HC Deb 08 March 1861 vol 161 cc1647-55
MR. MONCKTON MILNES

I rise to move for a Select Committee to inquire into the constitution and efficiency of the present Diplomatic Service of this country. Although I entertain some hope that the Government will not refuse the Committee for which I am about to ask, I do not think it would be respectful to the House if I did not explain the grounds on which I make this Motion on so important a subject. It will be recollected that some years ago a Select Committee to investigate the state of our Consular Service was moved for by an hon. Gentleman now, I regret to say, no longer a Member of this House. The late Member for Stafford (Mr. Wise) was one of those who, although ardent Reformers, never injure the character of feel- ings of private men in their advocacy of public measures, nor ever impute unworthy motives to public servants. I am glad to have an opportunity of paying him this slight tribute, because to him we are indebted for the appointment of the Consular Committee. Any part which I myself took in its labours was of a comparatively secondary nature, and although as chairman I was interested both in its examination and its Report, yet to the ex-Member for Stafford that investigation, and I think the settlement of that question were mainly due. During the progress of that inquiry we were continually coming upon subjects connected with the diplomatic service; and I left the Committee with the conviction that the latter branch of the public service could only be put upon a sound and satisfactory basis by the appointment of a Committee to inquire into its condition, as the necessary corollary to the investigation into the consular department. This question is not altogether new to this House. In 1850 there was a Committee on official salaries, which embraced within its scope a great variety of subjects, including the diplomatic service. Before that Committee the noble Lord now at the head of the Government and the noble Lord the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs were examined as witnesses. The Committee reported that they had carefully considered the subject of our diplomatic expenditure, and arrived at the conclusion that our diplomatic establishment should undergo a complete revision. With this view they came to a series of recommendations, the first of which was that arrangements should be made for converting the British Embassies at Paris and Constantinople into first-class missions. Now not only have our embassies at Paris and Constantinople not been abolished, but embassies on the same scale have been abolished at St. Petersburg and Vienna. The Committee next recommended that a single mission at some central point in Germany should be substituted for the separate missions existing at Dresden, Stuttgardt, Frankfort, and other cities. That recommendation has not been complied with either. The Committee, in the third place, suggested that the mission to Florence should be consolidated with one of the other Italian missions. That recommendation has been complied with—thanks not to the Foreign Office, but to the course of historical events which have tended to merge the mission to Florence in the mission to united Italy. The fourth recommendation was that no diplomatic salary should exceed £5,000 per per annum, including an allowance for a residence. I believe that has not been complied with. The fifth recommendation of the Committee was that there should be a general revision of the whole scale of diplomatic salaries, and that in many instances consular agencies should be substituted for the missions. Since that period of 1850 many alterations greatly increasing the efficiency and usefulness of the service have, I believe, taken place, but it is very desirable that the country should know the exact nature and extent of those changes, and whether they have followed the path marked out by the Committee. The Committee whoso appointment I now venture to suggest would investigate these matters, would enable the heads of departments at the Foreign Office to describe the reforms which have already been made, and to explain why they have not been carried out more generally and effectually. I will not now seek to prejudge what may be the result of the deliberations of the Committee if granted, but simply content myself with indicating some of the grounds which render its appointment at this moment advisable. Of late years the extension of the electric telegraph has undoubtedly tended greatly to alter the relation between our foreign embassies and missions and the Foreign Office, bringing them, as it were, into instantaneous communication. Indeed, it may now almost be said that the despatches of the Foreign Secretary are written quite as much in order to be laid before Parliament as to give special instructions to our diplomatic agents. Another point that will require the attention of the Committee is the anomalous position of the unpaid portion of our diplomatic service. You have a very large number of young men passing hardly less than four or five, and sometimes as much as ten or twelve years in the service of their country without receiving any salary or emolument for their exertions. The Committee might fairly consider whether the continuance of that system is desirable either for the public interests or for the career of these gentlemen themselves. Without wishing to prejudge the question, I think it doubtful whether you can get any good out of any man by unpaid service for any length of time. The tendency of public opinion is rather to connect responsibility with remuneration, and to question whether any man will give you the best of his mind and the whole of his abilities unless he receives for them some solid equivalent. Having travelled over a great portion of Europe I am bound to say my experience induces me to believe that the present system is neither wholly convenient to the heads of missions nor beneficial to the younger men who compose them. Heads of missions have more than once expressed to me how difficult it is to preserve due discipline and exact the amount of labour demanded by the public interests from men who do their work gratuitously. I have known some missions where the younger members received not only hospitality but guidance and care. I may mention the name of one now gone from us—the late Earl of Westmoreland—who was regarded by all who were attached to his mission as a friend and almost as a father. It may be said that the means of many heads of missions are not largo enough to enable them to perform those duties upon a sufficiently extended scale, and the Committee may well consider whether it may not be advisable to place the younger members of missions in a more satisfactory and independent position. Another point which the Committee may usefully consider is, whether it is possible to devise some method for a more intimate and frequent communication between the Foreign Office and missions abroad, I think it would be advantageous to the younger members if they were occasionally to have a change of duties in the Foreign Office at home; and it certainly would be a great advantage to the heads of missions to be able to communicate personally, more freely, and more frequently with the Foreign Office at home. I do not desire to impugn the conduct of any of our Ministers, but I must say it appears to me that by living many years abroad a man runs the risk of losing somewhat of his estimate of the English public opinion and his appreciation of English character. There are also other matters which could come under the consideration of the Committee, and which are well worthy of being considered; but I feel assured that the inquiry will exhibit the conduct of the Foreign Office in the matter in a light which will be pleasing to the country generally. I believe the general staff of the Foreign Office is most efficient, and the Report of the Committee will, I have no doubt, show that successive Foreign Ministers, of all parties, have laboured to improve and advance the diplomatic service of the country. I think, too, the Committee will be able to confirm in the principles of just economy the Ministers who are responsible for the administration of public affairs, and to assist them in doing that which they have begun to do—namely, to place the diplomatic service in a more satisfactory position. I know that Reports of Committees are not always treated with all the respect of which we may think them deserving, and I do think it is hardly respectful, after a Committee of the House has carefully investigated a subject and made a deliberately considered Report, that a public office should appoint another Committee to revise the recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee. I think it would be more becoming if the Minister at the head of the public office were to act upon his own judgment and responsibility in carrying out the Resolutions of the Committee appointed by this House as far as he thought was desirable. I have no doubt that, whatever Resolutions the Committee may adopt, the Government will act in their spirit, if they do not carry them out in their full extent, but that they will adopt every suggestion that may tend to improve the diplomatic service of the country.

