IV. THE EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS
The departments of state are very different from one another, both in historical origin and in legal organisation; and they have gone through transformations of all kinds, until the nomenclature has in some cases almost ceased to bear any relation to the facts. The title of an officer often gives no clear idea of his functions. The most striking case is that of the Treasury, whose regular chief, from the time of Henry VIII. to the death of Anne, was the Lord High Treasurer. Since 1714 the office has always been in commission; that is, its duties have been intrusted to a board composed of a number of Lords of the Treasury. But while the board is still regularly constituted by Letters Patent whenever a new ministry is formed, and still retains its legal authority, all political power has, in fact, passed from its hands. The board never meets, most of its members have little or no connection with the Treasury, and its functions are really performed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is not now a chancellor, and does not control the work of what is more properly called the Exchequer. Thus, by a strange process of evolution the powers of the Lord High Treasurer have, by law, become vested in a board; and by a still later custom they are actually wielded by quite a different officer, whose title indicates neither his succession to the Treasurer nor the nature of his present duties.
Although in origin and legal organisation the departments of state are very unlike, yet the growth of custom, and the exigencies of parliamentary life, have, for practical purposes, forced almost all of them into something very near one common type. Whatever the legal form of the authority at their head, the actual control is now in nearly every case in the hands of a single responsible minister, usually assisted by one or more parliamentary subordinates, and supported by a corps of permanent non-political officials, who carry on the work of the office.
[Sidenote: Origin of the Departments.]
[Sidenote: The Former Great Offices.]
The historical origin of most of the departments may be traced to one of three sources: the great offices of an earlier time; the secretariat of state; and the more recent boards and commissions. Many of the former offices of state survive as honorary posts, or with duties connected solely with the royal household.[82:1] The only ones that are still in touch with public administration are those of the Lord High Chancellor, who has retained the greater part of his ancient authority; of the Lord High Treasurer, the transformations of whose office have already been mentioned; and of the Lord High Admiral, whose powers have also gone into commission, and are vested in the Admiralty Board.
[Sidenote: The Secretariat of State.]
The secretariat is an old institution, although the standing of its members has varied much at different times. There are now five secretaries of state, but their position is peculiar in this, that they all share, from a legal point of view, the same office; and except so far as statutes have conferred special authority upon one or another, each of them can perform the duties of all the rest. During the greater part of the eighteenth century there were two secretaries, one for the northern and the other for the southern department, the former having charge of the relations with the northern powers, the latter of those with the southern powers together with home and colonial affairs. A series of changes made at the end of the century resulted in an increase of the number of secretaries to three, and a redistribution of their work, so that one had charge of foreign relations, another of home affairs, and the third of war and the colonies. The Crimean War brought about in 1854 the separation of the colonial and war departments, with the creation of a fourth secretary of state; and, finally, the mutiny in India, and the consequent transfer of the direct government of that country to the Crown, caused the appointment of a fifth secretary of state to take charge of Indian affairs.
[Sidenote: The Recent Boards and Commissions.]
[Sidenote: Sham Boards.]
The third great source of public departments has been the creation in comparatively recent times of a number of administrative boards or commissions, whose duties (except in the case of the Board of Works) are not primarily executive; that is, they are not concerned mainly with direct administration, but rather with the supervision and control of local authorities and of bodies exercising functions of a public or a quasi-public nature. There are now five boards of this kind, the Board of Trade, the Local Government Board, the Board of Works, the Board of Agriculture, and the Board of Education. Some of them, the first and last named, for example, have developed from committees of the Privy Council; while others have grown out of administrative commissions which were not originally regarded as political, and had no representatives of their own in Parliament. Except in the case of the Board of Trade,[83:1] both their organisation and their functions now rest upon statutes,[83:2] and in general character they are all very much alike. Each of them consists of a president,[83:3] of the five secretaries of state, and of other high dignitaries, such as the Lord President of the Privy Council, the First Lord of the Treasury, or the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and sometimes, in the case of the older boards, even of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Speaker of the House of Commons. But the board never meets; the president alone constitutes a quorum, and he conducts the business of the department, with the assistance, in the case of the Board of Trade, of the Local Government Board and the Board of Education, of a secretary who is not himself a member of the board, but is, like the president, capable of sitting in the House of Commons, and occupies, in short, the position of a parliamentary under-secretary. In practice, therefore, these boards are legal phantoms that provide imaginary colleagues for a single responsible minister; and, indeed, the only department in the English government conducted by a board that really meets for the transaction of business is the Admiralty.[84:1]
A satirical observer has remarked that the English Constitution is a bundle of shams; and this is inevitable where law fails to keep pace with custom--where the legal organisation has ceased to express the real working of the system. But it is difficult to penetrate the motive for deliberately constructing a sham; and yet that was done in the creation of the Board of Agriculture in 1889, and the Board of Education ten years later. In the last case the measure was criticised upon this ground;[84:2] and Sir John Gorst in reply said that, as there were other boards, the general desire of the House was thought to be in favour of a Board of Education, and that, although these boards did not often meet, they were potential.[84:3] He denied that the Committee of Council on Education had never met, and referred to an occasion, about twenty years earlier, when it had been called together, and actually transacted business.[84:4] A better statement of the reason, or rather the absence of any reason, for the creation of a sham board, was made with characteristic frankness by the Duke of Devonshire, who said, "as far as I remember, the point was mooted when the bill was first prepared, but I quite admit that I am unable, at the present moment, to recollect the reasons which weighed in favour of a board rather than a secretariat. It has the advantage, at all events, of numerous precedents, and it is perfectly well understood that there will be no board at all."[85:1]
In giving in this chapter a sketch of the executive departments nothing will be said of those offices to which no substantial administrative duties, or none outside of the royal household, are attached. There are about a dozen such posts, which are regarded as so far political that their holders retire upon a change of ministry; but they are omitted here, because the object is to describe not the offices of state, but the different branches of the public service and the distribution of business among them. Most of the departments require for our purpose only a few words, to point out the general nature of their duties and anything unusual in their structure or method of working. The functions of some others, such as the Colonial Office, the Local Government Board and the Board of Education, can be passed over rapidly, because they will be treated more fully in the chapters devoted to the subjects under their control; while the Army, the Navy and the Treasury are described at greater length on account of the peculiarities in their organisation, and the fact that their work is not dealt with in any other part of the book.
[Sidenote: The Foreign Office.]
The Foreign Office has at its head a secretary of state, who, like the chief of every normal department, is supported by a parliamentary under-secretary and also by a permanent staff consisting of an under-secretary, several assistant under-secretaries--in this instance three--besides clerks and other permanent officials. For convenience of administration there are in the Foreign Office a number of departments, the business being distributed among them partly on a geographical basis, and partly according to the nature of the subject.[86:1] The office has, of course, charge of foreign relations, controlling for that purpose the diplomatic representatives and the consuls. The only odd thing about its duties is the fact that in addition to the ordinary functions of a foreign office it governs certain dependencies of the Crown. The expansion of European influence over the less favoured portions of the globe has produced among other new things the "protectorate," which involves, by a political fiction, an international as well as a philanthropic relation between the ruler and the ruled. The result is that protectorates not closely connected with existing colonies are administered by the Foreign Office. This has been true of a number of protectorates in Africa, and notably of Egypt, which is still nominally ruled by the Khedive under the suzerainty of the Turkish Sultan, but is practically governed by a British agent.
[Sidenote: Position of the Foreign Secretary.]
The conduct of the relations with foreign powers requires from its very nature a peculiar method of procedure. Much of the work of the Foreign Office consists, no doubt, in examining and pushing the private legal claims of British subjects, and to some extent work of that kind has a routine character. But apart from this there is comparatively little of the detailed administration--so common in other departments--which, involving merely the application of settled principles to particular cases, can be conducted by subordinates without consulting the political chief. Much of the correspondence with foreign powers may entail serious consequences, and hence must ordinarily be laid before the Secretary of State. The permanent officials play, therefore, a smaller part in the management of affairs than in most branches of the public service, a matter that will be discussed more fully in a subsequent chapter.[87:1] Moreover, the representatives at foreign courts are kept, by means of the telegraph, under more constant instructions than formerly, and it has become the habit in all countries to retain diplomatic negotiations very closely in the hands of the home government. Even the functions of foreign envoys as the eyes and ears of the state have declined in importance; and it has been observed that as gatherers of political information they have been largely superseded by the correspondents of the press.
All this has the effect of concentrating the direction of foreign relations in the hands of the Secretary of State. At the same time he is singularly free from immediate parliamentary control. Diplomatic correspondence is ordinarily confidential, and it is usually a sufficient answer to any question in Parliament, touching foreign relations, to say that the information sought cannot be given without detriment to the public service. It follows that the presence of the minister in the House of Commons is less necessary than in the case of other departments; while his arduous duties make it hard for him to find the time required for attendance at the long sittings. These facts, coupled with the strange provision of law which permits only four of the five secretaries of state to sit there, resulted in placing peers at the head of the Foreign Office continuously from 1868 to 1905, the under-secretary alone representing the department in the popular chamber. But if the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs is less under the direct control of Parliament than other ministers, he is more under the control of his colleagues. We have already seen that every important despatch ought to be submitted, before it is sent off, both to the Prime Minister and to the sovereign; and, as a rule, the telegrams, together with correspondence of peculiar interest, are also circulated among all the members of the cabinet.[88:1] In fact there is probably no department where the executive action of the minister is so constantly brought to the notice of his colleagues.
