as that performed by clerks in commercial houses, the examination was at
first devised on the supposition that the candidates would have a
commercial training, and it was adapted to test their immediate fitness
for that work. Besides the elementary general subjects of writing,
English composition, arithmetic, geography and English history, it
covered copying, indexing, digesting returns and bookkeeping. Such a
test was not inappropriate in the earlier days, when appointments were
made by nomination and the object of the examination was simply to
eliminate individual appointees who were unfit for their duties; but it
was continued long after the system of open competition, with its crowd
of eager young candidates almost devoid of actual commercial training,
had brought in a very different state of things. In 1896 the Association
of Head Masters pointed out, in a memorandum, the bad effect produced on
general education. They showed that, in order to improve their chance of
success, boys were prematurely taken from school and placed in the hands
of crammers to acquire "a high degree of polish upon a rather low though
useful order of accomplishment"; and they asked that the examination
might be brought more into line with the curriculum of the schools. This
was done, without giving up the former methods altogether, by
introducing a number of options, so that a candidate need offer only the
subjects ordinarily taught in a secondary school.[166:1] The result in
the future will no doubt be to make proficiency in regular school work
the real test for appointment, and thus, in accordance with Macaulay's
principle, to base the selection upon general education instead of
technical knowledge.
Unlike the first-class clerks, the clerks of the second division are
drawn mainly from the middle and lower middle classes, and their
education has been obtained in the grammar schools and other schools of
a similar kind. Although a distinct corps, recruited by a different
examination, and intended for a lower grade of work, they are not
altogether cut off from the higher positions. After eight years of
service they can, in exceptional cases, be promoted to first-class
clerkships, and this is sometimes done. But as the number of second
division clerks appointed each year is about three hundred, and the
number promoted to first-class clerkships is on the average only about
four, the chance of reaching that grade is very small.[167:1]
[Sidenote: Assistant Clerks.]
Within the last few years a new grade, called assistant clerks
(abstractor class), has been formed, recruited at present by competitive
examinations among the boy clerks. The work is chiefly in the nature of
copying, but an assistant clerk may for special merit be appointed to
the second division without competing in the examination.[167:2]
[Sidenote: Boy Clerks.]
The lowest grade of officials recruited in common for a number of
departments is that of boy clerks.[167:3] These come from much the same
class in the community as the clerks of the second division, and the
competitive examination, though more elementary, is of the same
character,[167:4] the limits of age being fifteen and seventeen years.
The employment is essentially temporary, and in fact boy clerks are not
retained after they are twenty; but the position is a step towards
further advancement, for the boy clerks alone can compete for the
assistant clerkships, and if they go into the examination for the second
division a credit for the service they have done is added to the marks
they obtain. Yet the examination for boy clerks is one of the few
competitions for a large number of positions, where the quantity of
candidates is insufficient.
[Sidenote: Other Competitive Examinations.]
Besides the open competitions for the general grades of clerks, there
are many others for special classes of employees in the different
departments. Some of these positions require no peculiar qualifications,
and there is no obvious reason for having a number of separate
examinations differing slightly from one another; but certain
departments still cling to their own schemes, and the Post Office to
several schemes. All this is being gradually simplified, by having the
same examination for a number of distinct services, that for the second
division clerks, for example, being now used for recruiting the clerks
in the Custom House.[168:1] The examinations for the second division
could, probably, be combined with those for clerks in the Customs and
Inland Revenue, just as a combination has been made in the case of the
first-class clerkships, the Indian Civil Service and the Eastern
Cadets--and that will, no doubt, be the tendency in the future. The same
criticism does not, of course, apply to all the examinations. Some of
them require very different degrees of education; for others, such as
those for draughtsmen, law clerks, and many more, professional or
technical training is obviously necessary; while certain positions are
reserved for women. Each of these examinations is governed by
regulations prescribing the age of the candidates, the fee to be paid,
and the subjects included, but it is clearly needless for our purpose to
follow them in detail.[168:2]
[Sidenote: Limited Competition.]
In most of the departments there are positions in the permanent civil
service not filled by competition, because the kind of experience and
capacity needed cannot be tested, or fully tested, by examination; and
in that case the examination may be wholly or partially dispensed with
under Clause VII of the Order in Council of 1870. There are other
positions where open competition is inapplicable because the places to
be filled are not numerous enough, or sufficiently tempting, to attract
competitors at large; or, because, as in the case of the higher class
clerks in the Foreign Office, of attaches of legation, and of inspectors
of various kinds, the work is of a delicate and confidential nature, and
can be intrusted only to persons whose character is well known. In such
cases it is common to have competitive examinations limited to
candidates selected for the purpose.[169:1] Even a limited competition
has a tendency to raise the standard, but it must be remembered that in
order to obtain a chance to compete in such cases some influence, direct
or indirect, is indispensable; although the power of nomination does
not, in fact, appear to be abused for political purposes.
[Sidenote: Nomination with a Pass Examination.]
There are positions for which no competition is held, but where a single
person is nominated subject to an examination to test his competence.
Some of these places might very well be open to competition, and,
indeed, there are still strange anomalies in various branches of the
civil service; the strangest being the fact that the employees of the
Education Department are, almost invariably, appointed without any
examination at all, and this is true not only of inspectors, whose work
requires peculiar qualifications, but even of clerks of the abstractor
class. There are, however, positions in the civil service where the
technical knowledge or experience needed are really such as to render a
competition difficult. Even in manual occupations this is believed to be
the case. In the royal dockyards, for example, although the apprentices
are recruited by open competition, the artificers are appointed subject
to a pass examination touching only their skill in their trade, while
the foremen are usually selected by a limited competition which includes
something more. Provincial postmasters also form a class by themselves.
Until a few years ago they owed their positions to political influence;
for long after the members of Parliament had lost all control over other
appointments, they retained the power to fill any vacancies that might
occur in the postal service within their constituencies, provided, of
course, they belonged to the party in power. But this last remnant of
parliamentary patronage was abolished in 1896, and provincial
postmasters are now appointed on the recommendation of the surveyors of
the postal districts.[170:1]
[Sidenote: Nomination without Examination.]
Finally there are the appointments made entirely without examination of
any kind, either because examination is dispensed with under Clause VII
of the Order in Council of 1870, or because the position is one excepted
altogether from the operation of the Order. Such posts are chiefly at
the top or at the bottom of the service. They include positions of
responsibility at one end of the scale; and those of messengers,[170:2]
porters and servants at the other.
[Sidenote: Promotions.]
Political influence has not only ceased almost entirely to affect
appointments to office, but it has also been very nearly eliminated in
the matter of promotion. The struggle on this subject began as early as
1847, and the government has been strong enough to declare that an
effort to bring influence to bear will be treated as an offence on the
part of the employee; or as the minutes adopted by the Treasury in 1867,
and by the Admiralty a couple of years later, ingeniously and forcibly
express it, the attempt by a public officer to support his application
by any solicitation on the part of members of Parliament, or other
persons of influence, "will be treated . . . as an admission on the part
of such officer that his case is not good upon its merits."[171:1]
These measures seem to have had the desired effect.[171:2]
[Sidenote: Why the Civil Service was Easily Freed from Political
Influence.]
If we seek to understand how it happened that the baneful influence of
political patronage in the civil service, which had been dominant in
England in the eighteenth century, was thrown off with comparative ease
a hundred years later, while in some other nations that influence was,
at the same period, growing in strength, and has proved extremely
tenacious; if we seek to explain this contrast, we must take account of
a striking peculiarity of English public life at the present day that
has come with the evolution of the parliamentary system. For reasons
that will be discussed hereafter a member of the majority of the House
of Commons votes on the side of the government with singular constancy;
and as compared with most other countries under a popular form of
government politics turn to an unusual extent upon public questions. The
House is engaged in almost ceaseless battles between the two front
benches with the ranks of their followers marshalled behind them; and
the battles are over public matters. Questions affecting private,
personal or local interests occupy a relatively small share of the
attention of the member of Parliament. He is primarily the
representative of a national party elected to support or oppose the
cabinet, rather than the delegate of a district sent to watch over the
interests of his constituents, and push the claims of influential
electors. The defence, said to have been triumphantly made elsewhere, by
a member accused of absence from important divisions, that he had
procured more favours for his constituency than any other
representative, could not be pleaded as an excuse in England. Hence the
ministry is not compelled to enlist personal support either in the
legislature or at the polls, by an appeal to private gratitude. It can
afford to turn a deaf ear to solicitations for patronage, and stand
upon its public policy alone. In short, the enormous strength of party,
in the legitimate sense of a body of men combined for a common public
object, has enabled the government to do what it could not have done so
easily had party required the support of artificial props. The political
condition that has strengthened the government for this work is not in
itself an unmixed good. It brings with it evils, which will be noticed
in due course; but to its credit must be placed the purification of the
civil service.
At the outset ministers feared that the change would meet with
resistance in Parliament, but using one's influence to procure favours
for others is not a wholly agreeable task, especially when more
supplicants are disappointed than gratified. The reform brought to the
House of Commons relief from pressure by importunate constituents, and
all the later steps have been taken with the approval of the members
themselves.
[Sidenote: Pensions.]
With the elimination of politics the civil service has become a career,
steady and free from risk. But the salaries are not high in relation to
the capacity required, and as a rule they begin low with a small
increment for each year of service. They are not large enough to provide
for illness and old age; and, hence, along with the progress of reform
there grew up a demand for pensions. The law on the subject, although
frequently amended, is still based upon the Superannuation Act of 1859,
which grants to "persons who shall have served in an established
capacity in the permanent civil service of the state" for ten years, and
retire at sixty years of age or by reason of infirmity, a pension equal
to ten sixtieths of their final salary. For every additional year of
service another sixtieth is added up to a maximum of forty sixtieths.
Provision has been made, also, for the case of injuries received in the
public service; while more recent statutes have authorised gratuities to
women employees upon marriage--an allowance apparently given, as in the
case of the other grants, rather in a spirit of commiseration, than in
order to encourage matrimony.
FOOTNOTES:
[145:1] 12-13 Will. III., c. 2, Sec. 3. For a description of earlier
efforts to the same end, see Todd, Parl. Govt. in England, II., 114-121.
[146:1] 4 Anne, c. 8, and 6 Anne, c. 7, Secs. 25, 26. By Sec. 28 of this
act officers in the Army and Navy are exempted from its operation. They
may sit in the House of Commons, and they do so in considerable numbers,
although they are as a rule required to resign their seats when given an
active command. Military officers occupy, indeed, a position quite
different from that of other public servants, for they not only sit in
Parliament, and take an active part there in the discussion of questions
relating to the service; but they are constantly talking to the public,
a practice that would not be permitted for a moment in the case of
civilians in government employ. The statements in this chapter are,
therefore, confined to the members of the civil service.
[146:2] _Cf._ Rogers on Elections, 16 Ed., II., 21-24.
[146:3] For a list of such statutes, see Anson, I., 93-96.
[146:4] Treasury Minute of Nov. 12, 1884, Com. Papers, 1884-1885, XLV.,
171.
[147:1] Electioneering by civil servants has been the subject of
legislation. An Act of 1710 (9 Anne, c. 10, Sec. 44) rendered liable to
fine and dismissal any post-office official who "shall, by Word,
Message, or Writing, or in any other Manner whatsoever, endeavour to
persuade any Elector to give or dissuade any Elector from giving his
Vote for the Choice of any Person . . . to serve in Parliament." _Cf._
Eaton, "Civil Service in Great Britain," 85.
[147:2] 22 Geo. III., c. 41. Rogers on Elections, I., 196-97.
[147:3] 31-32 Vic., c. 73. All penalties attaching to any of their acts
in relation to elections were abolished by 37-38 Vic., c. 22.
[148:1] Rogers, I., 197-200.
