English Constitution — On Changes of Ministry, part 2

At this moment, in England, there is a sort of leaning towards bureaucracy--at least, among writers and talkers.

There is a seizure of partiality to it.

The English people do not easily change their rooted notions, but they have many unrooted notions.

Any great European event is sure for a moment to excite a sort of twinge of conversion to something or other.

Just now, the triumph of the Prussians--the bureaucratic people, as is believed, par excellence--has excited a kind of admiration for bureaucracy, which a few years since we should have thought impossible.

I do not presume to criticise the Prussian bureaucracy of my own knowledge; it certainly is not a pleasant institution for foreigners to come across, though agreeableness to travellers is but of very second-rate importance.

But it is quite certain that the Prussian bureaucracy, though we, for a moment, half admire it at a distance, does not permanently please the most intelligent and liberal Prussians at home.

What are two among the principal aims of the Fortschritt Partei--the party of progress--as Mr. Grant Duff, the most accurate and philosophical of our describers, delineates them?

First, "a liberal system, conscientiously carried out in all the details of the administration, with a view to avoiding the scandals now of frequent occurrence, when an obstinate or bigoted official sets at defiance the liberal initiations of the Government, trusting to backstairs influence".

Second, "an easy method of bringing to justice guilty officials, who are at present, as in France, in all conflicts with simple citizens, like men armed cap-a-pie fighting with defenceless".

A system against which the most intelligent native liberals bring even with colour of reason such grave objections, is a dangerous model for foreign imitation.

The defects of bureaucracy are, indeed, well known.

It is a form of Government which has been tried often enough in the world, and it is easy to show what, human nature being what it in the long run is, the defects of a bureaucracy must in the long run be.

It is an inevitable defect, that bureaucrats will care more for routine than for results; or, as Burke put it, "that they will think the substance of business not to be much more important than the forms of it".

Their whole education and all the habit of their lives make them do so.

They are brought young into the particular part of the public service to which they are attached; they are occupied for years in learning its forms--afterwards, for years too, in applying these forms to trifling matters.

They are, to use the phrase of an old writer, "but the tailors of business; they cut the clothes, but they do not find the body".

Men so trained must come to think the routine of business not a means, but an end--to imagine the elaborate machinery of which they form a part, and from which they derive their dignity, to be a grand and achieved result, not a working and changeable instrument.

But in a miscellaneous world, there is now one evil and now another.

The very means which best helped you yesterday, may very likely be those which most impede you to-morrow--you may want to do a different thing to-morrow, and all your accumulation of means for yesterday's work is but an obstacle to the new work.

The Prussian military system is the theme of popular wonder now, yet it sixty years pointed the moral against form.

We have all heard the saying that "Frederic the Great lost the battle of Jena".

It was the system which he had established--a good system for his wants and his times--which, blindly adhered to, and continued into a different age, put to strive with new competitors, brought his country to ruin.

The "dead and formal" Prussian system was then contrasted with the "living" French system--the sudden outcome of the new explosive democracy.

The system which now exists is the product of the reaction; and the history of its predecessor is a warning what its future history may be too.

It is not more celebrated for its day than Frederic's for his, and principle teaches that a bureaucracy, elated by sudden success, and marvelling at its own merit, is the most unimproving and shallow of Governments.

Not only does a bureaucracy thus tend to under-government, in point of quality; it tends to over-government, in point of quantity.

The trained official hates the rude, untrained public.

He thinks that they are stupid, ignorant, reckless--that they cannot tell their own interest--that they should have the leave of the office before they do anything.

Protection is the natural inborn creed of every official body; free trade is an extrinsic idea alien to its notions, and hardly to be assimilated with life; and it is easy to see how an accomplished critic, used to a free and active life, could thus describe the official.

"Every imaginable and real social interest," says Mr. Laing, "religion, education, law, police, every branch of public or private business, personal liberty to move from place to place, even from parish to parish within the same jurisdiction; liberty to engage in any branch of trade or industry, on a small or large scale, all the objects, in short, in which body, mind, and capital can be employed in civilised society, were gradually laid hold of for the employment and support of functionaries, were centralised in bureaux, were superintended, licensed, inspected, reported upon, and interfered with by a host of officials scattered over the land, and maintained at the public expense, yet with no conceivable utility in their duties.

They are not, however, gentlemen at large, enjoying salary without service.

They are under a semi-military discipline.

In Bavaria, for instance, the superior civil functionary can place his inferior functionary under house-arrest, for neglect of duty, or other offence against civil functionary discipline.