[Sidenote: The Colonial Office.]
Ever since England began to extend her dominion beyond the seas her foreign relations have been complicated by her distant possessions, and it is therefore natural to pass from the offices of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs on one side of the doorway in Downing Street to those of the Secretary of State for the Colonies on the other. But it is needless to speak of the Colonial Office at length here, because the government of the dependencies will form the subject of later chapters. The Secretary of State for the Colonies is assisted by his parliamentary and permanent under-secretaries, and by a staff of subordinate officials. There are in this office four permanent assistant under-secretaries; one of whom has charge of questions of law, and also at present of business connected with Canada, Australasia and a number of islands; another of South Africa; a third of the East and West Indies, emigration, prisons and hospitals, with a mass of miscellaneous matters; and the fourth of East and West Africa.[88:2] But the division of the colonies among these officers is not fixed, and varies to some extent with their personal experience. There are, in close connection with the office, agents for each of the dependencies, those for the self-governing colonies being real representatives appointed by the colonial governments, while the three who act on behalf of the crown colonies are selected by the Colonial Office itself.
It may be observed that the Colonial Office has by no means charge of all the outlying dependencies of the British Crown. Besides the protectorates governed by the Foreign Office, there are a number of smaller places under the care of other departments. The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, for example, are under the Home Secretary; some small islets are used only for lighthouses by the Board of Trade; while by an official fiction the Island of Ascension is considered a vessel of war, and as such is commanded by the Admiralty. But larger by far than any of these, more populous than all the other parts of the British Empire put together, is India. It is not classed among the colonies, for that term is confined to the places under the Colonial Office, and does not extend to a country ruled by a distinct administrative system of its own.
[Sidenote: The India Office.]
The Secretary of State for India has the usual parliamentary and permanent staff; but he has in addition a Council of India, composed of not less than ten or more than fifteen members, appointed for a term of ten years. In order to insure a familiarity with Indian conditions, it is provided that nine of the members must have lived in India within ten years of their appointment.[89:1] The Council is a consultative body. It has no power of initiative, but except for matters requiring secrecy or urgency (such as war and peace, or the relations of India with foreign powers or with the native states), all questions must be brought before it for consideration. The Secretary of State is not, however, bound by its decision, save in a few cases, of which the most important are the expenditure of the Indian revenues, and the issue of Indian loans.[89:2]
Legally, the government of India is directed by the Secretary of State and his Council. Even the laws made in India can be disallowed by the Crown on their advice; but in spite of the ease of communication furnished by the telegraph, the internal affairs of the country are still in the main managed by the authorities in India, happily without much interference from England. Parliament, moreover, exercises little control over Indian administration. Some matters--the use of the Indian revenues, for example, to pay for expeditions beyond the frontier--require its consent; and in other cases notice of action taken must be laid before it within a certain time. But the ordinary opportunities for bringing pressure to bear do not exist, because the salary of the Secretary of State for India, being paid out of the Indian revenues, does not furnish an occasion for a debate in Parliament; and although the Indian budget is regularly submitted, it does not need to be approved. On one of the last days of the session, when the work of the year is almost done, and the members are weary of attending, this budget, which is merely a financial statement, is introduced, and in order to give an opportunity for debate a formal motion is made that the Indian accounts show such and such totals of receipts and expenses. A discussion follows on the part of members who deem themselves qualified to express opinions on the government of India, and then the vote is passed. An illustration of the small authority of Parliament in Indian matters may be found in the fact that in 1891 (April 10) the House of Commons carried against the ministers a motion condemning the opium revenue; and in 1893 (June 2) a resolution that the examinations for the Indian Civil Service ought to be held in India, as well as in England, was carried in the same way; yet, on each occasion, the government after studying the subject came to the conclusion that the opinion of the House had been wrong, and did not carry it into effect. Such a condition of things is highly fortunate, for there is probably no body of men less fitted to rule a people than a representative assembly elected in another land by a different race.
If the vast colonial empire has complicated foreign relations it has also caused England to become the greatest of maritime powers, with an enormous navy to protect her dependencies, her merchant ships, and not least important, the routes of her food supply. The effective organisation of a naval force is, therefore, of more importance in her case than in that of any other nation.
[Sidenote: The Admiralty.]
It has already been observed that the Admiralty is the only department of state conducted by a board that really meets for the transaction of business, yet even in this case the statement may convey a false impression of the character of the body. The board as created by Letters Patent under the Great Seal consists of a First Lord, four Naval Lords and a Civil Lord; but by a series of Orders in Council, and by the practice of the department, the parliamentary and permanent secretaries also sit as members of the board.[91:1] The First Lord, the Civil Lord and the parliamentary secretary are capable of sitting in the House of Commons, and are, in fact, always members of one or other House of Parliament. The permanent secretary is, as his name implies, a permanent official, and hence excluded from the House of Commons altogether. The Naval Lords, on the other hand, although eligible to Parliament,[91:2] are very rarely members,[91:3] and yet they are not permanent officials. They occupy the anomalous position of non-political officials, who nevertheless retire upon the fall of the ministry. This does not mean that they belong necessarily to the party in power, or that they may not be reappointed under the commission issued when a new ministry comes into office. In order to preserve a continuity of administration, and a knowledge of the work, the new patent usually includes one, and sometimes more, of the Naval Lords who served under the preceding cabinet, and commonly another who held the place under some earlier ministry of the party that has taken office.
[Sidenote: Position of the First Lord.]
According to the language of the patent all of the members of the Board of Admiralty are equal in authority; but in fact the First Lord, who is always in the cabinet, is held by Parliament responsible for the conduct of the department, and as the other members of the board can be changed if necessary on his recommendation, they must adopt the course which he can justify in Parliament. With the evolution of the cabinet system, therefore, the power of the First Lord has increased until he has become practically a minister of marine assisted by an advisory council. The relation was sanctioned, not created, by Orders in Council of Jan. 14, 1869, and March 19, 1872, which declared the First Lord responsible for all business of the Admiralty,[92:1] and thus "the department now possesses more the character of a council with a supreme responsible head than that of an administrative board."[92:2]
[Sidenote: The Other Lords.]
The Civil Lord and the financial or parliamentary secretary are subordinate ministers, who occupy substantially the position of parliamentary under-secretaries. They are civilians, as is the permanent secretary also; while the four Naval Lords are naval officers, usually of high rank, who bring an expert knowledge to bear upon the administration of the department. But the members of the board, like the cabinet ministers, have individual as well as collective duties. By the Orders in Council of March 19, 1872, and March 10, 1882, and the regulations made in pursuance thereof, the work of the office is distributed among the members of the board, each of whom is at the head of a branch of the service, and responsible for it to the First Lord. By virtue of this arrangement the First Lord retains in his own hands the general direction of political questions, and the appointment of flag officers and the commanders of ships. The First Naval Lord, who is also the principal adviser of his chief, has charge of strategical questions, the distribution of the fleet, discipline, and the selection of the higher officers not commanding ships. The Second Naval Lord has charge of the recruiting and education of officers and men, and the selection of the lower officers. The Third Naval Lord, who is the "Controller," attends to the dockyards, and to construction, repairs and ordnance; while the Junior Naval Lord has charge of the transport and medical service, and the victualling and coaling of the fleet. The Civil Lord attends to the civil establishments, and the contracts relating to stores and to land. The parliamentary secretary is responsible for finance; and the permanent secretary for the personnel in the Admiralty Office, for routine papers and correspondence and for the continuity of business on the advent of a new board.[93:1]
Thus the actual administration of the Navy devolves upon the members of the board charged with the superintendence of the different branches of the service, while the full board meets frequently for the consideration of such questions as the First Lord wishes to refer to it.[93:2] There have been at times complaints about the working of the board, and the existing organisation is the result of gradual adaptations,[93:3] but at the present day the system appears to be highly satisfactory, and in fact it is constantly held up as a model to the less fortunate chiefs of the Army.
[Sidenote: The War Office.]
[Sidenote: Effect of the Crimean War.]
