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Leader (1850-1860), 12th April 1856, Edition 2 of 2, Page 12

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      The Exposition Of 1856 At Chelsea. A Ger...

      his wife was known to be a noble lady by her bearing , although they were poor wanderers ; and John Ledyabd , Captain Cook ' s ' « Serjeant Ledyaed , " was one of the most chivalrous of gentlemen—ever bold , ever ready for enterprise , loyal to his friend , even when his friend was deceived into slighting him , gentle and grateful to woman , trusting in God . It is the possessing or lacking high qualities that makes the gentleman ; and , verily , we have had some humbling disclosures lately as to our own rampant gentility .

      In . Hyde-park and in Paris we have had exhibitions of arts and manufactures , in 1851 and 1855 ; in Chelsea we now have the exhibition of 1856—an exhibition of British peers , officers and gentlemen . Certainly those manufactures , do not keep pace with the other products of the country . Sir John M'Keill and Colonel Tulloch describe Lord Lucan as letting his horses die , and threatening to arrest an ingenuous Colonel who modestly suggested a question as to the shelter of the beasts . Luoan

      denies the fact , denies the words , arraigning equally M'Keixl , G-bsiffiths ,- and everybody else Ty ho questions his conduct . A special ¦ c ommission is ordered , to investigate whether Sir John M'Neill and Colonel Tuiloch have told truth or not ; and Lucan has a theatre to himself , all among the Chelsea pensioners . It Is his purpose to show that he has done his duty , and to disprove the charge of having threatened a gentlema . ii and an officer with a vulgar stretch of authority , to vent his spleen by an act of petty revenge ; and how does he comport himself 1 H « takes up the time of

      the Court with long questions as to its mode of procedure ; tries to » make bargains for getiing his own case dismissed first ; wishes the Judges to promise a judgment before they go into other cases j exclaims , « I don ' t want to come here again f makes a long rambling statement ; bandies words with t he witnesses , trying to extort confirmation of his own denial by repetitions , leading questions , and remonstrating questions ; and seems incapable of perceiving what a painful position he is making for himself . Aye j but is he not an officer , a gentleman , and a Peer 1

      Yes , there it is : he is a " Lord ; " he expects others , witnesses , Judge Advocate , and Judges , to call him « Lord . " There is a difference . Ho is not only a Lord , but a picked officer . To question his efficiency as a soldier is to the

      question Horse Guards . All that he has done is right , for it has had official sanction ; and he has the tangible proof of it in his colonelcy . It is not any man who gets a crack colonelcy , but Lord Luoan did ; he must be better than other men ; how then dare inferior men to question him , to gainsay his word !

      How dare they 1 Why in a very minor degree . The indignant Griffiths sticks to his own account , but no provocation can make him disrespectful to "My Lord , " whereas " My Lord , " has no such compunctious regard for his inferior . lie treats Gbiiwiths no hotter than if he were " a person . " Others aie not less pliant than tlio Colonel . If any untitled and unfavoured defendant has addressed the Court with todious requirements , his petulant palaver would have been cut short

      in a trice . If any commoner had used the same bearing to the Judge-Advocate , ho would ha . ye been pointodly rebuked by the bench . If GteiWrua had treated Luoan as Luoan treatod Mbifbixhb , tho President would angrily have interfered—and justly . Why then was "My Lord Luoan , « Mojor-General and Colonel /' treated with such leniency ? Became tho chivalrous spirit " is not predo-Sffii ? w ° ° cavaUors . titled or untitlea ' , but a spmt of flunkeviem . Luoan

      knew his men : he looked down upon his " inferiors , " and they acknowledged their relative position by their sufferance . The assumption of a Lucan is justified by the submission of the others , and they , the obsequious , are of the class that su pplies officers , officials , diplomatic statesmen , even plenipotentaries . Ai-e we then wrong in vindicating the right of Mascamlle to treat the Conference as his affair 1

      And the English people , who sneer at the nunkeyism of the Low Life above Stairswhat of them S j ^ Tlie flunkeys insolently arrogate the right of placing themselves above the people , and , the people let them . The flunkeys may be low ; but from the facts we find that the contented people are lower . It is degradation , -but we make no effort to escape 'from it . We may despise the motives of the flunkeys

      but zve can get up no higher motive . Lttcan is still at the top of the tree . Commissioners and witnesses tacitly allow that he is above them ; commissioners and witnesses are above us—they are our rulers , the governing class de facto . But if Luoan is of the highest level in the social scale , what is our own , and what right have we to look down upon him 1 We not only let him be there , but make not an effort to bring him down , or to raise ourselves .

      3^8.. The Leader. [No. 316, Saturday

      3 ^ 8 .. THE LEADER . [ No . 316 , Saturday

      Civil _ Se R.Yice Superaitostu Ation. So...