In Wurtemberg, the functionary cannot marry without leave from his superior.

Voltaire says, somewhere, that, 'the art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third'.

This is realised in Germany by the functionary system.

The functionaries are not there for the benefit of the people, but the people for the benefit of the functionaries.

All this machinery of functionarism, with its numerous ranks and gradations in every district, filled with a staff of clerks and expectants in every department looking for employment, appointments, or promotions, was intended to be a new support of the throne in the new social state of the Continent; a third class, in connection with the people by their various official duties of interference in all public or private affairs, yet attached by their interests to the kingly power.

The Beamptenstand, or functionary class, was to be the equivalent to the class of nobility, gentry, capitalists, and men of larger landed property than the peasant-proprietors, and was to make up in numbers for the want of individual weight and influence.

In France, at the expulsion of Louis Philippe, the civil functionaries were stated to amount to 807,030 individuals.

This civil army was more than double of the military.

In Germany, this class is necessarily more numerous in proportion to the population, the landwehr system imposing many more restrictions than the conscription on the free action of the people, and requiring more officials to manage it, and the semi-feudal jurisdictions and forms of law requiring much more writing and intricate forms of procedure before the courts than the Code Napoleon."

A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality.

The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy--a bureaucracy trained from early life to its special avocation--is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business.

That art has not yet been condensed into precepts, but a great many experiments have been made, and a vast floating vapour of knowledge floats through society.

One of the most sure principles is, that success depends on a due mixture of special and non-special minds--of minds which attend to the means, and of minds which attend to the end.

The success of the great joint-stock banks of London--the most remarkable achievement of recent business--has been an example of the use of this mixture.

These banks are managed by a board of persons mostly NOT trained to the business, supplemented by, and annexed to, a body of specially trained officers, who have been bred to banking all their lives.

These mixed banks have quite beaten the old banks, composed exclusively of pure bankers; it is found that the board of directors has greater and more flexible knowledge--more insight into the wants of a commercial community--knows when to lend and when not to lend, better than the old bankers, who had never looked at life, except out of the bank windows.

Just so the most successful railways in Europe have been conducted--not by engineers or traffic managers--but by capitalists; by men of a certain business culture, if of no other.

These capitalists buy and use the services of skilled managers, as the unlearned attorney buys and uses the services of the skilled barrister, and manage far better than any of the different sorts of special men under them.

They combine these different specialities--make it clear where the realm of one ends and that of the other begins, and add to it a wide knowledge of large affairs, which no special man can have, and which is only gained by diversified action.

But this utility of leading minds used to generalise, and acting upon various materials, is entirely dependent upon their position.

They must not be at the bottom--they must not even be half way up--they must be at the top.

A

merchant's clerk would be a child at a bank counter; but the merchant himself could, very likely, give good, clear, and useful advice in a bank court.

The merchant's clerk would be equally at sea in a railway office, but the merchant himself could give good advice, very likely, at a board of directors.

The summits (if I may so say) of the various kinds of business are, like the tops of mountains, much more alike than the parts below--the bare principles are much the same; it is only the rich variegated details of the lower strata that so contrast with one another.

But it needs travelling to know that the summits ARE the same.

Those who live on one mountain believe that THEIR mountain is wholly unlike all others.

The application of this principle to Parliamentary government is very plain; it shows at once that the intrusion from without upon an office of an exterior head of the office, is not an evil, but that, on the contrary, it is essential to the perfection of that office.

If it is left to itself, the office will become technical, self-absorbed, self-multiplying.

It will be likely to overlook the end in the means;

it will fail from narrowness of mind; it will be eager in seeming to do; it will be idle in real doing.

An extrinsic chief is the fit corrector of such errors.

He can say to the permanent chief, skilled in the forms and pompous with the memories of his office, "Will you, Sir, explain to me how this regulation conduces to the end in view?

According to the natural view of things, the applicant should state the whole of his wishes to one clerk on one paper; you make him say it to five clerks on five papers."

Or, again, "Does it not appear to you, Sir, that the reason of this formality is extinct?

When we were building wood ships, it was quite right to have such precautions against fire; but now that we are building iron ships," etc. , etc. If a junior clerk asked these questions, he would be "pooh-poohed!"

It is only the head of an office that can get them answered.

It is he, and he only, that brings the rubbish of office to the burning-glass of sense.

The immense importance of such a fresh mind is greatest in a country 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.