where business changes most. A dead, inactive, agricultural country may
be governed by an unalterable bureau for years and years, and no harm
come of it. If a wise man arranged the bureau rightly in the beginning,
it may run rightly a long time. But if the country be a progressive,
eager, changing one, soon the bureau will either cramp improvement, or
be destroyed itself.
This conception of the use of a Parliamentary head shows how wrong is
the obvious notion which regards him as the principal administrator of
his office. The late Sir George Lewis used to be fond of explaining
this subject. He had every means of knowing. He was bred in the
permanent civil service. He was a very successful Chancellor of the
Exchequer, a very successful Home Secretary, and he died Minister for
War. He used to say, "It is not the business of a Cabinet Minister to
work his department. His business is to see that it is properly worked.
If he does much, he is probably doing harm. The permanent staff of the
office can do what he chooses to do much better, or if they cannot,
they ought to be removed. He is only a bird of passage, and cannot
compete with those who are in the office all their lives round." Sir
George Lewis was a perfect Parliamentary head of an office, so far as
that head is to be a keen critic and rational corrector of it.
But Sir George Lewis was not perfect; he was not even an average good
head in another respect. The use of a fresh mind applied to the
official mind is not only a corrective use, it is also an animating
use. A public department is very apt to be dead to what is wanting for
a great occasion till the occasion is past. The vague public mind will
appreciate some signal duty before the precise, occupied administration
perceives it. The Duke of Newcastle was of this use at least in the
Crimean War. He roused up his department, though when roused it could
not act. A perfect Parliamentary Minister would be one who should add
the animating capacity of the Duke of Newcastle to the accumulated
sense, the detective instinct, and the laissez faire habit of Sir
George Lewis.
As soon as we take the true view of Parliamentary office we shall
perceive that, fairly, frequent change in the official is an advantage,
not a mistake. If his function is to bring a representative of outside
sense and outside animation in contact with the inside world, he ought
often to be changed. No man is a perfect representative of outside
sense. "There is some one," says the true French saying, "who is more
able than Talleyrand, more able than Napoleon. Cest tout le monde."
That many-sided sense finds no microcosm in any single individual.
Still less are the critical function and the animating function of a
Parliamentary Minister likely to be perfectly exercised by one and the
same man. Impelling power and restraining wisdom are as opposite as any
two things, and are rarely found together. And even if the natural mind
of the Parliamentary Minister was perfect, long contact with the office
would destroy his use. Inevitably he would accept the ways of office,
think its thoughts, live its life. The "dyer's hand would be subdued to
what it works in". If the function of a Parliamentary Minister is to be
an outsider to his office, we must not choose one who, by habit,
thought, and life, is acclimatised to its ways.
There is every reason to expect that a Parliamentary statesman will be
a man of quite sufficient intelligence, quite enough various knowledge,
quite enough miscellaneous experience, to represent effectually general
sense in opposition to bureaucratic sense. Most Cabinet Ministers in
charge of considerable departments are men of superior ability; I have
heard an eminent living statesman of long experience say that in his
time he only knew one instance to the contrary. And there is the best
protection that it shall be so. A considerable Cabinet Minister has to
defend his department in the face of mankind; and though distant
observers and sharp writers may depreciate it, this is a very difficult
thing. A fool, who has publicly to explain great affairs, who has
publicly to answer detective questions, who has publicly to argue
against able and quick opponents, must soon be shown to be a fool. The
very nature of Parliamentary government answers for the discovery of
substantial incompetence.
At any rate, none of the competing forms of government have nearly so
effectual a procedure for putting a good untechnical Minister to
correct and impel the routine ones. There are but four important forms
of government in the present state of the world--the Parliamentary, the
Presidential, the Hereditary, and the Dictatorial, or Revolutionary. Of
these I have shown that, as now worked in America, the Presidential
form of government is incompatible with a skilled bureaucracy. If the
whole official class change when a new party goes out or comes in, a
good official system is impossible. Even if more officials should be
permanent in America than now, still, vast numbers will always be
changed. The whole issue is based on a single election--on the choice
of President; by that internecine conflict all else is won or lost. The
managers of the contest have that greatest possible facility in using
what I may call patronage--bribery. Everybody knows that, as a fact,
the President can give what places he likes to what persons, and when
his friends tell A. B., "If we win, C. D. shall be turned out of Utica
Post-office, and you, A. B., shall have it," A. B. believes it, and is
justified in doing so. But no individual member of Parliament can
promise place effectually. HE may not be able to give the places. His
party may come in, but he will be powerless. In the United States party
intensity is aggravated by concentrating an overwhelming importance on
a single contest, and the efficiency of promised offices as a means of
corruption is augmented, because the victor can give what he likes to
whom he likes.
