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

POST-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 ( ivil 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 resiele?
"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 P
"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 3on 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 the 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-
&s, 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 alrilost 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 Charts and the Bill of ltights, 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 his birth-
right. But Parliament has sanctioned the outrage.
We bow to necessity, which knocks 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,
and that we have constitutiopallv 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 taxation ; but he will die a
hundred deaths to prevent any one interfering with
the mode of his suicide. To stigmatise the income-
tax 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 can 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 employed, 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 ?" Why, 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 Corntts 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-
e
General without a murmur. We have consented to
submitted
iitttei s neitherenecessarylittle
caprices nor e nodr utrhaeb
PI co.
sltVniewihtaesr•
the introduction of a new improvement in the way
of receiving our letters, which is now in some mea-
-eehebsozedan
a lame
ae
knowledge, and of acquaint-
ance with arbitrary geographical divisions on the
sduorneodreseiinuilnelitnsoenloticiaelpossession of a map of Lon-
atWhnishab‘
threatened with pains and penalties in case we don't
:‘haveart beenifs-
le
_the r subjectaud.
Theseof aanrde coetnhte,ruiknadsiee a
n
b ,re more of them. The directions on newspapers
phaorletsofi our
our correspondents,
h a
lls
despotic tendency have been tolerated, butftlkienincsaousSftae.
Mr. Rowland Hill has won his Solferino we really
not
questionre s I) ohn
he
i sbhl
ce
uflodr
at lt eo
nics
cannot, permit him to torment, his Italians. If he be
esueof exercise th
the
his d oacuut hmoerni tt y it
no
save the officers of the Liverpool Post-office from
the absurd Paul Pry who has subjected them to such
. 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 ? Would he dare to dismiss any
officer who refused to answer them ? 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 exposed
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 Min:.ster 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.

7.71 E NAVY.

Her Majesty's ship Antelope was yesterday ad-
mitted into the basin at Woolwich, to be stripped
and paid off.
The result of the survey held on the two mortar
vessels„Nos. 31 and 48, intended for operations in
China, which were taken into the first dock at
Chatham, has fully justified the opinion originally
formed of their state, the bottoms of each having
been found infested with the marine worm, which
has committed very extensive ravages in the tim-
bers of the hull. The two vessels have accordingly
been floated out of dock, and will be hauled up on
one of the ship-ways in the dockyard, where they
will be thoroughly scraped and cleaned by the con-
victs, after which the bottoms of each will be left
exposed to the winter's frosts, which are found to be
a most efficacious remedy for destroying the marine
insect. The other mortar boats which will be re-
quired for service will also be docked and surveyed,
and, if found necessary, they will be treated in a
similar manner

An Admiralty order was yesterday promulgated
at Chatham Dockyard, directing that the whole of
the labourers at work in that dockyard on the fac-
tory systmi, and who are emploped 10 hours a-day,
are to have their wages advanced to 15s. per week.
Mr. Miller, of Liverpool, is now building two
gunboats, to be called the Pelican, and Steady,
which he has had in hand during the last two
months. Considerable progress has been made
since they were laid down, and it is expected they
will be ready for launching in December. They
will be fitted with engines of 80 horse-power by
Napier, of Glasgow, and are intended' to carry one
95cwt. pivot-gun and four 241 b. carrona,des. From
the fineness of their lines great speed is expected
from them. Their draught of water when fully
equipped will be 9 feet 3 inches forward, and 11
feet 6 inches aft. The engines and boilers will be-
below the loading line, and entirely out of the reach
of shot. Their dimensions are as f illows :—Length
between perpendiculars, 145 feet; length for ton-
nage, 127 feet 10. inches ; breadth, extreme, 25 feet
4 inches ; breadth, moulded, 24 feet 6 inches ; depth
of hold, 13 feet; tonnage per builders' measure-
ment, 425 14-94ths.

The following appointments were made yesterday
at the Admiralty :—C. P. Field, Assistant-Paymas-
ter to the Encounter; J. W. R. 13. Galsworthy, As-
sistant-Paymaster to the Olin ; Samuel M. Spry,
Master's-Assistant to the Beagle; G. K. Whitehead,
Master's-Assistant to the Perseverance; and G. H.
Downing, Master's-Assistant to the Nautilus.