RESOLUTION. (Hansard, 12 July 1869)

§ MR. W. LOWTHER
said, he wished to call attention to the employment in Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service of unpaid Attaches, and would contrast their position with that of the junior clerks in the Foreign Office. There were ten of these unpaid attaches, who were appointed by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. They must be between twenty-one and twenty-six years of age, and they must serve four years without pay. At the end of that time they were to receive £150 "contingently." Every junior clerk in the Foreign Office, on the other hand, received £100 a year on appointment. The unpaid attaches were subject to many expenses. They were obliged to provide themselves with an expensive uniform, to lodge near the Embassy, which was usually in the most expensive quarter, and they were called upon to contribute to the relief of their fellow countrymen in distress. They were continually being removed from one Embassy to another at a considerable 1673 expense; for when it was discovered that an attaché was comfortably settled anywhere, the rule at the Foreign Office seemed to be to remove him as far off as possible, while the clerk lived in London, often in his father's house, and had the great advantage of a club. The Committee of 1861 did much to assist the diplomatic profession, but the class of unpaid attaches still remained, although the most distinguished diplomatists and Ministers, including Lord Kimberley, Sir Andrew Buchanan, Sir John Cramp-ton, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, Lord Malmesbury, Lord Cowley, and Lord Napier, condemned the principle, and agreed that unpaid service was no more desirable in this than in other public Departments. As regarded the prospects of these gentlemen, under ordinary circumstances a man might, perhaps, expect to become a Secretary of Legation at about forty; but it appeared to him that diplomatic pensions depended entirely upon the caprice of the permanent Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; and he would mention one instance to show the peculiarity of the system adopted. Mr. A. was named Secretary of Legation in 1852, and retired, in 1867 while Mr. B., who was also appointed Secretary of Legation in 1852, retired in January, 1868. One would naturally have supposed that both these gentlemen would have the same claims upon the Government for a pension; but, in point of fact, though A received a pension, B did not, he being told that it was not usual for a man to enter Parliament on quitting the diplomatic service, notwithstanding that an Act had been passed in 1859, intituled "An Act to remove doubts as to the qualifications of persons holding diplomatic pensions to sit in Parliament." One reason assigned for giving a pension to B was that he was about sixty years of age. He could not see what objection there could be to placing attachés on the same footing as clerks in the Foreign Office. Ten first-class junior clerks received £4,664; nine second-class clerks, £1,605; and six third-class clerks, £688; while even the doorkeeper and the housekeeper received £100 a year each. Surely it was not unreasonable to ask that an attaché should receive a larger salary than was given to a housekeeper and a doorkeeper. The Committee had recommended that the attaché 1674 should occasionally exchange their posts with those of clerks in the Foreign Office; but this recommendation, though theoretically good, would not work in practice, because the Foreign Office clerks would be unwilling to accept diplomatic posts, which were for the most part disagreeable. There was a story told that Lord Palmerston, when he handed over the Seals of the Foreign Office, said to his successor, Lord Malmesbury—"You will find, my Lord, that diplomatists are very hard to please; in fact, there are only two courts that are coveted—Paris and Vienna." Having been himself connected with the diplomatic profession, he knew that they were a most efficient corps, and that it was quite a mistake to suppose, as many persons seemed to do, that they were engaged in a continual round of courtly amusements; and he thought a great and rich country like our own. ought to remunerate the attachés for their services.

§ MR. KINNAIRD
said, he thought the House could not be justly charged with not taking an interest in the diplomatic service; but, as the whole of the expenditure connected with it was now for the first time shown on the Estimates, and fully under the control of the House, he hoped that more careful consideration would be given to the subject than heretofore. He was unable to support the Motion, because he was of opinion that attaches, who gave their services gratuitously for a time, were not worse off than young surgeons, lawyers, and other professional men, who had to expend large sums of money before they got any return for the outlay. It should also be remembered that an attaché at first could do very little, and he thought there was no hardship in asking a young attaché to serve without pay for a few years while he made the experiment whether or not he was fit for service. The attaché was not entitled to remuner- 1675 ation on the same principle as the clerks in the Foreign Office, who were obliged to attend for several hours in each day. The electric telegraph, by enabling persons engaged in negotiations to receive instructions in a very short time from the Government at home, had, in a great degree, changed the character of the diplomatic service, and it was questionable whether it was necessary to maintain such large diplomatic staffs as formerly.

§ MR. ALDERMAN LUSK
said, he would remind the House that the Diplomatic Pensions Bill, recently passed, contained a provision that no person should receive a pension unless he had served four years without pay in addition to the time for which he received pay.

MR. OTWAY
said, he regretted that he had not heard the commencement of his hon. Friend's speech, as he was sure, from the hon. Member's experience, that any remarks that fell from him on the subject must be valuable. He understood him to complain that people had an opinion that the diplomatic service was a place for triflers and idlers. He (Mr. Otway) could only say that the sooner those who thought so got rid of that delusion the better. No one could read the Reports sent home from time to time respecting the commercial and political affairs of the different foreign countries without seeing that, whatever it might have been in the past, the diplomatic service must now be composed of able, intelligent, and industrious persons. His hon. Friend drew a comparison between the services of the attaches and those of the clerks in the Foreign Office, and suggested that attaches should receive the same pay as the junior clerks. He should, however, recollect that the clerks in the Foreign Office had no possibility of rising as the attaches had—to the attaches the highest grades in the diplomatic profession were open—while a clerk in the Foreign Office could never rise higher than permanent Under Secretary of State, with a salary of £2,000 a year. That was the highest prize open to him. As to the payment of the attaches, it would be perhaps better that every person serving the Government should receive a salary, whatever his rank; but the salary of a junior clerk in the Foreign Office was only £100 or £110 a year; and of what use would that be to an attaché serving at Paris, 1676 Vienna, or St. Petersburgh? [Mr. W. LOWTHER: A great deal.] He was surprised to hear his hon. Friend say so; for he had taken some trouble to ascertain, from various gentlemen filling that position in those capitals, what was the result of their experience as to the expense connected with it, and he was told that an attaché could not live in St. Petersburg, for instance, unless he had an allowance of £600 or £700. It was a mistake, he might add, to suppose that the expense of removal from one place to another was paid by the attaché himself. It fell upon the State, and in the quarterly accounts for every Embassy there was an allowance made for loss by the rate of exchange. It was also a mistake to attribute the assignment of pensions in any way to the permanent Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs. It was not only that Mr. Hammond was entirely incapable of bringing any injustice to bear in the exercise of any power which he might possess; but he in reality had no such power, inasmuch as the pensions were assigned by Act of Parliament. In principle he himself should not be opposed to granting the junior attaches a moderate annual sum; but if that were granted them it would be impossible to continue to them the advantages which they recently received. Formerly a man entering the diplomatic service acquired no right to a pension until he had been commissioned as secretary of Legation. Now, however, after four years as an unpaid attaché he at once received his commission, and from that moment his time towards his pension began to count. Under those circumstances it would, he thought, be somewhat inopportune to put the public to an expense for the purpose of conferring on those gentlemen what would be hardly a boon, especially seeing that no complaint emanated from them on the subject.

§ MR. W. LOWTHER
said, that after the explanation of the hon. Gentleman he would withdraw his Motion.