[148:2] _Ibid._, 207-08.
[148:3] Victoria Constitution Act, Com. Papers, 1903, XLIV., 109, pp.
7-8.
[149:1] _Cf._ Hans., 4 Ser. LIII., 1133-34.
[149:2] _Ibid._, CXCIII., 389 _et seq._
[149:3] In fact in 1874 the bill was amended so as to make this clear.
Hans., 3 Ser. CCXIX., 797-800. For 1868 see Hans., 3 Ser. CXCIII.,
405-06.
[149:4] _Cf._ Hans., 4 Ser. XVI., 1218; LIII., 1131.
[149:5] _Cf._ Courtney, "The Working Constitution of the United
Kingdom," 151.
[150:1] Hans., 3 Ser. CXCIII., 393.
[150:2] _Ibid._, 397.
[150:3] Rep. of Com. on Increased Cost of Tel. Service, Com. Papers,
1875, XX., 643, p. 5; 1st Rep. Civil Serv. Inq. Com., Com. Papers, 1875,
XXIII., 1, p. 9. For information and references on the efforts of the
civil servants to raise their pay, and on their pressure upon members of
Parliament, I am indebted to Mr. Hugo Meyer, who kindly showed me his
manuscript on "The Nationalisation of the Telegraphs in England."
[150:4] See, for example, Hans., 3 Ser. CCLXV., 141; CCLXXI., 429; 4
Ser. XXXIX., 596-98; LI., 351-52, 355; LIII., 1107 _et seq._; LXVI.,
1523 _et seq._; LXXII., 119; LXXXII., 199 _et seq._; XCIV., 1382-83;
CVI., 680; CXXI., 1023; and CXXXIX., 1617, 1618, 1629, 1632. 2d Rep.
Com. on Civil Estabs., Com. Papers, 1888, XXVII., 1, Qs. 17444-47,
17821-28, 20238; Rep. Com. on Post Office, Com. Papers, 1897, XLIV., 1,
Q. 11706.
[150:5] 2d Rep. Com. on Civil Estabs., Com. Papers, 1888, XXVII., 1, Qs.
10562-63, 10742, 10745-49, 17444-47.
[150:6] Hans., 3 Ser. CCCLII., 870.
[151:1] Hans., 4 Ser. V., 1123 _et seq._
[151:2] _Ibid._, 1536 _et seq._
[151:3] _Ibid._, VII., 188-90.
[151:4] _Ibid._, XVI., 1218.
[151:5] _Ibid._, LIII., 1138-39.
[152:1] Hans., 4 Ser. CXXI., 1023.
[152:2] _Ibid._, LXVI., 1550.
[152:3] _Ibid._, LIII., 1107 _et seq._
[152:4] _Ibid._, 1138. In the course of his speech he pointed out that
the membership of the trade-unions in the postal and telegraph service
had grown very much of late years. But he declared that they were
accorded all the privileges enjoyed by trade-unions elsewhere.
[152:5] _Ibid._, CXXI., 1023.
[152:6] _Ibid._, CXXII., 329, 331, 333.
[152:7] _Ibid._, CXXXIX., 1600-36.
[152:8] _Ibid._, CLIII., 357.
[153:1] It may be observed that the use of competitive examinations was
made general by the Act of 1870, passed shortly after the
enfranchisement of revenue officials.
[154:1] The prevailing American sentiment, on the other hand, is
expressed in the Declaration of Rights of the Constitution of
Massachusetts, adopted in 1780, which says (Art. viii), "In order to
prevent those who are vested with authority from becoming oppressors,
the people have a right at such periods and in such manner as they shall
establish by their frame of government, to cause their public officers
to return to private life; and to fill up vacant places by certain and
regular elections and appointments." This lays down the principle of
rotation in office, and although by no means so intended by its framers,
may be said to be the charter of the spoils system.
[155:1] Parker, "Sir Robert Peel," I., 50, 160-62, 222, 269. At this
time the permanent under-secretary in Ireland was expected to take an
active part in politics, for we find Peel writing to him to use every
exertion to get the Irish members to support the government on the
Catholic question. _Ibid._, 73.
[155:2] Dorman B. Eaton, "Civil Service in Great Britain." Although not
always accurate, this is the best, and indeed almost the sole, history
of the patronage system and the gradual substitution therefor of
appointment by examination.
[155:3] "Recollections and Suggestions," 33.
[155:4] Sir Thomas Erskine May, although writing when this system was
passing away, seemed to regard it as essential to party government.
Speaking of the effects of parliamentary reform upon the state of
parties, he says, "But throughout these changes, patronage has been the
mainspring of the organisation of parties." "Const. Hist. of England" (1
Am. Ed.), II., 99.
[156:1] Parker, "Sir Robert Peel," II., 140.
[156:2] _Cf._ Lowell and Stephens, "Colonial Civil Service."
[156:3] Com. Papers, 1854-1855, XLI., 369.
[156:4] These have since been reduced to two.
[157:1] 22 Vic., c. 26; Secs. 4, 17.
[157:2] Com. Papers, 1860, IX., 1.
[157:3] _Ibid._, 1870, XIX., 1, p. vii.
[157:4] Secs. 2, 7, and Schedule B. _Cf._ Orders in Council, Aug. 19,
1871, Sec. 1; Sept. 15, 1902. The Order of 1870 requires a certificate
of qualification from the Civil Service Commissioners as a condition of
employment in "any situation or appointment in any department of the
civil service," not specially excepted from the operation of the Order.
The exceptions were enumerated in Schedule B, and are those described in
the parenthesis of the sentence to which this is a note. The order
originally applied, therefore, to all other positions whatever their
nature; but by Sec. 8 the chief authorities of any department were given
power, with the concurrence of the Treasury, to add to the schedules, or
withdraw situations therefrom; and this power has been used to add to
Schedule B, and thus exempt from examination altogether a number of
positions, almost exclusively menial, such as those of messengers,
porters, charwomen, etc. The Orders in Council and Treasury Minutes
relating to the civil service may be found at the end of the Civil
Service Year Book.
[158:1] Schedule A at first contained a list, not of situations, but of
departments; so that the system of open competition applied to all the
positions (not specially expected) in some departments, and to none of
those in others. This irrational classification recurs constantly in the
history of the civil service examinations, but in the case of open
competitions it has been changed under the reserved power to modify
Schedule A. Clerkships, and other posts, in departments not previously
included, have been added to the schedule; while large classes of
situations have been withdrawn therefrom. These are, for the most part,
manual occupations, such as office keepers, messengers, porters,
foremen, artisans, labourers, matrons and domestic servants. Some of
them, as explained in the preceding note, have been exempted from
examination altogether, and for the rest the candidates are nominated
subject to a pass examination, or a limited competition. The
requirements in the case of the more important classes among them will
be described in a later part of this chapter.
[158:2] _Cf._ 45 Rep. Civil Serv. Comrs., Com. Papers, 1901, XVIII.,
129, pp. lxxxiii-lxxxvii.
[159:1] _Cf. Ibid._, pp. lxxiii-lxxv.
[160:1] Under Order in Council June 4, 1870, Sec. 7, and Schedule B.
Playfair's commission remarked of these positions, that in order to
obtain superannuation pensions the holders must have been appointed with
a certificate from the Civil Service Commissioners, or must, under
Section 4 of the Superannuation Act of 1859, be excepted from the rule
by the Treasury on the ground that the office is one requiring peculiar
qualifications. The commission found that in fact the examination was
not in general required. (Com. Papers, 1875, XXIII., 1, p. 6.)
[161:1] They covered reading, writing and arithmetic, often dictation,
precis, geography, English history, Latin and French, sometimes
bookkeeping, and occasionally something more; 3d Rep. of Civil Serv.
Comrs., Com. Papers, 1857-1858, XXV., 1, App. B.
[161:2] Rep. of the Com. on Civil Service Appointments, Com. Papers,
1860, IX., 1, pp. vii-viii.
[161:3] 16th Rep. Civil Serv. Comrs., Com. Papers, 1871, XVII., 1, App.
1.
[161:4] In 1873 a Committee on Civil Service Expenditure suggested
abolishing the distinction altogether, and having a single examination
for admission to each department, the men to stand upon an equality as
regards subsequent promotion by merit. (3d Rep., Com. Papers, 1873,
VII., 415, p. iv.) No action was taken on this recommendation; and two
years later Playfair's Commission on Admission to the Civil Service
reported (Com. Papers, 1875, XXIII., 1) that the distinction between a
higher division to do the responsible work, and a lower division to do
the routine work, ought to be maintained. But they criticised the
existing division into Classes I and II, on the ground that there was no
possibility of promotion from the second to the first, and that the
distinction did not correspond with the real difference in the nature of
the work, so that mechanical work was done by the first class and
responsible work by the second, while the clerks in some of the
departments belonged wholly to one class. They recommended that there
should be in every department a lower division of men and boy clerks;
that its members should serve in any department to which they were
appointed or transferred; and that after ten years' service they might,
if they had shown exceptional capacity, be promoted to the upper
division. These recommendations were embodied in the Order in Council of
Feb. 12, 1876. The organisation of the civil service was thereby
simplified and improved, but it was still imperfect. The Commission on
Civil Establishments, in their second report, in 1888 (Com. Papers,
1888, XXVII., 1), said that in practice the work of the two divisions
had overlapped, and the line between them had been drawn too low. They
suggested also that the name of the lower division should be changed to
second division. This was carried into effect by an Order in Council of
March 21, 1890, which constituted the second division of the civil
service, with a higher grade to be reached by promotion, and made the
boy clerks into a separate division. The rules affecting the second
division have since been embodied in a new Order in Council of Nov. 29,
1898, amended by another Order of Sept. 15, 1902. The first division,
known as Class I of the Civil Service, was regulated afresh by an Order
in Council of Aug. 15, 1890, which created there also an upper grade to
be reached by promotion.
It may be added that appointments made as the result of competitive
examination are not absolute at once, but are probationary for a certain
period.
[162:1] These are the men entering the civil service of the Eastern
colonies, Ceylon, Hong Kong, the Federated Malay States, etc.
[163:1] Of the 514 successful candidates for the Class I clerkships, the
Indian Civil Service and the Eastern Cadets, from 1896 to 1900
inclusive, 262 had studied at Oxford, 148 at Cambridge, 83 at other
universities in the United Kingdom, 7 in colonial and Indian
universities, and 14 in no university at all. (45th Rep. of the Civil
Serv. Comrs., Com. Papers, 1901, XVIII., 129, pp. lxxix-lxxxii.) The
proportion from Oxford and Cambridge in the Class I clerkships alone
would be somewhat larger still. The later reports of the Civil Service
Commission show that these proportions have not been very much changed.
[163:2] A more detailed statement of the method of conducting the
examination and its results may be found in Lowell and Stephens,
"Colonial Civil Service."
[164:1] Morley, "Life of Gladstone," I., 511.
[164:2] In a letter to Lord John Russell he wrote: "It must be
remembered that an essential part of any such plan as it is now under
discussion is the separation of _work_, wherever it can be made, into
mechanical and intellectual, a separation which will open to the highly
educated class a career, and give them a command over all the higher
parts of the civil service, which up to this time they have never
enjoyed." _Ibid._, 649.
[165:1] For Mundella's origin see Davidson, "Eminent English Liberals,"
Ch. xii.; Hinton, "English Radical Leaders," Ch. viii.
[165:2] As in all such cases, the upper limit is extended to some extent
for men who have served the public in a military or other capacity.
[166:1] 45th Rep. Civil Serv. Comrs., Com. Papers, 1901, XVIII., 129,
pp. lxxiii-iv. Under the present regulations, writing (with copying),
arithmetic and English composition are required; and of the eight
optional subjects--precis (including indexing and adjusting of returns),
bookkeeping and shorthand, geography and English history, Latin, French,
German, elementary mathematics (plane geometry and algebra), and
chemistry and physics--not more than four may be offered, including not
more than two of the three languages.
