The Sun.
London, England, 1857-06-13 00:00:00

LONDON, sATURDAV, JUNE 13, 1867

pas save of arras" last
There was a brilliant
night- in the House of Commons. Many Ron.
Gentlemen took pat in the melee. It was an in_
'siting topic, by which the zeal and anxiety fur
:4)eanomy and retrenchment, so recently professed,
on, divers husting4, could be displayed in a very
64-IY. manner. Nothing, however, was effected !
,After the' protracted discu3-3iou, progress was re-
ported, and the House resumed, without much
additional infOrmation. But will the postpone-
ment to Monday effect any material benefit to the
country ? We fear not. The present eye-
tsrn is defective in almost every respect.
.Althotigh the various estimates aro, nominally,

under the control of Parliament, so much mysti-
fication occurs that "the accounts are thoroughly
cooked" without any, save official persons, being
able to discover the proce4bt 4il4chit-'hai-'-been
effected. There is a geneial impression that
something is decidedly wrorii ;, but, the blot is
seldom if ever hit, arid the nation is victimised in
strict accordance with the most approved system
of red-tapism.
The simple fact, that the civil service estimates
have increased within five years from 2,012,0001,
to 7, 250,000/., or about 250 per cent. is quite
sufficient to attract attention to the subject. Mr.
JAMES WILSON, last night, undertook to explain
this very untoward result, and he certainly dis-
played extraordinary tact and jtidgment in the
manner in which he disci :wined his duty. His
ability was no less manifested in the clear and
intelligible manner in which he dwelt on the
strong points, than in the masterly skill with
which he slurred over, or passed sub sllentio the
less favourable items. He did all that man could
do under the existing system, to make things
pleasant to the House. But, still it is palpable
that something more is wanting, and that there
must be a complete change before Parliament or
the country can be satisfied with things as they
are, not as they ought to be.

There was one strong point in the case,
and it is almost needless to say that Mr.
WILSON made the most of it. He showed
tint, by a very salutary attention, many
payments which had formerly been charged
on the Consolidated Fund, or stopped in transitu
before the receipts were credited to the Exche-
quer, are now subjected to the control and regu-
lation of Parliament. This is unquestionably a
decided amelioration. But that control should
be real, and not merely nominal. Before it can
afford a valid guarantee to the tax-paying com-
munity, against undue extravagance, the accounts
should be rendered intelligible, so that every man
of ordinary capacity, whether in or out of Parlia-
ment, should be able clearly to understand every
item; and the object for which it is required. Any
job might then be immediately detected, and lavish
expenditure prevented, or at all events materially
checked.

But, as we have stated, this cannot possibly be
achieved under the present system. The most
complicated questions are brought forward in a
thin House, anxious to get rid of the dry topic
with the greatest possible expedition. Tens of
thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions
are voted with the most profound indifference.
What is everybody's business is never attended
to by any ; or, if some indefatigable person takes
he trouble to investigate some one point, his inter-
ference is regarded as a bore, to be got rid of in
the most summary and expeditious manner.
No decided improvement can be effected until
a regularly constituted Committee of Finance has
been appointed, whose duty it is to investigate
every estimate, and to report fully and fairly to
•he House on its nature, extent, and object. The
necessary information would thus be obtained t
enalle Hon. Gentlemen t.) know something of the
matters about which their vutes were required.
Some abuses would unquestionably still exist,
but they would gradually be abolished. The
Committee might be packed, but there should be
some independent members who could enlighten
their brethren. It would also be requisite that
the several estimates should be prepared an an
earlier period, so that they might be in the hands
of every member at the very commencement of
the session. But this could easily be achieved by
the exercise of proper official diligence during the
Parliamentary vacation. The subject is one of
vast importance to the welfare and prosperity of
the nation, and we only trust that it may receive
the attention it so eminently merits and
which must lead to considerable improvement,
although everything that could be desired may
not for some time be attained.

bead of our Public Works Department an Admi•
nistrator who does absolutely seem to know how
to spend the Public Moneys upon Public Works,-
for the Public Advantage. And instantly HE of
all men is chosen out of the Ministerial group to
be the target for all sorts of splenetic attacks and
the butt for every conceivable kind of petty and
malicious insinuation. We have had enough
of this. We are sick of the repetition upon
repetition—of the rechwiffee upon rechauffee.
Parliament, Public, Press—one and all are
heartily tired of it. It is becoming too stale and
too obviously dull a joke to be any longer toler-
able. We hope that any future perpetrators of
it, whether in Lords or Commons, will henceforth
be coughed down as so many bores and dullards.
And, beyond this, we earnestly trust that Sir
BENJAMIN HALL, undeterred by all these misera-
ble little jibes at his extravagance, will persevere
manfully in the laudable course upon which he has
advent'irei.

