The Sun.
London, England, 1861-02-05 00:00:00

TUESDAY tvENING, FEBRUARY 5, 1861

the words which have been articulated this after-
noon by the silvery voice of VICTORIA, it is not by
words which are, after all, only words, nor by pro-
mises, which events have, Eo repeatedly, proved to
have been made only that they might be broken,
and then cast back again for awhile into the
oblivion of the long vacation—it is not any longer
or in any way, by the Speech from the Throne
that " Her MAJESTY'S Ministers will be measured.
That is no longer looked to as the preliminary
test of their efficiency, or as a means of recognising
any reliable auguries of their success: or failure as
an Administration. Ministerial promises are of
no account whatever. Ministerial acts will hence-
forth alone be looked to, both within and without
the walls of Parliament. But those acts will
assuredly be looked to now both by the nation at
large and by the Legislature in both Houses with
all the more jealous scrutiny, because unindicated
previously by any reliable foreshadowing through
the Speech from the Throne, of the policy, of the
designs, of the distinct and deliberate intentions of
her MAJESTY'S Government.

Whatever their avowals now through the lips
of their gracious SOVERElGN—whatever their
reticence there, whether designed or undesigned,
in regard to the programme of their legislative
undertakings—Ministers know full what it is pre-
cisely that the community looks for this year at thei
hands, what it is that will be required from them
during 1861—whether they promise to do these
things, or whether abstaining from any promise
whatever upon this or upon that head, they reserve
themselves unpledged for the resolute labour of
their performance. Conspicuous among these great
national requirements, foremost among them both
in point of time and of importance, they know, one
and all of them perfectly well, must be the com•
prehensive revision, or to use an expressive
phrase, imported from the opposite shores of
the Channel, the rehabilitation of our whole finan-
cial system. The country will no longer consent to
continue, with so much long-suffering and apparent
complacency, this miserable hand to mouth system
of merely patched up Budgets—Budgets just tiding
over a deficit by means in every way discreditable
to the responsible financier of the QUEEN, the
nation and the Government. The country will no
longer quietly consent to jeopardize its prosperity
in order that a crochetty experimentalist may essay,
year after year, with profligate audacity and at
every hazard, to realise his own eccentric and
extravagant hallucinations. The country will not
have the war tax continued, much less doubled,
until war shall have at length justified, and, indeed,
necessitated its imposition—it will not yield up
year after year, any longer with tranquility, that
detested Income-tax which applied thus infamously
in a time of peace, is likely to become the
very germ of disloyalty and insurrection. The
country will insist upon having some rational
economy in its expenditure. At the same time
it will require no less inexorably the mainte-
nance in full efficiency, particularly during the con-
tinuance of the present critical irritation in Europe
the maintenance, at their full efficiency of both the
the great departments of our 'War Administration.
Abroad the dignity of the Crown and the honour
of the nation will have to be maintained. At home
the well-being of the community will have to be
cared for somewhat more sedulously and practically
than they have been cared for of late years, by
measures effecting the improvement of the laws, by
measures beneficially affecting the sanitary and
social condition of the masses, by measures inaugu-
rative of a new and sound financial :organisation,
and last, but not least, by measures tending to the
better constitutional development of our still
restricted and complex system of popular repre-
sentation.

LATE ST IN E WS.

(REUTER'S TELEGRAMS.)

PARIS, FEB. 5.

The Moniteur announces that a sitting of the
Corps Legislatif will take place to-day, in which
Government will make a communication.

TURIN, FEB. 5.
Ruggiero Settimo has been appointed Presi.
dent of the Senate.

The remaining elections have everywhere taken
place peacefully.
Brofferio and Crispi have been elected mem-
bers of Parliament.

PARIS, FEB. 6.
The death of Marshal Bosquet is announced.

NAPLES, FEB. 4.
The fire of the besieged at Gaeta is very brisk,
and is replied to by the Sardinians.
A vessel left Gaeta last night, eluding the
vigilance of the Sardinian squadron.
Prince Carignan has visited the camp.

VIENNA, FEB. 4.