The organisation of the War Office has undergone far more changes than that of the Admiralty, and has been the subject of a great deal more criticism both in and out of Parliament.[93:4] Like other countries with a popular form of government, England has found it hard to reconcile military command and civil control. In the War Office, as in the Admiralty, there has been a tendency to transfer supreme power gradually to the hands of the parliamentary chief; but owing to a number of causes--one of which was the tenacity with which the Queen clung to the idea of a peculiar personal connection between the Crown and the Army--the process of change in the War Office has been slow and halting. Up to the time of the Crimean War the Army was controlled by several different authorities, whose relations to one another were not very clearly defined, and who were subordinate to no single administrative head. This naturally produced friction and lack of efficiency, which was forcibly brought to public attention by the sufferings of the troops during the war. The result was the creation of a distinct Secretary of State for War, and the concentration in his hands of most of the business relating to the Army; but the change was made without a thorough reorganisation of the War Office, and without defining the relative authority of the Secretary of State and the Commander-in-Chief.[94:1] This last office was held at that time by the Queen's cousin, the Duke of Cambridge; and the fact that he was a royal duke, coupled with the Queen's feelings about the Army, threw an obstacle in the way of bringing the office fully under the control of the Secretary. In 1870, however, the Queen was prevailed upon to issue an Order in Council providing that the Commander-in-Chief should be completely subordinate to the Secretary of State.[95:1] Unfortunately, this order by no means settled either the organisation of the War Office, or the relation between the Secretary and the Commander-in-Chief.
[Sidenote: Lord Hartington's Commission.]
A number of commissions have examined the subject, one of the most important of late years being Lord Hartington's Commission, which reported in 1890.[95:2] At that time[95:3] the Adjutant General, who was charged with the general supervision of the military department, was the first staff officer of the Commander-in-Chief, and as such was responsible to him for the efficiency of the forces; while the other principal military officers--the Quartermaster General, Military Secretary, Director of Artillery, Inspector of Fortifications, and Director of Military Intelligence--were also immediately responsible not to the Secretary of State, but to the Commander-in-Chief, and approached the latter through the Adjutant General. Thus, while all the officers in the department were nominally subordinate to the Secretary of State, practically between him and them stood the Commander-in-Chief, who had the privilege of approaching the Crown directly and without the intervention of the Secretary. The commission thought that such a system failed to make the heads of the different branches of the service effectively responsible to the Secretary, or to provide any satisfactory system for giving him expert advice. They recommended, therefore, the virtual abolition of the office of Commander-in-Chief, and a division of the duties among a number of officers, who should be individually responsible for their administrative work to the Secretary, and should collectively advise him as a War Office Council. They recommended, in short, a system not unlike that of the Admiralty.
[Sidenote: The Changes of 1895.]
As a preliminary to bringing about a change of this kind Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the Liberal Secretary of State for War, procured the resignation of the Duke of Cambridge in 1895, and Lord Wolseley was appointed Commander-in-Chief for five years. The Secretary then announced a plan in accordance with the main principles suggested by the Hartington Commission. But just at that time the Liberal administration fell,[96:1] and Lord Lansdowne, the new Secretary of State, made a change in the plan, which left more power in the hands of the Commander-in-Chief. The policy thus adopted was embodied in an Order in Council of Nov. 21, 1895, followed by a memorandum setting out in greater detail the duties of the heads of the different branches of the service thereunder.[96:2] According to the new system the Commander-in-Chief exercised the general command, issued army orders, inspected troops, took charge of the distribution of the Army, and prepared strategical plans, having under him for that purpose the Director of Military Intelligence. He was also to have the general supervision of all the military departments, and to be the principal military adviser of the Secretary of State, all important questions going to him before submission to the Secretary. The Adjutant General was to have charge of the discipline and training of officers and men, and the patterns of their uniforms,--a matter which seems to involve as many changes in fashion as a dressmaking establishment. The Quartermaster General had charge of food, forage, transports and remounts. The Inspector of Fortifications constructed and maintained forts, barracks, etc., and supervised the engineer corps. The Inspector General of Ordnance looked after the supply of warlike stores and equipments, and each of these officers advised the Secretary of State on questions connected with his department. The Financial Secretary had charge of all questions of expenditure, and of the audit of accounts. Until 1899 he was also at the head of the manufacturing departments, but by an order of that year they were transferred to the Inspector General of Ordnance, whose title was changed to Director. By the memorandum which followed the order a War Office Council was created, consisting of the heads of the military departments, the under-secretaries of state, and the Financial Secretary, together with any other officers who might be summoned; its function being to discuss subjects referred to it by the Secretary of State. An Army Board, composed of the heads of the principal military departments, was also established, which was to report upon promotions to the higher grades in the Army, upon estimates, and upon other questions submitted to it by the Secretary of State.
[Sidenote: Their Results.]
The two great changes made at this time were the modification in the powers of the Commander-in-Chief, and the creation of consultative boards in the War Office. Neither of them can be said to have attained the object aimed at. The attempt to create advisory councils of that kind has been tried more than once, but after working usefully for a time they have ceased to meet regularly and have fallen into disuse. This appears to have been the case with the War Office Council and Army Board created in 1895 and reorganized in 1899 and 1900.[97:1]
The position of Commander-in-Chief under the Order in Council of 1895 has been the subject of severe criticism. At the expiration of his term of five years, Lord Wolseley recorded in a memorandum his opinion that the attempt to give the Commander-in-Chief a supervision over the departments of the War Office, and yet make their heads responsible to the Secretary of State, involved a contradiction, and had resulted in depriving the Commander-in-Chief of all effective control, and in making his office a high-sounding title with no real responsibility. He insisted that no army could be efficient unless the command, discipline and training of the troops were in the hands of one man, and that man a soldier; and he urged that the Commander-in-Chief should either be made the real head of the forces, or that the office should be abolished, and the Secretary of State for War should be himself a military man.[98:1] The only direct result that the memorandum had on the organisation of the War Office was the reestablishmemt of the control of the Commander-in-Chief over the department of the Adjutant General by an Order in Council on Nov. 4, 1901.[98:2] But a statement by Lord Wolseley of his views, in a speech in the House of Lords in March, 1901, led to an unseemly altercation with Lord Lansdowne, the late Secretary of State for War, in which each sought to cast upon the other the blame for the lack of preparation for the war in South Africa.[98:3] The occurrence would appear to show that the relations between the military and civil authorities at the War Office are not yet upon a well-recognised or satisfactory basis; and it shows also that this relation is very different from that which ordinarily prevails between ministers and their expert officials. For reasons that will be explained in a later chapter, such a dispute in any other department would be well-nigh inconceivable. From a political point of view the Army and Navy officers are, in fact, in an exceptional situation. They are not subject to the general rule which excludes from the House of Commons all office-holders who are not ministers.[98:4] And just as military officers are allowed to play a part in politics forbidden to other public servants, so those among them who hold high administrative posts stand in a position peculiar to themselves, a position which in the case of the Admiralty is definite and satisfactory, although anomalous, but in the case of the Army is not altogether definite or satisfactory.
[Sidenote: Effect of the South African War.]
The efficiency of the War Office was put to a rude test by the South African War, and some branches of the service did not stand the test very well. The results recalled, although in different respects, the experiences of the Crimean War. The commission on the war found that, both as regards plans and stores, there had been a grave lack of preparation which was not wholly due to the suddenness of the emergency.[99:1] There was not merely a deficiency in warlike stores, such as guns[99:2] and ammunition for them,[99:3] cavalry-swords[99:4] and clothing;[99:5] but some of the stores were unfit for use. Such clothing, for example, as there was on hand six months before the war broke out was all red and blue cloth, quite unsuitable for the campaign; and even after the manufacture of khaki suits had begun, changes were ordered first in the material and then in the pattern.[99:6] More than one third of the small arms ammunition on hand was found to be unserviceable and was discarded;[99:7] and all the reserve rifles were wrongly sighted, so that at a distance of five hundred yards they shot eighteen inches to the right--an occurrence the more extraordinary because the government had been manufacturing those weapons for some years, and never discovered the defect until after the war broke out.[99:8]
It would be a mistake to suppose that all the shortcomings in the South African War arose from defects in the War Office. Some of them were of a kind certain to occur where a military organisation is suddenly expanded beyond its normal size. Still, the errors already described certainly showed a lack of efficiency, and they have led to a remodelling of the office. In November, 1903, another commission was appointed for this purpose, and its principal recommendations[100:1] were put into effect in the course of the following year.[100:2]
[Sidenote: The Changes of 1904.]
According to this last system, for which the Admiralty served as a pattern, an Army Council has been formed, consisting of the Secretary of State for War, the parliamentary under-secretary, the Financial Secretary to the War Office, and of four military members. The post of Commander-in-Chief having been abolished, and that of Chief of Staff created instead, the four military members of the council are the Chief of Staff, the Adjutant General, the Quartermaster General, and the Master General of Ordnance. By the terms of the Order in Council the military members are responsible to the Secretary of State for so much of the business relating to the organisation, disposition, personnel, armament and maintenance of the Army as he assigns to them or each of them, while the Financial Secretary is responsible for finance, and the parliamentary under-secretary for the other matters that are not strictly military. The permanent under-secretary acts as secretary of the council, which has also under its orders a new officer, the Inspector General of the Forces, charged with the duty of reporting to it upon the results of its policy, and of inspecting and reporting upon the training and efficiency of the troops, and the condition of the equipment and fortifications. But the Army Council has in the last resort only advisory powers, for the Secretary of State is expressly declared responsible to the Crown and to Parliament for all its business.
[Sidenote: Lack of Initiative among Officers.]