Another attempt was last night made to neu-
tralise the benefits derivable from the Divorce
and Matrimonial Causes Bill. The bishops
mustered strongly on the occasion, and under
the leadership of "SAMUEL Oxorr," offered a
strenuous and almost factious opposition to the
just and salutary measure. In a very full House
an amendment had been very properly rejected
by a decisive majority, which would allow indi-
vidual clergymen to exercise their own private
scruples, by refusing to marry parties who had
been divorced. This decision was at-
tempted to be reviewed and set aside,
by a comparatively small, party, who, forgetting
the logical consequence that the less must always
be included in the greater, the particular in the
universal, attempted to prohibit marriage by any
clergyman whether he entertained these scruples
or not, and to reduce such nuptials to a merely
civil contract, which could not be hallowed by a
religious sanction. The proposition was merely
an exhibition of petty spite, which was fortunately
rejected by a majority of four. It could not have
answered any beneficial purpose, and might have
been productive of consequences little thought of
by the Right Rev. Prelates.

As the Mice of ARGYLL clearly pointed out, it'
would have been the first step to a complete sepi
ration of Church and State, the introduction of the
sharp end of the wedge that might lead eventually
to a great hiatus. We need not say that we
should not deem this any very serious evil, but it
would be passing strange if the fatal blow should
be administered by the members of the Episcopal
Bench ! It would, however, tend to promote
immorality ; might lead some who, having unfor-
tunately once yielded to temptation, were anxious
to lead a new life, to disregard the solemnity of the
tie which was reduced to a merely civil contract
without any religious sanction. It could
not possibly pass the House of Commons, and
might, unless their Lordships yielded at the last
moment, occasion a very unpleasant collision
between the different branches of the Legislature.
The Bishop of OI?CRD and his associates should
look to this in due time. The attempt to render
the clergy independent of the law is one of a very
dangerous characterto those largely endowed under
that very law, and if persevered in, the natural re-
sults must be anticipated. Other efforts to reject or
emasculate the measure may be anticipated on
the third reading. We trust, however, for the
sake of the general community, and still more of
the discontented patties, that they may be deci-
dedly rejected, and that a fertile source' of reli-
gious dissension may be got rid of by the salutary
decision of both Houses of Parliament.

We have before noticed the fact of epidemic
diseases being almost entirely abolished, and the
death rates reduced to nearly► one half in model
dwellings,—which are only model in respect to
the cesspool taint, and the foul emanations from
old house drains and sewers prevented, from their
having some provision of ventilation, from the
means of cleanliness by water supplies being given
within the living and sleeping rooms, and from
overcrowding being prevented. Even common
lodging houses, have by these means
chiefly been rendered comparatively salubrious.
With these practical examples before us, the
deaths from preventable disease in this metro-
polis of ours, occasioned chiefly by foul air are
estimated at above ten thousand yearly. Each
man of the middle class, who, besides doing
business in the metropolis, sleeps in the foul
drain and cesspool tainted atmosphere—it is
proved loses thereby several years of life and
working ability. The moans of prevention is
therefore a large question, which c‘nnot be
allowed to drop, and ought not to be allowed
to flag. But at each step it is beset
with difficulties, or with questions which
are unresolved to those who have thought
only slightly upon the subject, or too readily re-
solved in the shape of immense outlays with very
doubtful results. The latest question raised in
the metropolis has been the purification of the
Thames. We are inclined to agree with Mr..
CHADWICK, that the complete purification of the
cesspool tainted houses was the first question to
be dealt with—for, supposing the Thames puri-
fied, in what relief would the completion of that
work affect the 60 or 70 per cent. of the houses
which have those poison pits, the cesspools, beneath
them ? And how, we would ask, can outfalls be ad-
jasted properly until a new system of self-cleansing
house-drainage—proved to be practicable and ad-
mitted to be necessary—shall have been got into
operation, and it is seen what, under the new circum-
stances, the outfalls are required to do But a
powerful engineering influence, in a high quarter,
bias been successfully exerted to put the outfall
question first. The Metropolitan Board of Works
was induced to agree to a scheme of outfalls which
were to cost four millions, for throwing all
the sewerage and manure of the metropolis
.c
into tip Thames belOw Greenwich, or at Erith.
Then, besides the outcry of the inhabitants against