Numbers of the Hungarian soldiers on furlough,
who had been ordered to return, have already ar-
rived at their quarters.
The semi•official .Donau Zeitung gives a denial to
the news published by some German journals, that
a treaty relatir.g to the Danubian Principalities had
been concluded between Russia and Austria.

The law regulating the religions affairs of the
Protestants in the German and Sclavonian pro-
vinces has been adopted by the Council of Minis-
ters, and will be published shortly, after it has re-
ceived the Imperial sanction. It grants complete
autonomy to the Protestant Church. As regards
marriages between Catholics and Protestants, the
existing regulations are for the present to remain
in force.

PESTH, FEB. 4.

The Judex Curia, has exhorted the municipalities
to await the result of the judicial conference, which
is to meet shortly, before commencing the exercise
of judicial functions.

ROME, FEB. 3.

The Pope has ordered his soldiers to return to
Rome, notwithstanding the orders of Mgr. de
Merode to the contrary.
15,000 Sardinian soldiers passed through
Umbria on their march to tho Kingdom of
Naples.

The reactionary movement in the Abruzzi was
organised by Count Trapani and i‘fgr. de Merode.
The Sardinians have evacuated the Papal ter-
ritory in compliance with orders from the Emperor
Napoleon,

The Spanish vessels which were despatched to
Gaeta have been repulsed by Admiral Persano.

TROOPS AND WAR STORES FOR NEW ZEALAND.—
The African, one of Shaw, Savill, and Co.'s liners, sailed
from Gravesend on Thursday for Auckland direct. She has
taken a large quantity of powder and other military stores,
as also five officers and GO men of the Commissariat and
Hospital Corps, with their wives and families. Two officers
have sailed in the ship to join the 57th Regiment, now
serving in New Zealand. The African is a high-classed
vessel, and the military officers from Chatham, who super-
intended the embarkation, expressed themselves highly
satisfied with the arrangements made for the comfort of the
troops.

THE PUBLIC EXPENDITURE.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.
Sir,—The independent press will render the
most important public service if it shall assist in-
dependent members of the House of Commons in
enforcing a strict but well-considered economy on
the Government. .As a public censor you have a
perfect right to hold up to blame any members of
Parliament who neglect their duty, and are mere
pretenders to the merit of carefully guarding the
public purse. But I hope you will not confound
those who do their duty with those who neglect it,
and that you„ ill not by your criticisms impair the
effect of a combined and seasonable effort to obtain
a reduction of our enormous expenditure.
If I may judge of others from myself, the object
of those members who signed the recent memorial
to Lord Palmerston was to produce an impression
on the Government favourable to retrenchment, at
the very time when that impression would be of
the greatest service—namely, while they were pre-
paring the Estimates. To wait till the extent of
the public establishments had been decided, and
Government had been publicly committed to them,
would have been to come a day after the fair.
Admitting most fully the duty of members to
attend during the discussion of the Estimates, I
need not observe to you that the difficulty of effect-
ing well-considered retrenchments in Committee of
Supply, in opposition to the Minister and to the
numerous members who professionally sympathise
with the maintenance of large establishments, is
very great. In questions admitting of doubt there
is a natural but too great readiness to throw the
responsibility from the members themselves upon
the Minister. Hence the value of impressing the
Ministers beforehand with the necessity of care
and economy in framing the Estimates.
I can scarcely have failed to produce some in-
fluence on the Government to find a great number
of members who have generally been among their
supporters, and who represent many of the largest
constituencies in the kingdom, so convinced of the
necessity of retrenchment as to join in expressing
their sentiments to the Prime Minister. If the
measure is unusual, it would only have the more
effect, providing it was in no sense improper.
So far from the signing of the memorial excusing
members to themselves or to their constituents from
the duty of watching the estimates in the house, I
conceive it must have exactly the opposite effect.
It must blind them, in consistency, to the perform-
ance of that duty.
Allow me to say that the terms in which you
criticise the memorial to Lord Palmerston are not
calculated to encourage zeal in obtaining a reduc-
tion of the public burdens. You say, "We believe
the opinion of the country upon this somewhat
pharisaical demonstration will be—' Instead of
masquerading as Censors, go into the House of
Commons and do your duty." Now if, as I be-
lieve to be the case, the subscribers were sincere in
their wish to obtain retrenchment, the charge of
" pharisaism" is unjust ; and it is hardly calculated
to induce members to support economy in the house,
because it shows how honest attempts to serve the
public may be misinterpreted. As to "masquerad-
ing," at least there was no concealment of faces,
seeing that each gentleman gave his name to a
document that was sent to the Government, and
was sure to become public. Neither was there the
assumption of any dress but his own, unless it be
said—for which there is no pretence—that the re-
quest for economy was hypocritical. Nor did the
subscribers become " Censors," for there was no
censure conveyed in their memorial. Would it not,
then, have been more just and expedient to say,
" You,have done well to make a timely representa-
tion 'to the Government while the estimates
were under their consideration, and when, as
Parliament was not sitting, you had no other
means of doing it ; now go into the House of Com-
mons, and there do your duty by supporting with
your votes the economy which you have advocated
in your memorial."

