The Sun.
London, England, 1868-07-18 00:00:00

Er-rEIT 72 ME PUBLIC ,TOUBITAL3,

In an article on the Government:and the telegraphs the
Saturday Review blames the Chancellor of the Exchequer
for the careless injustice of his original proposal for expro-
priating the telegraph companies. The most prudent
plan would have been to negotiate with the directors ; or,
if it was considered necessary to take the property of the
shareholders without their consent, the Government
should, in accordance with all precedent, have determined
on a compulsory purchase of all the undertakings. Mr.
MfarckEltuat, or his advisers, with an injudicious smartness,
'devised a plan for acquiring the telegraphs which was
scarcely distinguishable from a partial confiscation. The
remonstrances which were provoked by the reckless pro.
posal of the Government have happily produced their full
effect ; for, before the bill went into committee, the tele-
graph companies bad agreed to sell their property on
equitable terms, and at a later period the railway corn
panies and the owners of the submarine lines also agreed
for sufficient consideration, to assent to the transfer. As
the evidence of commercial witnesses in favour of the bill,
was overwhelming, it only remained to consider the finan-
cial character of the operation. Mr. Goschen and one or
two other members of the committee object to the terms
of the bargain. It may well be that the telegraph
system might be greatly improved and cheapened by
arrangements which nevertheless would not be advanta-
geous to the revenue. The penny postage, although
it never subjected the Post Office to actual loss, greatly
reduced its profits for a long period, and the net receipts
of 1839 were not reached for twenty-five years after the
adoption of the new and admirable system ; yet, if it bad
beenpossible to trace the collateral effects of cheap postage
on the paper duty, and on other taxes, it is highly pro•
bable that the scheme would be found to have been profit-
able from its inception. The original outlay of the
Government for the telegraphs will not fall much short of
£5,000,000 ; and probably the immediate receipts will
scarcely amount to £200,000 a year. It may be argued
with some plausibility that it is not allowable to tax the
entire community for the benefit of a minority which
sends telegraphic messages ; but it is desirable that
Government should sometimes prefer a partial good, in-
volving a corresponding sacrifice, to absolute inaction. II
Parliament is satisfied by Mr. Seudamore's statistics
that the telegraphs will within five years pay a fair
interest on the original outlay, it would be mere prudery
to deny the country the enjoyment of a great benefit in
order to avoid a small reduction in the surplus revenue of
the Post Office. There will be a certain economy, and ar
appreciable public advantage, in raising the condition and
the qualifications of the servants of a great department of
State. A functionary who manages the Government
savings-banks, the annuities, and the telegraphs will be
better paid and more enlightened than the simple distri-
butor of letters ; and the effect of superior competence
will be felt in the discharge of the duties proper to a post-
master, as well as in the performance of supplementary
functions. On the whole, Parliament will do well to con-,
firm the arrangements which have been approved by the
committee ; and the House of Commons will not listen tc
the impudent proposal of seizing the property of the com-
panies without paying the stipulated price.
The Controller-General seems to the Spectator to be get•
ing rather scant justice at the hands of the Treasury and
the public:—We do not wonder at it, or greatly regret it.
for until the army has been made a strictly parliamentary
department, obedient in all ways and in every detail tc
the Minister at War, all civilian statesmen will exhibit
strong jealousy of all military control over expenditure.
Still, justice is justice, and Sir 11. Storks and Major-
General Balfour seem to be getting considerably less than
their share. Their plan may be inadmissible, but if so, it
is only inadmissible because Parliament chooses to endure
a prerogative which virtually exempts the army from full
parliamentary control. Avoiding details which only per-
plex non-military readers, the plan of military finance laid
down by the Controller-General and his assistant was sub
stantially as follows :—Each head of each department in
the army organism was to submit his estimate for the year
to Sir Henry Storks and his colleague, who, after a revi-
sion possible only to men thoroughly familiar with details

—who can decide off-hand, for example, whether there
ought to be 1,000 rounds of ammunition in the fortresses
or only 500—would submit the whole to the Minister at
War, a civilian and a parliamentary officer, and through
him to the Cabinet. If that -supreme civil authorit3
thought the estimate too high, or wanted it reduced in obe•
dience to public opinion, either as to the whole amount oz
any section of the whole, it would send the estimates
back to the Controller, who would at once compel the
departments to make the necessary change. If he did
not, he must either resign, or the Minister must. It is on
these estimates alone that economy can be elf, eted, fur the
estimates once sanctioned are certain to be spent. The
departments will never risk their efficiency, as they think
it, by spending less than Parliament has allowed. We
might as well expect a housekeeper, when limited to a
figure, to expend less than her allowance. Fur the allow-
ance, however, the control thus exercised would be purely
civil, would be entrusted solely to the responsible
Allinsters, and could be exercised to any extent or in any
direction they please. But when they announced their
?ecisiun,
and the house of Commons had endorsed it, then
the departments were to spend the money, subject, as we
understand the plan, to the Controller-General, aided and
checked by an independent audit, but not to the Treasury.
The depart►nent would, in fact, be c9inpitte within itself,
and therefore responsible in the highest degree for it,i
acts through the Cabinet Minister, the Secretary at War,
who, be it remembered, appoints and can remove the
Controller-General. Such au arrangement is in accord
with the practice of other departments, and is necessary
to perfect the centralisation which is the life of an efficient
army, and the very objet of the recent reform.

