The Sun.
London, England, 1866-05-05 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—The Chancellor of the Exchequer is en-
deavouring to teach England to pay her debts. It is
proverbially a task for which it is difficult to excite
an interest, or to find a way. Our extravagance
runs in the course of our tastes, and our habits,
mid our hobbies, all of them clamorous, obtrusive,
and pleasant. But when it comes to economy,
then we pass from the positive to the negative,
from solid enjoyments to a shadowy self-denial.
Knowing the cruelty of the case, and of course un-
able to tell everybody exactly what to do, moralists
and preachers teach economy in a high-flying way,
taking care, in fact, that the lesson shall fly right
over the head and leave no painful sore. Mr. Glad-
stone endeavours to embody economy in a positive
pursuit, and even a picturesque scheme. He gives
us an actual occupation, and an end to look forward
to. Whether we, and our children after us, shall all
persevere in the agreeable enterprise he has planned
for we cannot tell what
for us depends upon considerations not entirely in
the
our
immediate
next
their days, or what we may ourselves become under
unexpected provocation. But he has certainly hit
generation
will
be, what will happen in
one of the first objections to a prudent economy and
financial honesty. " "What is one to save for ?"
The answer to that question is generally thought
inadequate, for it seems to mean that you are to
blight your whole being for the sake of a distant
and partial relief. For ten years, which may be
the very prime of your life, you are to suffer a con-
tinual eclipse, a
banishment, a burial, or worse,
and at the end of the time to find yourself just a
little easier, and a little wiser and better in your
own eyes. The road to virtue is so dreary, as well
as so arduous, that people thus advised bethink
themselves of some shorter cut and royal road to
happiness and unindebtedness. They are prepared
to run a little risk, but not to go on grinding at
economy for ever. So Mr. Gladstone tries to sweeten
this rugged path. If the final goal is at an impos-
sible height, he can point to a halt. To begin is at
least half the work ; and this is a pretty instal-
ment, besides having merits of its own to stand on.
Here is the scheme ; but it is a mere holiday task
compared with the whole debt. We have got
ourselves into a bad position with the Savings
Banks, a position we ought never to have found
ourselves in, and one which we ought to avoid for
the future. Let not the poor contributors be fright-
ened ; it is the public that has made a mistake, and
has to pay for it, not they... We took their money,
invested it when Consols were 90, 95,'100, and even
higher; and hp,ye now to giYe them their pound,

not a penny less, though the property has de-
preciated in our hands down to 86. Mr. Gladstone
reckons the loss at £3,000,000 ; and if the contribu-
tors were all seized with a sudden and simultaneous
wish to have their money out, we should have to
give them that immense sum over and above the
security in our hands. This consideration we
have put first, because it lies naturally in the
foreground of this question, and because it was
quite enough to direct attention to the savings-
banks deposit, andits management. It has not, how-
ever, any direct or necessary bearing on the scheme
before us, which would have quite as much to say
for itself if we had gained £3,000,000 by the savings
banks instead of suffering that loss. The only
im-
portant feature in the case is that we can deal with
that deposit of £24,000,000 as we like; whereas we
cannot, by any argument or method, induce the
general body of creditors to accept terminable in
lieu of their perpetual annuities. Volumes have been
written in praise of terminable annuities, but people
will not buy them. Mr. Gladstone has tried it on
with the open money-market, and found it a failure.
At least £10,000,000 out of 80 times that sum is all
he has been able to reduce from eternity to time.
But all the obligation we are under to the trustees
of savings banks is to give them their money when
they ask for it, and interest meantime. It matters
not in what form the money exists, or whether there
is any security beyond the solvency of the State.
Every quarter of a year there accrues to the public,
as holders of this deposit, a certain amount of inte-
rest. What is not paid to the trustees has been
hitherto reinvested in the same form as the deposit,
which has thus been continually growing in.a form
found to be productive of loss to the public. The
proposition is to arrest this increasing evil, and ex-
tinguish it altogether, by changing the whole capital
sum of £24,000,000 into its equivalent amount of
terminable annuities to expire in 1885. Through
the lapse of some annuities they have just run their
course the annual charge will be light at first ; but
it will increase to near two millions; and, by
carrying the principle throughout with future in-
vestments and reinvestments, Mr. Gladstone reckons
upon paying off £49,000,000 in the course of these
19 years. The national debt would then be reduced
to £750,000,000 by that process alone, while the
existing system of reduction might be expected to
have done at least as much or more, bringing the
debt down to £700,000,000. There is no doubt that
the State ought not to be the depository of capital
which it can only invest in a form exposed to vicis-
sttudes. It ought not to speculate. This is one
point for the proposal. The next is the apparently
proved fact that England will not pay its debts ex-
cept by some process which forestalls the annual
surplus and takes it out of the reach of Parliament
—that is, the Parliament of the day and hour. The
intention will not suffice. Indeed, the body sup-
posed to possess these good intentions is itself con-
tinually changing, and is just now threatened with
a greater and more fundamental change than ever
—a change in the very materials out of which its
elements come. It is threatened by the Chancellor
of the Exchequer himself with a larger proportion
of numbers and opinions from that very class which
on account of its poverty must be supposed the
least capable of accumulation, without even the
means necessary for learning the art of judicious
expenditure. The vice of our finance is that it has
been from hand to mouth, and that it is not the
vice to be corrected by men who usually cannot
tse 1 f
entirely
.even see a week before them. Then there obtrudes
misgiving a s t
no
etwh e
constituencydeg ree respon-
sibilityof
mayfeel as to the obligation incurred by that which
was tried and found wanting before it. Even
if
the new constituency be ready to pay debts,
can it even be expected to do that more zealously,
at a quicker pace, and with greater self-denial,
than that which it takes the place of it ? It is not
without a sense of shame that we see so vast a
heritage of evil transmitted to our successors, whom,
at the same time, we cannot hail with unreserved
confidence. It is true that the Diet is reduced
immensely in its proportion to our numbers, to
our wealth, and to our productive power. It is
true that it is now wholly removed from thein-
dustry and the food of the people ; but a debt there
still is, and it is the largest in the world. Yet we
are bequeathing it to a new steward, and one newer
to debt, because newer to wealth and power. So
let us at least set things going. Such is evidently.
