The Sun.
London, England, 1859-03-19 00:00:00

MARCH 19, 1859.

allowance. Accordingly a superannuation was allowed
them, but considerable confusion arose from this
state of things. The system of abatements had given rise
to considerable objection, and created a great deal of excite-
ment in the house and in the country. His rigbt hon.
friend the member for Radnor brought in a bill on the sub-
ject. That bill did not pass, and the subject was then re-
ferred to a royal commission. The measure introduced by
the late Government last session and the present bill were
founded on the recommendations of that committee. The
main point on which the bill differed from the act of 1834
was this, that whereas the act of 1834 gave superannuation
to the oficers named in the schedule of the act, this bill pro-
posed to give superannuation to all civil servants. It ap-
peared to him to be more suitable to make no distinction
than to schedule the officers who should be entitled to
superannuation. All civil servants, therefore, would be
entitled to superannuation, except those who were provided
for by Acts of Parliament, such as the judges, the sheriff-
depute of Scotland, and others similarly circumstanced.
There was another exception with regard to those who were
provided for by "order in council." But he proposed to
strike out the words "or by order in council." These words
applied to the men in the dockyards, with regard to whom
a good deal of confusion existed, in consequence of the
variety of employments. There were some persons in the
dockyards who were entitled to the full amount of super-
annuation under the act of 1834. There were others who
were entitled to superannuation, but on a scale of lower
amount than was allowed by the act of 1834. Below these
were another class who were paid a superannuation of
£24, and £3l, according to the nature of the employment.
Others were not entitled at all.. He proposed that all
should be equally entitled to compensation. But there
were a class of workmen who were not permanently but
merely temporally employed in the dockyards. And at
that point they drew the line, because it was not con-
sidered that they came within the intention or spirit of the
superannuation system. There was another large class
of civil servants whose case had been brought before the
house, the officers of the Post-office. The Post-office was
one of the departments included in the act of 1834, and
therefore one would suppose that all the officers would
be entitled to superannuation. But those only who were
employed in the metropolitan offices were so entitled. Those
employed in the country—and the country included such
places as Manchester and Liverpool, where the duties were
as important and as onerous as in the metropolis—were ex-
cluded from the benefit of the superannuation. The letter-
carriers in London were also entitled to superannuation, but
those in the country were not. He proposed to put them all
on the same footing, making the same distinction between
persons who were permanently employed and those who
were only temporarily employed, as was made with regard
to the workmen in the dockyards. It was one of the condi-
tions of title to tuperrannuation that the money should be
paid out of the imperial funds. Applications had been made
by officers employed in prisons and in workhouses and others
to have the benefit of superannuation applied to them. It
might be very proper and desirable that there should be a
superannuation provided for this class of officers out of the
funds from which they were paid, but their position was so
distinct from that of the persons who were paid from impe-
rial funds, that they could not be dealt with in this bill.
For the same reason the bill would not apply to those per-
sons who were paid by fees. He had been asked whether the
bill would apply to such persons as the procurators fiscal
and judges' clerks. It would not, because those persons
were liable to be dismissed at the pleasure of others, and not
of the Crown. If this class of persons were allowed the
benefit of superannuation it might open a door to abuse.
He begged pardon of the house for entering so much into
details, but he was speaking as much for the country as for
the house—there being a great number of persons who were
anxious to know how they would be dealt with by the bill.
(Hear.) He thought he had now stated enough with regard
to the main principle on which they proposed to define who
were civil servants. The hon. member for Evesham asked
him if he could state what expense the bill would occasion.
That was an important question, and he was not in a posi-
tion to give a very satisfactory answer to it. It was so
much a matter of conjecture, that he felt it impossible to
give an answer. (Hear, hear.) There were three ways in
which expense might be occasioned by the bill. First, there
was the new scale of pensions, as compared with the former
scale. The former scale of pensions was a jumping one,
allowing so much for seven years' service, so much for 14
years, and so on. The present bill was a sliding scale, ad-
vancing so much year by year, and stopping at two-thirds
of the salary. To those who retired after 24 years' service
the proposed scale would give a somewhat higher remune-
ration than was given under the Act, of 1834. If persons
retired before 21 years' service, there would be a saving
under the present scale. But to get at the average expense
was a very difficult matter indeed. But, speaking generally,
if the scale was to be applied to exactly the same class of
persons—and those only—as were included in the Act of
1834, the difference of expense would be very slight indeed.
The proposed scale was a better and more economical one
for the public in this respect, that it would discourage per-
sons from coming into the service and leaving it after a
short period. Secondly, bringing in new classes might add
to the expense of the superannuation fund ; but to what
extent it would do so would entirely depend on the number
of persons who were brought in. On that point he found
it !difficult to arrive at any kind of conclusion. For instance,
it would appear from a customs return that 2,000 new persons
would be entitled to pensions under the new arrangement who
were not entitled before. He did not believe that was pos-
sible. And on inquiring of Sir Thos. Fremantle he found
that a large proportion of these 2,000 were persons who were
placed on establishment as temporary officers. No doubt
many of these would be taken on the permanent establish-
ment, in which case they would become entitled to pensions,
and their temporary services would be counted in their
favour. The same observation applied to the dockyard offi-
cers. From the post aiffice a very large number of persons
would be added to those who were entitld to superannuation.
There was a third way in which the bill would add to some
extent to the expense, and that was that it gave superannua-
tion to all those who retired at.the age of 60, and made it
compulsory on all those who reached the age of 65 to retire
unless they got special permission to remain on account of
their being able efficiently to perform their duties. The
number of such persons would be very inconsiderable. By
