The Sun.
London, England, 1869-02-26 00:00:00

sicir„:lo ram° JOURNALS,

The Times, after remarking that rating and ratepayers
have been the theme of the House of Commons during
this week, says that Mr. Goschen's bill to remedy the incon•
veniences attending on the extinction of the famous
compound householder is rather complex in its machinery.
Mr. Bright confessed that it looked a little puzzling.
Mr. Locke excused himself from hastily discussing it on
the first evening, as it was bad to understand. Mr.
Goldney thought its end might have been attained by a
direct enactment. It would be premature to express a
very decided opinion on the proposals of the Government
before their bill is made public, but at present we incline
to approve Mr. Goldney's judgment, that the Govern.
ment might attain their end by a direct instead of a round.
about manner. Their bill proposes to relieve weekly
tenants of the risk and burden of paying rates, by giving
them a right to recover from the landlords the sums they
may pay. Why not enact that the landlords shall
pay directly all rates imposed on houses let in weekly
tenancies ? If the Small Tenements Act is to be restored
in principle, why not restore it in form? It may be
answered that this would amount to a revival of the com-
pound householder ; but is there any adequate reason why
he should not be revived and suffered to live in that
decent obscurity which was his portion before he achieved
a sudden notoriety two years since ? It was necessary
that he should be sacrificed then. Some little dressing,
some fringe of circumstance, was essential to the adop-
tion of household suffrage by the Conservative party,
and the pra:tical wisdom of men was manifested
by the degrees of promptitude with which they saw that
the compound householder must be the victim of the occa-
sion. But the sacrifice has been completed, household
suffrage has been adopted, and there remains no necessity
for denying the compound householder a fresh lease of
existence. To use a different metaphor, the edifice has
been finished and the ugly scaffolding may be removed.
The late Government practically acknowledged their in-
difference to this supposed security in their Scotch and
Irish Reform Bills. The present Administration might
therefore take courage to attempt a bolder stroke than Mr.
Coschen's Rating Bill contemplates ; they might restore
the compound householder to life and have done with him
for ever.

The Standard declares that the repeal of the ratepaying
clauses of the Reform Act was one of the chief planks in
the Liberal electoral platform. Nobody was surprised
therefore when the Queen's Speech promised a measure for
" the relief of some classes of occupiers from hardships in
respect of rating," and the President of the Poor-law Board
gave notice of a motion for leave to introduce a bill
" amending the law with respect to rates assessed upon
occupiers for short terms." The speech in which Mr.
Goschen introduced and explained his bill will, on the
contrary, create some surprise. Friends and foes of the
Government will alike be astonished at the singularly
conciliatory language of the right honourable gentle.
man, and the care he has taken to divest his measure
of any political character. Whether the bill will
prove an acceptable one is a matter upon which we
cannot yet venture to form an opinion. Not only must
we have the clauses before us, but we must have the
opinions of the local authorities charged with their execu-
tion, before we can venture to say whether the proposal
of the Government is an acceptable one or not. But we
may say at once that Mr. Goschen has so framed his
measure that we may accept his own account of it as not
to interfere in the slightest degree with the principle of
the personal payment of rates as established in the Reform
Act ; and that, in the moderation of his description of the
grievance to be removed, the careful avoidance of all
appeal to party passion, and the repudiation of any de.iire
to revive the controversies of 1867, he made ont the best
case possible for a fair and generous consideration of the
measure on the part of the Opposition. If there is SOTTIC.
thing of a contrast between the promise of the hustings
and the performance in Parliament, it should be noted
only in favour of the Minister who has set himself not to
gratify a clap-trap cry, but to remove a real grievance.