[167:1] During the thirteen years from 1886 to 1898, inclusive, 147
first-class clerks were appointed by open competition, 34 were promoted
from the second division (or the corresponding class that preceded it),
and 8 came from other sources (virtually by transfer from distinct
services). During the same period 123 second division clerks were
promoted to other posts carrying an increase of salary. Com. Papers,
1899, LXXVII., 751. From the later reports of the Civil Service
Commissioners it would appear that the proportion of first-class
clerkships filled by promotion does not increase.
[167:2] Order in Council, Nov. 29, 1898, Sec. 15.
[167:3] Or boy copyists. They were formerly two separate classes, but
are now combined.
[167:4] The nature of the examination was changed at the same time, and
for the same reason as that of the second division clerks.
[168:1] 45th Rep. of the Civil Serv. Comrs., Com. Papers, 1901, XVIII.,
129, pp. lxxxiii-vii.
[168:2] _Ibid._, 129, pp. lxxxiii-vii.
[169:1] The Committee on Civil Establishments reported that this method
of appointment was a necessity in the Foreign Office. Com. Papers, 1890,
XXVII., 1, p. 9.
[170:1] Courtney, "The Working Constitution," 149-50. The local member,
however, is still often consulted, but rather as having local knowledge
than with a view to political influence.
[170:2] Messengers are often examined in the three R's.
[171:1] Com. Papers, 1883, XXXVIII., 543.
[171:2] Third Rep. of the Com. on Civil Serv. Exp., Com. Papers, 1873,
VII., 415, Qs. 4270-72, 4727, 4762, 4764. There was at that time some
trouble in the case of dismissals. _Ibid._, Qs. 4271-72.
CHAPTER VIII
THE MINISTERS AND THE CIVIL SERVICE
[Sidenote: The Need of both Expert and Layman.]
As scientific and technical knowledge increase, as the relations of life
become more complex, there is an ever-growing need of men of special
training in every department of human activity; and this is no less true
of the government than of every other organisation. Any work, therefore,
carried on at the present day without the assistance of experts is
certain to be more or less inefficient. But, on the other hand, experts
acting alone tend to take disproportionate views, and to get more or
less out of touch with the common sense of the rest of the world. They
are apt to exaggerate the importance of technical questions as compared
with others of a more general nature--a tendency which leads either to
hobbies, or, where the organism is less vigorous, to officialism and red
tape. These evils have become so marked in the case of some governments
as to give rise to the ill name of bureaucracy. In order, therefore, to
produce really good results, and avoid the dangers of inefficiency on
the one hand, and of bureaucracy on the other, it is necessary to have
in any administration a proper combination of experts and men of the
world. Now, of all the existing political traditions in England, the
least known to the public, and yet one of those most deserving
attention, is that which governs the relation between the expert and the
layman.
[Sidenote: The Judge and Jury.]
The first branch of the English government to reach a high point of
development was that which dealt with the administration of justice; and
it is here that we first see the cooperation of professional and lay
elements. They appear in the form of judge and jury; and in that form
they have worked together from the Middle Ages to the present day. The
judge, a royal officer of high rank, supplies the expert knowledge,
while the lay influence is exerted by means of a panel of twelve men of
average ignorance, drawn from the community by lot for the occasion; and
although this is not the usual method of combining the two elements,
their reciprocal control has certainly been effective.
[Sidenote: The Justice of the Peace and his Clerk.]
It was not, however, in the superior courts of law alone that the
principle made itself felt. Its working, if less evident on the surface,
may be traced no less clearly in the exercise of petty jurisdiction by
the justices of the peace sitting without a jury. But here the mutual
relation of the two elements was reversed. The justice of the peace was
in most cases a landowner, a country gentleman, not skilled in law. In
the earlier period the commission included a number of trained lawyers,
who were said to be of the quorum, because without the presence of one
of them the justices were not by law competent to act.[174:1] But in
process of time the trained lawyers ceased to be appointed, while the
names of almost all the justices came to be inserted in the quorum
clause;[174:2] and thus it happened that judicial authority was vested
in a squire who knew little of the law he was called upon to administer.
But the justice supplied, in fact, the lay, not the professional,
element in his own court; the requisite legal knowledge being usually
furnished by his clerk, who was learned in the law; or, at least,
learned in the duties of the justice of the peace as set forth in the
statutes and in the manuals published for the purpose.
The office of clerk of the peace for the county must be of considerable
age, for it is referred to in a statute of Richard II. in 1388.[174:3]
But besides this office, which is a public one, it has been the habit
time out of memory for an active justice to retain a private clerk of
his own to assist him when acting as a single magistrate; such a clerk
being paid partly out of the justice's pocket, partly from the fees
that accrued.[175:1]
[Sidenote: As Portrayed in Literature.]
More important than the age of these offices is the question of the real
power exerted by their holders. That the influence of a clerk over the
justice who employed him has long been both great and notorious is clear
from the frequent references to it in literature. Early in the
seventeenth century Fletcher, in "The Elder Brother," makes Miramont say
to Brissac:[175:2]--
"Thou monstrous piece of ignorance in office!
Thou that hast no more knowledge than thy Clerk infuses."
Near the end of that century the same idea was expressed with singular
frankness in a manual on "The Office of the Clerk of the Peace,"
published in 1682. In an address "to the reader," which precedes the
second part of the volume, the author explains the object of the book.
After saying of the justices of the peace that their birth is a glory to
their seats, he continues:--
"But divers of these Gentlemen having not been conversant in the
Practice of the Ordinary Courts of Justice, often in the absence of
those worthy Persons, who be associated with them for their Learning in
the Law, meet with many difficulties and discouragements."
Coming down to the eighteenth century there is the case of Squire
Western and his clerk in "Tom Jones"; and later in the same novel the
scene in the inn at Upton, where the strange justice is unwilling to act
because he has not with him his book or his clerk. The reader will
probably remember Justice Foxley and his clerk in "Redgauntlet"; and
also Dickens's burlesque of the relation in the scene at Ipswich, where
after much whispering between the justice (Mr. Nupkins) and his clerk
(Mr. Jinks) the magistrate says to Mr. Pickwick:--
"An information has been sworn before me that it is apprehended you are
going to fight a duel, and that the other man, Tupman, is your aider and
abettor in it. Therefore--eh, Mr. Jinks?"
"Certainly, Sir."
"Therefore, I call upon you both to--I think that's the course, Mr.
Jinks?"
"Certainly, Sir."
"To--to--what, Mr. Jinks?" said the magistrate pettishly.
"To find bail, Sir."
"Yes. Therefore, I call upon you both--as I was about to say, when I was
interrupted by my clerk--to find bail."
The satire here is particularly keen, because before the public the
magistrate always takes the whole credit to himself, and is very
sensitive about having the world believe that he is under the control of
his clerk.
[Sidenote: Lay Chief with Expert Subordinate an English Usage.]
Leslie Stephen, I think, remarks somewhere that the characteristic
feature of the English system of government is a justice of the peace
who is a gentleman, with a clerk who knows the law; and certainly the
relationship between the titular holder of a public post, enjoying the
honours, and assuming the responsibility, of office, and a subordinate,
who, without attracting attention, supplies the technical knowledge and
largely directs the conduct of his chief, extends throughout the English
government from the Treasury Bench to the borough council. Perhaps,
indeed, it is not altogether fanciful to attribute the ease with which
the principle has become established in the national government to the
fact that the members of Parliament, and the ministers as well, have
been drawn in the past mainly from the same class as the justices of
the peace, and have brought with them to a larger sphere the traditions
of the local magistrate.
[Sidenote: Influence of Permanent Officials in the Colonial Office.]
The extent of the control exerted in the national administration by the
permanent officials is forcibly illustrated by the history of the
Colonial Office. My colleague, Professor Edward Channing, has pointed
out to me that the records of the American colonies reveal how largely
the Committee for Trade and Plantations was in the hands of Blathwayt,
its secretary. In spite of all the violent political upheavals of the
time that functionary retained his post without interruption from the
latter part of the reign of Charles II. until some years after the
revolution of 1688; and if a colony wanted anything done by the home
government it was he that must be persuaded, sometimes by inducements of
a pecuniary nature.
The power, but happily not the corruption, of the permanent officials in
the Colonial Office can be traced still more clearly at a much later
time. In 1839 Lord Durham, in his famous "Report on the Affairs of
British North America," complains that owing to the repeated changes in
the political chiefs of the Colonial Office, the real management of the
colonies fell into the hands of "the permanent but utterly irresponsible
members of the office"; and he quotes from a report made in the
preceding year by a select committee of the Assembly of Upper Canada, to
show that this was felt by the colonists themselves as a
grievance.[177:1] The group of English colonial reformers, with whom
Lord Durham was associated, held the same opinion. Gibbon Wakefield
tells us, in his "View of the Art of Colonization" that "The great
bulk, accordingly, of the labours of the office are performed, as
the greater portion of its legislative and executive authority is
necessarily wielded, by the permanent under-secretary and the
superior clerks."[177:2] Wakefield and his school disapproved of the
colonial policy of the day, and disliked cordially the permanent
officials and their methods. "Our colonial system of government,"
Wakefield adds, "is the bureaucratic, spoiled by being grafted on
to free institutions."[178:1] He had a special aversion for Sir
James Stephen--long the legal adviser, and afterwards permanent
under-secretary, to the Colonial Office--whom he regarded as the
archetype, if not the founder, of the class of officials that had become
the real arbiters of the destinies of the colonial empire.[178:2]
[Sidenote: Mr. Mothercountry.]
Wakefield quotes from Charles Buller's "Responsible Government for
Colonies" (a work published in 1840, but at that time already out of
print), an extract entitled "Mr. Mothercountry, of the Colonial
Office."[178:3] Parliament, Buller declares, takes no interest in the
colonies, and exercises no efficient control over the administration and
legislation affecting them; and hence the supremacy of England really
resides in the Colonial Office. But the Secretary of State holds a
shifting position. Perplexed by the vast variety of questions presented
to him, he is obliged at the outset to rely on one or other of the
permanent officials, and the official who thus directs the action of the
British government Buller calls "Mr. Mothercountry." He is familiar with
every detail of his business, and handles with unfaltering hand the
piles of papers at which his superiors quail. He knows the policy which
previous actions render necessary; but he never appears to dictate. A
new Secretary of State intends to be independent, but something turns up
that obliges him to consult Mr. Mothercountry. He is pleased with the
ready and unobtrusive advice which takes a great deal of trouble off his
hands. If things go well, his confidence in Mr. Mothercountry rises. If
badly, that official alone can get him out of the colonial or
parliamentary scrape; and the more independent he is the more scrapes he
falls into. Buller goes on to point out the faults of Mr. Mothercountry;
his love of routine, his tendency to follow precedent, his dislike of
innovation, and his dread of being criticised.
[Sidenote: Memoirs of Colonial Officials.]
