The Sun.
London, England, 1859-12-03 00:00:00

the delightfully cool and careless manner in
which those enormous supplies are voted Mr.
WILLIAMS gave his constituents, on Mon-
day evening, a sufficiently vivid illustration.
" One night," quoth he, "the Prime Minister
all at once proposed that they should proceed to
vote the Civil Service Estimates. There were seven
volumes of these estimates, which had only just
been delivered. The house had not five minutes
given them to look into the books, and he therefore
objected most strenuously to pass any of these
votes, containing, as they did, some thousands of
items, which he always made a point of carefully
comparing with the same items in former years. It
was no use to point out extravagance in a particu-
lar instance. This would only be laughed at ; but
when he showed that in the old borough-monger-
ing Parliaments less was required, Ministers some-
times hummed and hawed, and often tried to make
a joke of it. In the case he referred to he chal-
lenged any member to say that he had had time to
look at a single figure of these estimates. No one,
however, accepted the challenge, and, upon repeat-
ing it to Lord PALMERSTON, his lordship very jocu-
larly admitted that he had never looked at a
figure. Yet this happened in the House of Com-
mons, whose principal function was to protect the
pockets of the people. He was so disgusted that
he shut up the books and walked out of the house,
declaring that he would be no party to such a farce,
and that he considered an insult had been offered
to the House of Commons by the Premier. No
doubt they were very glad to see him go, and the
House immediately went to work and passed 57
votes, amounting to between £3,000,000 and
£1,000,000 of money, without a word from any-
body, as fast as the votes could be read over. One
might have supposed," he added, " that.the Pre-
mier would have been anxious to allow the fullest
opportunity of examining and discussing the
estimates. But in this instance he (Lord PALMER-
STON) seemed in effect to say, You, the House of
Commons, have no business with these votes, ex-
cept to pass what I think proper, or what the Go-
vernment order you to: pass !" Showing that ac-
cording to a popular idiom, things had, in truth,
come to a pretty pass indeed when this was not the
exceptional, but the ordinary and almost invariable
method of getting pro forma through the drudgery
of the Estimates.
In reference to our war expenditure, in reference
to the military and maritime estimates, we rejoice
to note that Mr. WILLIAMS distinctly repudiated
any desire in regard to the scrutiny and revision
of the estimates beyond that of discovering whether
the money annually voted for the Army and Navy
was, in truth, properly, judiciously, and thriftily
applied. No man, he protested, was more anxious
to see the country defended by a force which would
be irresistible against any attack that could be
adventured upon ! But when, for example, he
found that no more than £4,000,000 out of the
£13,000,000 voted this last year for them were
spent in paying and clothing the officers and men,
and in finding them necessaries and allowances—
his curiosity (Mr. WILLIA.MS seemed to intimate)
was naturally piqued to find out what could possi-
bly have become of the remaining £9,000,000 !
Hence, indeed, his yearly motion for a Committee
of Inquiry into the system of our military expen-
diture. So, again, precisely in regard to our naval
estimates. How (he was curious to learn) had the
sums of money voted for years and years past for
naval purposes beeri actually expend -!(1 ? Remem-
bering that since the termination of the French
war £300,000,000 had been spent upon our navy,
and that at the close of the French war we had
upwards of 150 sail of the line, while at the begin-
ning of the'present year;after.this enormous outlay,
we had only 29 screw and 12 sailing line.of-battle
ships—how, in the name of fortune, or rather we
should say of misfortune (others besides Mr. Wu-
Lams will be eager to know), have we contrived to
get through that awful sum of £300,000,000 ? If
Mr. WILLIAMS'S passion for economy be deemed
by some to amount to nothing less than a mono-
mania—it must certainly be admitted by all to be
a monomania that (no less than HAMLET'S madness)
" hath a method in it !"

We wish to have a word with the farmers of

England, with tenants-at•will, and with leasehold-
ing tenants too. A Reform Bill is at hand, unless.
indeed, foreign affairs or preparations for defence,
are to be the pretexts for evading one once more.
Ought not the farmers:of England to speak out ?
They have, we presume, their electoral grievances
to complain of—why should they leave all the dis-
cussion and action on the subject of Reform to the
towns ? Let farmers awake. There is not a finer
class of Englishmefi than English farmers, yet we
never hear their wilco on public subjects. They
think on them as they walk their fields, and as
they sit by their winter firesides, but they do not
tell us their thoughts. Is it because they dare
not ?

Why is there so great a difference, politically,
between the ordinary £lO householder and the £5O
farmholder ? The former, as the rule, votes as he
pleases. Many of his class, no doubt, must vote
with some lawyer, creditor, or banker ; some will
vote with those who buy them—Gloucester and
Wakefield can tell us that. But hardly a man
among the £lO-householders must vote with his
landlord; while hardly a man of the farmers of
England dares vote against his landlord. Why
this last great difference ? Why does the average
borough voter vote as he pleases, while the farmer
everywhere must vote as his landlord pleases ? The
reason is, that in the actual state of England every
farmer has a political master; the generality of towns-
people have none. The cause of this every farmer
knows. He knows that, firstly, every farmer's
farm is his living ; that, secondly, in this little
island, farms cannot be multiplied, and, if turned out
of the one he holds, twenty other farmers would
like to have it, while he cannot easily find another.
In the town the tenant, if dismissed from one house,
could readily obtain another; the landlord, there-
fore, if ever so hot a Tory, never thinks of parting
with the most Radical tenant who regularly pays
his rent, and keeps the house respectable. It is the
same, of course, with the Radical landlord and the
Tory occupier of his house.
The farmers of England are powerless to remove
this cause of difference between the tenant of a
house and the tenant of a farm. The supply of
houses will never long be wanting where there is
a demand for them. The supply of farms must be
deficient, if every farmer, on the average, brings up
more than one of his sons to his own business.
Hence the competition for farms. Hence the higher
and higher rents given for them since the repeal of
the Corn-laws ; and hence, again, the power of the
landlord over his tenant. Ile can turn him out
without loss. He can have a tenant who will give
him his vote as well as his rent ; and his tenant's
vote counts for two in every contested election.
His landlord is proud of the votes he can command ;
and is mortified if he cannot command his tenant's
vote. Sometimes his influence with the Government
of the day is at stake, and then it is not a ques-
tion of pride merely ; for it may also be a question
whether he shall get an appointment for a relative,
perhaps for a son, from the Horse Guards, or from
a Secretary of State. Add to all, that landlords