An army, and especially a standing army, is liable during a long period of peace to fall into habits that impair its efficiency in war. One of the chief criticisms made after the South African War related to the lack of initiative, and of capacity to assume responsibility, on the part of the officers both in the War Office and in the field.[100:3] Now, this is precisely the defect that one would expect to find under the circumstances. With the traditions of strict discipline ingrained in military men, there is a natural tendency in time of peace to regulate everything with precision, leaving to subordinate officers little independence of action. And in fact the Committee on War Office Organisation in 1901 reported that the Army was administered by means of a vast system of minute regulations, which tended on the one hand to suppress individuality and initiative, while on the other their interpretation led to protracted references, and to absorbing the time of high officials by matters of routine.[101:1] The evidence presented to the Committee on the war in South Africa pointed to the same evil, for it showed that the deficiencies of the officers arose from their being too much controlled and supervised during their training.[101:2]
[Sidenote: Their Training.]
The excessive tendency to routine, and the consequent lack of initiative, might be counteracted in some measure by a keen intellectual interest in the profession on the part of the younger officers; but the military education they receive is hardly of a character to stimulate such an interest. As a rule the candidates for commissions, after leaving the great public schools, such as Eton, Harrow and Rugby, where the sons of the upper classes are educated, obtain admission to the military academies by means of competitive examinations based upon the curriculum of those schools. The ordinary time then spent in studying at Woolwich, where the engineer and artillery officers are taught, is two years; that at Sandhurst, the school for the infantry and cavalry, was eighteen months before the South African War, and later only a year. Periods of this length are obviously too short to give a thorough training, or even a strong interest, in military science; and, in fact, the object is rather to produce a good subaltern than a highly educated officer.[102:1] If a man is ambitious for promotion he is expected to pursue his studies by himself, or to attend the staff college, later in life. Now, with the modern application of science to warfare, a military officer has become a member of a learned profession. But in England the preliminary teaching is insufficient for this purpose; and what is more, the conditions of the service are very unlike those of learned professions, and hardly such as to stimulate intellectual activity. Moreover, the private contributions to the mess, and the other expenses of an officer, are often so great that it is difficult for a man without private means to follow the Army as a career. In short, after the abolition of the purchase of commissions in 1871, the Army ceased to be a caste without becoming a profession.[102:2]
[Sidenote: Advantages of the Navy.]
The fact that the Navy escapes some of the difficulties that beset the Army is not due altogether to better organisation. The Navy has in many ways great natural advantages as compared with the Army. Most civilians feel that after a short experience they could lead a regiment, but few landsmen have the hardihood to believe that they could ever command a ship. The Navy is a mystery which ordinary men do not pretend to understand, and with which they do not attempt to interfere; and this is a security for expert management. Again the Navy is less exposed to the dangers of peace. Warships are constantly in service. If they do not fight, at least they go to sea; and hence the Navy is far less likely than the Army to suffer from the demoralising influence of minute and antiquated regulations.
[Sidenote: The Training of Naval Officers.]
This has an effect also upon the training of naval officers. Under the old plan which is now being superseded, the theoretical education given them was by no means high. The cadets destined for executive naval officers entered "The Britannia" at the age of about fifteen, and spent there a little less than a year and a half. They then had a service of about three years at sea, where besides learning the practical side of their profession, they were expected to study elementary mathematics, mechanics, physics, navigation, surveying, etc. Then followed a couple of months at Greenwich preparing for the final examination in those subjects; and, lastly, before receiving their commissions as sub-lieutenants, five or six months at Portsmouth studying pilotage, gunnery, and torpedo practice. Thus the average age for obtaining the commission was not far from twenty years. The theoretical study pursued was certainly not of an advanced character. In mathematics, for example, it did not include the calculus, or even conic sections. In fact, according to the syllabus as revised in 1899, one of the optional subjects which men who desired to go farther than the rest might pursue, if they desired, was projectiles, "treated so as not to require a knowledge of conic sections."[103:1]
The principal changes made by the new plan, which began to go into effect in 1903, were, first, making the executive, engineer and marine, officers more nearly into a single corps, and therefore giving them a common training until they reach the grade of sub-lieutenant; and, second, reducing the age for entering "The Britannia" to between twelve and thirteen. This last change enables the cadets to remain at the school four years, and will, it is hoped, insure a sounder education. They are then to get a training at sea for three years, followed by three months at Greenwich and six at Portsmouth. At that point they are to receive their commissions as sub-lieutenants, and those who join the executive branch of the service will go to sea again, while the engineer and marine officers attend their respective colleges for some time longer.[104:1] Whatever good effects the new plan may have in other directions, it can hardly increase materially the scientific education of the cadet.
But if the education in the theory of naval science has not been carried far, the junior naval officer has much greater opportunities for learning the practice of his profession than the officer in the army. In fact, if not a master of naval science he becomes an excellent seaman, and this, in the opinion of many officers, is much the more important of the two.
[Sidenote: The Defence Committee.]
One of the chief criticisms of Lord Hartington's Commission on the administration of the naval and military departments, bore upon the lack of combined plans of operation for the defence of the empire. They suggested the formation of a naval and military council, to be presided over by the Prime Minister, and to consist of the parliamentary heads of the two services, and their principal professional advisers.[104:2] In partial fulfilment of this recommendation a committee of the cabinet was formed, consisting of the Prime Minister, the parliamentary heads of the Army and the Navy, the First Lord of the Treasury, with the addition, if need be, of the Colonial Secretary. The committee was intended to deal with questions unsettled between the two departments, matters in which a joint policy was advisable, and questions relating to the relative importance of expenditures; and it differed from other committees in that minutes were to be kept of its proceedings, and formally recorded by the departments. The committee seems, however, not to have fulfilled the intentions of the Hartington Commission, for it has been openly stated in Parliament that it never met;[105:1] and even the Secretary of State for War admitted that it acted mainly with regard to estimates, and to questions within the War Office and the Admiralty, while, in his opinion, it ought to act on larger questions of policy. A new Defence Committee was, therefore, created in 1903, to consist, besides members of the cabinet, of the most influential experts of the two services, and when necessary of representatives of the Indian and Colonial Offices. The committee is intended to deal not only with estimates, but with larger questions of military policy.[105:2] But whether this result will be permanently attained, or whether the committee will meet with the usual fate, and find itself absorbed by details of administration and of expenditure, is yet to be seen.
The departments of state that remain to be considered in this chapter need not detain us long. They are all concerned with the internal government of the kingdom, and so far as their work is of general interest it will be touched upon again.
[Sidenote: The Home Office.]
The Home Office is a kind of residuary legatee. It is intrusted with all the work of the secretariat that has not been especially assigned to the remaining secretaries of state, or to the other administrative departments. Its duties are, therefore, of a somewhat miscellaneous character. As the heir to the residue of the secretariat, the Home Secretary is the principal channel of communication between the King and his subjects, and countersigns the greater number of the King's acts. He receives addresses and petitions addressed to the sovereign, and presents them if he thinks best. Among others he receives petitions of right--that is, claims to be allowed to sue the Crown--and consults the Attorney General about the answer to be given. Outlying places, such as the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, which are not from an administrative point of view a part of the United Kingdom and yet are not colonies, fall under his jurisdiction. He has charge of questions of naturalisation and extradition. But more important still, the central control over the police, not having been transferred to the Local Government Board, remains in his hands, and this gives him wide powers of supervision. The metropolitan police of London is, indeed, administered directly by the national government under his immediate control;[106:1] and although the police elsewhere is not under his orders, yet the fact that the central government pays one half of the cost on condition his regulations are observed, enables him to prescribe the organisation, equipment and discipline of the local police all over England. Moreover, all by-laws of counties and boroughs, except those relating to nuisances, must be submitted to him for approval, and may on his advice be disallowed by the Crown.[106:2] As a part of his authority in matters of police he manages the prisons, both the national prisons for convicts and the county and borough gaols. He is responsible for the appointment and removal of recorders and stipendiary magistrates. He appoints the Director of Public Prosecutions, and makes regulations about costs in criminal proceedings. By virtue of special statutes he sees to the enforcement of the acts relating to factories, mines, burial-grounds, inebriates, anatomy, vivisection, explosives, and other kindred matters.
He is assisted by a parliamentary under-secretary, and by a large staff of permanent officials, beginning with a permanent under-secretary, and including a prison commissioner, a metropolitan police commission, and a host of inspectors for factories, mines, police, and so forth.
It will be observed that although primarily responsible for public order, the Home Secretary is by no means a minister of the interior in the continental sense, for apart from the police he has very little to do with local government. The supervision of matters of that kind, although in part scattered among different departments, is mainly concentrated in the hands of the Local Government Board. The Home Secretary has, on the other hand, some of the functions of a minister of justice; and this will be referred to again when we come to speak of the Law Officers of the Crown.
[Sidenote: The Board of Works.]