Any one, with even a slight knowledge of government offices in England,
will recognise that the portrait of Mr. Mothercountry and his influence
is hardly overdrawn, in cases where the political chief either holds his
place for a short time, or is not a man of commanding ability. The
impression of the critics of colonial administration is, indeed,
strikingly reenforced in this respect by memoirs of the permanent
officials themselves; although some allowance must, no doubt, be made
for a natural overestimate of their own importance.[179:1] Sir Henry
Taylor confided to the world in his autobiography a number of remarks
that throw light on the internal working of the Colonial Office in the
second quarter of the century. While never its permanent
under-secretary, he was for a great many years a highly influential
person there, as may be seen from the fact that early in his career he
drew up, on his own judgment, a despatch recalling a governor, which the
secretary signed.[179:2] Taylor tells us that Lords Goderich and Howick,
who became the political chiefs of the Colonial Office in 1831, were
"not more in pupilage than it is necessary and natural that men should
be who are new to their work."[179:3] He says that when Lord Stanley was
appointed Secretary of State, in 1833, he asked no advice from his
subordinates, and a measure he prepared was blown into the air by the
House of Commons; whereupon he had recourse to Mr. Stephen,[179:4] "who
for so many years might better have been called the Colonial Department
itself than the 'Counsel to the Colonial Department.'"[179:5] A little
later he repeats this last statement, saying that while Lord Glenelg was
Secretary "Stephen virtually ruled the Colonial Empire."[179:6] Taylor's
own influence was shown when complaints were made of his administration
of the West Indies. The House of Commons appointed a committee of
inquiry, and the report of that committee, with the exception of the
last few sentences, was entirely drawn up by Taylor himself.[180:1]
Sir Frederick Rogers (afterwards Lord Blachford), who was permanent
under-secretary from 1860 to 1871, has left in his letters suggestive
comments upon most of his political chiefs. The Duke of Newcastle, he
says, is "very ready to accept your conclusions, very clear in his own
directions, and extremely careful (which I respect very highly) never to
throw back on a subordinate any shadow of responsibility for advice that
he has once accepted."[180:2] "Cardwell," he remarks, "is happily
absent, though not so much as I could wish";[180:3] and, finally, he
writes that he likes Lord Granville, who "is very pleasant and friendly,
and I think will not meddle beyond what is required to keep us clear of
political slips."[180:4] Some people outside of the office evidently
thought that the secretaries of state had not meddled overmuch, for
George Higginbottom, afterwards Chief Justice of Victoria, once remarked
in the Assembly, "It might be said with perfect truth that the million
and a half of Englishmen who inhabit these colonies, and who during the
last fifteen years have believed they possessed self-government, have
been really governed during the whole of that time by a person named
Rogers";[180:5] and in the same vein Rees, in his "Life and Times of Sir
George Grey," refers to Sir Robert Herbert (permanent under-secretary
from 1871 to 1892) as the man who "controls the destinies of the
Colonial Office."[180:6]
[Sidenote: Influence of Permanent Officials in Other Departments.]
With the growing interest in the empire, there has come a change; but
until a very recent period the fact that British statesmen knew little
of the subject, and did not care much more, no doubt made the power of
the permanent officials peculiarly great in the Colonial Office.
Their influence, however, upon the policy of the government in the
other departments, if less absolute, has nevertheless been very large.
This impression one obtains both from published documents, and from
private conversations, although the former alone can be cited as
evidence. As far back as 1845 we find the Lord Lieutenant speaking of
the permanent under-secretary as "the main-spring of your government in
Ireland."[181:1] But more important than scattered statements of this
kind is the information derived from the testimony taken by
parliamentary committees of inquiry. One cannot read, for example, the
evidence collected in 1900 by the Committee on Municipal Trading[181:2]
without being convinced that not only the efficiency, but also in large
measure the current policy, of the Board of Trade depended upon the
permanent official at its head, and this is true of every branch of the
administration.[181:3] Sir Lyon Playfair gave the reason for it when he
said: "The secretary being a very busy man is very apt to take the
advice of the clerk who has been looking over all the details and the
correspondence before it comes to him."[182:1] A superior, indeed,
lacking the time to become thoroughly familiar with the facts, must be
to a great extent in the hands of a trusted subordinate who has them all
at his fingers' ends. It is the common case of the layman and his
confidential expert; and it must be observed in this connection that
with exacting parliamentary and other duties, the cabinet ministers
cannot devote all their time to the work of their departments.
[Sidenote: Theoretical Relation of Political and Permanent Heads.]
The theoretical relation between the political chief and his permanent
subordinate is a simple one. The political chief furnishes the lay
element in the concern. His function is to bring the administration into
harmony with the general sense of the community and especially of
Parliament. He must keep it in accord with the views of the majority in
the House of Commons, and conversely he must defend it when criticised,
and protect it against injury by any ill-considered action of the House.
He is also a critic charged with the duty of rooting out old abuses,
correcting the tendency to red tape and routine, and preventing the
department from going to sleep or falling into ruts; and, being at the
head, it is for him, after weighing the opinion of the experts, to
decide upon the general policy to be pursued. The permanent officials,
on the other hand, are to give their advice upon the questions that
arise, so as to enable the chief to reach a wise conclusion and keep him
from falling into mistakes. When he has made his decision they are to
carry it out; and they must keep the department running by doing the
routine work. In short the chief lays down the general policy, while his
subordinates give him the benefit of their advice, and attend to the
details. It is easy enough to state a principle of this kind, but in
practice it is very hard to draw the line. The work of a public
department consists of a vast mass of administrative detail, the
importance of which is not self-evident until some strain is brought to
bear upon it; and all the acts done, however trifling in themselves,
form precedents, which accumulate silently until they become as
immovable as the rocks of the geologic strata. To know how far the
opinion of an expert must be followed, and how far it may be overruled;
to know what is really general policy, and what is mere detail; to know
these things is the most valuable art in life. The capacity of an
administrator on a large scale depends upon what he attends to himself,
and what he commits to others. But the political chief of a department
is so situated that it is difficult for him to determine what questions
he will reserve for himself and what he will leave to his subordinates.
To understand why that is the case it is necessary to know something of
the procedure in the government offices.
[Sidenote: Procedure in the Public Departments.]
The method of doing business in a public office is of necessity more
elaborate than in a private concern. There is more responsibility for
the work done; more subjection to public criticism in small matters; and
a stronger obligation to treat every one alike, which means a more
strict adherence to precedent. All this entails a complicated machinery
that is less needed in private business, where a man can say that if he
makes a mistake the loss falls upon himself and is no other person's
affair. In a public office, therefore, more writing is done, more things
are preserved and recorded, than in a private business, and there are
more steps in a single transaction.[183:1] Now although the procedure in
the English departments varies somewhat in detail, the general practice
is much the same throughout the public service.
When a minister wishes to prepare a measure for Parliament, or to make
any change in administrative policy, he consults the permanent
under-secretary and any other officials especially familiar with the
subject; if, indeed, the matter has not been suggested to him by them.
He weighs their advice, and states his conclusion to the permanent
under-secretary, who in turn gives his directions to the proper
subordinates for carrying it into effect. In such a case the procedure
is obvious; but by far the greater part of the action in the central
offices begins at the other end, and comes from the contact of the
government with the public, or from questions that arise in the course
of administration. When anything of this kind occurs, whether it be in
the form of a despatch, a petition, a complaint, a request for
instructions, or a communication of any sort, it is sent by the official
charged with the opening of correspondence to the principal, or senior,
clerk within whose province it falls. The senior clerk intrusts it to
one of the junior first-class clerks in his division. He examines the
paper, and unless it is of such a purely routine character that he feels
authorised to dispose of it, he affixes to it a minute or memorandum,
which gives a history of the matter, the precedents in similar cases,
and any other information that may assist his superiors in reaching a
decision, commonly adding a suggestion of the course to be pursued. The
paper then goes back to the senior clerk, who inspects it, and if the
question is of small consequence approves the minute or directs a
different disposition, subscribing his initials. If the affair is more
weighty, he adds his own comments in the form of a second minute, and
transmits the paper to the permanent under-secretary.[184:1] That
officer, as the permanent head of the department, gives the final
directions,[184:2] and returns the paper, unless the matter is of great
importance, or involves a new question of policy, or is likely to give
rise to discussion in Parliament, when he submits it to his political
chief with a further minute of his own.[184:3]
[Sidenote: Each Official a Reader for his Superior.]
Each permanent official thus performs a double service for his
immediate superior. He collects all the material that bears upon a
question, presenting it in such a form that a decision can be readily
and quickly made; and he acts to a certain extent as a reader, examining
a mass of papers that the superior would be quite unable to go through,
and making up his own mind how far they contain anything that requires
his chief's attention.[185:1] This system runs throughout the
department, from the junior first-class clerks to the parliamentary
head, each official deciding what he will submit to his superior; in the
same way that the minister himself determines what matters he will
settle on his own authority, and what he had better lay before the
cabinet. No doubt a subordinate in undertaking to decide a question
occasionally makes a mistake for which the minister must assume the
responsibility; but that is not a serious danger. The besetting sin of
bureaucracy is the tendency to refer too much to a higher authority,
which cannot become familiar with the facts of each case, and finds its
only refuge in clinging to hard and fast rules. It is fortunate,
therefore, that the growth in the machinery of central administration in
England has been accompanied by greater deconcentration within the
departments.[185:2] The process has not been without effect on the
position of the permanent under-secretary. By relieving him of detail it
has made him more free to devote his attention to general policy; and,
in fact, a departmental committee reported a few years ago that he ought
"to divest himself of all but the most important matters in which the
application of a new principle is involved." No question, the report
continued, ought to reach him until it has been threshed out by the
responsible head of a division, and is ripe for decision. "The permanent
secretary should be able to devote himself to such work as conferring
with and advising his Parliamentary chiefs, framing or elaborating
proposals for new legislation or administrative reform, considering all
questions in Parliament, receiving members of Parliament, or
representatives of the Public on questions of difficulty, and generally
controlling and directing the conduct of the Department."[186:1]
[Sidenote: Differences between the Departments.]
The point to which deconcentration is carried is not the same in all
branches of the public service. Mr. Gladstone declared that the
Chancellor of the Exchequer could not take as active a part as other
ministers in the current business of his department;[186:2] while in the
Foreign Office, on the other hand, it has been the tradition that the
Secretary of State ought to see almost everything. No doubt this is in
part due to the very nature of diplomatic relations, but there can also
be no doubt that in the past it has been carried much too far. When Mr.
Hammond was under-secretary for foreign affairs he insisted on making
the first minute on all papers in the office.[186:3] A change has been
made in this respect, and the practice brought more into accord with
that which prevails in other departments;[186:4] but the Foreign
Secretary is still expected to give his personal attention to a greater
mass of detail than other ministers.[186:5]
[Sidenote: Effect of the Procedure on the Power of Officials.]
Now any subordinate who determines what questions he may decide himself,
and what he will refer to his superiors, and who prepares the materials
for a final judgment in the cases that he does refer, is certain to
exert a great deal of influence. The permanent under-secretary, holding
his position, as he does, for an indefinite period, devoting his whole
time to the work, and becoming thoroughly familiar with the affairs of
his department, can, no doubt, regulate the class of questions that
shall be referred to him, and can acquire complete control over the
administration. But the minister, who is usually unfamiliar with the
department to which he is assigned, who remains at its head a
comparatively short time, and whose attention is largely engrossed by
the more exciting scenes enacted in the cabinet, in Parliament, and on
the platform, must, unless gifted with extraordinary executive capacity,
be to a considerable extent in the hands of his permanent subordinates.
[Sidenote: Need of Mutual Confidence between Political and Permanent
Heads.]
The smooth working of a system of this kind evidently depends upon the
existence of mutual respect and confidence between the minister and the
permanent under-secretary. If the minister, knowing that the
under-secretary does not share his own political views, fails to treat
him with perfect frankness, or if, after one party has been long in
power, the permanent officials have little sympathy with a new ministry
from the other party, and do not give it their active and cordial help,
then mistakes are certain to be made, the efficiency of the service
suffers, and the plans of the government are likely to miscarry. The
permanent under-secretary ought to feel, and in fact does feel, a
temporary allegiance to his chief, although of a different political
party. He gives his advice frankly until the chief has reached a
decision, and then he carries that out loyally. Confidential
communications--and they are numberless--he treats as sacred even from
the next parliamentary chief. If one minister prepares a measure which
never sees the light, the permanent under-secretary might refuse to show
the documents to the succeeding minister, and the latter would
recognise the propriety of such a course. The minister on his part
seeks the advice of the under-secretary on all questions that arise,
making allowance for bias due to preconceived political or personal
conviction. This does not mean that if a government comes into power
pledged to a definite policy, such as Home Rule or a preferential
tariff, the under-secretary would be consulted about the general
principle. In a case of that kind the policy has been settled in
Parliament or by a general election, and the advice of the permanent
officials would be limited to the details of the measure proposed.