the return of the Civil Service Commissioners they would
not be more than 300, and by the return which he received
they would be only 120, so that the number paid off in that
way would not be large. As it was felt to be desirable that
the superannuation should not apply to any persons but
those who were bona fide civil servants, a rule was laid down
declaring that no person was to be deemed a civil servant
unless he held his appointment directly from the Crown, or
was admitted with a certificate from the Civil Service Com-
missioners. Ho believed that by taking care that none but
persons who were competent, in good halth, and who were
under a certain age, were admitted into the service, and
treating them in a fair and equitable spirit, in conformity
with a rule easily understood, they would not only have
made a great step towards the allaying of that uncomfortable
and excited state of feeling which existed amongst the
civil servants at present, but also have done much for
the permanent improvement of the service itself. (Hear.j
With regard to the retirement at the age of 65, that would
not be such a hardship on the civil servants as was repre-
sented. By the scale in operation before 1829 a man was
entitled to retire on his full salary after fifty years' service ;
but by the act of 1834 no man, no matter what his length
of service, could receive a retiring allowance of more
than two-thirds. The result of this was completely to
clog the upper part of the offices. Officers, having no in-
ducement to retire, remained after they were past their
work, and the younger men, who in reality did the duty,
were discouraged and kept back. That was the reason why
an arbitrary rule was adopted ; and, after all, a man of
65, after forty years' service, ought not to object
to retire. One objection to the compulsory retirement was,
that it would throw a great deal of patronage into the hands
of the Government. With regard to the great mass of offices,
they would have no opportunity of jobbing, as the next in
seniority would fill the vacancy. But there was another class
of offices to which the objection might apply ; he referred to
such offices as those'of the Commissioners of Customs, to
which men were 'appointed direct who had not risen from the
ranks. To meet the objection, he proposed to exclude all
officers of this class from the compulsory retirement. He
would be ready in committee to give any further explanation
that might be required, and he begged to move that the bill
be committed.
Sir H. WILLOUGHBY complained of the course pur-
sued with regard to this bill, that it had been read a second
time at Et'very late hour. He considered that, in justice to
the tax-payers, the scale of salaries ought to be revised, and
he begged to move the resolution of which he had given
notice :—" That all deductions from salaries, in order to
form a fund for superannuations, having been abolished, it
is not expedient to add to the amount of public charge by an
increase in the scale of superannuation.'
Mr. GLADSTONE considered that the bill raised some
very serious questions. In the first place he thought his
hon. friend the Secretary for the Treasury made a large de-
mand on the house when he asked them to be satisfied to
proceed to erect a system of pensions and superannuations on
a new basis without knowing what classes would fall within
its purview, or what the probable additional charge would
be. He knew the difficulty which 'even a Government
department would find in obtaining correct information,
but still the house ought to have the best estimate the
Government could afford, and until it was given the house
would not be justified in proceeding to erect a new system.
He inferred from the statement of his honourable friend
that the information was not supplied, not because it could
not be given, but because the communications between the
Treasury and the different departments on the subject were
not complete. He would not protest against going into com-
mittee, but he must say the house would not bejustifiecl in
assenting to the second reading until they had full and com-
plete Information on these points. The house ought to be
clearly aware of what they were doing. They were not
entitling to-day what would come into operation to-mor-
row, and might be altered the day after. They were esta-
blishing a system which would not take full effect for
thirty or forty years, and entering into engagements which
must be scrupulously kept, oven if they extended to half a
century. This made it necessary they should have full in-
formation. He feared his hon. friend was inclined to too
great liberality; he seemed scandalised at what he called
an anomaly in the Post-office, that*the London letter-carriers
should be entitled to a superannuation whilst those in the
country were not, It might be that in some large towns
the men were in the same position as those in London, who
were constantly on their legs, and gave their whole time to
the duty; but the great majority of' the country letter- car-
riers were men with other avocations, who merely devoted
a couple of hours a day to the work, and had no claim to
superannuation. • His hon. friend proposed to introduce a
clause defining the limits of the civil service ; but as it stood
he did not consider it all satisfactory. The system of the
Civil Service CoMmission was quite new, and the ambiguity
of the clause only confirmed his opinion that it was wrong
to depart from the system of the old acts, where the officers
entitled to the superannuation were always set out in the
schedule. The recommondation of the committee that the
salaries should be revised seemed to have been entirely for-
gotten. It was not true that the civil servants wore illi-
berally or insufficiently paid. They could not contend that
as a body they were unpaid, and it was not just to the tax-
payers that they should got a wholesale increase without

the slightest r&roneo to their duties. He hoped they
would have some declaration from the Government as to
what classes it was intended to bring within the provlsjons
of the act ; and also that before they precood.d to the second
reading they would have an estimate of the probable addi-
tional c:zponse. It also most desirable to know whe.
ther it was intended to follow up the recommendation chile
committee, and reconsider the rates of salarieA. The abo-
lition of the deduction had given them a sweeping whole-
sale rise, totally irrespective of their merits and duties, or
the respective facts o their respective cases.
Mr. WILLIAMS thought the house ought not to pro-
ceed with the bill until it got some further information. He
agreed that the salaries of the etvil servants ought to be
revised.
le - H
iger houde woul snggest that they should be made
to wort hours. (No, no.) They now only worke4 six hours a day, and he thought that if they were xo,de to
work eight it would do them a great dPRI
Mr. WILSON knew by eXIIPTiPiIee how difficult it would
be fur the Seol'o4l7 a 0;6 'treasury to give any estimate of
dinbur
prpliable ad
ditronal charge. In London, Dublin, aucl
Egh, the former had always been entitled to pensions, and he did not see how a distinetielA c.ovi)d be
permanently maintained 'between 142,0- Vin•es and such
places as Liverpool Mitpeliggter anti 44eeds No one