the Hof
Theatre, or the little house where Schuster used,
in the olden time, to make the lieges laugh, in
the Leopoldatadt Fanbourg. These things cannot
be done on .a few hundred florins a year, in a capital
in which a first and second floor let for the rent
of a decent London house, and the consequence
is that civil and military employes levy black mail
on the public, or defraud the State by malversa-
tions and corruptions. The low teaching and
the intense Jesuitism of the clergy has never
sought to awaken to better morality the torpid
consciences of the Viennese. If the civil or mili-
tary employe attends mass on high days and holi-
days, goes to confession a couple of times a year,
pays his ecclesiastical dues with a good grace, and
never utters anything but an orthodox political
sentiment, it is immaterial to his priest or his
bishop how he fleeces the public or robs the State.
In no country on earth is there better raw material
among the small farmers and peasants for making
a fine army than in Austria. The men are brave,
stalwart, docile, and well disposed; but if their
officers and commanders have no care for their
clothing or creature comforts, or are in complicity
with the commissariat or contractors to cheat the
men, by giving them indifferent food, cloth, leather,
hose, and cotton garments, thus interfering with
their health, strength, and efficiency on the field
and in garrison, how can the men be blamed for
not fully performing their duty ? Of what avail is it
that Austrian cltilir-a-canon is brave and obedient,
is ductile and easily fashioned to his work ? A great
portion of the troops who so vigorously combated
at Magenta and Solferino..were 14 and 18 hours
without food, and the last meal they partook of was
insufficient in quantity and indifferent in quality.
No, doubt the Austrian treasury had agreed to pay
for a sufficiency of wholesome rations, and that the
State is debited with them in the grand score, as
though they had been actually .provided; but the
truth is that, what with the dishonesty of command-
ing officers, of military intendants, of commissaries-
general, of commissaries, and contractors, every-
thing was and is at sixes and sevens in the Austrian
army. Percentages and pots de via, as our neigh-
bours in Paris call them, were granted at right and
at left, and inferior and unserviceable articles were
substituted for what ought to be good and sound
corn, flour, calico, broadcloth, and leather. A cen-
tury ago, or even less, malversations and rogueries
of this kind were common enough among our own
commissaries and contractors. Nelson, in 1787,
wrote from the West Indies to the Comptroller of
the Navy, stating that frauds were committed to
the extent of £500,000, £300,000, and £250,000.
But though the peculators, from their interest, for
a time succeeded in baling the great commander,
yet he ultimately dragged them into day, and ex-
posed their delinquencies. But our courts of law
were then, as now, open to the public ; their
proceedings were published and commented
upon in the daily journals, and thus a flood
of light was thrown on a system which in Austria
has been insufficiently exposed. Not that we accuse
Austrian judges of venality or a desire to stifle the
truth ; but Austrian tribunals are close, if not abso-
lutely secret, and there is not that canvassing of
the facts and circumstances, orally and by cross-
examination, which a civil or criminal trial before
a British jury with us so admirably supplies. We
are not therefore surprised that not half the truth
has come out in the trial of Herr Richter, the com-
missary and contractor, which began at Vienna
quite recently, and which still continues. Enough,
however, has already transpired in evidence in this
process to fix a deceased Minister of the Austrian
Crown with a guilty knowledge of, if not a direct
complicity and pecuniary 'participation in, fraud.
This corruption in high places had been long ago ,
believed among the well-informed in England to
exist, but it is now proved beyond the possibility of
a doubt. The statesman whose memory is thus
tarnished was not a matt of aristocratic birth, but a
man of humble origin, who Isad through all his
earlier life been engaged .in commercial specula-
dons. There are doubtless hundredri Of NI sigh.