When you call the memorial " a lazy device for
neglecting the duties of a member of Parliament,"
I must not on my own part, lest I should be charged
with " pharisaism," but I may on the part of others
express my belief that the imputation is not well
founded. I believe that many of the members who
signed the memorial are those who attend best
during the discussions on the Estimates. It is too
true that the benches of the house are at such times
deplorably thin ; for this I will offer no excuse ; on
the contrary, I blame it, let the blame fall where
it may. It is too common for members to absent
themselves during discussions on the details of
establishments with which they are not proles-
sionlly acquainted, and the public suffers from the
practise. Reprehend this as forcibly as you like ;
but do not, as one sometimes hears in public meet-
ings which are thinly attended, scold those who
are present for the fault of those who
are absent. And, above all, do not represent a
memorial in which members go out of the common
way to urge economy as " a device for neglecting"
the common way of securing it.
Qoarehing examination into the details of the
public expenditure is ILaportaut but, I hope you
are mistaken when you say—" We believe that if
these gentlemen were to poll the country through
it would be found that the great majority of the
people of all classes are thoroughly convinced that
there is not at this moment one soldier or sailor
too much in the service of Queen Victoria. We
believe it would also be found that every one is
equally convinced that we pay too much for them."
If you are correct in the first of these supposi-
tions, I confess that I shall have small hope of
any effective reduction of the public expenditure ;
but my own opinion strongly differs from that
which you suppose to be general as to the extent
of our warlike establishments. Last year Parlia-
ment voted the following numbers of soldiers and
sailors—namely, for the army, 145,269 men of all
ranks, with 83,585 men on the East India estab-
lishment—total, 228,854 (of course exclusive of the
Volunteers) ; and for the navy 66,100 seamen in the
fleet and Coastguard service, 18,000 marines, and
1,400 civilians for Coastguard service—total, 85,500
men. These numbers very far exceed those voted
in any former year when the country was not en-
gaged in an European war. In the year 1840 the
total coast of our 'warlike establishments was
£14,119,418 ; in 1850 it was £15,392,944 ; but in
1860 the Army and Navy Estimated reached
£27,644,746, exclusive of supplementary estimates
for the China war, which carried the total warlike
expenditure to upwards of £30,000,000. My con-
viction, then, is both that the army and navy are
unnecessarily large, and that the cost is excessive ;
and whatever the country may have thought in
times of high prosperity, it is certain that a Go-
vernment which maintained establishments like the
above would in any less prosperous state of things
be denounced for its extravagance.
Whatever justification, apparent or real, there
may have been for the vast extent of our establish-
ments in 1860, surely no man can look at the posi-
tion of England in 1861 and deem establishments
of the same extent to be necessary. I think, there-
fore, every member who signed the memorial to
Lord Palmerston for retrenchment did his duty as
a guardian of the public purse ; and I hope they
will be ready to support the demand by their votes
on the Estimates.—l am, sir, your obedient servant,
Reform Club, Feb. 4. EDWARD BAINES.