The Board of Works is not regarded as a department of great political importance, and for this reason it presents one of the two or three cases where the minister has no parliamentary under-secretary. For a score of years the public lands and buildings were under the care of a body called the Commissioners of Woods and Forests; but in order to keep the revenue from land separate from the expenditure upon buildings, and so bring the latter more completely under the control of Parliament, the duties were divided in 1852. The Commissioners of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues were made a permanent non-political body under the Treasury, while the Board of Works was established to take charge of the construction and maintenance of parks, palaces and other buildings. At that time many of the public buildings were, in fact, committed to the care of the departments that occupied them; but by a series of statutes these have now been transferred almost wholly to the Board of Works. Now, although the amount of money that passes through its hands is very large, the board is by no means entirely free, for without the sanction of the Treasury it can undertake no work not directly ordered by Parliament, and it can make no contracts for the erection of large public buildings without submitting them to the same authority,[107:1] which also appoints the ordinary permanent staff of the office.[107:2]
[Sidenote: The Board of Trade.]
The Board of Trade occupies, on the contrary, a position of great and growing importance. It has had a long and chequered history, and although in the course of its career it has lost duties enough to keep an active department busy, these have been more than replaced under that modern tendency toward state regulation of industry which is constantly adding to its burdens. It deals not only with trade, but with many of the chief agencies of trade, and especially with transportation. As in the case of the three other boards to be described hereafter, the Board of Trade is engaged not in direct administration, but in supervising and regulating the action of private bodies and local authorities, and in keeping a watch upon the enforcement of the law. Speaking broadly, its powers have grown by the process of making it responsible for the application of a great many statutes.
Its functions may be classified roughly under the heads of collecting information, registration, inspection, and authorising acts or undertakings of a public nature; although any such classification is sadly confused by the fact that duties of more than one kind have been conferred upon the board in regard to the same subject-matter, and even by the same statute. To the first of these classes belong its functions in collecting and publishing statistics relating to domestic and foreign trade, and giving advice on commercial matters to other departments of the government. To that class belong also its functions as a labour bureau in preparing statistics about labour, wages and other matters touching the interests of workingmen. In this connection it has power also to act as a board of conciliation in labour disputes, and to name arbitrators or conciliators. Under the head of registration may be mentioned its duties in maintaining the standards of weights and measures; registering joint-stock companies; examining and recording patents and trade-marks; and keeping a register of ships and seamen. Under the head of inspection come its functions in ascertaining that merchant vessels are in a seaworthy condition, and properly laden, officered, manned and equipped; with the power to detain unseaworthy craft. Under the same head may be classed its control over harbours, its duty to see to the enforcement of the laws relating to railways[109:1] and to inquire into the causes of railway accidents and disasters at sea. As an example of the final class of powers may be cited the fact that the by-laws of a railway company require for their validity the approval of the board; but a far more important instance is to be found in its control over the building of new lines of railway, over new undertakings for the supply of water, gas and electric light, and over the construction of tramways and light railways, the last being a recent invention legally very different, but physically indistinguishable, from tramways. This control is exercised by means of provisional orders, prepared by the board after an investigation and a hearing of all the persons interested, and then confirmed by Parliament.[109:2] The petitioner is not, indeed, compelled to resort to a provisional order, but may avoid the direct control of the Board of Trade by means of a private bill in Parliament. But a provisional order is far less expensive; and even when the procedure is by private bill the board endeavours to exert its influence by scrutinising the bill, and bringing to the notice of the officers of the House any departures from the general policy of legislation.[109:3] The result is that the board has an effective, although by no means an absolute, control over these matters.
The subject of bankruptcy has also been placed in the hands of the Board of Trade, and except for legal questions which come before the courts, it has the entire charge of the cases, maintaining for that purpose a staff of inspectors, examiners and official receivers.
The nearest approach to actual administrative work intrusted to the board is in the case of lighthouses, buoys and beacons, which are maintained by Trinity House, an ancient corporation composed of self-elected brethren but financially under the control of the Board of Trade.
[Sidenote: The Local Government Board.]
Until the era of the Reform Bill local affairs in England were managed in the main by justices of the peace and town councillors, whose powers were derived from a host of statutes covering many subjects in great detail. These officers were kept rigorously within the limits of their authority because the legality of their acts could be tested in the courts of law; but they were almost entirely free from administrative control. The first wide breach in the system was made by the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which aimed at a reform in the method of giving poor relief, and set up for the purpose a commission to supervise the local bodies. The new commissioners, being vigorous and efficient, aroused hostility, and as they were not permitted to sit in Parliament, they found it hard to defend their policy. In fact the experience they went through is used by Bagehot as an illustration of the impotence of an executive department without a representative in the House of Commons.[110:1] In 1847 the body was reorganised under the title of the Poor Law Board, with a responsible minister at its head, and thenceforth received from time to time additions to its duties. Various functions relating to public health and local government had in the meanwhile been intrusted to the Home Secretary and the Privy Council; and, finally, in 1871 the greater part of them were transferred to the Poor Law Board, which was given the name of Local Government Board.
Legislation of this kind has entirely transformed the nature of English local government. Partly by bringing the exercise of existing powers under the supervision of the central government, partly by subjecting to systematic control the new powers called into life by the wants of the time, the old system of local self-government--limited by law, but independent of any administrative superior--has been replaced by a system where the local bodies, and especially those outside of the great towns, are to a considerable extent under the tutelage of the state. The subjection is not the same as that which prevails in other European countries, and it is not so great, but it is in some respects more nearly akin to the continental system than to that of England in the eighteenth century.
Except for such matters as police, education, and the supply of transportation, light and water, the control over the local authorities is almost entirely vested in the Local Government Board; but as the subject of local government, and therefore the powers of the board, will be considered at some length in another part of this book, we do not need to enumerate its functions here. We need only point out that it has the unusual number of five assistant under-secretaries, and a large staff of clerks, auditors and inspectors. But although the amount of head work to be done, and therefore the number of permanent officials of high grade, is large, yet from a political point of view the department is not regarded as of the first class.
[Sidenote: The Board of Agriculture.]
The creation in 1889 of a new department of state to attend to the matters that have been transferred from various commissions to the Board of Agriculture hardly seems to have been necessary; and, indeed, the board is not important enough to require a parliamentary under-secretary. It has inherited the duty of shaking the dry bones of ancient tenures by dealing with such subjects as the commutation of tithes, the enfranchisement of copyhold, the enclosure of commons, allotments to labourers, and the improvement of land by limited owners. The control of fisheries, the promotion of agriculture and the prevention of contagious diseases among animals are also placed under its care, and it has been given power, or rather authority, to muzzle dogs and destroy the Colorado beetle.
[Sidenote: The Board of Education.]
The Board of Education is the youngest of all the boards, but in reality it is only a committee of the Privy Council reorganised with some additional powers. The most remarkable thing about the act creating it--apart from the erection of a sham board--is the extent of the authority delegated to the executive. Instead of prescribing minutely the organisation and functions of the department of education, the act empowered the government, in its discretion, to set up such a consultative committee as it saw fit, and to transfer to the board any educational duties of the Charity Commissioners or the Board of Agriculture that it thought best.[112:1] Both of these powers have been exercised by Orders in Council of Aug. 7, 1900, and the Consultative Committee has been made to consist of representatives selected by the universities and by other bodies interested in education. But the subject of public education will be treated in subsequent chapters, and it is enough here to note that by means of elaborate regulations, commonly known as the Education Code, the board prescribes the instruction to be given in all schools aided by public money;[112:2] that it inspects endowed or private secondary schools at their request;[112:3] and that it has charge of the museums at South Kensington and Bethnal Green, and of the Geological Museum and Survey.
[Sidenote: The Post Office.]
From the point of view of the national government the Post Office has two functions. It is a great administrative department which conducts a huge business, with a minister at its head; and it is a source of income, its gross receipts forming about one seventh of the total revenues of the United Kingdom, its disbursements only about one tenth of the total expenditure. For that reason it is under a financial control by the Treasury so strict as to leave very little chance for independent action, and this renders the position of Postmaster General far less important than it would otherwise be. The office has been regarded as political since 1837; but until 1866 the holder could not sit in the House of Commons, and since that time he has occasionally been a peer, the Post Office in such a case being usually represented in the Commons by the Financial Secretary of the Treasury. The duties of the Postmaster General are minutely prescribed by statute, and while he has power to make regulations for the management of the postal service, it is not easy to make substantial changes or improvements without affecting the receipts or the expenses, and when that is done he comes at once under the control of the Treasury. The rates of postage, for example, and the compensation for carrying the mails, when not fixed by Act of Parliament, are subject to the approval of the Treasury; and so are the purchase or sale of land, and any lease of the right to carry on a telegraph or telephone business. The same approval is also required for his regulations touching money-orders, post office savings-banks, and the telegraph, although in these cases the revenue would not appear to be necessarily involved. In short, as Sir William Anson puts it,[113:1] "The Postmaster General is no more than the acting manager of a great business, with little discretionary power except in the exercise of the very considerable patronage of his office."[113:2]
The business of the department is certainly enormous, the number of persons employed being little short of two hundred thousand. In addition to the usual work of transmitting letters, books, parcels and money-orders, the Post Office in England maintains savings-banks, with deposits of about 150,000,000_l._; and it has been given exclusive control of the telegraph by provisions which have been held to include the telephone also. But while the administration of the telegraph has been retained by the government in its own hands, the right to conduct the telephone business was granted, by means of temporary licenses, to private companies, and to some extent to local authorities also; and the government has only recently decided to take over the management as soon as the licenses expire.
