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Leader (1850-1860), 31st December 1853, Edition 1 of 2, Page 1261, Untitled Article

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      Untitled Article

      conceived the idea of making the Civil Servants contr ibute towards an allowance made to them on superannuation . It was agreed that they should contribute one-half , and they were rated at 5 per cent , on salaries above 100 Z ., and at 2 £ per cent , below that amount . The old salaries were not disturbed . As the allowance , however , Is very small , the Civil Servants usually delay as long as possible the sentence of superannuation ; most of them dying in harness . This is the case with the new men , with those whose appointments date subsequently to 1829 . The effect has been that those who contribute to the

      Superannuation Fund receive very little in return for their contribution : they pay for the superannuation of those who pay nothing ; and they also pay unacknowledged tax to the State . For instead of forming a fund , as the name professes , what the State does is simply to pocket the money . Now if the inpney had been really funded , it would not only have paid for superannuations , but it would have formed a provident fund to meet pensions for the dependents of the Civil Servants , and which would have sufficed to provide for the pensions for all time to come without any further assessment . So that the modern Civil Servants

      who are taxed and get so little , provide for the past , and for the indefinite future , but not for themselves . Ariosto , the Italian poet , who adopted the device . of bees smoked out from their hive with the motto " Sic vos non vobis , " might have been a Civil Servant . There is now no difference of opinion as to the njustice , of this arrangement , and it is understood that the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposes to relinquish the assessment of the 5 or 2 f per cent .,

      and to grant pensions of superannuation for Civil Servants out of the bountyof the Crown . The general committee of the Civil Servants object . They say , very justly , that the service has become used to pay the deductions , and that there is no necessity to abandon the assessment ; that the fund already accumulated in the hand of Government gives them a moral right to be considered in disposing of that accumulation ; and they desire that while assessment should be continued , the proceeds should be devoted to form a provident fund .

      If the deduction were relinquished , the virtual effect would be a gratuitous rise of salary , in the proportion of 2 | per cent , for the lower salaries , and of 5 per cent , for the higher . Now this would be not a very great advantage ; for while it would be a sort of Christmas gratuity to the less provident , it would only be a trifle more to the income of the more provident , and would do nothing towards that which the service most desires— a safe , certain , and well regulated provident fund .

      Mr . William Farr , of the Registrar-General ' s Office , has shown how an insurance may be provided by annual payments suited to the circumstances of the contributor , and modified in this particular manner , —that if the payment should be temporarily suspended or cease , still the actual value of the amount accrued by accumulation might be secured for its ultimate purpose . Thus , a person who made an annual payment to secure for himself an annuity under certain conditions , another payment to secure an allowance in sickness , and a third payment to secure an allowance

      for Iiis survivors , would bo sure of receiving a pension to some amount apportioned to his actual payments—although sickness might have disabled him from contributing his payment ; and he would secure the allowance to his survivors , although sickness or superannuation had cut off his payment on that score . In other words , Mr . Farr show 3 how savings might be laid up , and distributed for three purposes , with an absolute appropriation for them , in lieu of the present plan of insurance , which is calculated on the probability that if payments be stopped the accumulated amount will be forfeited . These tables are peculiarly suited to the Civil Service , since the risk

      of superannuation and cessation are comparatively small . The narrow amount of the salaries in the Civil Service , however tends td check any voluntary insurance , and a voluntary insurance is lews desired , for this reason . One of the charges Upon the civil servant consists of the claims of Widows and children ; and this is a claim which few men of humnuity can resist , notwithstanding the more intimate but remoter claims on behalf of the contributor ' s own wife or child at some indefinite period . Now every man would probably be inclined to insure for his wifo and children , if he could bo certain , in the first place , of being protected from that pressing claim in the mean time ,

      number . The minority of 12 per cent , is variously distributed into those who made no return from absence or sickness , those who prefer the present system , those who would be glad of the simple release of the reductions , and others of unclassified opinions . The proposed plan of insurance would be guaranteed by the actual accumulations ; that which Government would contribute would be certainty and uniformity ; and the request for so much assistance on the part of Government from its own servants can scarcely be disregarded by the Chancellor of the Exchequer .

      and also if he were sure that the custom of charitable contributions would not be continued . At present he counts upon a kind of higgledypiggledy chance . He would much rather reduce it to certainty ; but he must have the consent of the whole before the full benefit of the change can be obtained . We are not without grounds in saying that this is the prevalent feeling of the service ; since the general committee have made the inquiry of all the public servants in London and Dublin , and have obtained an affirmative response of 88 per cent , of the whole

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      YOUNG TOEYDOXY . It seems we committed a mistake in considering seriously the position in the religious world assumed by our young Tory contemporary . We humbly ask . pardon for having indulged the illusion for a moment . It is plain that its professions on the Subject of religion had no purpose , except what belongs to an apocryphal faction ; that they constituted not a confession of faith , but an apology for a hit at the Coalition , whom it is not our business to defend .

      The retort in the Press of last week leaves no doubt as to this . No doubt our young Tory friends are quite right in turning away from the gravest discussion with a schoolboy ' s scoff . We are not ashamed to express regret , for ourselves , that we have been betrayed into supposing that they were in earnest—even on the subject of religion .

