The Sun.
London, England, 1861-06-05 00:00:00

and twist, to which Manchester so strongly
objected, is to be reduced from 10 to 5 per cent.

Mr. LAING even goes so far as to fall in with the
proposal to apply to the local Governments for
£500,000 which is to be raised in through them; but
the grand point of all, that on which Sir CHARLES
most insisted, is conceded also. The army is to be
largely reduced. It is not to exceed 200,000 men.
That is instead of more than double the European
army, and, costing as much to watch as to maintain
it, the native army will be brought down to about
half as many again as the European, and even this
proportion we may expect will be lessened. An
immediate reduction of expenditure seems to be
the consequence, for we are told that the
revenue has increased by £2,080,000, and the
expenditure decreased by 3,600,000. That is, that
India is at least by five millions and a half in a
better position than she was before. The Indian
Budget has arrived just at the time, therefore, to
improve the prospects of the new loan required for
the home demands, principally, of the Indian Go-
vernment, and of the railroads which certainly
must not now be stopped.

The disbanding of all the soldiers possible, on
which Sir CHARLES TREVELYAN so strenuously in-
sisted, is specially important now. The demand for
labour has so greatly increased, owing to the rail-
ways and other works, that the soldiers prefer the
better wages of workmen and are thankful to be
released. They will not be troublesome idlers,
but industrious labourers who know the
value of money and are ready to work for it. For
the precise meaning of the information that local
legislative councils are to be established, we must,
of course, wait. Can it be that power is really to
be more decentralised than it has been ; that the
governors of what are, in fact, large kingdoms are
to become something more like viceroys, and are to
be permitted to improve their vast territories with-
out having to consult Calcutta about every rupee
they spend—and even whether pencils and note-
paper are to be allowed to a servant !
Does the Government really contemplate fol-
lowing Mr. BRIGHT'S advice, and setting the
different Presidencies and their Governors compet-
ing for the prize of first-rate management ? We
may be sure our aristocracy will never forego the
prize of a Governor-Generalship, so long as it is
given not to merit, but to needy patricians. We
may hope, however, that the announcement will be
found to mean that the local Governments are to
have far greater powers intrusted them ; and the
Governor-General to become more and more the
Viceroy of smaller confederated Viceroyalties.

Many changes for the better are now being fast
rendered inevitable in our system of Workhouse
management. Conspicuous among these changes
for the better in the future operation of that system
is one recently brought to light by means of the
searching inquiry now going on before the Parlia-
mentary Committee appointed to investigate the
social problem of Poor Relief in the Metropolis.
There, before that Committee, at one of its latest
sittings, the Rev. Canon MORRIS being at the time
under examination—it came out that many of the
Workhouse inmates, not being Protestant, are re-
peatedly deprived of the liberty of going to attend
religious service for—what ? For a breach of the
workhouse rules ! The witness adding that, while
he did not mean to say, of course, that the work-
house rules should not be kept, he nevertheless
could not but think that any breach of them
ought to be punished in a proper man-
ner, and consequently (it were superfluous to
argue) in a manner totally different from the one
we have just now particularised. " What"—the
witness very reasonably asked—" would be said
of a magistrate who, instead of inflicting the usual
legal punishment for an offence, should sentence
any one to be prevented from saying his prayers
for a week or fortnight ?" Certainly, an inquiry
that puts the matter quite irresistably to any one's
recognition by the sheer force of what is familiarly
known among logicians as the reductio ad absur-
dum. The notion of any such discretionary power
being allowed to our patty workhouse officials, the
notion of any such odious, any such literally profane
and demoralising power of punishing in the manner
instanced, must, certainly, be allowed on all sides
to be utterly preposterous. To talk of imposing,
as a penalty, upon any wretched pauper who may
have broken these miserable little workhouse rules
and regulations; to talk of imposing upon him, or
upon her, as the case may be, a punishment
incapacitating the individual from worshipping
GOD according to the dictates of conscience—to
talk of anything so monstrous as this, as of a sys-
tem to be tolerated for an instant longer than is ab-
solutely necessary for its destruction, is certainly to
outrage all our nobler instincts, all our sense of
social decency, all our reverence for religion, all our
homage for our common Christianity.

There must surely come an end to this among other
abuses—as surely let us say as this Parliamentary
Committee of Inquiry is now sitting for the pur-
pose of numbering up these still existing abuses
with a view to their speedy and effectual dissipa-
tion. Another grievance of a kindred description
that came out before that Committee upon
the occasion of the same sitting from the re-
port of the proceedings at which we have
already quoted. This must here also be par-
ticularised. It is less flagrant, we admit, in its
character—as it well might be ! But hardly the less
imperatively does it require removal, henceforth,
as a systematic grievance at our workhouses—a
grievance felt very bitterly indeed by many of the
unhappy occupants. We allude to the circum-
stance that those occupants of our workhouses who
are not Protestants are altogether precluded from
using their own books of devotion unless open to
the inspection of the Chaplain, of the Governor, and
of the Matron—" which.,"
observed
rteeit yo
fenaessise,
nu upon whose
comment,who se evidence we
ehav the
ealre amadsyhe wit
adocz
" of course rendered the permis-
sion to use those books
nugatory."
Aniotvhieorlal
taimonenot
of
instance of this kind of officia
national(th anbkoas heavent'nay, for the
!)
most
pgarreta great
we
may
truth-
fully designate it the great nationalui
al
Civil and Religious Liberty ! The free exercise of
religion within the walls of an union workhouse
ought, in vindication of that glorious principle, to
be rendered as secure, to be rendered as possible
and as easy within as without the walls of those
mournful establishments. Nay—perfect freedom
of religious worship, according to the dictates of the
consciences of the inmates—ought to be rendered,
if that were in any way practicable, more e,2sy to
those inmates, more readily within their reach, than
to others outside the union workhouse. And for
this simple
,reason, that the unhappy pauper has
larger need for the consolations of religion than the
majority of those who are not so utterly
prostrated under the heel of misfortune. Yet as
things are at present, according to the same witness
at the same sitting of the Committee already specified,
the general practice is not to send for a priest until
the pauper applicant is seriously ill. That asser-
tion of the witness having reference, it will be
observed from the report of the proceedings of the
Committee, to St. Pancras Union. One of the lead-
ing members of this Committee appears to he almost
incredulous as to this statement, unwilling to accept
it as undeniable in its accuracy without fur-