Is in the Strand--or in Westminster--and the contrast between its silence
and stillness and the bustle of the streets is something wonderful. You
feel as you enter as if you were in a charmed land. With Tennyson's
lotus-eaters you exclaim, "There is no joy but calm. Why should we only
toil, the roof and crown of things?" Charles Lamb's description of the
South Sea House might have been penned for a Government Office. The
place seems to belong not to the living present. The windows, double
glazed, keep out the roar of the outside world. The chairs and tables,
of massive mahogany, seem as if of the time of the ancients. The Turkey
carpet has a smack of the primitive political Eden, ere man sinned, and
Lord John Russell introduced his Reform Bill. This may be a railroad
age, but it is not in a Government Office that that truth is recognised.
The young men are generally reading the papers, or eating lunch; the
seniors are doing the same, but in a more dignified manner. In an office
where there are several, to find a couple at real hard work from ten till
four is, I fear, a rarity.
According to Mr. Knight, when Henry VIII. had stripped Wolsey of
Whitehall, and other possessions, he constructed there, for the amusement
of his leisure, a tennis-court, a bowling-green, and a cock-pit. The
tennis-court and the bowling-green have left no traces. The cockpit went
through a variety of transmutations, till it settled down into a
treasury. In the reign of Anne, the lord high treasurer Godolphin sat
three or four times a week at the cock-pit, "to determine and settle
matters relating to the public treasure and revenues." This was the old
building fronting the banqueting house, which Mr. Barry has recently
metamorphosed into a magnificent wing of his uniform edifice. The old
office of Godolphin, however, is but a small part of the modern treasury.
The offices of the more important functionaries are in the large building
behind, which fronts the esplanade in St. James's Park. Several offices
were destroyed in 1733, in order to erect the present building facing the
parade, the expense of which was estimated at 9,000 pounds. The facade
consists of a double basement of the Doric order, and a projection in the
centre, on which are four Ionic pillars supporting an entablature and
pediment.
Where the treasury of the kings of England had its abiding place--or,
more properly, where its _eidolon_ or Platonic idea lodged, before it
took up its abode in the cock-pit--were hard to say. The exchequer,
which in the reign of Edward I. was literally the king's strong box, was,
in his time, lodged in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. Sir Francis
Palgrave says, that the earliest place of deposit for the royal treasures
which can be traced is "that very ancient apartment, described as the
'Treasure in the cloisters of the Abbey in Westminster, next the
Chapter-house,' and in which the pix is still contained. This building
is a vaulted chamber, supported by a single pillar; and it must remain
with the architectural antiquary to decide why a structure in the early
Romanesque style, ranging with the massy semicircular arch in the south
transept, acknowledged to be a portion of the structure raised by the
Confessor, may not also have been erected in the reign of the last
legitimate Anglo-Saxon king. In this treasury the regalia and crown
jewels were deposited, as well as the records. The ancient double oak
doors, strongly grated and barred with iron, and locked with three keys,
yet remain."
The theory of the British treasury was much the same during the nomad
period of its existence that it has continued to be in its settled and
citizen-like life. There was from the beginning a treasurer, whose
office it was to devise schemes for raising money, to manage the royal
property to the best advantage, and to strike out the most economical and
efficient modes of expenditure. He had even then the control of all the
officers employed in collecting the customs and royal revenues, the
disposal of offices in the customs throughout the kingdom, the nomination
of escheators in the counties, and the leasing of crown lands. Then, as
a check upon the malversion of this officer, there was the exchequer, the
great conservator of the revenues of the nation. "The exchequer," said
Mr. Ellis, clerk of the pells, when examined before the finance
commissioners, "is at least coeval with the Norman Conquest, and has been
from its earliest institution looked to as a check upon the lord high
treasurer, and a protection for the king, as well as for the subject, in
the custody, payment, and issue of the public money."
This is still the broad outline of the treasury--of the finance
department of the State of Great Britain. The enormous magnitude of the
empire has caused the subordinate departments of customs, the mint, &c.,
to expand until they have attained an organisation, an individual
importance, a history of their own. The different modes of transacting
money-business, rendered necessary by its greater amount and more
complicated nature, have altered the routine both of the treasury and the
exchequer; the changed relations of king and parliament have subjected
the treasury and exchequer to new control and superintendence. Still
their mutual relations, and the part they play in the economy of the
empire, remain essentially the same as in older times.
The lords commissioners of the treasury (for the office of lord high
treasurer has for many years been put in commission) have their office at
Whitehall, in the building whose history we have briefly traced. The
exchequer, or more properly "the receipt of exchequer," has its office at
Whitehall Yard. But we must not descend to particulars. The only place
in the wide world where change comes not--where the main object seems to
be how not to do it--where antiquated routine has its stronghold--is a
government office.