MR. GRANT DUFF

said, he rose to second the Motion, and explained his reasons for resigning his right to bring forward this subject to the hon. Member for Pontefract. In addition to what had fallen from his hon. Friend, it appeared to him that there were several German Courts where diplomatic agents might be appointed of the rank which was so use fully filled by our agent at Rome. In that way a field of exertion would be opened for younger men, which would enable the Foreign Minister the more readily to judge of their merits, and their ability for higher functions. He thought an officer should be attached to each of the embassies, who might be called a travelling attaché, whose duty should be every year to make a circuit of the country in which he resided, visiting the larger towns, and more especially those in which consuls or vice-consuls were stationed. In Turkey, especially, he believed there was often very great difference between consular and ambassadorial opinion, between metropolitan views and local views. Such differences must sometimes cause considerable embarrassment to the Foreign Office; but if the two branches were enabled to compare their opinions it might lead to useful results. It was well known that the younger members of the diplomatic service lived almost entirely in the fashionable society of the capitalists in which they were stationed. This exclusiveness might be carried too far. It often happened that there existed a society without the pale of the fashionable world in which much could be learned of which an attaché who confined himself to that world must remain in ignorance. In making this remark, he was thinkly chiefly of Berlin, of which he could speak from his own knowledge, but he believed the case was still stronger with regard to Vienna, and perhaps St. Petershurgh. The most important matter of all, however, was, that there should be some change in the mode of recruiting for the diplomatic service. Last year he proposed, by way of experiment only, that one single appointment should be given to open competition, and although the general opinion seemed to be against this proposition, he could see no force in the arguments. If they were afraid of any bad result, let them limit the area of competition, so as to make it utterly impossible any bad consequences could arise. They might limit the candidates to members of the universities and public schools. The style of examination which he should wish to see instituted in this case was precisely the kind of examination which the great Lord Chesterfield would have, he felt confident, advocated, if he were now alive. Nowhere was there so much wise advice with regard to the course of reading which a young man who meant to enter the diplomatic service should pursue as in Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son. The only other matter which he wished to call attention to was the very slender acquaintance with law which was usual amongst the members of the diplomatic service. In all other countries means were taken to ensure a greater knowledge of law in the diplomatic body, and he thought the same principle might be very usefully applied in this country.

