The Sun.
London, England, 1861-02-04 00:00:00

PUBLIC EXP-ENDITURE.

The address from certain members of the House
of Commons to Lord Palmerston, on the subject of
retrenchment (a copy of which has already been
given in The Sun), was last week forwarded to his
lordship, in a letter bearing the signatures of Mr.
R. W. Crawford, Mr. E. Mines, and Mr. C. Bux-
ton. The noble Premier acknowledged the receipt
of the address in the followbg letter to Mr. Craw-
ford :

94, Piccadilly, Jan. 30.
".My dear Mr. Crawford,—l have to acknowledge the
receipt of the letter signed by yoirself, Mr. Baines, and Mr
Buxton, which transmitted to ne the memorial addressed
to me by some members of the liberal party in the House
Commons, who have generally ar.pportel bier Majesty's
Government. I beg to assure you that lam much gratified
by the friendly spirit in which this memorial has been
drawn up ; and I entirely concur in the opinion it conveys,
that a due regard to economy should be observed in making
arrangements for the public services of the nation. It is
the duty of the responsible advisers of the Crown to propose
such establishments and such estimates as, according to the
best judgment they can form upon the knowledge they pos-
sess of the general state of affairs, may appear to them to
be requisite for the interest and security of the empire ; and
it will be the endeavour of her Majesty's Government so
to perform this duty as to obtain the approval and support
of Parliament and the country.—My dear Mr. Crawford,
yours sincerely,
" PALMERSTON..
"R. W. Crawford, Esq."