Nor is this the only defect of a Presidential government in reference
to the choice of officers. The President has the principal anomaly of a
Parliamentary government without having its corrective. At each change
of party the President distributes (as here) the principal offices to
his principal supporters. But he has an opportunity for singular
favouritism; the Minister lurks in the office; he need do nothing in
public; he need not show for years whether he is a fool or wise. The
nation can tell what a Parliamentary member is by the open test of
Parliament; but no one, save from actual contact, or by rare position,
can tell anything certain of a Presidential Minister.
The case of a Minister under an hereditary form of government is yet
worse. The hereditary king may be weak; may be under the government of
women; may appoint a Minister from childish motives; may remove one
from absurd whims. There is no security that an hereditary king will be
competent to choose a good chief Minister, and thousands of such kings
have chosen millions of bad Ministers.
By the Dictatorial, or Revolutionary, sort of government, I mean that
very important sort in which the sovereign--the absolute sovereign--is
selected by insurrection. In theory, one would certainly have hoped
that by this time such a crude elective machinery would have been
reduced to a secondary part. But, in fact, the greatest nation (or,
perhaps, after the exploits of Bismarck, I should say one of the two
greatest nations of the Continent) vacillates between the Revolutionary
and the Parliamentary, and now is governed under the Revolutionary
form. France elects its ruler in the streets of Paris. Flatterers may
suggest that the democratic empire will become hereditary, but close
observers know that it cannot. The idea of the Government is that the
Emperor represents the people in capacity, in judgment, in instinct.
But no family through generations can have sufficient, or half
sufficient, mind to do so. The representative despot must be chosen by
fighting, as Napoleon I. and Napoleon III. were chosen. And such a
Government is likely, whatever be its other defects, to have a far
better and abler administration than any other Government. The head of
the Government must be a man of the most consummate ability. He cannot
keep his place, he can hardly keep his life, unless he is. He is sure
to be active, because he knows that his power, and perhaps his head,
may be lost if he be negligent. The whole frame of his State is
strained to keep down revolution. The most difficult of all political
problems is to be solved--the people are to be at once thoroughly
restrained and thoroughly pleased. The executive must be like a steel
shirt of the Middle Ages--extremely hard and extremely flexible. It
must give way to attractive novelties which do not hurt; it must resist
such as are dangerous; it must maintain old things which are good and
fitting; it must alter such as cramp and give pain. The dictator dare
not appoint a bad Minister if he would. I admit that such a despot is a
better selector of administrators than a Parliament; that he will know
how to mix fresh minds and used minds better; that he is under a
stronger motive to combine them well; that here is to be seen the best
of all choosers with the keenest motives to choose. But I need not
prove in England that the revolutionary selection of rulers obtains
administrative efficiency at a price altogether transcending its value;
that it shocks credit by its catastrophes; that for intervals it does
not protect property or life; that it maintains an undergrowth of fear
through all prosperity; that it may take years to find the true capable
despot; that the interregna of the incapable are full of all evil; that
the fit despot may die as soon as found; that the good administration
and all else hang by the thread of his life.
But if, with the exception of this terrible Revolutionary government, a
Parliamentary government upon principle surpasses all its competitors
in administrative efficiency, why is it that our English Government,
which is beyond comparison the best of Parliamentary governments, is
not celebrated through the world for administrative efficiency? It is
noted for many things, why is it not noted for that? Why, according to
popular belief is it rather characterised by the very contrary?
One great reason of the diffused impression is, that the English
Government attempts so much. Our military system is that which is most
attacked. Objectors say we spend much more on our army than the great
military monarchies, and yet with an inferior result. But, then, what
we attempt is incalculably more difficult. The continental monarchies
have only to defend compact European territories by the many soldiers
whom they force to fight; the English try to defend without any
compulsion--only by such soldiers as they persuade to
serve--territories far surpassing all Europe in magnitude, and situated
all over the habitable globe. Our Horse Guards and War Office may not
be at all perfect--I believe they are not: but if they had sufficient
recruits selected by force of law--if they had, as in Prussia, the
absolute command of each man's time for a few years, and the right to
call him out afterwards when they liked, we should be much surprised at
the sudden ease and quickness with which they did things. I have no
doubt too that any accomplished soldier of the Continent would reject
as impossible what we after a fashion effect. He would not attempt to
defend a vast scattered empire, with many islands, a long frontier line
in every continent, and a very tempting bit of plunder at the centre,
by mere volunteer recruits, who mostly come from the worst class of the
people--whom the Great Duke called the "scum of the earth"--who come in
uncertain numbers year by year--who by some political accident may not
come in adequate numbers, or at all, in the year we need them most. Our
War Office attempts what foreign War Offices (perhaps rightly) would
not try at; their officers have means of incalculable force denied to
ours, though ours is set to harder tasks.