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      POLITICAL MORALITY . * One ' s enemies don ' t often write books ; but it is a great advantage when they do ; for then the assailed meets face to face , and can deal with the hoarded hate , and all it can suggest , of all whom he has conquered—or forgiven . Some gentleman—as a politician , we suspect he belongs to the tea party—has written a book against Mr . Disraeli ; not a light guerilla pamphlet , but an artillery-division book—a solid quarto , of about 640 massive pages . This is " A Literary and Political Biography , " " addressed to the new generation ;"—the object being to " expose" the real character of Mr . Disraeli , and to point a

      disastrous moral to his sinister career . I he writer acknowledges that he is terrified by the cheers with which the Oxford under-graduates saluted Vivian Grey when he entered the theatre to receive his degree * , and this painfully proper person appeals to the cheerers against their idol—who , sure of the affection of the advancing , is supposed to be able to afford indifference to the doubts of the receding , generation . Such a warning , based upon the political application of the thrilling story of Tom who didn ' t care , is worthy of a schoolmaster ' s views of the exigencies of contemporary politics ; and the style of the exhortation is the style of one who has always been a boy among

      men . We are not aware whether the Peelito party , who have to faco the session with but one droad —• the dread of Mr . Disraeli—have put up n petla-<* o < ni ( 5 to print this pretentious lecture . But it is very certain that , ns Mr . Disraeli ' s power will , next session , depend on the point of what ho says , not on his own character for virtue , a solemn sillinesB like this book will but aggravate the ¦ ting of the sarcasm , and the world's enjoyment of it .

      Whatever Mr . Disraeli ' s crimes , wo aro not participators ; and if the Tories cannot defend their adopted and their champion , then he is defenceless . But on the question raised , in reference to Mr . Disraeli—What is political morality?—we have to object to singling out an individual for a reproach duo to a system and a

      class . Personally , Mr . Disraeli does not afflict us , either as a writer or as a politician : and it is odd that the serene essayist of these complacent 640 pages has undertaken to guard youth against the seductiveness of a writer whom he regards only as a writer of persiflage , and of a p olitician who is only a " phosphorescent" satirist . We cannot see Mr . Disraeli ' s sins . His assailant supposes that Mr . Disraeli has carried personal and political satire to an excess unprecedented in our history : and such a supposition is natural in a person whose knowledge of Parliamentary history enables him to assert that Gerard

      Hamilton was the only man who ever made a successful first speech in the Commons . We have great faith in the usefulness of political insolence ; we believe the horror of a mot is not less effectual than a knowledge of the law of impeachment in keeping statesmen in order . We are also quite sure that a satirist cannot succeed , unless he happens to be right ; and that a libel does no harm , beyond a momentary mischief , if the assertion be not true . But it cannot be denied , that of all the wit ever manifested in Parliamentary and political debate , the wit of Mr . Disraeli is the most polished .

      He was never once called to order in his most excited—and they were perhaps malignant—analysed of ' . the bizarre character and coaTse career of Peel ; " and in republishing those novels and sketches , which the awful author of the " Biography" denounces , in decent sorrow , as disgraceful for their poisoned personalities , it i 3 remarkable that Mr . Disraeli has not , in a deliberate revisal , seen occasion to alter a syllable . This last circumstance , indeed , should have been considered by our author , were he not too sad to be svllogisof his

      tic , as the complete refutation of one mam propositions—that Mr . Disraeli must be a political profligate to consent to lead Tories without believing in Toryism . Bolingbroke , this writer says , could not be a real Tory leader , because he was an infidel , consequently incredulous of the Church creed , on which Toryism depends . Now it happens that no Tory leader , except Percival , has , since 1800 , given any clear proof that he believed in a tittle of the tenets of the Church he upheld-But , at least , it must be admitted that Mr . Disraeli is the most honest of all these

      Protestant and Tory chiefs ; for whatever the facility with which he has accepted the position a caste of Cretins , needing him , were compelled to offer him , there can be no doubt whatever that in all his ovorks he has expressed with the utmost candour his profound contempt , in principle and detail , for Church and State . He has justified the Jews for the crucifixion : he has ridiculed the aristocracy : he has analysed the Venetian constitution ; and he has declared that in England there are " two nations . " The great error of those who study such a biography as that of Mr . Disraeli is in applying to him a set of moral rules which would be even only partially applicable to a Burke or n Canninsr—native adventurers . Mr .

      Disraeli is not merely a professed adventurer , but he is a professed foreign adventurer . Thomas Paine , in a French assembly , was more French than Mr . Disraeli is in an English assembly . "I , Sir , have no hereditary or class convictions , " he told the House of Commons : and all his superiority , as a critic of politics , springs from the fact that he can have no political passions , being "o patriot—that he can have no political prejudices , having no local

      principles . This superiority . sustains him against all charges of sycophantic inconsistency in alternating hia partialities among parties . His sole object , as a professed foreign adventurer , who never disgu scH his notions of the degradation of the country in which his lot is cant , is to gnin ' power—or , if not power , fame ; purely , if possible : but at all events power or fame : and when the Tories elect him to the captaincy they , not he , sire disgraced—they do not use him—he uses them . lie told the world

      when he was only nineteen that it was his oyster ; and ho has over since kept the sword wherewith to roach the fish— "or the pearl—Hashing in the world ' s eyes . . The prolonged and decorous howl of this Biography could only be excused by the display of proof that Mr . Disraeli is a winner among saints — a solitary black sheep among a mild flock . This genteel purist appears to take for granted , like so many innocent Englishmen , that their " House" is "in order , " and that an adventurous burglar , of unroutine manners , has no business in it . But in estimating both the immorality and the danger of Mr . Disraeli , we muHt inquire—what has he done ? An " if" in history

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      * Tho Hight HonournMo . Benjamin I ) i » rnoli , M . I ' - A Literary anu Political lliourraphy , uddroBBcd to tlio Now Generation . Bentloy . 1854 . IGh .

      Untitled Article

      December 31 , 1853 . ] T H E LEADER . 1261

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 31, 1853, page 1261, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2019/page/13/