The Star says that the Government have solved the
compounding question in a manner most creditable to their
good taste and perspicacity, and Mr. Goschen has ex-
pounded their plan in a very lucid speech. With a deli-
cacy beyond all praise Ministers have desired to save the
feelings of the Opposition leaders. Mr. Bright, iu his
first speech as a Minister of the Crown, said that
everyone knew Mr. Disraeli and his colleagues never meant
to occasion the hardships which the abolition of com-
pounding had caused ; and though it is equally true
that those hardships were foretold at the time by
Gladstone, there can be no objection to burying
the past in silence, if by that means the sore
place in our rating system may be the more
easily and effectually healed. Mr. Goschen's party
eloquence has a very rasping side to it, as many examples
have proved ; but his speech on this question of weekly
tenants has established that there is no Minister to whom
a task of delicate conciliation could more safely be en-
trusted. if Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Hardy had been put
under chloroform they could not have been more effec-
tually spared the pain of Thursday night's operation.
Yet, as the first step to the abrogation of the absurd
ratepaying law of the 1867 Reform Bill, it was per.
fectly successful. Of the 700,000 householders in
this country who pay less than £lO a year rent, the
majority are weekly tenants ; and in Parliamentary
boroughs these for the most part were compelled fox
the first time by the Reform Bill to pay their poor rates
palpably, and in a lump sum. Mr. Bright mentioned
that in Birmingham 36,000 became liable for rates who
had never paid a rate before. It would hardly have been
possible to convince these people that they were not suf.
fering a grievous wrong, even if there had not been any
absolute injustice in the operation of the law. But
beyond this there was actual injustice in the infliction.
Not only did the landlords who had hitherto paid the rates
decline to lower the rents now the rates were paid by the
tenants, but the tenants were liable at any moment to
have to pay on a week's occupancy the rate for a quarter
a half-year, or perhaps a year in advance.
The Daily News pronounces in favour of the Govern.
xnent bill for Scottish education, and says that such a
scheme in Scotland is an amending, and not, as it would
be in England, a creating measure. For two centuries and
three-quarters Scotland has possessed a system of popular
instruction to which the nation owes, in no small degree.
the wealth which it has won from a bleak clime.
and a rugged soil, and the tribute which its
emigrants have levied from every foreign country
in which they have settled. A statute of 1696
compelled the landowners of every parish, or in their de-
fault the presbytery, to establish a school-house, and to
provide a salary for the teacher, to be defrayed at the
expense, half of the landlords, and half of the tenants.
Subsequent legislation has modified the details of these
arrangements, but in essential points the system has sub-
sisted p until the present time. But while it has been
stationary, society has advanced. It never had any appli-
cation to the towns, in which the peculiarities of modern
civilisation have accumulated population. It is unsuitable,
therefore, to the " age of great cities." What is needful
now is that this system shall be applied to the present dis-
tribution and necessities of the population. This work of
local discrimination cannot be performed, once for all by
any general statute. It cannot be discharged from London.
It must be performed by an authority which will be at
once of a national and of a representative character. For
this purpose a Central Board of Education is to be created,
which is to consist of two members representing the coun-
ties and the landed proprietors, two members representing
the Scotch burghs, two members representing the univer-
sities and the higher education of Scotland, a representa-
tive of the schoolmasters, and two members, including. a
paid chairman, nominated by the Crown. This central
board is to decide on the number of schools which may be
requisite in particular parishes and burghs, and to enforce
the erection and maintenance of new schools where the
supply is insufficient.

The Herald thinks that there is very little reason for
Mr. Bright's complaint the other night at the meeting of
the Associated Chambers of Commerce, that he, havinl
" perforce" taken office there is no one left to say
things " a little different from anything that was said."
We are pleased to know that Mr. Bright's talent for.
singularity remains pretty much the same in spite oi
his elevation to office. IVe have every confidence in
his continued ability and inclination to say things that
no one else would say ; and we are convinced that
his colleagues would readily absolve him from any charge
of having deserted his old vocation. The only point
of novel interest in Mr. Bright's speech to the Asso-
ciated Chambers is the insinuation, a second time
repeated, that if they require him to act up to the doc-
trines which he has been accustomed to agitate out of
office, they must bring an external pressure to bear upon
the Government. Mr. Bright declares that " lie requires
the support of public opinion." He is content to be a
Minister in a Liberal Administration, but he will move
only when pushed from behind towards what he holds to
be the true Liberal measures. This is certainly saying
something different from what other men say—other men
who are Ministers, and who are responsible both for their
words and their acts.