Again, the English navy undertakes to defend a line of coast and a set
of dependencies far surpassing those of any continental power. And the
extent of our operations is a singular difficulty just now. It requires
us to keep a large stock of ships and arms. But on the other hand,
there are most important reasons why we should not keep much. The naval
art and the military art are both in a state of transition; the last
discovery of to-day is out of date, and superseded by an antagonistic
discovery to-morrow. Any large accumulation of vessels or guns is sure
to contain much that will be useless, unfitting, antediluvian, when it
comes to be tried. There are two cries against the Admiralty which go
on side by side: one says, "We have not ships enough, no 'relief'
ships, no NAVY, to tell the truth"; the other cry says, "We have all
the wrong ships, all the wrong guns, and nothing but the wrong; in
their foolish constructive mania the Admiralty have been building when
they ought to have been waiting; they have heaped a curious museum of
exploded inventions, but they have given us nothing serviceable". The
two cries for opposite policies go on together, and blacken our
executive together, though each is a defence of the executive against
the other.
Again, the Home Department in England struggles with difficulties of
which abroad they have long got rid. We love independent "local
authorities," little centres of outlying authority. When the
metropolitan executive most wishes to act, it cannot act effectually
because these lesser bodies hesitate, deliberate, or even disobey. But
local independence has no necessary connection with Parliamentary
government. The degree of local freedom desirable in a country varies
according to many circumstances, and a Parliamentary government may
consist with any degree of it. We certainly ought not to debit
Parliamentary government as a general and applicable polity with the
particular vices of the guardians of the poor in England, though it is
so debited every day.
Again, as our administration has in England this peculiar difficulty,
so on the other hand foreign competing administrations have a peculiar
advantage. Abroad a man under Government is a superior being: he is
higher than the rest of the world; he is envied by almost all of it.
This gives the Government the easy pick of the elite of the nation. All
clever people are eager to be under Government, and are hardly to be
satisfied elsewhere. But in England there is no such superiority, and
the English have no such feeling. We do not respect a stamp-office
clerk, or an exciseman's assistant. A pursy grocer considers he is much
above either. Our Government cannot buy for minor clerks the best
ability of the nation in the cheap currency of pure honour, and no
Government is rich enough to buy very much of it in money. Our
mercantile opportunities allure away the most ambitious minds. The
foreign bureaux are filled with a selection from the ablest men of the
nation, but only a very few of the best men approach the English
offices.
But these are neither the only nor even the principal reasons why our
public administration is not so good as, according to principle and to
the unimpeded effects of Parliamentary government, it should be. There
are two great causes at work, which in their consequences run out into
many details, but which in their fundamental nature may be briefly
described. The first of these causes is our ignorance. No polity can
get out of a nation more than there is in the nation. A free government
is essentially a government by persuasion; and as are the people to be
persuaded, and as are the persuaders, so will that government be. On
many parts of our administration the effect of our extreme ignorance is
at once plain. The foreign policy of England has for many years been,
according to the judgment now in vogue, inconsequent, fruitless,
casual; aiming at no distinct pre-imagined end, based on no steadily
pre-conceived principle. I have not room to discuss with how much or
how little abatement this decisive censure should be accepted. However,
I entirely concede that our recent foreign policy has been open to very
grave and serious blame. But would it not have been a miracle if the
English people, directing their own policy, and being what they are,
had directed a good policy? Are they not above all nations divided from
the rest of the world, insular both in situation and in mind, both for
good and for evil? Are they not out of the current of common European
causes and affairs? Are they not a race contemptuous of others? Are
they not a race with no special education or culture as to the modern
world, and too often despising such culture? Who could expect such a
people to comprehend the new and strange events of foreign places? So
far from wondering that the English Parliament has been inefficient in
foreign policy, I think it is wonderful, and another sign of the rude,
vague imagination that is at the bottom of our people, that we have
done so well as we have.
Again, the very conception of the English Constitution, as
distinguished from a purely Parliamentary Constitution is, that it
contains "dignified" parts--parts, that is, retained, not for intrinsic
use, but from their imaginative attraction upon an uncultured and rude
population. All such elements tend to diminish simple efficiency. They
are like the additional and solely-ornamental wheels introduced into
the clocks of the Middle Ages, which tell the then age of the moon or
the supreme constellation; which make little men or birds come out and
in theatrically. All such ornamental work is a source of friction and
error; it prevents the time being marked accurately; each new wheel is
a new source of imperfection. So if authority is given to a person, not
on account of his working fitness, but on account of his imaginative
efficiency, he will commonly impair good administration. He may do
something better than good work of detail, but will spoil good work of
detail. The English aristocracy is often of this sort. It has an
influence over the people of vast value still, and of infinite value
formerly. But no man would select the cadets of an aristocratic house
as desirable administrators. They have peculiar disadvantages in the
acquisition of business knowledge, business training, and business
habits, and they have no peculiar advantages.
