The Sun.
London, England, 1859-10-04 00:00:00

POS2-OFFICE INQUISITION.

The followiag extraordinary series of questions
put to the subordinates of the Liverpool Post-office
is extracted from a late number of the Civil Service
Gazette :

"P. 0., Liverpool, Aug. 24.
" For Mr. —, who I request will carefully
answer the following questions, for the information
of the Postmaster-General :
" 1. Where do you resije?
"2. What rent do you pay ? what taxes ?
" 3. Do you pay the rent quarterly, monthly, or
weekly ?

"4. Have you any income beside that received
in your official capacity here, or do you carry on or
share profits in any 'kind of business. If so, state
particulars ?

"5. What family have you? If you have any
children state their ages, and whether any of them
is in employment; and if so, the wages received,
and by whom employed ?
" 6. Did your expenditure for the year ended 31st
July last exceed your income ? If so, what amount?
" 7. State as near as 3ou can the principal items
of expenditure, and what caused the excess ?
" 8. State the amount of your debts, and to whom
they are owing ?
" 9. From whom have you borrowed money dur-
ing the last two years ? When did you borrow it,
and has any portion of it been repaid ? Have you
undertaken to repay debts by weekly instalments
or otherwise ?

" 10. Have you lent money to any person in this
office ? If so, state his name, the amount, and when
the transaction occurred ; also, whether such money
or any portion of it, has been repaid ?
" 11. Are you a bondsman for any person (whe-
ther connected with this office or not) who has bor-
rowed money from a loan society ? If so, state his
name, address, the sum you are surety for, and
when the loan was contracted; also the name of
the society from which the loan was obtained?
" 12. State the circumstances fully which led to
your present pecuniary circumstances ?"

(From tht Times.)

In former days we were fond and proud of boast-
ing that in this favoured land " every man's house
is his castle." This phrase was supposed to imply
that some peculiar privileges were possessed by the
owner or tenant of a small brick quadrilateral in
England which were not enjoyed by the proprietor
of a French appartement, or by the unfortunate
possessors of mansions in foreign countries. Some-
how or other this axiom seems to have gone out of
fashion. Tax•gatherers, Income-tax Commission-
ers, Wide-street Commissioners, Sanitary Officers,
and a host of social police and small inquisitors,
have been gradually sapping up to the castle, and
it is now so battered, breached, and undermined by
their assaults, that the garrison are almost driven
to surrender, and if they have not quite struck
their flag, have at all events furled it round the
staff, and cease to shout the war•cry in the efficacy
of which they had such firm reliance. The State,
for great purposes of its own, may have found it
convenient to permit or authorise those assaults on
our strongholds, but we must not allow them to
be invested by banditti or by the free lances
in the pay of " Heads of Departments." There
is a vague notion in the minds of most
of us that an income-tax return is an infraction of

Magna Charta and the. Bill of Rights, and we sign
it with the feelings of a man who has been coerced
to cut off an entail or to part with a bit of birth-
right. But Parliament has sanctioned the outrage.
We bow to necessity, which ktocks at our doors
armed with all the powers of the law.
It would be a monstrous insult to Englishmen to
insinuate that they were no better than French-