The system has, of course, its limits. There are cases where the known
opinions of the under-secretary would make it almost impossible for him
to conduct a certain policy effectively. When the Conservatives, for
example, came into office in 1895 with a policy of coercion for Ireland,
they found as permanent Irish under-secretary Sir Robert Hamilton, who
was known to be a strong Home Ruler, and believing that it would be very
difficult for them to govern the country through his agency, they
promoted him out of the way; such cases must sometimes occur, but they
are extremely rare. It is, indeed, astonishing how far the system can be
carried; to what an extent an under-secretary can act as the loyal
adviser and administrator for chiefs of totally different political
opinions.
[Sidenote: Actual Relation Depends on Personality.]
The actual relations between the minister and the permanent
under-secretary depend in any particular case very much upon the
personality of the men. Peel and Gladstone, for example, maintained a
close supervision and control over the departments under their charge,
while John Bright felt that his real field of usefulness was in the
House of Commons, and left the affairs of the Board of Trade almost
altogether in the hands of the permanent officials. The system naturally
works at its best when minister and under-secretary are both strong,
good-tempered men, when each is active, but recognises clearly the
province of the other. The saying has become almost proverbial that the
most valuable minister is one who knows nothing about his department
when appointed, and like most paradoxes it contains a distorted truth. A
good minister must be a good administrator, but he must look to results,
and not suppose that he knows as much about the technical side of the
work as his permanent subordinate. For, as Bagehot quotes Sir George
Cornwall Lewis, "It is not the business of a Cabinet Minister to work
his department. His business is to see that it is properly
worked."[189:1] If he attempts to go beyond his province, to be dogmatic
and to interfere in details, he will cause friction and probably come to
grief.
[Sidenote: Methods of Controlling a Minister.]
The permanent officials have, indeed, several means of controlling a
minister who ventures to disregard them. They have been heard to say
that a fool, if given rope enough, will hang himself. If he does not
care for their advice they need not tender it, and then he is sure to
make mistakes for which he alone will be held responsible. If, on the
other hand, he tries, with the best intentions, to go too much into
detail, nothing is easier than the trick, familiar, probably, to every
bureaucracy, of overwhelming him with detail. He wishes to decide
questions himself. The papers bearing upon them are brought to him in
ever-increasing piles, until he finds himself hopelessly unable to cope
with the mass of documents, and virtually surrenders at discretion. Then
there are the means of control arising from the audit of accounts and
from questions in Parliament. The permanent under-secretary points out
to his chief that an expenditure he proposes is likely to be disallowed
by the auditor, or that an action he suggests may very well give rise to
an embarrassing question in the House of Commons, and to these things a
minister is highly sensitive. Questions afford, indeed, a means of
mutual control, for the permanent officials are usually far more afraid
of the House of Commons than the minister is himself, and tend to be
reticent in preparing answers.
The Treasury Bench is not so omniscient as it appears when answering
questions in the House. After notice of a question has been given, the
materials for a reply are prepared, and often the answer itself is drawn
up, by some permanent official in the department. Sometimes the minister
merely reads the answer as it has been placed in his hands, but more
commonly while keeping the substance, he puts it into words of his own
that he thinks better suited to the temper of the House. The labour of
working up the answers to innumerable questions on every conceivable
subject, and of every degree of importance and triviality, is in the
aggregate very great, and places a heavy burden upon the permanent
officials during the session of Parliament. But no satisfactory method
of limiting the privilege has yet been devised, and although abused, it
has the effect of keeping the administration up to the mark. The system
affords an opportunity for constant public criticism, and while it gives
the permanent officials some control over the minister, it is, on the
other hand, a most effective means of preventing the growth of a
bureaucratic spirit.
[Sidenote: Evils where a Minister is Inactive.]
If the permanent officials can restrain a minister from interfering
overmuch, there is no similar means of preventing him from neglecting
his duties. Yet in that case the service suffers. It is apt to become
numbed and bureaucratic. Permanent officials tend to follow precedent,
and, indeed, the force of precedent furnishes the basis of their power,
but the tendency to be too rigid in their rules is the curse of all
their tribe. They shrink from innovation, rarely making a new precedent
themselves. This is particularly true in the lesser offices, giving
rise, at times, to complaint; and the political chief has to insist upon
the need of making exceptions in hard cases, without allowing the hard
cases themselves to make bad law. The surest remedy for an excess of
routine is a parliamentary head who is interested in the department, and
with him a permanent under-secretary of large calibre and wide
experience in affairs.
[Sidenote: Influence of Permanent Officials not Increasing.]
Speaking in 1884 about the Reform Bill then pending, Sir Stafford
Northcote predicted that an extension of the franchise would increase
the power of the permanent officials;[191:1] and many people think that
the prophecy has been fulfilled. But this would seem to be one of the
cases where an impression is due not so much to a real change of
conditions, as to the fact that a state of things already existing has
become recognised. The power of the civil service has undoubtedly grown
very much within the last hundred years; owing partly to the fact that
the ministers, instead of being primarily administrators, have become
legislators, engrossed by the work of Parliament and by general
politics; partly to the much shorter periods for which they hold office.
During the one hundred and two years from 1721 to 1823 there were
nineteen chancellors of the exchequer; of whom five held office for more
than ten years apiece, the aggregate length of their services being
seventy-eight years. In the eighty-two years from 1823 to 1905,
twenty-three men held the office, one of them for thirteen years,
another for nine, and no one else for more than about six years. The
effect of such a shortening of the minister's tenure of office upon the
position of his permanent subordinates is self-evident. But the present
conditions of political life have now existed with little change for a
generation; and, in the opinion of men well qualified to form a
judgment, the power of the permanent officials, while varying from time
to time with the personnel of the ministry, has not of late years shown
any general tendency to increase.
[Sidenote: Self-Effacement of the Civil Servants.]
Although the civil servant enjoys a great deal of the substance of
power, yet he purports to act only under the directions of his political
chief. Sir Stafford Northcote was admonished early in his career by Mr.
Gladstone "that references from the Opposition Bench to opinions of the
permanent officers of Government, in contradiction to the opinion of the
Minister who is responsible in the matter at issue, were contrary to
rule and to convenience."[192:1] If this were not so the principle of
ministerial responsibility could hardly be maintained. The minister is
alone responsible for everything done in his department, and he receives
all the credit and all the blame. The civil servant never talks in
public about the policy of his department,[192:2] never claims anything
done there as his own work; and, on the other hand, the minister ought
not to attribute blunders or misconduct to a subordinate unless prepared
at the same time to announce his discharge. This rule is not, indeed,
always observed in the military services, for within a few years the
House of Lords has heard the late Secretary of State for War and the
Commander-in-Chief charge each other with the responsibility for the
lack of preparation in South Africa;[192:3] and in 1901 the First Lord
of the Admiralty in the House of Lords laid the blame for the capsizing
of the royal yacht at her launching upon the naval constructor, while
praising, at the same time, his skill in designing battleships.[192:4]
In the civil services the principle has been, as a rule, very strictly
followed; although here, also, in the case of Sir Antony MacDonnell, the
under-secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, an exception occurred
which caused no small stir at the time.[192:5] Nor is the
responsibility of the minister merely formal and conventional, for the
mistakes of the officials in his department go into the great balance of
good and evil report, whereby the reputation of the cabinet is made, and
its fate at the next election is determined. In short, the permanent
official, like the King, can do no wrong. Both are shielded by the
responsibility of the minister, and in fact it may happen that a policy
adopted, let us say by the Foreign Office, which is popularly attributed
to the personal wishes of the King, is in reality the work of some
permanent subordinate.
Fifty years ago the public was not aware of the power of the civil
servants, and Parliament, regarding them as clerks, paid little
attention to them. But now that their importance has come to be
understood there is, in the opinion of some of their own members, a
danger that they will be made too prominent, that the screen which
protects them from the public gaze will be partly drawn aside, and that
they will thereby lose their complete irresponsibility, and with it
their permanence and their non-political character. Whether such a
danger will prove serious is at present only a matter for conjecture.
[Sidenote: Honours Conferred upon Civil Servants.]
While the permanent official can win no credit for particular acts, a
life of exceptional service does not pass unrecognised. Sir Robert Peel,
who appreciated their importance, lamented that honours were not
conferred upon them more freely.[194:1] Such a complaint could hardly be
made to-day, for a number of them are knighted every year, and
occasionally a permanent under-secretary, on retiring from office, is
even raised to the peerage. In spite of self-effacement, therefore, the
career of a permanent official is honourable and attractive. If he is
debarred from the excitement and the glory of the political arena, he is
spared its hazards, its vexations, and its disappointments. He wields
great power, takes a real part in shaping the destinies of the nation,
and if capable and fortunate he may end his days in the subdued lustre
of the House of Lords.
FOOTNOTES:
[174:1] _Cf._ Gneist, "Self-Government in England," 3 Auf., 196-97.
[174:2] Blackstone, Bk. I., 351.
[174:3] 12 Ric. II., c. 10 (4). _Cf._ 32 Hen. VIII., c. 1.
[175:1] Gneist, "Self-Government," 212.
[175:2] Act II., Sc. I. The characters of the play purport to be French,
but the manners and customs are, of course, English. Fletcher died in
1625. An earlier, though less definite, reference to the power of the
clerk is found in William Lambard's "Eirenarcha or, Of the Office of the
Justices of Peace," published in 1581 (p. 468): "Howbeit, I do not
thinke, that in our case, this dutie of Estreating is so peculiar to the
Clarke of the Peace, but that the Justices of the Peace themselves,
ought also to have a common and carefull eye unto it . . . least
otherwise, it lye altogither in the power of the Clarke of the Peace, to
Save or Slay (as one sayd) the Sparrow that he holdeth closed in his
hand."
[177:1] Com. Papers, 1839, XVII., 1, pp. 37-38.
[177:2] P. 235.
[178:1] P. 235.
[178:2] P. 268.
[178:3] P. 279.
[179:1] For the quotations from these memoirs I am indebted to Mr. Evan
Randolph, who made, while a student at Harvard College, a careful
examination of the subject.
[179:2] "Autobiography," London Ed. (1885), I., 70.
[179:3] _Ibid._, 130.
[179:4] _Ibid._, 133.
[179:5] _Ibid._, 136.
[179:6] _Ibid._, 233, _cf._ 123. It was during Lord Glenelg's time that
Stephen became permanent under-secretary.
[180:1] "Autobiography," II., 38.
[180:2] Marindin, "Letters of Lord Blachford," 227.
[180:3] _Ibid._, 252.
[180:4] _Ibid._, 275.
[180:5] Morris, "Memoirs of Higginbottom," 183.
[180:6] II., 505.
[181:1] Parker, "Sir Robert Peel," III., 184.
[181:2] Com. Papers, 1900, VII., 183.
[181:3] In that same year much discussion was provoked by Lord
Salisbury's sweeping remark that the British Constitution was not a good
fighting machine on account of the power of the Treasury to restrain
military expenditure. (Hans., 4 Ser. LXXVIII., 32, 237, 239.) It was
pointed out that if the political chiefs of the Army and Navy want to
increase their expenditure they cannot be blocked by the Treasury
clerks. They can confer with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and if he
will not consent, they can appeal to the Prime Minister, and ultimately
to the cabinet. Nevertheless it is true that if the political chief does
not consider a matter of first-class importance--and many of the most
far-reaching matters do not appear so at the time--or does not want to
fight about it, the opinion of the Treasury officials may prevail, even
to the extent of blocking useful reforms that cost a little money.