Our middle class, too, is very unfit to give us the administrators we
ought to have. I cannot now discuss whether all that is said against
our education is well grounded; it is called by an excellent judge
"pretentious, insufficient, and unsound". But I will say that it does
not fit men to be men of business as it ought to fit them. Till lately
the very simple attainments and habits necessary for a banker's clerk
had a scarcity-value. The sort of education which fits a man for the
higher posts of practical life is still very rare; there is not even a
good agreement as to what it is. Our public officers cannot be as good
as the corresponding officers of some foreign nations till our business
education is as good as theirs.[9]
[9] I am happy to state that this evil is much diminishing. The
improvement of school education of the middle class in the last
twenty-five years is marvellous.
But strong as is our ignorance in deteriorating our administration,
another cause is stronger still. There are but two foreign
administrations probably better than ours, and both these have had
something which we have not had. Theirs in both cases were arranged by
a man of genius, after careful forethought, and upon a special design.
Napoleon built upon a clear stage which the French Revolution
bequeathed him. The originality once ascribed to his edifice was indeed
untrue; Tocqueville and Lavergne have shown that he did but run up a
conspicuous structure in imitation of a latent one before concealed by
the mediaeval complexities of the old regime. But what we are concerned
with now is, not Napoleon's originality, but his work. He undoubtedly
settled the administration of France upon an effective, consistent, and
enduring system; the succeeding governments have but worked the
mechanism they inherited from him. Frederick the Great did the same in
the new monarchy of Prussia. Both the French system and the Prussian
are new machines, made in civilised times to do their appropriate work.
The English offices have never, since they were made, been arranged
with any reference to one another; or rather they were never made, but
grew as each could. The sort of free trade which prevailed in public
institutions in the English Middle Ages is very curious. Our three
courts of law--the Queen's Bench, the Common Pleas, and the
Exchequer--for the sake of the fees extended an originally contracted
sphere into the entire sphere of litigation. Boni judicis est ampliare
jursdictionem, went the old saying; or, in English, "It is the mark of
a good judge to augment the fees of his Court," his own income, and the
income of his subordinates. The central administration, the Treasury,
never asked any account of the moneys the courts thus received; so long
as it was not asked to pay anything, it was satisfied. Only last year
one of the many remnants of this system cropped up, to the wonder of
the public. A clerk in the Patent Office stole some fees, and naturally
the men of the nineteenth century thought our principal Finance
Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, would be, as in France,
responsible for it. But the English law was different somehow. The
Patent Office was under the Lord Chancellor, and the Court of Chancery
is one of the multitude of our institutions which owe their existence
to free competition, and so it was the Lord Chancellor's business to
look after the fees, which of course, as an occupied judge, he could
not. A certain Act of Parliament did indeed require that the fees of
the Patent Office should be paid into the "Exchequer"; and, again, the
"Chancellor of the Exchequer" was thought to be responsible in the
matter, but only by those who did not know. According to our system the
Chancellor of the Exchequer is the enemy of the Exchequer; a whole
series of enactments try to protect it from him. Until a few months ago
there was a very lucrative sinecure called the "Comptrollership of the
Exchequer," designed to guard the Exchequer against its Chancellor; and
the last holder, Lord Monteagle, used to say he was the pivot of the
English Constitution. I have not room to explain what he meant, and it
is not needful; what is to the purpose is that, by an inherited series
of historical complexities, a defaulting clerk in an office of no
litigation was not under natural authority, the Finance Minister, but
under a far-away judge who had never heard of him.
The whole office of the Lord Chancellor is a heap of anomalies. He is a
judge, and it is contrary to obvious principle that any part of
administration should be entrusted to a judge; it is of very grave
moment that the administration of justice should be kept clear of any
sinister temptations. Yet the Lord Chancellor, our chief judge, sits in
the Cabinet, and makes party speeches in the Lords. Lord Lyndhurst was
a principal Tory politician, and yet he presided in the O'Connell case.
Lord Westbury was in chronic wrangle with the bishops, but he gave
judgment upon "Essays and Reviews". In truth, the Lord Chancellor
became a Cabinet Minister, because, being near the person of the
sovereign, he was high in court precedence, and not upon a political
theory wrong or right.