47 



however, some portion of this chapter has of necessity been 

 anticipated, and to this I may briefly refer before going 

 further. I have shewn in the first place that there has been 

 a reckless multiplication of offices in order to create 

 posts for the favourites and relatives of Mr. Jones. This 

 unnecessary expenditure has been further aggravated by the 

 bestowal of these posts on wholly incompetent men. In 

 the second place I have shewn how the Secretarial Staff has- 

 been increased in defiance of the recommendations of a. 

 Royal Commission. Thirdly, I shewed pretty clearly what 

 the country had to pay because Mr. Jones could not do his 

 work himself, or agree with the Secretaries who came to do 

 it for him • and, lastly, in the crowning abuse of the Cata- 

 logue I showed a gross and almost incredible waste of 

 hundreds of thousands of pounds on work that is, for the 

 present at least, worthless. This is a tolerably fair begin- 

 ning to be gathered from merely incidental remarks. 



Up to March 1873 (the latest return issued April, 1874)7 

 the [total expense of maintaining the British Museum for 

 one hundred and twenty years had been ^3,452,863. Of 

 this sum more than ^770,000 stands to the account of the 

 last ten years. That is to say, it cost nearly one third as 

 much to keep up the Museum for the last ten years as for 

 the previous hundred and ten years. Besides the long 

 period is charged with ^44,000 for land, lease, and new 

 buildings, an item extinguished during the last ten years. 

 " Buildings, Repairs, and Fittings," keep the very high 

 average of about jQ 10,000 a year, of which all that can be 

 said here is that there seems very little to be seen for so 

 large a sum. 



In the accounts /presented to Parliament there is one for 

 " Building," and I[may give an example of how insufficient 

 a mere return to Parliament may prove as an index to a job. 