FOOTNOTES:
[82:1] Such are the offices of the Lord Steward and the Lord Chamberlain, the latter having in his charge also the censorship of plays and theatrical performances.
[83:1] The name of the Board of Trade is now statutory (25-26 Vic., c. 69, Sec. 2; 52-53 Vic., c. 63, Sec. 12, cl. 8). Its composition, however, is fixed not by statute but by Order in Council at the beginning of each reign, save that an act of 1867 (30-31 Vic., c. 72) abolished the office of Vice-President, and provided instead that one of the secretaries to the board might sit in Parliament.
[83:2] For the organisation of the Board of Works, see 14-15 Vic., c. 42; 37-38 Vic., c. 84; for the Local Government Board, 34-35 Vic., c. 70; Board of Agriculture, 52-53 Vic., c. 30; Board of Education, 62-63 Vic., c. 33.
[83:3] In the case of the Board of Works he is styled First Commissioner.
[84:1] The Council of India, described hereafter, has some of the characteristics of a board.
[84:2] Hans., 4 Ser. LXVIII., 678-9; LXX., 338, 351; LXXIII., 632, 666.
[84:3] Ibid., LXXIII., 676.
[84:4] In the course of the debate Lord Norton declared (Hans., 4 Ser. LXVIII., 676) that he had served on two different boards, and could remember only one instance where a board had been called together or consulted in any way.
[85:1] Hans., 4 Ser. LXX., 353. There may have been good reasons for not creating a sixth secretary of state, and among them the fact that a secretary of state receives a salary of 5000_l._, while the president of the board receives 2000_l._ But, as Mr. Bryce pointed out (Hans., 4 Ser. LXXIII., 632), a secretary might have been appointed who, like the Secretary for Scotland, should not be a secretary of state. The salary of the Secretary for Scotland is, in fact, 2000_l._
[86:1] Until a few years ago the departments were: (1) the Eastern (Eastern Europe and Central Asia); (2) Western (Western Europe, Northwest Africa and the Pacific Islands); (3) American and Asiatic (which includes China, Japan and Siam); (4) Consular (including East and West Africa); (5) Commercial; (6) The Chief Clerk's (which has charge of financial business); (7) The Library (with the papers of the office); (8) The Treaty Department. (Fourth Rep. of the Comn. on Civil Establishments, Com. Papers, 1890, XXVII., 1.) Within a few years four new departments have been created: an African, an African Protectorates, a Far Eastern and a Parliamentary. (See the Foreign Office List.)
[87:1] Ch. viii. The permanent under-secretary at the head of the staff holds, however, an important place.
[88:1] See Hammond, "The Adventures of a Paper in the Foreign Office." Rep. of Sel. Com. on Trade, Com. Papers, 1864, VII., 279, Q. 1384.
[88:2] Colonial Office List, 1907, XIII.
[89:1] Three of the members may, however, be appointed for life, and any other member may be reappointed for five years. Ilbert, "Government of India," 112.
[89:2] Ibid., 152-55.
[91:1] Report of Comrs. on Admn. of Naval and Mil. Depts., Com. Papers, 1890, XIX., 1, pp. viii-ix.
[91:2] 2-3 Will. IV., c. 40, Sec. 1.
[91:3] Lord Charles Beresford was a Naval Lord and a member of the House of Commons from 1886 to 1888.
[92:1] Rep. of Comrs. on Admn. of Naval and Mil. Depts., Com. Papers, 1890, XIX., 1, p. viii.
[92:2] Ibid., p. x.
[93:1] Return on the Distribution of Business between the Members of the Admiralty Board, Com. Papers, 1890, XLIV., 605.
[93:2] Rep. of Comrs. on Admn. of Naval and Mil. Depts., Com. Papers, 1890, XIX., 1, p. ix.
[93:3] Todd, II., 767 et seq.
[93:4] The military forces consist of the regular army (with the reserves, that is, the men who have served their time but are liable to be recalled in case of war); and of the militia, yeomanry and volunteers. The militia are a little more like regular troops than the volunteers. They are formally enlisted and their period of training is longer. None of the auxiliary forces can be ordered out of the United Kingdom; but while the volunteers are intended solely to support the regular army in defending the country in case of invasion, the militia have always offered their services in time of war, and have often been used for garrison duty both at home and abroad, and even for field service abroad. The yeomanry are a body of cavalry forming part of the militia. A royal commission on the militia and volunteers reported in 1904 that both of these forces were unfit to take the field against a regular army; that the period of training ought to be increased in each case; and that a home defence army, capable of protecting the United Kingdom in the absence of the greater part of the regular army could be raised only by universal compulsory military service. (Com. Papers, 1904, XXX., 175, pp. 6, 9, 11, 15-16.) This last suggestion was received with general disfavour.
[94:1] For the History of the War Office up to this time, see Clode, "Military Forces of the Crown."
[95:1] Order in Council, June 4, 1870, Com. Papers, XLII., 683.
[95:2] Com. Papers, 1890, XIX., 1.
[95:3] By virtue of Orders in Council of Dec. 29, 1887, and Feb. 21, 1888. Ibid., App. viii.
[96:1] On account of a vote at the close of the same debate in which this change was announced.
[96:2] Com. Papers, 1896, LI., 483.
[97:1] Rep. of Com. on War Office Organisation, Com. Papers, 1901, XL., 179, p. 21; Rep. of Com. on the War in South Africa, Com. Papers, 1904, XL., 1, pp. 138-42.
[98:1] Com. Papers, 1901, XXXIX., 243.
[98:2] Ibid., 1902, LVIII., 717.
[98:3] Hans., 4 Ser. XC., 327 et seq.; XCI., 6 et seq.
[98:4] 6 Anne, c. 7, Sec. 28. (In the Rev. Sts. it is c. 41, Sec. 27.)
[99:1] Rep. in Com. Papers, 1904, XL., 1, pp. 28, 30.
[99:2] Ibid., p. 89.
[99:3] Ibid., p. 87.
[99:4] Ibid., p. 94.
[99:5] Ibid., pp. 94-96.
[99:6] Ibid., pp. 94-95.
[99:7] Ibid., pp. 86-87.
[99:8] Ibid., pp. 93-94.
[100:1] Com. Papers, 1904, VIII., 101.
[100:2] Cf. Orders in Council of Aug. 10, 1904, Com. Papers, 1905, XLVI., 291, 295, 299.
[100:3] Rep. of Com. on War in South Africa, Com. Papers, 1904, XL., 1, pp. 52-56.
[101:1] Rep. of Com. on War Office Organisation, Com. Papers, 1901, XL., 179, p. 2.
[101:2] Rep. of Com. on War in South Africa, Com. Papers, 1904, XL., 1, pp. 52-56.
[102:1] The recent Committee on Military Education evidently approved of that object. Com. Papers, 1902, X., 193, p. 24.
[102:2] The Committee on Military Education were impressed by the widespread dissatisfaction with the education of army officers, and in Sandhurst, especially, much was found to criticise. The education of the junior officers after leaving the military academies was reported to be in a most unsatisfactory state. They were said to be lamentably wanting in military knowledge, and in the desire to study the science and master the art of their profession; while the examinations for promotion encouraged "the customs of idleness with a brief period of cram." Com. Papers, 1902, X., 193. There may well be some exaggeration in the criticism of the moment, due to a natural revulsion from the military self-complacency that preceded the war.
[103:1] Rep. of Com. on Training and Examination of Junior Naval Officers, Com. Papers, 1901, XLII., 621, p. 15.
[104:1] Memorandum, Com. Papers, 1902, LXI., 675. Since this was written another change has been made dividing naval officers into a sea-faring and fighting branch and an engineer branch.
[104:2] Com. Papers, 1890, XIX., 1, pp. vi-viii.
[105:1] Lord Charles Beresford, Hans., 4 Ser. CXII., 1146, 1147.
[105:2] Rep. of Com. on War in South Africa, Com. Papers, 1904, XL., 1, pp. 135-36. Hans., 4 Ser. CXVIII., 291.
[106:1] The "City" of London is an oasis with its own police force.
[106:2] Glen on Public Health, 12 Ed., 443, 1169, 1341.
[107:1] Rep. Com. on Nat. Expend., Com. Papers, 1902, VII., 15, Q. 1425.
[107:2] 14-15 Vic., c. 42, Secs. 16, 17.
[109:1] In 1873 the settlement of railway controversies was transferred to a judicial body, the Railway and Canal Commission.
[109:2] In the case of light railways the orders are made by the Light Railway Commission and confirmed by the Board of Trade, the members of the Commission being appointed by the President of the Board. 59-60 Vic., c. 48; 1 Edw. VII., c. 36.
[109:3] Rep. of Com. on Municipal Trading, Com. Papers, 1900, VII., 183.
[110:1] "English Const.," 1 Ed., 228-30.