The Imperial Recieta can by no means adopt the purist
and doctrinaire theory, that the candidate who bribes is
far more guilty than the voter who is bribed. In most
cases the constituencies are the corruptors. If any man
goes down to a county or borough hitherto the undisputed
domain of pure disinterested patriotism, where every vote
has hitherto been a matter of conscience, and every
elector has acted for the public good according to what
light lie had, and this unscrupulous juts uder, by lavish ex-
penditure, turns such an abode of innocence into a copy of
Barnstaple or Bridgewater, let him be given up to the
indignation of moralising newspapers. But the aspirant
to a seat seldom desires to bribe for its own sake, from a
sense of the value of cash, if not of the value of political
purity. More often he finds reluctantly a number of his
would-be constituents hungering fur gold and itching for
patronage, and engages in a scale of illegitimate expendi-
ture, which he dislikes, to avoid a defeat, which he dislikes
still more. Many who have often bribed would rejoice at
the extinction of bribery. Those who have often been bribed
are probably of another mind. We think it is well that
the House of Commons should have abandoned its jealousy
of others deciding upon the election of its own members.
The present election committees are, perhaps, the most
unsatisfactory tribunals that the present time would be
likely to see. They are, no doubt, a great advance upon
the state of things in a large part of the last century, when
committees settled the legality of a return by a strict
party division, which was either confirmed or reversed by
another strict party division in the House. But it is impossible
for members of Parliament to treat such an issue with the
calmness and " dry light " which might be brought to bear
by an external tribunal. It is a most invidious task fur
them to fix a personal charge upon a brother legislator.
It is equally detrimental to justice and public advantage
if they stretch a point against their own party, from serupu•
bons sensitiveness to the suspicion of partiality, as if they,
under the influence of less worthy feelings, strain the law
or distort the facts in au opposite direction. We have
heard of aggrieved sufferers by a decision of a committee
who bitterly lamented that the majority had not been
opponents instead of friends. In that case they might
have hoped for the benefit of any doubts that would have
occurred ; as it was, it was a point of honour to withhold
such indulgence. We, therefore, comprehend and rejoice
in the prudence of the decision by which those functions
are to be entrusted to a tribunal, to be created by l'arlia-
ment, which the House has hitherto committed to small
bodies chosen from itself.

The London Perim is led, apropos to the Irish Church,
to consider the po4ition of the English Church. It
points out that the Church is eminently national.
If it has enemies now, it is in no worse a condition than
it has always been. It presents none of the glaring
iniquities which forty years ago made it unpopular. And
he would not be far wrong who should lay down the
position that there are only two sources whence she is
threatened with danger—one, her internal differences
and the other, the insAne attempt to represent her as
indissolubly linked with the Irish Church—a living body
bound hanil and foot to a ciirme. There is no institution
with which the people would less willingly part Were the
Cl.urch allowed to stand upen. its own s,„and.
Men, no
doubt, there are who, working upon a principle, and with-
out any hos:ility specially directed against her, would he
glad t see her and all other religious bodies reduced to
the system of vilultary support. But though they should
le !made their efforts, the Church will be unassailable if
ber trusted guides : r true to her. There :ire n+,t a few
'D.ssiii.ters who would be unwilling to see tuy per-
ninuei,t harm come to her. For three centuries she
lea:: been identified with the life of the nation, and has
contributed mainly to form the national character. Even
the lia!tie which hat Leen carried on for many years upon
had sprun,, nine!' less front towards her
than from that sense of justice_ which Englishmen have
:i!so felt intensely. when their • own interests have been
concerned, and winch revolted from thee impelled support
of a form of worship with which they did not agree. The
Lo:Idon Reciew has no doubt of the sincerity of the argu-
ment that Dissenters would subscribe voluntarily for the
repair of the parish fabric much more than the sum irri-
tatingly forced from them by the State. And our con-
temporary is also convinced that it is possible, supposing
the time were ripe for it, to secure the position of the
Church by placing it upon a broader basis than it now
stands upon. A national Church is the Church of the
nation. To be that it must represent, as far as possible,
the religious sentiment of the nation. The Irish Church
is perishing because it has failed to do that. The English
Church is vigorous fur ,the opposite reason. But we are
in a state of transition, and another generation may find
the Church representing a minority of the nation unless
La :Was Aud rims arc Win in burn.