      CIVIL _ SE R . YICE SUPERAITOSTU ATION . Some public questions have a tendency to get " dry . " Matter-of-fact men get hold of them , and so cover them with figures of arithmetic that the impatient public associate them at once with essays on education and tables of logarithms—the only two literary productions entirely unreadable . Unless some person of " wit and honor about town " takes up the two or three public questions connected with the Civil Service , they will assuredly fall into the limbo of the great unread .

      The Superannuation question is not necessarily dry . A clerk in a Government office , putting by money for a rainy day , or for old age , is not more uninteresting than the same act done by a hard-worked artist , or a gentleman-farmer in Devonshire . The further circumstance that Government has instituted a system , compelling their officers to make the annual saving , still leaves the question as

      worthy of attention , for thafc is done in the Bank of England , and in that factory of attractive topics—the Times office . Despite , then , all the figures of Dr . Farii , and the long dull memorials of the civil servants themselves , we persist in considering the question not quite dry . Some very intelligent fellow citizens men who , in their quiet life , exercise a great deal of mental power , and whose steadiness in work

      is a peculiar characteristic—are individually , and with their wives and families , bound up in the question . We cannot but sympathise with them as men—notwithstanding the tendency of dreary < f minutes" to call them clerks . We cannot but believo them wronged when we know , on good authority , that Government takes more money from them in annual deductions than suffices to pay their pensions . The proprietors of the Times havo also or ganised deductions , but these monies go undinainished to pay pensions , tho expense of managing the fund being "borne ly tho

      proprietors themselves . The nowspaper authorities do not deduct lioavily from Jones , employed as reporter in 1856 , to enable them to pay a good pension to old Brown , who retired in 1830 ; but tho Government does commit this injustice . Its deductions from tho present civil servants are heavy , in consideration , it is avowed , of the heavy burthen of the whole Civil Service Pension List . This inju & tioe is aggravated b y tho fact that the older class of civil servants ( who entored before 1820 ) pay no contributions towards tho pensions to which they are entitled .

      There are two parties in the Civil Service , w ho hold different opinions as to the best settlement of the question . The senior party consists of a committee , formed in 1846 . It proposes that the pensions to superannuated servants should be awarded , as at present , by the State , but that all connection between these pensions and the deductions should ceaso ; that the deductions should then be administered as a fund for the benefit of the widows and orphans of civil servants who had died without

      makinoadequate provision for their families . ( In tho case of an unmarried civil servant , he can . leave his claim in the fund to a relative or friend ) . It is argued in support of this proposition , that the present deductions to which tho civil servantshave become accustomed form a good means of organising a system compelling officials to lay by a small sum yearly to provide against the future wants of their families . It is said that painful scenes present themselves

      occasionally in public offices , when the widow of a deceased brother officer conies round with a begging-letter praying for relief , inducing many of the petitioned to think how easily their former colleague might have laid by ten or fifteen pounds a-year to preclude the humiliation . To organise a system that would carry out the good intentions , as to a provision for their families , of the majority of tho officials , and frustrate the selfishness of the

      few bad men who would wish to live comfortably arid leave their families to want—is the object of the committee . In opposition to its views another committee has been more recently formed . It asks for the abolition of the deductions , an increase of the pensions , and suggests that wives and families should be left to the care of individual heads of families . In our opinion this new committee asks too much , and promises too little . They ask to have their own . pensions increased , and will

      not even promise to provide for their families . It may be said that provision for families is not a question for the Government . But , to a certain extent , it is . The widow in distress of a good eivil servant has a kind of claim on the Government , and it is a claim that has been more than once recognised . Look , for instance , at the case of the late Mr . Edwin Chafer . He was private clerk to successive Secretaries of the Treasury , and discharged his very confidential duties with great propriety .

      Ho had a salary of about £ 800 a-year , but , dying very suddenly , left his wife and family very poor . Government could nob well see Mrs . Crafer and her children sink from comfort to poverty , and it gave her £ 100 a-year . Such cases arise frequently ; but the Government is obliged to "be hard-hearted , and allow the widows and orphans to sink from

      independence to poverty , or worse . But whether tho Government should organise the compulsory system of provision for families , or leave it to the care of individuals , it should , at all evonts , abolish the injustice of exacting deductions more than sufficient to pay tho pensions . In this prayer all classes and sections of the Civil Service unite . A

      good civil servant , worn out in tho service of the State , deserves a pension from the State without any conditional deduction . In strict justice , the State is not bound to pension widows and orphans ; but wo havo stated our opinion that 3 from considerations of decency , Government might properly organise a system onabling tho officials themselves to provide for their own families .

      Beames On Heliaious Teaching. Wjk Have A...

      BEAMES ON HELiaiOUS TEACHING . Wjk have asserted many timoa that tho methods taken by tho advocates of a religion , professedly so called , result in preventing tho extension of religion , and oven in rondoring its very narao

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), April 12, 1856, page 12, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_12041856/page/12/