[112:1] 62-63 Vic., c. 33, Secs. 1-4.
[112:2] This does not, of course, apply to special establishments, like the naval and military schools, which are managed by other departments.
[112:3] Throughout this chapter statements relating to local government must be understood not to apply to Scotland or Ireland; but in this case Wales, with Monmouthshire, is also excluded because, by the Welsh Intermediate Education Act of 1889, a special board chosen by the local authorities inspects the secondary schools there.
[113:1] "Law and Custom of the Constitution," II., 184.
[113:2] It may be observed that for many years after 1868 the Postmaster General was rarely in the cabinet, and hence he has not acquired the authority possessed by a regular cabinet minister. He has, however, now been in the cabinet continuously since 1892.
V. THE TREASURY
The most important of all the departments, and the one that exhibits in the highest degree the merits of the English government, is the Treasury. It is the central department of the administration, which keeps in touch with all the others, and maintains a constant financial control over them. But before considering how that is done it may be well to explain the process by which money flows in and out of the national purse. The part played by Parliament in the imposition of taxes, and the authorisation of expenditure by means of appropriations, will be described in chapter XIV, and we are concerned here only with the machinery for collecting those taxes, and giving effect to the appropriations.[115:1]
[Sidenote: The Consolidated Fund and the Bank of England.]
Until the Commonwealth, taxes were, as a rule, granted to the King, who used the proceeds to carry on the government as he saw fit; but under Charles II. Parliament began to appropriate parts of the revenue for specific purposes, and after the revolution of 1688 this developed into a comprehensive system, so that the whole revenue was appropriated, to be used only for the objects, and in the sums, designated by Parliament.[115:2] It was the custom, however, to appropriate for specific objects the proceeds of particular taxes, a practice that made the public accounts needlessly complex. In 1787 William Pitt, following earlier partial experiments, simplified matters by creating a single Consolidated Fund into which all revenues from every source were turned, and from which all payments were made.[116:1] The Consolidated Fund is deposited in the Bank of England and the Bank of Ireland, which have a right to use it like any other deposit, and perform, in fact, for the government much the same service that an ordinary bank does for a merchant. This method of dealing with the national finances continued substantially intact until a few years ago,[116:2] when it was complicated by two innovations, one of which allows a department to use incidental revenues, under the name of "appropriations in aid," to defray expenses, and the other sets aside certain parts of the national income to supplement local taxation, in each case without passing through the Consolidated Fund.[116:3] The second of these exceptions is due to the great increase of local expenditure, and the narrow range of local taxation, which have caused a demand for national subventions, and have resulted in setting apart for the purpose the proceeds of specific sources of revenue. In this way the income from the local taxation licenses, and a portion of the income from the death duties and the duties on spirits and beer, are now collected by the central government and paid directly into the Local Taxation Account.[116:4] But saving these cases, all the national receipts are paid into, and all the disbursements are made from, the Consolidated Fund.
[Sidenote: Method of Getting Money into the Consolidated Fund.]
[Sidenote: The Sources of Revenue.]
The financial procedure of the Treasury is now regulated by the Exchequer and Audit Departments Act of 1866,[117:1] and the Public Accounts and Charges Act of 1891.[117:2] By these acts the gross revenue--after making the deductions already mentioned--is paid into the "account of His Majesty's Exchequer," at the Banks of England and Ireland, to be used as a single fund. The three chief collectors of revenue are the Commissioners of Customs, the Commissioners of Inland Revenue and the Post Office. With the growth of the principles of free trade the customs duties became confined to coffee, chicory, cocoa, dried fruit, tea, tobacco, wine, and a number of articles, such as spirits, on which duties are laid to countervail the excise upon similar articles produced at home. To these were added at the time of the South African War an export duty on coal, and import duties on sugar and grain, the last being again dropped in 1903, while the coal duty was repealed in 1906. Under normal fiscal conditions in times of peace, the customs duties yield about one fifth of the total revenue, the receipts being mainly from tobacco, tea and spirits. The gross receipts from the Post Office (including the telegraphs) form about one seventh of the revenue, but this is really misleading, because three quarters of those receipts are paid out again for the expenses of the department. All but a very small fraction of the remaining receipts come through the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, and their sources of income are of a miscellaneous character. The largest item is the excise, mainly on beer and spirits, which yields more than a quarter of the total national revenue.[117:3] The next largest is the income tax, which varies very much from time to time, and has produced during the last score of years from one seventh to one quarter of the total revenue. Then there are the death duties, a progressive tax on property passing at death, which yield one tenth of the revenue. The ancient land-tax, and the inhabited-house duty produce comparatively small sums; and, finally, there are the stamp duties on all kinds of transactions, articles and licenses which yield all together about one twelfth of the revenue. Some of the license fees collected under the head of excise are so small as to appear rather vexatious than productive, such as one guinea for the display of armorial bearings not used upon a carriage, fifteen shillings for a license to have a manservant, or keep a carriage with less than four wheels, and fourpence a day for the privilege of occasionally selling tobacco.[118:1]
[Sidenote: Permanent and Annual Taxes.]
Neither the expenditure nor the proceeds of taxes being absolutely constant, it is necessary, in order to maintain a close balance between them, to adjust the sources of revenue to some extent from year to year, and this is done by means of a small number of variable charges. Most of the taxes are imposed by permanent statutes, changed only at long intervals, but the rates of assessment under the tea duty and the income tax are fixed each year in the annual Finance Act; and since 1894 certain additional duties on beer and spirits have also been laid for a year at a time.
[Sidenote: Accuracy of the Budget.]
It has been the aim of English statesmen to make the revenue and expenditure of each year balance one another as closely as possible, and their skill in doing so has been extraordinary. While the South African War was raging such a result was naturally impossible, but during the preceding twenty-five years the difference between receipts and expenditures (including payments on account of the debt) was never more than about four per cent, and in fifteen of those years it did not exceed one and a half per cent. The taxes are, indeed, of such a character that it is possible to forecast their proceeds with great accuracy. The Chancellor of the Exchequer intends to make his calculations so as to leave a margin of safety, and yet during the period under consideration the difference between the estimated and actual receipts was never more than about three and a half per cent.[119:1]
Accurate fiscal administration is very much promoted by the rule that any part of an appropriation unexpended at the end of the financial year in which it is voted shall lapse, and cannot afterwards be used unless it is granted afresh by Parliament.[119:2] The rule has been thought to lead to wastefulness by provoking improvident haste in spending the whole appropriation before March 31.[119:3] But such an evil is surely far smaller than that of allowing the appropriations to run on, with the result, well known in France, for example, that the annual accounts cannot be finally made up, and the extent of the deficit determined, until several years have passed.
Like all other excellent things devised by men, the English system of finance is not without its drawbacks. If it promotes careful administration, and rivets attention upon any increase in the budget, it also makes the revenue inelastic in emergencies. A great deal has been said in Parliament of late about broadening the basis of taxation, but that is a very difficult thing to do suddenly, without dislocating the commercial as well as the fiscal system; and while the existing taxes are elastic up to a certain point, an attempt to raise them too much would diminish rather than increase their productiveness.
[Sidenote: Method of Getting Money out of the Consolidated Fund.]
Just as there are two kinds of taxes, one permanent and the other annual, so there are two classes of expenditure, one regulated by standing laws, and the other by annual appropriations. All the ordinary expenses of the government require parliamentary sanction every year, both on the theory that the money collected from the nation ought not to be spent without the consent of its representatives, and also in order that Parliament may be able to oversee the administration and criticise it in every session. But there are certain matters that ought to be kept aloof from current politics, and ought not to be brought in question in the heat of party conflict. The principal charges that have been regarded in this light are the interest on the national debt, the Civil List or personal provision for the King, annuities for the royal family, certain pensions, and the salaries of the judges, of the Comptroller and Auditor General, of the Speaker, and of a few officers of lesser importance. These charges amount to nearly one quarter of the total expenditures; and they are called Consolidated Fund charges, because by statute they are paid directly out of the Consolidated Fund without the need of any further action by Parliament. The other expenditures are for what are known as the supply services, because the appropriations for them are voted by the House of Commons in Committee of Supply.
The administrative procedure for getting money out of the Consolidated Fund to pay the Consolidated Fund charges and the supply services is not precisely the same. In the case of the supply services a royal order for the amounts appropriated by Parliament is made under the King's sign manual, countersigned by two of the Commissioners of the Treasury. The Treasury then requires the Comptroller and Auditor General to grant credits at the Banks of England and Ireland for those amounts, and if satisfied that the authority from Parliament is complete, he makes an order on the banks granting the credits. From time to time the Treasury requests the banks to transfer to the various supply accounts, for disbursement, sums of money not exceeding the credits so granted.[121:1] The procedure in the case of Consolidated Fund charges differs from this only in the fact that a royal order is not needed, and the Comptroller and Auditor General, on the requisition of the Treasury, grants quarterly credits for the amounts prescribed by statute.[121:2] By this process a highly effective security is provided that no money shall be spent without the authority of Parliament. The Consolidated Fund is deposited in the banks of England and Ireland, which are liable if any of it is withdrawn without an order from the Comptroller and Auditor General, while that officer is given the same independence as the judges. Like them he is appointed during good behaviour, with a salary charged upon the Consolidated Fund. The security is not absolutely perfect, for there are some moneys, such as the appropriations in aid, that do not pass through the Consolidated Fund; and as no foresight can be unfailing, the government is given a limited power to meet unforeseen contingencies, and to cover expenses that have inevitably proved larger than was anticipated.[121:3] But all matters of this kind are fully reported to Parliament by the Comptroller and Auditor General.