Moreover, if a matter is fought out between the political chiefs, their
opinions may very well be derived from their permanent subordinates.
When the subject of Treasury control was investigated by the Committee
on Civil Establishments, Sir Reginald (now Lord) Welby was asked, "Is
not this question not so much between political ministers as between
permanent heads of departments?" He answered "Yes, but the permanent
heads of departments to (_sic_) convince their political chiefs behind
whom they fight," and added that the political chiefs commonly support
their subordinates. (Com. Papers, 1888, XXVII., 1, Qs. 10721, 10723.)
[182:1] Com. Papers, 1888, XXVII., 1, Q. 20168.
[183:1] _Cf._ Giffen's Ev., 2d Rep. Com. on Civil Estabs., Com. Papers,
1888, XXVII., 1, Qs. 19131-32, 19139.
[184:1] If there is an assistant under-secretary the paper passes, of
course, through his hands; and in case local conditions require to be
examined an inspector is sent down to report.
[184:2] It has already been observed that in some departments the
parliamentary under-secretary is the administrative head for some
matters.
[184:3] Todd, with his unfailing industry, searched the Blue Books for
information on this subject. (Parl. Govt. in England, 2 Ed. II., 542,
614, 628-31, 645-46, 671, 708.) Since he wrote, a great deal of evidence
on the procedure in the several departments has been collected by the
Com. on Civil Estabs. (2d Rep., Com. Papers, 1888, XXVII., 1, Qs.
10992-11001, 11849-51, 12034-35, 12072-78, 12360-64, 12887-91, 19434,
19442-43).
[185:1] Com. Papers, 1888, XXVII., 1, Qs. 12072-78.
[185:2] In the Home Office, for example, the minuting for replies to
papers was formerly done by the permanent under-secretary alone. Later
the senior clerks were allowed to make minutes, and now the process
begins with the junior clerks. (Com. Papers, 1888, XXVII., 1, Qs.
10992-11001.) The same tendency has been at work in the Foreign Office,
as will be explained later.
[186:1] Rep. on clerical staff of Local Gov. Board, Com. Papers, 1898,
XL., 429, p. 12.
[186:2] He said "The relation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the
Treasury is somewhat anomalous; it does not correspond at all with that
of a Secretary of State to his department, because of course he lies a
good deal outside the Treasury, and a good deal of the current business
never comes before him at all." (3d Rep. Com. on Pub. Accounts, Com.
Papers, 1862, XI., 467, Q. 1640.)
[186:3] _Cf._ Mr. Hammond's memorandum entitled "The Adventures of a
Paper in the Foreign Office," Rep. of Sel. Com. on Trade, Com. Papers,
1864, VII., 279, Q. 1384; reprinted in 1st Rep. of Com. on Dip. and
Cons. Services, Com. Papers, 1871, VII., 197, Qs. 1145-46.
[186:4] Com. Papers, 1871, VII., 197, Qs. 1145-46. Hans. 3 Ser.
CCXXXII., 1058.
[186:5] 4th Rep. Com. on Civil Estabs., Com. Papers, 1890, XXVII., 1,
Ev. of Mr. Bryce, Qs. 27927-31, Sir Charles Dilke, Q. 29252.
The position of the Secretary of State for War, and the First Lord of
the Admiralty, although in most ways not unlike that of the other
ministers, is peculiar in the fact that they are the lay heads of great
professions. Their relation to the military officers detailed for
service in the principal administrative posts in their departments has
already been discussed in Chap. IV.
[189:1] "The English Constitution," 1 Ed., 240.
[191:1] "After that there will come a bureaucratic despotism; that is to
say, the permanent officials will take the management of affairs into
their hands, and Parliament will have little to do." Andrew Lang, "Life,
Letters, and Diaries of Sir Stafford Northcote," 2 Ed., II., 219.
[192:1] Lang, "Life, Letters, and Diaries of Sir Stafford Northcote,"
I., 160.
[192:2] After resigning his post in the Education Department in 1903,
Sir George Kekewich condemned publicly the Education Bill which had been
passed while he was in office, but it may safely be said that even this
is not regarded as the best form.
[192:3] Hans. 4 Ser. XC., 327 _et seq._, XCI., 6 _et seq._
[192:4] _Ibid._, XCVI., 969.
[192:5] Sir Antony MacDonnell, who had distinguished himself greatly as
an Indian administrator, and had just been given a place on the Council
of India, was appointed by Mr. Wyndham under-secretary for Ireland in
September, 1902, in spite of the fact that he was an Irishman, a Roman
Catholic and a Liberal in politics. In the summer of 1904, believing
that he had the approval of Mr. Wyndham, the Chief Secretary, in so
doing, he assisted Lord Dunraven to formulate the policy of devolution
in Ireland. But Mr. Wyndham hastened to make public his disapproval of
that policy as soon as the plan appeared in the press. When Parliament
met in February, 1905, Mr. Wyndham, in reply to questions of the Irish
Unionists, stated these facts, adding that Sir Antony MacDonnell had
been censured by the cabinet, which was, however, thoroughly satisfied
that his conduct was not open to the imputation of disloyalty. (Hans. 4
Ser. CXLI., 324-26.) The occurrence gave rise to a good deal of hot
discussion in both Houses of Parliament in the latter half of February,
in the course of which Mr. Wyndham said that he could not invite such a
man as Sir Antony MacDonnell to come and help him as a clerical
assistant, that he was invited rather as a colleague than as a mere
under-secretary. (Hans. 4 Ser. CXLI., 650, and see Lord Lansdowne's
remarks, _Ibid._, 461.) The letters that passed between Mr. Wyndham and
Sir Antony MacDonnell at the time of his appointment were then produced,
and they contain a stipulation couched in language that can fairly be
interpreted as implying either a position of exceptional importance, or
merely such influence as an under-secretary possessing the full
confidence of his chief might enjoy. (Hans. 4 Ser. CXLI., 979-81.) The
debate led to the resignation of Mr. Wyndham; and his successor, Mr.
Long, as well as Mr. Balfour, insisted that no agreement made with Sir
Antony gave him a position different from that of other
under-secretaries in the civil service. (Hans. 4 Ser. CXLI., 995;
CXLII., 1225-26; CXLIV., 647-48, 1278-79). An aftermath of the trouble
came in the autumn of 1906 when Mr. Long challenged Sir Antony
MacDonnell to publish any letters bearing upon the events of 1904-1905,
but these the Conservative government, when in power, had declined to
produce in Parliament. (The _Times_, Aug. 30, 31, Sept. 1, 4, 1906.)
Correspondence of this nature cannot, of course, be published, at the
good pleasure of the possessor. The whole episode illustrates clearly
the difficulties that arise when a parliamentary chief fails to assume
complete responsibility for everything that happens in his department.
It shows also that the relations between the political chief and his
permanent subordinate are fixed by the nature of the parliamentary
system, and cannot be effectively changed in special cases.
[194:1] Parker, "Sir Robert Peel," II., 35-36.
CHAPTER IX
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
_Constituencies and Voters_
[Sidenote: Electors and Constituencies Offer Distinct Problems.]
The composition of any representative body involves two separate things;
the electors and the constituencies. During the first part of the
nineteenth century public attention outside of England was mainly
concentrated upon the electors, or in other words upon the extension of
the franchise. But now that something like universal suffrage has been
introduced into most of the countries which have a popular element in
their government, the franchise is little discussed, and much more is
said about the constituencies, that is, the method of combining the
voters into groups. The change is largely due to discontent with some of
the results of democracy, a feeling which finds vent in widespread
criticism of representative institutions.[195:1]
It was formerly assumed that the interests of the masses of the people
were fundamentally identical; and hence the mode in which the electors
were grouped was comparatively unimportant, the main question being the
enlargement of the basis of representation. We have now learned that the
formation of the constituencies offers a distinct problem with grave
practical effects, and popular government not having brought the
millennium that was foretold, men seek a remedy in different methods of
combining the voters. We constantly see discussions of this subject. We
hear of the relative advantage of _scrutin d'arrondissement_ and
_scrutin de liste_; that is, single electoral districts or large areas
choosing a number of representatives apiece. We hear about the grouping
of voters on the basis of their natural economic relations into urban
and rural constituencies; or on the basis of wealth, as in the
three-class system of Prussia. We hear suggestions of possible grouping
on the basis of occupations;[196:1] and a vast amount of literature has
been published to prove the advantage of a grouping on the basis of
opinions, by some form of proportional representation.
[Sidenote: How Treated in England.]
In England the two questions of the electors and the constituencies,
although usually considered, and made the subject of legislation, at the
same time, have always been kept distinct. Each of the great series of
measures of parliamentary reform has touched both subjects, but in
unequal degree; and, in fact, it was really the state of the
constituencies that forced both problems upon public attention.
The Reform Act of 1832 brought in a general franchise for boroughs in
place of the multifarious, and on the whole highly exclusive, privileges
which had existed before. It also changed, though in a less radical way,
the franchise in the counties. But as a political measure its greatest
importance lay in its effect upon the constituencies by the
redistribution of seats. It took from small boroughs in various stages
of decay and rottenness one hundred and forty-three seats, and gave them
to the counties, and to new large towns hitherto unrepresented. The Act
of 1867, on the other hand, while transferring seats to some extent, was
mainly a measure for extending greatly the borough franchise. In 1884
and 1885 both subjects were dealt with radically. By the Act of 1884 the
franchise for counties was much enlarged; and by that of 1885 the
distribution of seats was reorganised upon a basis closely akin to equal
electoral districts.
[Sidenote: The Constituencies.]
The constituencies for the English Parliament are of three kinds;
counties, boroughs and universities. The last are quite different from
the others in nature and franchise, and a word may be said about them
here.
[Sidenote: Universities.]
Oxford and Cambridge were given two seats apiece by James I. The
University of Dublin, which had already one seat, obtained another by
the Reform Act of 1832; and, finally, the Act of 1868 gave one member to
London University, one to Glasgow and Aberdeen combined, and another to
Edinburgh and St. Andrews. The franchise for the universities belongs in
general to the registered graduates.[197:1]
[Sidenote: The Reform Act of 1832.]
Until 1832 each county, and each borough that had the privilege of being
represented, elected, as a rule, two members of Parliament. This,
however, was not true of the Scotch boroughs, which were, with few
exceptions, grouped into districts returning a single member apiece; a
system that has been maintained to the present day. Some of the English
boroughs had been given the right of electing members by the Tudors and
the early Stuarts, not because they were places of importance, but, on
the contrary, because they were not populous, and their members could be
easily controlled by the Crown--the electoral rights being commonly
vested in the governing council, which was a close corporation. Other
boroughs that had once been places of consequence had, in the course of
time, fallen into decay. So that by the beginning of the nineteenth
century many members of the House represented no substantial
communities, and were really appointed either by small self-perpetuating
bodies, or by patrons, who, owning the land, controlled the votes of the
few electors in the constituency. This condition of things was made
scandalous by the open practice of selling elections to Parliament for
cash; and the demand for reform, which had been checked by the long
struggle with France, began again after the peace, culminating finally
in the Reform Act of 1832.[197:2] The object of this measure was to
remove a manifest abuse, rather than to reorganise the representation
of the country on a new basis, and it applied to the conditions a
somewhat rough and inexact remedy. The boroughs with less than two
thousand population by the census of 1821 were disfranchised altogether,
those with more than two thousand and less than four thousand lost one
member, and the seats thus obtained were divided about equally between
the counties and the new large towns that had hitherto been
unrepresented.[198:1] But the constituencies still remained very uneven
in population--and, indeed, the framers of the act had no desire for
equal electoral districts.
