The Sun.
London, England, 1860-07-31 00:00:00

diting the Parliament of his country, and displaying
a total want of the feeling of manly dignity.
On the question itself of the amalgamation of the
two armies, the local and the imperial army in
India, every candid man is willing to own that
there are strong arguments and weighty authorities
for the conflicting views. The objection of most
weight is undoubtedly the difficulty of adjusting
the patronage. No confidence is felt in the Horse
Guards. Promotion by favour and by wealth
will undoubtedly die hard. Hundreds 'of
HAVELOCKS may not have HAVELOCK'S op-
portunity of proving by their last acts the
injustice of the system which depresses merit,
and elevates connection and money. But the
remedy for this is to improve the system of pat-
ronage, not to sacrifice Imperial claims to the
existence of a real, but a certainly curable defect.
Let Mr. HORSMAN and his fellow-obstructors but
devote the same zeal to exposing and reforming the
administration of our naval and military patronage
which they do to the hindrance of the public busi-
ness, and they will deserve well of their country.
The obvious advantages of the whole force of an
Empire being entirely at its disposal, are so great,
that it must be a strong case, indeed, which can
override them. To us, seeing, too, all the difficul-
ties ably stated by Lord STANLEY, and which have
been said or sung, over and over again since, by
Mr. HORSMAN and the old Indians, it still seems
that the Government is right in its proposal, and
that the simplicity of the Bill leaving scope to
carry out the measure as circumstances may require
is, in truth, one of its merits.

How often before now have we not had occasion
to comment upon the Civil List Pensions in terms

of mingled scorn and indignation! Yet year after

year the same melancholy record forces itself under
our notice, echoed and re-echoed back with "damn-
able iteration." Each annual catalogue is as like
as can well be to its immediate predecessor. The
customary total of £1,200 annually placed at the
disposal of the Prime Minister, nominally for the
encouragement of Art, Science, and Literature, is
actually year after year, in the old accustomed man-
ner, frittered away in wretched little driblets—
distributed among individuals for the most part
" unknown to fame " in doles capable of doing
little else than afford them the most poignant sense
of personal degradation. Repeatedly before now
we have insisted upon the cruelty and fatuity of
these most perverse proceedings. Time after time
we have proved both their cruelty and fatuity to
absolute demonstration: To do this, it has only

been necessary upon each yearly occasion to reca-
pitulate, and, in recapitulating, to analyse the
melancholy list of the alms and their re-
cipients. Again and again we have indicated,
moreover, that several among the questionably for-
tunate recipients have had no claim whatever to
the bounty (?), being in no wiy at all connected,
either directly or indirectly, with art, with science,
or with literature. Sometimes a portion of the
£1,200 has been awarded to the relict or the
children of a naval or military officer ; sometimes to
the widow or orphans of a church dignitary. And
in each of these instances (almost invariably) the
pension bestowed has been of the largest class of
amounts ventured upon with ao air, as we must
call it, of beggarly ostentation and parsimoni-
ous munificence. There is a case directly in

point in the present mournful catalogue of the

" Civil List Pensions" granted, to the tune of
£1,200, between the 20th of June, 1859, and the
20th of June, 1860—pursuant to Act the Ist Vict.
c. 2. There the largest sum awarded to any one is
the annual sum of £lso—a pension bestowed
neither i■ the interests of art or of science, nor yet
indeed, for that matter, of literature. It is a pension
of £l5O per annum granted to Mrs. LUCY RIGAUD,
" in consideraion of the labours of her late hus-
band, Bishop of Antigua, and of her distressing
position, left with a family of seven children, quite

unprovided for" by that deceased dignitary.
And, as if in mockery of the despised
interests of science, the very next item
on the list announces the magnificent award
of ,£5O annually (not 20s. a week!) to Mrs. CATHE-
RINE LIDDON (daughter of the late HENRY CORT),
and another magnificent sum of £5O per annum to
Miss CAROLINE CORT, another daughter of the
aforesaid scientific discoverer, in consideration of
the great benefits which have accrued to this

country from their late father's inventions in the
manufacture of iron, and of the large fortune which
he expended in carrying them into execution—
the said HENRY CORT having, by those wonderful
and world-famous inventions of his, enhanced the
wealth of this country to an almost incalculable
extent—already it is estimated in round numbers
at the stupendous amount of some £200,000,000 !
In consideration of which, and as a mark of the
national gratitude, we give £5O a-year to his
two daughters, CATHERINE and CAROLINE. It
is to a wretched dole like this that we
point as to an insult rather than (what
it insolently affects to be) a tribute or a testi-
monial !

Several of the little awards this year we gladly
recognise as well-selected so far as the chosen re-
cipients are concerned themselves. But even in
these instances the sums doled out are wretchedly
inadequate, and the pleas specified often ludicrously

blundered upon. For example—£loo a-year being
set apart for Miss (obviously it should be Mrs.)
HELEN GALLWEY, the pension is said to have been
bestowed, forsooth, in consideration of the long
services of her husband as British Consul at
Naples---when the claim should obviously have
been by rights, that the lady in ques-

tion is the daughter of HOPPNER the
painter ! Another annual sum of £lOO, we are
gratified to observe, set apart for Miss JULIA
PARDOE, in consideration of thirty years' toil in the
field of literature, by which she has contributed
both to cultivate the public taste and to support a
number of helpless relations ! There is a yearly
sum of £lOO likewise well awarded to the Rev.
lIENRY LOGAN, in consideration of his contribu-

tions to mathematical and scientific literature, and
his present state of destitution, in consequence of
the loss of his eye-sight ! A like sum of £lOO per
annum being deservedly bestowed on Dr. ROBERT
BLAKEY, in consideration of his exertions to aid and
promote the study of philosophy, and of his
straightened circumstances. Another £lOO being
set aside annually for Dr. ROBERT BIGSBY, for some
nameless "great services and contributions to the

literature of his country "—with the extent or even
nature of which *services we must shamefacedly
acknowledge ourselves to be wholly unacquainted.
Contrasted painfully with some of which par•

titulars there is the annual pension of
£125 set down upon this list as the
aggregate award vouchsafed to the six sis-
ters of the late celebrated• and indefatigable
labourer (for the public good) in the fields of phi-
losophy, Dr. DioNYstus LARDNER—in considera-
tion, the official award acknowledges, of his great
labours and their scanty means. Remembering
what were the toils of the departed philosopher
and encyclopedist—it certainly does appear to us
painfully inadequate, the dribbling out of this
miserable total of £125, to be divided yearly in
equal proportions among those six sisters—Mibs