The Sun. — 1855-02-22 (London, England)

LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 22, 1855.  SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURYALS.  agreed'on a committee of a somewhat different cast from that of which notice was given for to-night. We really cannot see what else was to be done. Parliaments may be very troublesome, and public inquiries very inconvenient; Czars and Emperors may be able to manage very much better, and it is possible that the proposed committee is a stretch of the censtitution ; but we must take things as they are. We cannot do without the House of Commons. Lord Palmerston, in the course of an unusually long and varied political career, has had occasion to feel the power, not to say the caprice, of the House of Commons, as much as any man living, and be is well aware that it would be simply an act of suicide to persist in saying "Nay," when the house has so emphatically said " Yea." The house has said what it wants, and he is there to do what it want=, and, if he refuses, it will undoubtedly find others to do its work. We may all rest assured there will be a Committee of Inquiry, and the only question about the matter is its constitution, and, consequently, the temper with which it will proceed to ite business. The members to be proposed this evening, with the concurrence of Government and Mr. Roebuck, are, we believe, airea ly settled ; and we trust it will be found that due security is taken, on the one hand, for a free, full, and sea thing inquiry ; on the other, that it shall be conducted as much as possible without inconvenience to the public service, or betrayal of secrets, if any there are, to the enemy. If the inquiry be directed, in the first instance, to the physical condition of our forces in the East, we cannot see who is to be taken from his, duty, what department is to be hindered, or what hint of importance need be given to the fee, by an inquiry into the operations and mutual relations of the Commissariat, the Naval and Land Transport Services, the Medical Department, and their connexion with the higher departments of the Exchequer, the Ministry of War, and the Admiralty. What a tale, for example, 'has already come out insthehistory' of the green coffee berries, and how little has the public service been interrupted or an enemy served by the disclosure Why should not the rest of the investigation be conducted in the same manner ? No doubt, it ean, if people will only go the right way to work. The fact is that there is nothing about which people are so ignorant as the manlier of doing business in our public departments—whose duty it is to do certain things ; who gives the order ; who executes it ; whose consent or ce-operation is necessary ; who is answerable for the delay, if any ; what limitations there are to such an officer's authority or resources. For example, when complaints came from the Crimea that the poor soldiers could do nothing with their green coffee berries, the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury appear to have been " moved" by somebody or other to stir in the matter, and they made a minute ordering that their Secretary write to the Secretary of the Admiralty requestiag him to " move" the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to direct that early steps might be taken for providing and shipping 225,0001 b. of roasted coffee. It took, however, six weeks of moving, countermoving, requesting, writing, directing, expediting, hastening, sealing, signing; providing, and 'shipping, before one single pound of roasted coffee was actually put on board a ship. When' that ship sailed, whether it called anywhere, where it stopped, what became of its cargo at last, are further questions that may very likely lead to the same results. But all the people concerned in this affair are not only anxious to do their duty, not only men with bowels of compassion for their fellow-subjects, but they are the very people who in.private society will complain the most of the interminable hindrances and inextricable perplexities of the public service. No doubt Mr. Gladstone would take care not to lose five minutes, if he could help it, in succouring our brave soldiers in the Crimea. No doubt often as he has had to talk by the hour about coffee and sugar, he never felt so much their importance as when it became his duty to get off a supply to the Crimea as soon as could be. No doubt, Sir James Graham, even from a bed of sickness, would rise to despatch the needful stimulant to our perishing defenders. No doubt, Sir Charles Trevelyan has the same humane sympathies as his chief. No doubt, every official concerned in this matter is only too ready to complain of the delay, somewhere above or below him, or in some other department he knows not where. Surely this is a case for inquiry, with a view to a thorough departmental reform. The only thing it can be compared to is that distressing, though strangely grotesque malady, called St. Vitus's Dance. The poor sufferer cannot convey a piece of bread to his mouth without flourishing it in all imaginable directions, up and down, sideways, zigzag, circuitous, till it describes a journey of many yards, and takes half a minute and no smell expenditure of muscular energy to do what is usually an unconscious and almost instantaneous act. The poor creature tries to go out of a room, but cannot do so without performing all sorts of eccentric and highly unnecessary evolutions .before the door, visiting both doorposts again and again, and finally leaving the door open, and his errand ixcomplete, or perhaps tumbling down on the threshold. Nobok who had a child in this melancholy case -would hesitae to Bend for the (lector and inquire into the natoie and proper treatment of the malady. That is what the House of Commons is doing with respect to this political St. Vitus's Dance, which infests every department of the public service, and makes us all look more like madmen or idiots than sane, and—as we flatter ourselves—partioularly sensible people.