The following 60 members " authorised" their
names to be appended to the address :—Sir J Ar-
nott, Kinsale; E Baines, Leeds; W E Baxter, Mon-
trose; T Bailey, Manchester; A R Bristow, Kid-
derminster; W Buchanan, Glasgow; Sir R B W
Bulkeley, Anglesey; C S Butler, Tower Hamlets;
C Buxton, Maidstone ; H C E Childers, Pontefract;
Sir M J Cholmeley, North Lincolnshire ; J Clay,
Hull; Colonel H M Clifford, Hereford; It W
Crawford, London ; J Crook, Bolton ; F. Cross-
ley, West Riding, Yorkshire ; J D Dent,
Scarborough ; Sir C E Douglas, Banbury; A
M Dunlop, Greenock ; W Ewart, Dumfries;
H E C Ewing, Paisley ; Hon C
W Fitz william, Melton ; Major G Gavin,
Limerick ; S Gurney, Penryn, &c. ; G Hadfield,
Sheffield ; R Hanbury, Middlesex ; G Hodgkinson,
Newmarket ; E Holland, Evesham ; J Kershaw,
Stockport; WH G Langton, Bristol ; W Lawson,
Carlisle ; E A Leathern, Huddersfield ; W Lee,
Maidstone; W S Lindsay, Sunderland; F Lyons,
Cork ; J Mellor, Nottingham ; G Moffatt, Honiton ;
J T Norris, Abingdon; G Onslow, Guildford; R
Padmore, Worcester; C Paget, Nottingham;
H Pease, Durham County, South; Sir S M Peto,
Finsbury ; G Pigott, Reading; J Pilkington,
Blackburne ; W Pollard-Urquhart, Westmeath ;
J L Ricardo, Stoke-on-Trent; T Salt, Bradford;
W D Seymour. Southampton ; Sir J V Shelley,
Westminster ; J B Smith,:Stockport ; M Staniland,
Boston; Colonel W H Sykes, Aberdeen ; J A
Turner, Manchester; I B P Westhead, York; G
H Whalley, Peterborough ; H W Wickham, Brad-
ford; Colonel H White, Longford ; J White
Brighton; J Wyld, Bodmin.
As there is a call for retrenchment, it may be as
well to mention that a committee of the House of
Commons sat last session to inquire whether any
reduction could be effected in the miscellaneous
expenditure, and that they took the evidence of
several official persons, and recommended that the
inquiry be resumed this year. To this committee,
Mr. Laing, then Financial Secretary to the Trea-
sury, made a statement of the increase in the civil
expenditure of the kingdom. Having first of all
explained that items amounting in round numbers
to £1,500,000 a-year have within these few years
been transferred from the consolidated fund to the
estimates to be voted annually by the House of
Commons (of couse, constituting no real increase in
the expenditure), he proceeded to say that he had
carefully analysed the estimates for the last 12
years, with a .view to ascertain the actual real in-
crease, and he found that in 1859 the " miscellane-
ous" civil expenditure had risen to £2,225,000 more
than it was in 1848. This increase is accounted for
and more than accounted for, by the following
seven votes :—For education, science, and art there
has been an increase of £930,000 a year; for extra-
ordinary buildings, such as the Houses of Parlia-
ment, telegraphs, and public works of that sort,
£660,000 a-year ; for ordinary public buildings,
parks, and works, £157,000; for harbours, 127,000 ;
for law, justice, and police, £332,000 (the county
courts causing above £200,000); for consuls and
the diplomatic service, £75,000 ; ar d for superan-
nuations, £89,000. There is also the cost of the
packet service, which has increased by £400,000 a-
,
year. Mr Laing had to add that though items
amounting to £1,500,000 had been transferred from
the consolidated fund to the estimates, it would
unfortunately be a mistake to expect to find the
charges on the consolidated fund less by £1,500,000
a year; the reduction there is now only £BOO,OOO.
The cost of the collection of the revenue has also
increased by £300,000. These items together make
an increase of £3,500,000 a year in the civil expen-
diture since 1848, making the civil charges range
between £10,000,000 and £11,000,000 a year, and
the cost of collection of the revenue £4,500,000.
The committee took some evidence with regard to
these great items of increased expenditure. In
reference to the education vote, Mr. Laing pointed
to the enormous outlay in England upon the edu-
cation of pupil teachers and schoolmasters, but upon
this whole subject we must wait for the report of
the Education Commission, which cannot now be
much longer delayed. Several witnesses were exa-
mined upon the subject of public works and build-
ings, and there was a strong opinion expressed, and
adopted by the committee, that as the office is not
political a permanent commissioner of works
should be appointed, and that all public
worsts (excepting those for naval and military
defence) should be placed under this department ;
Lord Llanover assured the committee that the
saving by such an arrangement would be immense.
The charge for furniture for the public offices is
very high. Such items were instanced as one of
£2,404 in a year for carpet beating and van hire,
and " that perpetual moving of furniture which
there is in public offices from one place or room to
another." Mr. Austin, the secretary of the Office of
Works, said that sometimes demands for new furni-
ture are made very frivolously, and he acknowledged
that he did not see any reason why the furniture
supplied for the use of clerks in public offices should
be so superior to that in an attorney's office, or in
the chambers of a special pleader or conveyancer;
as he added—" One knows what the furniture there
is." Sir H. Willoughby stated that (besides on the
average £lOOO a-year for its general repairs) there
had been spent since 1825 no less than £75,000 upon
the repairs of the Embassy-house at Paris, and Mr.
Austin being asked to account for it could only say,
"I do not know how it is." With regard to har-
bours, Mr. Whitbread, as Lord of the Admiralty,
made a very moderate suggestion ; he stated that at
Alderney stone is taken out in barges and dropped
into the water 120 feet deep, and for nearly half a
mile there is no apparent work above the water,
and, said he, " I should wish to have an independent
measurement taken of that, in order to verify that
the pier, for which wo have paid, does really exist
there." At Holyhead, he remarked, the projection
into the sea is apparent, but strange changes have
been made there owing to the cold and warm fits of
Parliament. A foreign engineer of eminence men-
tioned to Mr. Hawkshaw, the controlling engineer,
that be had been in vain endeavouring to ascertain
on what principle the elbow of the breakwater
was of an inward instead of an outward character,
and Mr. Hawksbaw was obliged to tell him that
it was not founded upon any scientific principle
at all, but that there was a desire at one time,
with a view to economy, to stop the work at a
given point, and afterwards Mr. Bendel urged the
extension of the arm for the sake of getting further
anchorage, and this caused the zigzag character
of the work ; but the result was a great increase
in, the expenditure. These statements will

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