The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-22 00:00:00

EMANCIAL REFORM.

There is a mocking vision which periodically
appears in his dawn-of-day slumbers to tantalise
the imagination of John Bull. It visits him under
different names and in various forms, but it always
promises some relief almost unhoped for. When
tired and weary, and heavily laden, it offers him
rest and refreshing sleep, and holds out the hope
that he shall go henceforward light of foot.
Troubled about matters pecuniary, it tells him that
he shall be in time to come free from debt and able
to make both ends meet without that extraordinary
exertion which begins to bow his back and shake
his nerves. The only fault of this vision is that it
is a vision. When John. in his honest way, would
shake hands upon the promise there is no hand to
shake. Sometimes the gauzy pantomimic fairy calls
herself Financial Reform, and she is so rich in
spangles, and reflects so beautifully the blue fire,
that all the world is for the moment enamoured of
Financial Reform. We recollect how in Drury-
lane Theatre, not very long since, this most attractive
piece of magic was played. But while we admired
and doted the pretty vision vanished. Where is now
Financial Reform? Where are the splendours
Financial Reform promised, where the burdens of
which she undertook to relieve us ? The first are
nowhere, but the second are tight upon our backs,
just where they were. Financial Reform, however,
is now come back to us, and is dancing her pretty
pas seal before the eyes of certain very staid
and respectable members of Parliament under
the changed name of Retrenchment. It is the
same vision under a new name. On the former
occasion it shone in all publicity, this time there
was a certain degree of privacy about it; but from
the time of Burke a vision of Economical Reform,
or Financial Reform, or Retrenchment has always,
under different names but with the same allure-
ments, equally delighted our eyes and mocked our
hopes.
_ _