[Sidenote: The Reform Act of 1867.]
The same process was continued by the Act of 1867, which again took
members from little towns and gave them to larger ones and to the
counties. While there was no general attempt to make the number of
representatives proportional to the size of a constituency, a few
of the largest provincial towns were given three members; and in
that connection an interesting experiment was tried. With the
object of providing for minority representation, the electors in
the boroughs returning three members--the so-called three-cornered
constituencies--were allowed to vote for only two candidates apiece.
This resulted in diminishing the real representation of the borough, as
compared with the rest of the country. If Manchester, for example, was
Liberal, she would probably be represented by two Liberals and one
Conservative. But in a party division the Conservative would neutralise
one of the Liberals, so that Manchester would count for only one vote,
and would, therefore, have only half as much weight as a much smaller
borough with two members both belonging to the same party. The
experiment gave so little satisfaction that it was afterward abandoned;
and it is chiefly interesting to-day because the effort to organise a
large party majority so as to compass the election of all three members
gave rise to the Birmingham Caucus, whose birth and whose progeny will
be described in a subsequent chapter. Except for the few three-member
constituencies, and a much larger number of boroughs having only a
single seat, the constituencies still returned two members apiece; and
this continued to be the rule until the third and last of the great
measures of parliamentary reform.
[Sidenote: The Reform Act of 1885.]
The Redistribution Act of 1885, although, like all English measures of
reform, to some extent a compromise between the old ideas and the new,
rested upon the principle of equal electoral districts each returning a
single member. The proportion of one seat for every 54,000 people was
roughly taken as the basis of representation; and in order to adapt the
principle to the existing system with the least possible change,
boroughs with less than 15,000 inhabitants were disfranchised
altogether, and became, for electoral purposes, simply a part of the
county in which they were situated. Boroughs with more than 15,000 and
less than 50,000 people were allowed to retain, or if hitherto
unrepresented were given, one member; those with more than 50,000 and
less than 165,000, two members; those above 165,000 three members, with
an additional member for every 50,000 people more. The same general
principle was followed in the counties.[199:1]
The boroughs that had hitherto elected two members, and were entitled to
the same number under the new scheme, remained single constituencies for
the election of those two members. Of these boroughs there are
twenty-three,[199:2] which, with the City of London, and the three
universities (Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin), makes in all twenty-seven
cases where two members are elected together. All the other
constituencies are single-member districts, a result which was brought
about by a partition of the counties, of boroughs with more than two
members, and of the new boroughs with only two members, into separate
electoral divisions, each with its own distinctive name.
It may be interesting to note that the Reforms of 1832 and 1867 did not
change the total number of members of the House, but merely
redistributed the existing 658 seats. By the disfranchisement, after
1867, for corrupt practices, of four boroughs returning six members, the
number was reduced to 652; and the Reform Act of 1885 increased it to
670, where it has since remained.
[Sidenote: Inequalities in Representation.]
The distribution of seats under the Act of 1885 was only a rough
approximation to equal electoral districts; and in time it has become
far less close, until to-day the difference in the size of the
constituencies is very great. The smallest is the borough of Newry in
Ireland, which had at the census of 1901 a population of only 13,137;
or, if we leave Ireland aside on account of its peculiar conditions, the
smallest in Great Britain is the city of Durham with a population of
14,935; while the largest is the southern division of the County of
Essex, with 217,030 inhabitants; so that the largest constituency to-day
is nearly fifteen times as populous as the smallest.[200:1] Nor are the
inequalities confined to extreme cases; for they exist in lesser degree
throughout the electoral body, many of the constituencies being two or
three times as large as many others.
But unless one assumes that the exact equivalence of all votes is a
fundamental principle of political justice, differences of this kind are
of little consequence, provided one part of the community, or rather one
set of opinions or interests, is not distinctly over-represented at the
expense of another. Now, in Parliament an over-representation of this
kind does exist; not, indeed, in regard to the different social classes
or economic interests in the nation--for inequalities of that sort are
not marked enough to be important--but between the different parts of
the country.
[Sidenote: Over-Representation of Ireland.]
Some parts of Great Britain have grown very rapidly, while the
population of Ireland has actually diminished during the last half
century; and the result is that whereas in the United Kingdom as a whole
there is now, on the average, one member of Parliament for every 62,703
people, England has only one for every 66,971; and Ireland one for every
44,147. If a redistribution of seats were to be made in strict
proportion to population, Ireland would therefore lose thirty members,
and England would gain about as many, while Scotland would gain one
seat, and Wales would lose three.
The question of the proportional representation of England and Ireland
is a burning one, because the parliamentary system cannot work well
unless one party has a majority which can give to the ministry a stable
support. But eighty of the Irish members are Nationalists, who do not
belong to either of the great parties, and may at any general election
acquire a balance of power, and cause confusion in politics, as they did
after the election of 1885. The loss of twenty-five seats, which they
would suffer by a reduction of the Irish representation, would
materially lessen that danger. The Conservative government was
constantly urged by its supporters to make the transfer of seats from
Ireland to England, and was actually preparing to do so at the time it
resigned in 1905. On behalf of Ireland it was argued that this would be
a violation of the Act of Union, which was in the nature of a treaty,
and allotted to Ireland one hundred members in the House of
Commons.[201:1] On the other hand the advocates of the policy replied
that the terms of the Act of Union cannot be forever binding under a
change of circumstances; they referred to the fact that in 1868 the
Church of England was disestablished in Ireland, notwithstanding the
provision in the Act for its perpetual establishment there;[201:2] and
they said that conditions had so changed as to justify a redistribution
of seats. The Irish, however, claim that the great bulk of their people
wanted disestablishment, and that Ireland could waive provisions made in
her behalf; but it may be urged that the provision about the Church was
made for the benefit not of Ireland, or its people, but of a minority
there.
The formation in England of new constituencies for the seats transferred
would raise great practical difficulties. Even if it did not involve a
general redistribution bill, it would necessitate changing many of the
districts. Quite apart from the danger of incurring a charge of
gerrymandering for party purposes, there would be a host of personal
interests of members of Parliament to be considered. Each member
affected would be anxious that the change should not make his seat less
secure than before; and claims of this sort have peculiar weight in a
country where, as in England, the sitting member has almost a
prescriptive right to renomination by his party.
[Sidenote: Effect of the English Method of Distributing Seats.]
The English practice of rearranging the constituencies, and apportioning
the representatives among them, only at long intervals, of treating a
bill for the purpose as an exceptional measure of great political
importance, instead of the natural result of each new census, has the
advantage of preventing frequent temptations to gerrymander. But, on the
other hand, it raises the matter of electoral districts to the height of
a constitutional, and almost a revolutionary, question, preceded
sometimes by long and serious agitation, and always fought over on party
grounds. This is a perpetual difficulty, for the shifting of population,
which must always be changing the ratio of representation, will from
time to time make a redistribution of seats inevitable.
[Sidenote: The Franchise.]
The extension of the franchise was long a grave constitutional question
also, but it has now been so nearly worked out that it can hardly be
regarded in that light in future. Before the Reform Act of 1832 the
franchise in the counties depended entirely upon the ownership of land,
an old statute of 1429,[202:1] having confined the right of voting to
forty-shilling freeholders; that is, to men who owned an estate of
inheritance, or at least a life estate, in land of the annual value of
forty shillings.[203:1]
In the boroughs the franchise was based upon no uniform principle, but
varied according to the custom or charter of the borough. Sometimes it
depended upon the tenure of land; and, since residence was by no means
always necessary, it might happen that the voters did not live in the
place, and there were even cases where members were returned to
Parliament by boroughs that had no longer a single inhabitant. Sometimes
the right belonged to the governing body of the town; sometimes to all
the freemen; sometimes to all householders who paid local taxes; and in
one place, at least, it extended to all the inhabitants. In these last
cases the franchise was actually wider before the Reform Act of 1832
than it was afterward, so that although the act enlarged the electorate
very much on the whole, and preserved the rights of all existing voters,
it narrowed the franchise seriously for the future in a few
places.[203:2]
[Sidenote: Reform Act of 1832.]
[Sidenote: Counties.]
In the counties the Act of 1832 continued to treat the right to vote as
dependent upon the tenure of land, although in some ways restricting and
in others much more largely extending it. In order to prevent the
manufacture of forty-shilling freeholders for electoral purposes, the
act provided that a voter must have been in possession of his land for
six months, unless it came to him by descent, devise, marriage or
promotion to an office;[203:3] and, also, that if he held only a life
estate he must either have acquired it by one of these methods, or must
be in actual occupation, unless again it was of the clear yearly value
of ten pounds.[203:4] On the other hand the act extended the right of
voting in counties to persons entitled to copyholds, and leaseholds for
sixty years, of the annual value of ten pounds; to leaseholds for twenty
years of the value of fifty pounds; and to leaseholds of fifty pounds
annual value without regard to the length of the term, if the tenant was
in actual occupation of the land.[204:1]
[Sidenote: Boroughs.]
In the boroughs the Reform Act wrought a complete change. Except that it
preserved the personal rights of living voters,[204:2] and retained the
privileges of freemen in towns where they existed,[204:3] it swept away
all the old qualifications,[204:4] and replaced them by a single new
franchise based exclusively upon the tenure, or rather the occupation,
of land. The new qualification was uniform throughout England, and
included every man who occupied, as owner or tenant, a house, shop, or
other building, worth, with the land, ten pounds a year. But while the
franchise in the boroughs was thus based, like that in the counties,
upon land, the effect was entirely different, and was intended to be so.
It has been said that the framers of the act meant the county members to
represent property, and the borough members to represent numbers. The
boroughs, as will appear later, did not really stand for numbers, but
the counties did certainly represent property, and that in spite of the
Chandos Clause which admitted fifty-pound leaseholders and was resisted
by the authors of the bill. The electorate in the counties consisted of
the landholders with a few large farmers, while in the towns it
comprised the great middle class.
Later in the same session acts of a similar nature were passed for
Scotland[204:5] and Ireland;[204:6] and in fact it was the practice
until 1884 to deal with the franchise in the three kingdoms by separate
statutes.
[Sidenote: Effect of the Act of 1832.]
As the practice of keeping a register of persons entitled to vote at
parliamentary elections did not begin until this time, it is impossible
to say precisely how much the Act of 1832 increased the size of the
electorate. But from returns made just prior to the passage of the
Act,[205:1] it would appear that the number of borough electors in
England and Wales was then about 180,000; whereas immediately after the
Act had gone into effect it was 282,398.[205:2] The total increase in
the borough electorate, which was the one chiefly affected, was
therefore about 100,000, and a great part of this increase consisted of
the voters in the large towns that had been given seats for the first
time by the Act.
The new system was in no sense either democratic or proportionate to
population. The average ratio of electors to population for the whole
United Kingdom was about one in thirty; but the variation in different
constituencies and different parts of the kingdom was very great. In the
English and Welsh counties the ratio ran all the way from one in five in
Westmoreland, to one in thirty-seven in Lancashire, one in thirty-nine
in Middlesex, and one in sixty in Merioneth. In the English and Welsh
boroughs it ran from nearly one in four in Bedford and Aylesbury, where
practically all adult males were voters, to one in forty-five in the
manufacturing towns. In Scotland even a smaller part of the population
enjoyed the franchise. In the counties the ratio ran from one in
twenty-four in Selkirk, to one in ninety-seven in Sutherland; and in
boroughs or districts, from one in twenty in the Elgin district, to one
in forty in that of Linlithgow. In the Irish counties it ran from one in
fifty-eight in Carlow, to one in two hundred and sixty-one in Tyrone;
and in the boroughs from one in nine in Carrickfergus and Waterford, to
one in fifty-three in Tralee.