Those of our readers who have read--and who has not?--Captain Marryatt's
graphic descriptions of seafaring life, entitled "The King's Own," will
remember the scene in which Captain Capperbar ingeniously manages to
supply, from the ship's stores, all his own and her ladyship's domestic
wants. The ship's carpenters are engaged in framing chests of drawers,
and building dining-tables. Fully aware of the mischievous effects of
idleness, the captain's lady finds employment for the ship's painters in
her attics. The armourers, instead of preparing the murderous weapons of
war, are peacefully occupied in making rakes and hoes for the especial
benefit of the junior members of the same devoted family. Does the fair
spouse of the gallant captain need even a pole for the clothes-line, a
boat-mast is immediately dedicated to that important service. Thus, the
captain turns his devotion for his country to some account; and if his
patriotism be a virtue, it is one that brings with it its own reward.
Granting, which we readily do, that the above scene is an exaggeration,
still we believe it to be nearer the mark than the opposite
representations, which would lead us to believe that all persons in the
employ of Government are overworked and underpaid. Their places are
sinecures; bread for life. Every merchant or employer of labour has the
power of instant dismissal; but in Government offices this great check on
idleness and stupidity is ignored. Officials are happy fellows. The
ills of life do not affect them. Mills may stop, panics may take place,
commerce may decline, ships may rot in deserted harbours; docks and
warehouses, once teeming with busy life, may be silent as the grave--but
their income knows no change, save when death causes a general promotion
in their ranks. The agricultural mind may be weighed down with grief--it
may find its idols but clay. There, where it must live, or bear no life,
it may find all hollow, delusive, and false. The seasons may be
unpropitious. The common ills farmers are heir to, such as potato
disease, the fly at the turnips, the rot in the sheep, may be theirs in
no common degree; nevertheless, the Clapham omnibus duly deposits at the
Treasury in Downing-street Mr. Smith, who, with the exception of two
hours for lunch, and another hour or so for miscellaneous conversation,
and the perusal of the _Times_, will, from ten till four, magnanimously
devote himself to his country's good. At the hour of four, Mr. Smith is
again on the omnibus, about to seek, in the bosom of his family, that
relaxation which, did his country deny him, it would be ungrateful
indeed. Mr. Smith is a family man; and, regardless of London
temptations, he hastens to his mutton at five. On the contrary, the
junior clerk, Mr. Adolphus Blaser, is a young man about town; and just as
Mr. Smith retires to his night's rest, our young _roue_, having recovered
from the effects of a good dinner, is ready to commence the diversions,
or, as they may be more fitly termed, the follies of a night. At a good
old age Mr. Smith is gathered to his fathers, and a tombstone in Norwood
Cemetery calls upon the public to admire those virtues, the loss of which
has left such a blank in the Clapham annals of domestic life. One of Mr.
Smith's companions, a much-maligned individual, has just written to the
_Times_, indignantly asking if it be nothing to attend every day at
Somerset-house, in wet weather or fine? But, upon the whole, we think
few men were more fortunate than our deceased friend. Like many of his
schoolfellows, he did not make and lose a fortune; his hair did not
become prematurely grey. There were storms, but they never reached him.
He never missed his church: he had always a friend, and a bottle to give
him; for your true Church and King man is generally reared on fine old
port. His sons were placed in his office; and his daughters
(good-looking, as most of the daughters of well-to-do, jolly old
gentlemen, generally are) settle comfortably in life. And so endeth the
chapter.
If this imaginary sketch be not true, it is not far from the truth. A
Government situation is known to be a pleasant berth, and is jumped at as
a man would jump at a freehold estate or a lump of Californian gold. A
man who has any influence with the powers that be, or a younger son,
instead of trying a trade or profession, will often seek a Government
situation, trusting, with the income arising from it, he may live in town
almost in idleness--at any rate in comparative luxury and ease. By the
side of a Rothschild he may be poor, but really he is not so badly off,
after all. The life of a Government _employe_ is considered gentlemanly,
easy, and not under-paid. Hence the doors of those who have places to
dispose of are furiously besieged by an eager and avaricious mob. The
higher offices are equally greedily seized, and equally as preposterously
over-paid. During one of the recent examinations before the committee of
the House of Commons, a quondam ambassador had the coolness to inform the
committee that the reason why the American ambassadors managed to perform
their duties for less money than the English ones was, that they lived so
much more economically; as if economy were a crime, and a thing to be
shunned by any of the numerous representatives of John Bull: and one
celebrated ambassador does not see how diplomacy can be carried on at all
unless the money of the nation be lavished on banquets, such as even
Soyer might envy and admire.
This is the climax of absurdity; and the time has come for such absurdity
to be treated with merited contempt. The axe must be laid at the root of
the tree. A reduction of salaries commensurate with the increased
cheapness of living, and with the difficulties the tax-payers have in
meeting the tax-gatherers' demands, must be made at once. It is childish
to suppose that such a man as Mr. Bancroft was less respected at Paris
than the Marquis of Normanby, or that Lord Cowley would less powerfully
represent England were his salary of 10,000 pounds cut down to 2,000
pounds. A thoughtful man can see, in the glitter and glare of gilded
saloons, filled with flunkies and worshippers of the golden calf, nothing
very creditable, or worthy of admiration. At the same time it must be
remembered that, if the nation has efficient service, it is not grudging
as regards expense.