MR. BAILLIE COCHRANE

said, he hoped the Government would grant the Committee for two reasons. In the first place, great changes had been made in the diplomatic service in consequence of the state of affairs on the Continent. Two missions, those at Naples and Florence, had ceased to exist, and the Ministers at the Courts of Vienna and St. Petersburg had been made ambassadors. He hoped the salaries of these appointments would be made sufficient to sup- port their dignity. It bad always struck him that the English Ministers and Ambassadors were not paid in the same proportion as those of other countries. It was very important that these high officers of State should have salaries sufficient to enable them to fill their posts with dignity. The other reason for granting the Committee was the total change of the diplomatic service by the introduction of the system of examination. Formerly young men of family and fortune entered the diplomatic service as an agreeable means of passing their time, visiting foreign countries, and being introduced into the best society. He believed there wore many qualities requisite for efficiency in the diplomatic service that could not be tested by any examination at all. But as the system of examinations had been introduced it must bring a different class of men into the service, and it would become still more necessary to have no unpaid attachés. The argument that formerly applied to the case of the young attachés, that they had great incidental advantages, would not apply to the young men who looked to the service for their professional existence. No country had been better served by its diplomatic corps than England; and by none had it been so ill paid.

LORD JOHN RUSSELL

Sir, I cannot assent to the appointment of the Committee without stating that I do so entirely unpledged as to what the course of the Government may be with regard to the results of the inquiry. The hon. Gentlemen who support the Motion for a Committee seem to think it desirable that there should be a larger expenditure on the diplomatic service. In that opinion I do not share. I am sorry to say the House of Commons is getting more and more into the practice of suggesting how the public expenditure can be increased, instead of leaving it to the Ministers of the Crown to consider how those employed in the public service should be paid. The Government cannot be bound in any way by the appointment of the Committee, and might well appeal to the House against the tendency to increase the public expenditure. The diplomatic corps has always been a distinguished one; the information it gives the Government is most reliable, and the Crown has been well represented by it. My hon. Friend has alluded to the increased facility the electric wire gives for the transmission of messages in a short time to our Ministers. But that facility does not do away with the necessity of fuller communications; that necessity is even greater now than it ever was before. With regard to the unpaid attachés the question is important; but, on inquiry, I think it will be found that their position is not so bad as it has been represented. It has been stated that they may remain for eight or nine years on the unpaid list. But I find from an examination of the list of last year that there are not more than three or four who have been on it more than five years. I believe my hon. Friend and the members of the Committee will find the arrangements of the Foreign Office very complete, and that the manner in which its business is carried on is perfectly satisfactory; that it is done with great order, and without any confusion. In agreeing to the appointment of the Committee I do not assent, in any way, on the ground that there are abuses in this department which require investigation; but I will concede that improvements may, no doubt, be made from time to time, and I should be glad if the Committee suggest any. Apart, however, from the new service in China and Japan the payments to the diplomatic servants of the Crown are made out of the Consolidated Fund and not out of the Estimates voted yearly by this House, and to this it is owing that the increase on this department has been much less than in any other. The Committee will, doubtless, find that Ministers and attachés, paid and unpaid, can give very good reasons why they should be paid salaries, or why their salaries should be increased. Reference has been made to the Report of the Committee of 1850, but I do not agree that the Report of that Committee is an authority on this subject, or, indeed, on any other; I think it went very hastily to work.

MR. HENLEY

said, he wished to warn the House of the difficulty in which it would find itself if it countenanced Motions of this description. That was the third branch of the public service which was being placed in a kind of trust. The Admiralty had got two nursing mothers in the shape of Committees, and another was about to inquire into the military expenditure by the Colonial Department in our colonies. [The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER; There is the income tax.] The right hon. Gentleman mentions another Committee, but he (Mr. Henley) did not think that its inquiries were on all fours with the question of considering the effi- ciency of a particular branch of the public service. It would be difficult to find any one year in which three branches of the public service had been inquired into by a Committee with the consent of the executive Government. He sincerely hoped the public service would be benefited by the proposed inquiry, but he had his doubts as to such result, the more especially as regarded the case of servants of the Crown who brought their complaints before the Committee instead of before the Ministers of the Crown. He did not think such inquiries contributed to the efficiency of either army or navy, or any other branch of the public service; but as the Government consented to the Motion he should not offer any opposition to it.

Motion agreed to.

Select Committee appointed, "To inquire into the constitution and efficiency of the present Diplomatic Service of this Country."

Committee nominated:— Lord JOHN RUSSELL, Mr. DISRAELI, The JUDGE ADVOCATE, Lord STANLEY, Lord HARRY VANE, Mr. FITZGERALD, Mr. LAYARD, Sir JAMES FERGUSSON, Sir JOHN ACTON, Sir MINTO FARQUHAR, Mr. HANKEY, Mr. HOPE, Mr. GRANT DUFF, Mr. MONCKTON MILNES, and LORD CLAUD HAMILTON:—Power to send for persons, papers, and records; Five to be the quorum.