The proportion of members of Parliament to population was far more
uneven still. As reformers at a later date were constantly pointing out,
one half of the borough population of England was contained in sixteen
boroughs, and elected only thirty-four members; the other half,
numbering less than two and a half millions, still returning two hundred
and ninety-three members; while the counties with eight millions of
people returned one hundred and forty-four members. Thus it happened
that less than one fifth of the population in England elected nearly one
half of the representatives; and as these came from the boroughs it can
hardly be said that the borough members represented numbers.[206:1]
[Sidenote: Later Reform Bills.]
Mr. G. Lowes Dickinson, in his "Development of Parliament during the
Nineteenth Century,"[206:2] has pointed out that while the framers of
the Act of 1832 had not the least intention of introducing democracy,
the measure itself could not have furnished a permanent settlement of
the franchise, and was destined inevitably to lead to further steps in
the direction of universal suffrage. The first step was a slight
reduction, in 1850, of the amounts required for the qualification of
voters in Ireland.[206:3] This was followed by a series of moderate
English reform bills, which failed to pass the House of Commons.[206:4]
[Sidenote: The Act of 1867.]
In 1867 Disraeli, who had educated his reluctant party until it accepted
the political need of extending the franchise, brought in a bill with
elaborate safeguards against the predominance of the masses. Under the
existing law a small fraction of the working classes had votes in the
boroughs;[206:5] and it was Disraeli's intention to admit a larger
number of the more prosperous workingmen without giving them an
overwhelming weight in the electorate. But the parliamentary situation
was peculiar. The Conservative government, which had come into power
only through the quarrels of its opponents, had not a majority in the
House of Commons, and could not insist upon its own policy; while the
Liberals were not under the sense of responsibility that comes with
office. The result was that the bill was transformed by amendments, the
safeguards proposed by the cabinet were swept away, and a far longer
stride toward universal suffrage was taken than any one had expected.
In the counties the Act of 1867[207:1] reduced the ten-pound
qualification for owners and long leaseholders to five pounds, and
created a new twelve-pound occupation franchise. But a far greater
extension was made in the boroughs, where two new franchises were
introduced. The most important of these was that of the "householder,"
whereby a vote was given to every man who occupied, as owner or tenant
for twelve months, a dwelling-house, or any part of a house used as a
separate dwelling, without regard to its value.[207:2] The other
franchise admitted lodgers who occupied for the same period lodgings of
the clear value, unfurnished, of ten pounds a year.[208:1] In the
course of the next session acts, in general similar, were passed for
Scotland and Ireland.[208:2]
[Sidenote: Its Effects.]
From 1832 to 1862, in spite of the general gain in wealth, the electors
had increased very little faster than the population; in England and
Wales, indeed, the voters remained about one twentieth of the
people,[208:3] while in Scotland they had risen only from one thirty
seventh to one thirtieth.[208:4] But the Acts of 1867 and 1868 almost
doubled the electorate. In the counties the voters, who numbered 768,705
just before those acts, were, by 1871, 1,055,467; while the borough
voters increased from 602,088 to 1,470,956.[208:5]
[Sidenote: The Act of 1884.]
It was evident that the qualifications for voting could not long remain
far wider in one class of constituencies than in another; that the
franchise of the boroughs must, in time, be extended to the counties.
This was done in 1884,[208:6] and the change more than doubled the
county electorate. The franchise, therefore, is now substantially
uniform throughout the United Kingdom, except that certain owners and
leaseholders have a right to vote in counties, and that in some old
towns the freemen still possess the suffrage. Inasmuch as most of the
boroughs are included in counties, the occupier, householder, or lodger
would be entitled on the same qualifying property to vote in both; and
hence a man in a borough would have two votes at an election, while
another man with the same qualification outside of the borough would
have only one. To avoid this result it is provided that a man shall not
be entitled to vote at an election for a county in respect of the
occupation of a dwelling-house, lodging, land or tenement in a
borough;[209:1] but he may vote in the county on account of the
ownership of land in a borough which he does not occupy, or on account
of land which he both owns and occupies if he occupies other land in the
borough sufficient to qualify him there.[209:2]
[Sidenote: The Existing Qualifications.]
Although the franchise is now substantially uniform, it is not exactly
the same for the different parts of the United Kingdom; nor is it by any
means simple. The latest acts have not codified the law. It must still
be sought in many statutes, whose provisions are so complicated, and
often obscure, that they can be understood only by studying the
interpretation put upon them by the courts. The reader who wishes to
ascertain the law on a special point must refer to treatises upon the
subject, such as Rogers on "Elections." It will be enough for our
purpose to summarise the various franchises as they exist to-day.
[Sidenote: Property.]
There are two qualifications which are not universal. One of these,
relating to property rights in land, applies only to counties, and to
some extent to boroughs which are counties in themselves.[209:3] It
confers the right to vote on owners of land[210:1] of forty shillings
yearly value, who hold an estate of inheritance; or who hold an estate
for life, and are in actual occupation of the land, or have acquired it
by some means other than purchase, or whose land is of five pounds clear
yearly value.[210:2] Under this franchise come, also, the leaseholders
of land of five pounds yearly value if the original term was not less
than sixty years, and fifty pounds value if the term was not less than
twenty years.[210:3] The corresponding qualifications for Scotland and
Ireland are slightly different in their conditions and in the values
required.
[Sidenote: Freemen.]
The other franchise which is not universal is that of freemen in those
towns where they had a right to vote before 1832. The privilege still
exists in a number of old boroughs, but, except in the City of London,
is confined to freemen who have become such by birth or apprenticeship.
[Sidenote: Occupiers, Householders, and Lodgers.]
The three remaining franchises are universal, though not precisely
uniform. They are those of the ten-pound occupiers, the householders,
and the lodgers. The first of these gives the right to vote to a man who
occupies, as owner or tenant, any land or tenement of the clear yearly
value of ten pounds. The second confers the right on a man who occupies,
as owner or tenant, any dwelling-house, or part of a house used as a
separate dwelling, without regard to its value. The qualification
extends also to men who are not owners or tenants, but who occupy by
virtue of an office, service, or employment, a dwelling-house in which
the employer does not himself reside. The third of these franchises
confers the right to vote upon a man who occupies lodgings of the value,
unfurnished, of ten pounds a year.
The application of these franchises to particular cases has given rise
to a great amount of litigation, and in particular the courts have found
it almost impossible to distinguish between a householder and a lodger.
For the general reader, who is concerned with the study of the English
government, and not with the effort to get the largest possible number
of party members registered, such questions have little interest; but
there are two or three matters that ought to be noted, because they have
an important bearing on the actual size of the electorate.
[Sidenote: Period of Occupation.]
One matter of political consequence relates to the period of occupation
required. Owners of land in counties, who have acquired it by descent,
marriage, promotion to an office, etc., are not required to have owned
it for any period. All other owners must have held the title for six
calendar months before the 15th of July preceding the registration; and
all other voters, except freemen, must have been in occupation of the
qualifying premises, or some other premises within the same
constituency, for one year preceding the 15th of July.[211:1] This, of
course, has the effect of disqualifying entirely persons whose
occupation has not been continuous for the whole of that year, and as
the register does not take effect until the 1st of January following,
and then remains in effect a whole year, voters who have moved to
another part of the country within eighteen months after their year of
occupation can vote only by a journey back to their former place of
abode.
[Sidenote: Residence.]
A second matter that must be noticed is the question of residence.
Before the Reform Act of 1832 the qualification for counties was based
upon ownership; that for boroughs varied very much; but in those places
where the franchise was broad it was based mainly upon residence. This
distinction has, to some extent, persisted. In general it may be said
that for English and Scotch counties, and in Ireland for both boroughs
and counties, residence is not required, except so far as the occupation
of a dwelling-house or lodging may involve residence and this is not
necessarily the case.[211:2]
In English boroughs a voter must have resided for six calendar months
previous to the 15th of July in the borough, or within seven miles
thereof;[212:1] and in Scotland he must have resided there for a whole
year.
The requirement of residence does not, however, imply quite so much as
might appear, because, according to English law, the possession of a
chamber in which a man occasionally sleeps, and to which he can return
at any time, is enough to constitute residence; and, hence, he may have
a residence in more than one place.[212:2] In the counties, therefore,
residence is unnecessary, and even in the boroughs the requirement of
residence does not limit a man to voting in a single constituency. The
importance of this will shortly be pointed out.
[Sidenote: Payment of Rates.]
The third matter to be noticed is the question of rating. We have
already observed that at one time the personal payment of rates by the
voter was much discussed, and was regarded as an important guarantee of
character.[212:3] In England poor rates are assessed upon the occupiers,
not the owners, of the property, and it is still provided that all
voters whose qualification depends upon the occupation of land (except
lodgers, who are not from the legal point of view occupiers) must have
been rated and must have paid their rates.[212:4] But this means only
that the rates must have been paid on their behalf; and the practice of
compounding by the landlord for small tenements is so universal that
practically the landlord pays the rates in almost all cases where the
occupiers would be likely to fail to do so. In England, therefore, the
requirement that the rates must have been paid has little or no effect
on the electorate. In Scotland, on the other hand, this is not the case.
There the rates are divided between the owner and the occupier, and the
practice of compounding does not exist. The result is that many
occupiers are omitted from the parliamentary register every year on
account of their failure to pay rates. For the whole of Scotland the
number reaches fifty thousand.[213:1]
[Sidenote: Actual Extent of the Suffrage.]
A comparison of the number of electors on the register with the total
population shows that England is not very far to-day from manhood
suffrage. The ratio is about one in six,[213:2] whereas the normal
proportion of males above the age of twenty-one years (making no
allowance for paupers, criminals, and other persons disqualified by the
laws of all countries), is somewhat less than one in four. The only
classes excluded from the franchise are domestic servants, bachelors
living with their parents and occupying no premises on their own
account, and persons whose change of abode deprives them of a vote. Now,
these are not necessarily the worst political elements in the community.
No doubt the provision requiring twelve months' occupation excludes
vagrants, but it also excludes excellent artisans who migrate with
changes of trade, and other persons whose calling compels them to move
from place to place. In 1902 a school-teacher, in a plaintive letter to
_The Times_,[213:3] described how he had never been able to vote at a
general election. He had graduated with honours from his university, was
nearly forty years old, married, and prosperous; but his very success in
his profession, by involving changes of residence, had always cost him
the right to vote. It is a common saying that many respectable people
are disfranchised from this cause, although the slums, which move
little, are not.
The present condition of the franchise is, indeed, historical rather
than rational. It is complicated, uncertain, expensive in the machinery
required, and excludes a certain number of people whom there is no
reason for excluding, while it admits many people who ought not to be
admitted if any one is to be debarred. But the hardship or injustice
affects individuals alone. No considerable class in the community is
aggrieved, and neither political party is now anxious to extend the
franchise. The Conservatives are not by tradition in favour of such a
course, and leading Liberals have come to realise that any further
extension would be likely to benefit their opponents.
[Sidenote: Plural Voting.]
Although there is no urgent demand for a closer approach to manhood
suffrage, there has long been a strong desire to restrict each man to a
single vote. That a man should have a vote in two different
constituencies is as clearly a breach of political equality as if he had
two votes in the same place; and for this reason, as well as from the
fact that most of the men who have more than one vote are Conservatives,
a demand for the abolition of plural voting has been for many years an
article in the Liberal programme. So far as the franchise is not
dependent upon residence there is nothing to prevent a man from voting
in every constituency where he possesses a qualification.[214:1] Now for
the counties and the universities residence is not necessary; and even
in the boroughs, where it is required, plural voting is restrained only
in part, because a man may have more than one residence, and because
residence within seven miles of the borough is enough, so that the men
who carry on their business in the town and live in the suburbs are
qualified in the borough by reason of their offices or workshops, and in
a suburban borough or the county by reason of their dwellings.