Mr. Gladstone's feeling in the matter, and we can-
not deny its reasonableness, though we doubt the
success of the means he propose.%

ZoßrOlarence Paget, 0.87`, anotnialired—By
flag lieutenant and his secretary, has been down to
Woolwich and hoisted his flag, preparatory to his
departure to take the command in chief in the
Mediterranean, and that he is previously to be made
a Privy Councillor, reminds us that the Govern-
ment is about to lose one of its most able and
zealous administrators. But though the Govern-
ment may miss his useful assistance at home, he
will by no means be even temporarily lost to his
country, since his talents and activity will only be
transferred from one sphere of the public service to
another. Lord Clarence Paget has served his
country from a very early age ; and his varied and
vigorous powers, which have enabled him to succeed
in the functions of the statesman and administrator,
no less than in the active duties of the profession
to which he was bred, seem to mark him out for
still more important public services than any he has
yet had an opportunity of rendering. He is still
in the prime of intellectual life, and may, in the
natural course of things, look forward to a long
career of active and honourable services, whether
on the deck or at home, of the kind which the
country, whether in peace or war, is most
likely to need. Our navy is our right arm.
An Admiral who is thoroughly acquainted by
long practical experience with the machinery
of the Admiralty, the work of administration, the
duties and functions of a member of the Legisla-
ture, is the very man to be in command of a fleet
in active service. On the other hand, an experienced
naval commander bred in the service, and who is
possessed of first-rate business capacity, is the very
man whose presence is of the greatest use at the
Admiralty and in Parliament. Lord Clarence
Paget has, it must be admitted, enjoyed singular
opportunities for cultivating the talents which he has
shown he possesses in so high a degree—for gaining
a practical knowledge of his profession afloat, and
of the details of public business on shore. His
father, the late Marquis of Anglesey, was accounted
in his day the best cavalry officer in Europe, and
when the Field-Marshal was Master-General f the
Ordnance, Lord Clarence filled the office of Secre-
tary—a post in which, comparatively subordinate
as it was, his attention to his duties and his capacity
for mastering the details of official business were
conspicuous. He had, however, in his early youth
been sent to sea, and had acquired the habits of a
thorough sailor ; and when the war with Russia
broke out he distinguished himself by his activity
and sailor-like qualities when serving with the
Crimean fleet. Nearly 20 years ago he was elected
member of the House of Commons for Sandwich,
and he has continued to represent that place, with
the exception of a brief interval, up to his present re-
tirement from his seat, as the preliminary to taking
the command in the Mediterranean. It was in
1858 that he attained his flag rank, and in the fol-
lowing year Lord Palmerston appointed him to the
office which he has filled so well and which he has
just resigned—the Secretaryship of the Admiralty.
The tastes and proclivities of a true sailor may
have had a good deal to do with the resignation of
office by one so well qualified to fill it with equal
credit to himself and benefit to the country. N ot-
withstanding the active exercise of a man's best
energies called forth in the debates in the House of
Commons—in which Lord Clarence was one of the
best because most practical and intelligible speakers
—a man bred on the quarter-deck, and in the
prime of life, may often, in the harassing details of
business, sigh for the open sea and the active duties
of his profession. The command in the Mediter-
ranean will, with a man of Lord Clarence's cast of
mind, afford at once an invigorating relaxation—if
the two words may be combined—from the seden-
tary and monotonous details of official business, and
also a further training and preparation for the
public service in Parliament at a future time. Since
Lord Clarence was in the Baltic a great revolution
has been carried out in naval architecture and in
naval ordnance—a revolution in which he has him-
self had to play the part of an active agent. From
time immemorial until after the period when he
served in the Crimean war the age of wood had
continued. All our great sea fights, from the time
of the Armada to Navarino and the Crimea, had
been fought with wooden ships, armed with guns of
which the " old" 68-pounder—at the time Lord
Clarence last saw active service considered a new
invention—was the heaviest. We have now sub-
stitutedk—
vessels covered with iron half a foot thick
se
in the case of the turrets a foot thick—for h
" first-rates" which we should now
designate as " tubs ;" while 110-pounders
irreverently
are looked upon as far too lightrliflore(_iflalcie3 service,
and nothing short of 3007poun
will inset our ideas
broadsides
and 600-pounders-for turrets _
artillery.
It ,
44 to the requirements a aaval