Call it retrenchment, or economy, or frugality, it
is the common hope of every English taxpayer. It
is not peculiar to the members who sit in any par-
ticular part of the House of Commons. It is not
the patented aspiration of Sir James Duke, or the
private hope of Mr. Baines, or the want originally
discovered by Mr. Pilkington. It is the general
desire of all men. Every Englishman, Scotchman,
and Irishman, from the Premier to the little boy
who stands with his blacking-brushes at the corner
of St. Martin's-lane, desires to pay less taxes. We
all want the full advantage of government and
absolute protection from foreign invasion, and we
desire to have this as perfect as possible and as
cheap as possible. A great many of us also enter-
tain a notion at this moment that what we at pre-
sent have is perhaps not quite so efficient and cer-
tainly not so cheap as it might be. Certain very
wise men, becoming cognisant of this fact, have
undertaken to communicate it privately to Lord
Palmerston, and, as the world knows, this
privacy, according to the natural course of
things, has become a very wide publicity.
Lord Palmerston has been solemnly told that
there must be retrenchment and economy. It is
a very strong probability that Lord Palmerston
knew this be"ore, and felt it quite as deeply as any
of the gentlemen who signed the letter which
expressed this undoubted fact. Ministers in this
country do not willingly produce inflamed Esti-
mates, and Chancellors of the Exchequer do not
subject themselves to the obligation of imposing new
taxes or opposing popular movements for the repeal
of obnoxious taxes. Nothing, however, is easier
than to enunciate a general desire. We all want
to retrench, but the question is, what shall we
retrench? We are all in the position of the house-
holder who finds that his Christmas bills are
reducing the balance at his banker's to nil. Lut
the question remains, where shall he begin ? What
shall be the first article of expenditure struck off?
There is an immense crowd of servants meeting a
certain number of times per diem in the servants'
hall. and never without some serious damage to
the family finances ; but, poll the servants' hall,
and it will abundantly appear that, according to
the opinion of the household, no retrenchment can
be made there. If you insist upon an unanimous
opinion you would be led to the conclusion that the
policeman outside is the only cause of expenditure
which is quite unnecessary. If you could only get
rid of the Police-rates, and could save the expense
of the lock upon the street door, a most healthy
state of economy would pervade the whole house-
hold, and all things would go well.
Such seems to be the opinion of the large section
of the House of Commons who have put their names
to the private letter to the Premier now in course
of signature. Sir De Lacy Evans, who refuses his
signature and denounces the document, is of an
entirely opposite opinion. With an almost unwonted
perspicuity, the General points out that while the
members signing this Round Robin have recourse
to the unprecedented expedient of a private com-
munication to the Minister of the Crown on a sub_
jest of the greatest public interest, they confine
their particular suggestion as to the point of
retrenchment to " the warlike establishments of the
present year." With a vast region of expenditure,
more diffuse and unexamined than any f xpenditure
in the world, the censors of the day confine them-
selves to a recommendation of general retrenchment
in the Civil Service and Miscellaneous Estimates,
and the partial suppression of soldiers and sailors.
The General accepts, as all men must accept, the
proposition of retrenchment, but objects to its special
application to solders and sailors. We agree with
Sir De Lacy Evans. If the members signing
this memorial will examine the estimates, they
will find that soldiers and sailors, and the actual
defences of this country, are about the cheapest
things we do. The question is whether they
ace not too cheap to be efficient. It would
be a very trifling saving to us in taxes to strike
off a number of men from the estimates of next
year, and it would he a very miserable economy
to send out our ships half-manned, and exhibit
England in a condition of disarmament, when
all the rest of the world is full armed for war. We
would have retrenchment, but not here. Expe-
rience ought to have told us that no saving is to
be obtained by reducing ourselves to a state of
weakness which will invite attacks which we must
arm again to meet. Arc we to be reminded once
more of tne fable of the porcupine, who in the hot
walk was persuadedhy the fox to take off his thick
great coat of quills, and who felt cool and easy till
his companion found it convenient to eat him
But let not our lovers of retrenchment be angry
with Sir De Lacy Evans. If the suppression of a
few thousands of soldiers and sailors is the easiest
process of reducing estimates, there are other much
more efficient means of exercising the energies of
Financial Reformers. We have been for years
calling for the assistance of members of the Houle
of Commons to sift and thoroughly examine these
Naval and Military Estimates. They are as rich
in antiquities as the soil of Rome. Not a spade is
ever put into the ground but some noseless relic of
former times is turned up. It has been our vain
cry for years that if members of Parliament would
only work in this soil, instead of crying about
the streets like frozen-out-gardeners, they would
dig up hundreds of unknown abuses and reduce
the Estimates by several millions, without im-
pairing the efficiency of the service, Per-
haps, the best instance of how money runs
away in old useless grooves is that of the
difference of pay between the Horse Guards
and the Blues, The Horse Guards and the Blues
have the same duties, the same rank, and are iden-
tical in everything except pay. The Horse Guards
receive 3d. a-day or 25 per cent, more pay than the
Blues. This has gone on for many years. At last
the anomaly struck some meditative individual,
and he devoted his leisure to an historical inquiry
into the matter. After much official research, he
discovered that the difference originated in this
wise :—Many years ago, the Blues being at Wind-
sor and the Horse Guards in London, the London
Barracks required repair, and during these repairs
the Horse Guards were necessarily turned out of
barracks and allowed 3d. a-night billet money. In
a few months the barracks were repaired, and the
Horse Gaards went back; but that billet money,
that 3d., has gone on unexamined and been punc-
tually paid through all the succeeding years. No
lynx-eyed member peering through the Estimates
has ever seen it. It has grown to tens of thousands,
and is simply the result of the omission of a clerk
to make a memorandum in a book many years ago,
when the Horse Guards went back to their regular
quarters. There aro other things of this kind yet
to reward a careful investigator. A little industry
rightly employed would pare down the Estimates
without diminishing the efficiency of the service.
If we want to reduce a jockey we sweat away his
superfluous fat; we do not cut off his arms.—limes.