men, or Austrians, or Russians in all that relates to
the privacy of their lives or the secrets of their
domestic economy. While undergoing the most
harassing attacks from all sorts of official inquiries,
we are buoyed up by the happy consciousness that
we are a free people, that we never will be slaves,
and that in theory, if not in practice, our private
residences are fortified by the most formidable
works, which enables the inmate to deem insolent
curiosity or aggression on liberty impracticable.
If in the fulness of our confidence and affection we
sacrifice for a time some portion of our rights, it is
our consolation
,to know that the act is our own,
aad that we have constitutionally assisted in the
deliberations of the great Council of the State at
which it was resolved that the sacrifice should be
accomplished. An Englishman may suffer much
in this way—he may open his veins and bleed away
to death in a bath of ; but he will die a
prevent any one interfering with
suicide. To stigmatise the income-
taxthe hundredumde deathsufhis t o
as " iniquisitorial" is enough to condemn it. It
exists because it is an inevitable necessity just at
present. All forms and appearances and workings
of an inquisitorial spirit are to us abominable and
hateful. We have the deepest pity for those who
are subject to its operations ; we thank Heaven
we are not as they are. Our sincerest sympathy
is excited for the unhappy men who are followed
to their cafes by Vidocqs, who are haunted by
sprites in cocked hats and swords, and whose
words, uttered in the abandon of eau sucre and
dominoes, are taken down by recording demons at
the next table. Would it not excite the angry
surprise and indignation of any Englishman to be
told that there were public Departments in which
the employes were obliged to make returns to the
head clerk, who can have little or no interest in the
matter, as to the minutest particulars of their do-
mestic life—to state, for instance, what was their
rent and taxes ; whether the rent was paid by the
quarter, the month, or the week ; whether they had
any income beyond that received officially ; hew
many children they had, how old they were, where
they were • if the children were employe& and, if
so, what they were paid, and the names of their
employers ; if their own expenditure exceeded their
income for the last year, and, if so, how much they
owed, and to whom they were indebted ; if they
had lent any money to their brother employes, or
were sureties for any one, and, if so, who that one
was ? " Where," he would ask, " can this inquisi-
tion be tolerated ? Is it in Austria, in Naples, or
in Russia ?" W'iy, no ; it is in England, and in
the first port of the kingdom.
The fact is that the Post-office, which is estab-
lished for the diffusion of information, seems to be
possessed lately by an insatiable thirst for know-
ledge for its own particular use and ends. " The
proper study of mankind is man." The proper
study of a Postmaster is a post-office clerk. We
do not say to the sufferers, " Thank Rowland Hill
for this ;" for, so far as our information goes, the
inquisition to which we refer has not erected the
rack in any town but Liverpool. But the docu-
ment, which will be found in another place, is said
to be issued by the authority of the Postmaster-
General. We all remember that a year ago the
subordinate officers in this Department were driven
into rebellion in London itself by the petty an-
noyances of the authorities. We are all ready
to acknowledge the services of Mr. Rowland
Hill, but we do not think that he has in
virtue of them any right to torture the public
servants under his control. We don't permit
our Nelsons to hang our Quartermasters, or our
Wellingtons to flog our Cornets of Horse. The
bureaucratic spirit is repugnant to our feelings.
The surveillance exercised abroad over all classes
of citizens is not suited to the genius of English-
men ; it is neither necessary nor endurable. We have
submitted to some little caprices of the Postmaster-
General without a murmur. We have consented to
the introduction of a new improvement in the way
of receiving our letters, which is now in some mea-
sure dependent on the possession of a map of Lon-
don
or of immense local knowledge, and of acquaint-
ance
part
ofwith
our
correspondents. arbitrary geog r a p.wh i cea
have divisionsburedon
large
holes in our hall doors at his behest, and are
threatened with pains and penalties in case we don't
byre more of them. The directions on newspapers
have been the subject of a recent ukase from St.
Martin's-le-Grand. These and other indications of a
despotic tendency have been tolerated, but because
Mr. Rowland Hill has won his Solferino we really
cannotnot
res
pp
oe
nr
officers
should
ueoe hlur
fisplomdror
Pry who
ohtwt
etholoineroi
csmhes
uea exercise
h
es suo subjected
Liverpoolet Ichttpehae
Post-office
issattanh-
document
them
he lotefroihfts
reyuobciti
nhnoe
tsghauNee' esatbitosl
uinerldl
persecution. What action, we should like to know,
can be taken on the replies to such questions ?

What authority is there on the part of the Post-
master to put them P Would he dare to dismiss any
officer who refused to answer them P It is altogether
monstrous and intolerable that those who are enti-
tled, in the discharge of their duties, to the confi-
dence and support of their chiefs should be eosed
to the covert insults and degrading suspicions
which are implied by these inquiries on the part of
the heads of the Department which they serve.
The Post-office may carry, but it cannot pass, an
Act of Parliament, and Mr. Rowland Hill himself
would have our warm support if he were dismissed
for refusing to tell the Postmaster-General " what
he had for dinner last Sunday," or to communicate
to that Minister any information as to his tailor's
residence or the amount of his rent, or how old his
eldest daughter was. We trust we shall hear no
more of such outrages on the rights of private life
on the part of the Post-office, or of any other De-
partment.