The Honourable Gentleman who, not so very
many months back, earned for himself a rather
inevitable notoriety by talking seriously in the
House of Commons about the advisability of dis-
persing a Sunday Rabble in Hyde Park with the
crash of a ten-pounder on the Piccadilly Pave-
nent—Mr. G. DUNDA.S elicited, last evening,
from the Right Hon. Baronet, the Minister of
Public Works and the Member for Marylebone,
the acknowledgment of the fact that St. James's
Palace is going to be enlarged ! The former per-
sonage—the individual we mean who would fain
bestow upon the 7roXXoL a horribly new kind of a
•` ten pound" franchise!—had been commenting, in
plaintive accents, yesterday upon that notable crush
at HerMaJnsTv's Drawing-Room to which our fair
countrywomen are periodically subjected, and
About which the Times, a morning ort wo since, was so
tmusinglyla,chrymose. Whereupon Sir BENJAMIN
HALL, ever " blithe and debonnair," even gallant
tnd good-humoured—while he could not for the
!ife of him resist the inelkation to crack a ♦ery
tempting little joke about crinoline—proferred
the Aggrieved the best and surest solace any
Minister in his place could by possibility have
proferred, by announcing the projected improve-
ment already indicated, namely, the enlargement
3f St. James's Palace and the general increase
)f its accommodation. " Although" said the
Right Hon. Baronet, " the dresses of the ladies in
former days were very large, yet I believe at the
present moment they are almost of a similar
width. It is therefore utterly impossible that
tny comfort should be experienced by thous at-
tending a drawing-room in the present day. At
the same time I am happy to be able to inform
the Honourable Gentleman and the House that
instructions have been given by Her MAJESTY'S
Government for the purpose of enlarging the
accommodation of St. James's Palace." Pleasant
tidings for our " ladies of the land"—the victims
of Drawing Room days—the heroines of Crinoline.
But how—in regard to the parsimonious grum-
blers, in the Lords and in the Commons, noble
Earls and hon. and right hon. gentlemen who
complain, from time to time, about the squandering
of the Public Money upon Public Works? Any-
thing but agreeable news to them, we should say,
this prospective increase of St. James's Palace !
Why, it was only a few minutes after Sir BENJA

HALL had thus satisfactorily answered the

larne'utations of Mr. G. DuNDis--that Sir

FRANCIS BARING rosy for the purpose

of solemnly complaining before Parliament of that

harried and worried Administrator, and what is

deemed by a small clique of snarlers--his• waste-
ful extravagance. It was really and truly only a

tedious repetition in the Commons of wha4, it will
be remembered took placs a week or two since in

the pollution, there is a public condemnation of
the proposal to throw a vast amount of manure

into the sea. The plans are taken out of th e

the Lerds, when the Bight Honourable BaronA

hands of the Metropolitan Beard of Works, and

put again into those of another Government Com.
mission. But if the sewer manure is to be pre

served ; 'how shall it be applied ? This question,

was anticipated in his cheese-paring argu-
ments by a Noble Earl from whom we

in which the whole arrangement of the work,

outfalls, and all, turns, is put into the hands o

another and special Government Commission, and
that commission has, we are informed, been kept

had been led t) expect better things—to wit;
Lord MALIIESBURY. And so, from week
to week, Sir BENJAMIN HALL is teazed, and vexed,
and bothered,
now on the right, and now on the
left, by assailants who really appear to treat his
doings tts though they were not simply improve-
ments—but, actually, as if they were so many
monstrous embezzlements ! It is very disheartan-
ing all this. For here, positively for about the first
we have installed at the
time in a hundred years,

inactive for want of money to pay their expenses
—immense waste of manure, to say nothing of

life, still going on. In the meanwhile, on the

suggestion of Mr. CHADWICK, as one of the inter-

national Jury of Ilygeine at Path, under some
interesting circumstances narrated in a speech

•
which we give elsewhere; the Municipal Govern-
-

merit of Paris, under the auspices of the

EMPEROR, have establishoi some important

trial works, the results of which may be taken as

contributary to our investigations in Eog-

land on this important national question.

The main point of the speech, which was listened

to with profound attention -by a very competent
auditory at a meeting of the Royal Agricultural
Society, was demonstrative of the practicability of

C • '.

THE SUN, LONEON, SATURDAY EVENING, JUNE 13, 1857.

applyierage,4 1119 d in the immediate vici-
'aity of'tOps, not ~ronly progelvely, but per-
f :ctly inOffensivelvi especially- 'when it is brought
oat of towns before decomposition., Another
great proposition, for which we refer to the
facts and reasonings stated, apparently 'to
the satisfaction of the meeting, was the
oamparatively small and convenient area
in which town sewarage may be utilised :—of five
houses to an acre of land ; or, for the whole of the
metropolis, an area of not more than ten miles
square, or not greater than the Essex marshes—
when drained. On these topics the testimony of
the Earl of Esssx, who has applied to some of his
own land the sewerage of Watford, is very im-
portant and interesting. The next points were the
statements showing that the sewerage and all town
manure might be removed at a less expense than
that of cleansing cesspools and foul drains
and foul sewers of the foul residue after
decomposition. This is a topic which ought to
be of the deepest interest to metropolitan rate-
payers, over whom there is an impending burthen,
the completed old system of drainage works,
which, it has been avowed by an authority never
below the estimates, will cost upwards of ten
millions :—that is to say a burthen nearly equal
to the poor-rates, for the mitigation of which by
equalisation so many ratepayers in the poorer
districts are contending.