The Post thinks it a good sign when a Government is
willing to take up difficult questions. Local taxation is a
subject which a weak Government would gladly have
evaded. But the fact is that Sir M. Lopes, completely
at home in his subject, was enabled to present a really
strong case. Anomaly, inequality, and injustice in
raising and expending local taxation he readily proved
to exist. Facts carefully selected beforehand, to exhibit
the system in all its absurdity, were laid by him before
the House, and there could he no question as to
the urgency and importance of the subject. Sir M.
Lopes stated that no less than twenty millions sterling of
local taxation are raised from an area of ninety-three
m ions of mcome-: or, as Mr. Goschen reckons ita
. hundred ; is, from real property consisting
of houses and lands. he growth of this taxation, too, is
astonishing. Et:t its incidence is the most remarkable
part of it ; and w(:11 might Sir Al. Lopes ask, " Was it not
a glaring
injustice that one description of
property,
reckoning only one-seventh of the income of the
country, should be taxed at the rate offs. Gd. in the
pound, while all other descriptions paid nothing
whatecr? " The illnstrntion !)1 !.wo men with an
equal capital to start with, inviisting, it, one in consols and
the other in land, though overdrawn, is very convincing.
The former mildit live in a lodging in a town and pay
towards the expenses defrayed from local taxation ;
while the other would be compelled to pay, towards the
maintenance of the
poor and of the police. Ihe argument
that the land bad always supported the poor from the
days of Elizabeth, and that, therefore, it should continue
to do so, was shewn by Sir M. Lopes to be untenable ; and
it is satisfactory to find that the government is fully alive
to the importance of the 50..7:1"*_

-


THE CHARGE or CORRUPTION AGAINST
ADMIRALTY OFFICIALS.

J. T. Gambier, one of the chief clerks in the Store-
keeper-General's Department, Somerset House, and
William Rumble, one of the inspectors of machinery afloat,
were brought up on remand, at Bow-street, on Thursday,
before Sir Thomas Henry, on the charge of conspiracy to
defraud. Gambier bad been out on bail since Saturday.
The evidence given on the former occasion was read over
by Mr. Burnaby, the chief clerk. Upon Mr. Maxwell's
evidence being read over, Mr. Maxwell said he
wished to make some observations in correction of what
he had previously stated. It was not a correction of his
own evidence, but of an observation made by the learned
counsel, or rather of an impression it might convey. Mr.
Bristowe had stated that, actuated by a laudable motive,
"he had given information to the authorities." Now the
fact was that he went to the Admiralty to seek informa-
tion, not to give it. Being told by Rumble that his get-
ting the contract was dependent on the payment of
or £3O to him, he wished to ascertain whether that was
the case or not. Upon being informed that it was not so,
and that a fraud was being practised upon him, he then
Promised to assist the Government in the matter.

Sir Thomas Henry said that it was not regular for a
witness to make any reply to the opening speech of
counsel. Still he could, perhaps, have allowed it, but
that it appeared to be quite unnecessary. Nothing was
said of which Mr. Maxwell ought to complain.
Mr. Philip Langham, clerk to Mr. Nadan, wine
merchant, 7, St. Benet's-place, Gracechurch-street, City,
said he received the bank note No. 50,259 for his master
on the 2nd February, from the prisoner Rumble, in par
ment of an account for wines and spirits. Witness sent
it to Barclay and Co.'s bank to get it changed.
Mr. Joseph Boys, assistant to Messrs. Holditch and
Co., linen warehousemen, Fleet-street, deposed that he
received the Bank of England note now produced, No.
24,974, dated May 9, 1867, about eight days ago, from the
prisoner Rumble, in payment for some small purchase, and
gave him change for it. Witness gave it to one of the
cashiers, who is a son of Mr. Holditch.

Mr. Henry Houghton, clerk in the Storekeeper-Gene.
ral's Department, Somerset House, produced the book in
which was entered the acceptance of a contract for elm
timber on the 22d of January last, addressed to Mr.
Nicholas M. Maxwell ; also a book in which the names of
the parties tendering on that date for the contract were
entered.

The prisoners were then remanded. The same bail as
before was taken for Gambier.