[Sidenote: Audit of the Accounts.]
The Treasury lays before Parliament annually the Finance Accounts of the preceding year, while the Comptroller and Auditor General submits at a later date a separate report. Therein he examines the Consolidated Fund charges, and makes for the supply services more elaborate statements, called the Appropriation Accounts, in three volumes, relating to the Army, the Navy and the civil service. The accounts are rendered to him by the several departments, and after auditing them he transmits them to the House of Commons with his comments.[121:4]
The money granted by Parliament is divided into votes, of which there are in all about one hundred and forty.[122:1] In the estimates these votes are subdivided into subheads and items; but the votes would appear to be the only limitation expressly placed by Parliament upon expenditure; for the Annual Appropriation Act provides that the sums granted shall be deemed to be appropriated "for the services and purposes expressed in Schedule (B) annexed" thereto, and that schedule gives a list of the votes, but not of the subheads or items. Nevertheless, the Comptroller and Auditor General is enjoined by the Exchequer and Audit Departments Act of 1866 to ascertain whether the money expended has been applied to the purpose or purposes for which each grant was intended to provide,[122:2] and hence the reports that he submits note the excess or saving with the reasons therefor, under each subhead, and sometimes, as in the case of votes for the construction of new buildings, under each item. He adds, also, his own comments wherever it seems to him necessary to do so. All this is done, even where the saving under one subhead more than counterbalances the excess under another in the same vote. When that happens, however, no action by Parliament is required; but if the total amount of a vote has been overspent, the excess is entirely unauthorised, and must be covered by a deficiency appropriation, which Parliament grants upon the reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Committee on Accounts of the House of Commons. To the last rule there is one exception. In order to facilitate the administration of the Army and Navy, the Annual Appropriation Act declares that the Treasury may authorise expenditure, not provided for, to be defrayed temporarily out of any surplus effected upon other votes in each of those departments; and the Act goes on to recite and sanction the transfers of surplus so authorised by the Treasury in the last year for which the accounts are complete.[123:1] This brings us to another important question, that of the financial control of the Treasury over the other branches of the administration.
[Sidenote: Treasury Control over Other Departments.]
[Sidenote: Control over Estimates.]
There has been a great deal of discussion about Treasury control over the receipt and expenditure of public money. In the case of the receipts it is a simple matter, for the financial control over the Post Office has already been described, and the other great revenue departments are, as will shortly be explained, virtually subordinate to the Treasury. The question of control over expenditure is far more complicated. Committees of the House of Commons have, at different times, collected evidence on the subject,[123:2] but the statements made have often been vague, and tend to confuse the control of the Treasury over the estimates, with its control over expenditure after the appropriations have been voted by Parliament. The control over the estimates has been discussed in the preceding chapter. It is only necessary here to repeat that such a control is by no means absolute, because any important question of expenditure becomes a question of policy to be decided, in case of disagreement, by the Prime Minister or the cabinet; and to point out that the departments supported by their political chiefs are usually too strong for the Treasury to resist.[123:3]
[Sidenote: Control over Expenditure.]
It might be supposed that after the appropriations had been voted the departments would be free in expending them, subject only to their responsibility to Parliament; but this is not altogether true. In the first place a statute sometimes requires that the expenses of a department shall be sanctioned by the Treasury.[124:1] Then it is not infrequently provided that the salaries shall be fixed by the Treasury, or that alterations in the establishment shall require its consent. Moreover, the salaries of certain grades of clerks are regulated by Orders in Council,[124:2] which are changed only on the advice of the Treasury. Apart, however, from statutes and Orders in Council there is a general customary principle forbidding any increase in the civil establishment of a department,--that is, any increase in the number or salary of permanent officials,--without the approval of the Treasury; and this although the appropriations would not be exceeded.[124:3]
[Sidenote: Transfer of a Surplus.]
Over certain departments the control is even more extensive, for not only do the contracts made by the Post Office require its approval, but contracts entered into by the Board of Works are also the subject of discussion between the Treasury and the First Commissioner.[124:4] In the case of the Army and Navy the fact that the Treasury can authorise a transfer of the surplus under one vote to cover a deficiency under another gives it a certain authority; and, indeed, its sanction is to some extent sought even for transfers between subheads of the same vote. This last is, of course, a matter of custom rather than of law, and practice differs in the two services. The Admiralty, which always plays the part of the good boy, comes very frequently to the Treasury for permission to make transfers between subheads before it acts; while the Army, save in exceptional cases, comes only at the end of the year for a formal approval.[125:1] The exceptional cases are, however, numerous. They sometimes extend even to separate items, and are regulated by a code of rules made by the Treasury and the department.[125:2] Every excess, for example, of a certain size in an item for a new building, the payment of any excess to a contractor, the discharge of a loss, or the insertion of a new item, require the sanction of the Treasury; and in fact the Appropriation Accounts of the Army and Navy are followed by many pages of correspondence on matters of this kind between the Treasury and the department. In the case of the civil services, where the Treasury has no authority to sanction transfers between votes, the system is less elaborate and the correspondence is not printed in full. Still there are frequent references in the accounts to Treasury letters sanctioning expenditures under subheads or items, especially in relation to such matters as salaries, the purchase of land, large excesses over estimates for construction, the abandonment of claims, and unforeseen expenditures.[125:3]
[Sidenote: Effect of Treasury Control.]
The control by the Treasury is sometimes vexatious in small matters,[126:1] but it does not seriously hamper the administration, or impair the efficiency of the service;[126:2] and while it can hardly prevent an expenditure on which a department is seriously determined,[126:3] the very need of consultation can hardly fail to act as a restraint upon extravagance.[126:4]
In addition to its control over the application of the sums voted by Parliament, and its authority to permit the use of appropriations for purposes not contemplated in the estimates, the Treasury has a limited power to open the national purse in case of necessity when no grant has been made by Parliament. For this purpose it has three sources of supply at its disposal: the Treasury Chest Fund, limited to 1,000,000_l._, may be used to make temporary advances for carrying on the public service, to be repaid out of sums afterwards appropriated; the Civil Contingencies Fund, limited to 120,000_l._, is available on similar terms for unforeseen contingencies and deficiencies; and, finally, any incidental receipts, not granted by Parliament as appropriations in aid, may be used as such under the authority of a Treasury minute to be laid before the Houses.[126:5]
[Sidenote: The Organisation of the Treasury.]
In the remarks on the history of the Treasury Board, at the beginning of the last chapter, it was pointed out that the board no longer meets. The Treasury minutes are still drawn up in the name of "My Lords," but this is merely the survival of a form, and all the members of the board, except the Chancellor of the Exchequer, have ceased to take part in directing the financial administration. The three junior lords have at times some small departmental duties, but their real functions are to act as assistants to the Parliamentary or Patronage Secretary, who is the chief government whip in the House of Commons. All the four whips receive salaries from the state on the theory that it is their duty to keep a House, or in other words to insure the presence of a quorum, while the supplies are being voted. But in fact they are officers, not of the state, but of the party in power, and it is their business to see that whenever a vote is taken in which the ministry is interested, their partisans are present in greater force than those of the Opposition. The relation of the First Lord to the Treasury is anomalous. He is usually the Prime Minister, and as such is supposed to keep a general supervision upon all branches of the administration, and to act as a sort of umpire between the different ministers, and, therefore, between the Treasury and the other departments. But whether he is Prime Minister or not he has a real connection with the Treasury. The functions of that office cover a much wider field than its name would imply, including subjects of a most miscellaneous character; and while the finances are entirely under the charge of the Chancellor of the Exchequer,--who is, in fact, the Minister of Finance, with the Financial Secretary of the Treasury as his parliamentary under-secretary,--the First Lord may be said, speaking very roughly, to be at the head of the outlying departments which are not concerned with financial affairs.
[Sidenote: The Subordinate Departments.]
The Treasury has been described as a superintending and controlling office that has properly no administrative functions;[127:1] and this, in a sense, is true, for even in money matters its duty as an organised department is financial direction and control, not the actual collection and disbursement of the revenue. It prepares the budget, reviewing the estimates submitted to it, and devising the means of defraying them; it supervises the collection of the revenue, and keeps watch over the expenditure. In this work the political chiefs are assisted by a body of clerks, headed by the permanent under-secretary, whose office is generally regarded as the highest in the permanent civil service. The offices that have direct charge of the collection of revenue have separate organisations with distinct staffs of permanent officials; but, except for the Post Office, they have no political chiefs of their own, and are in fact subordinate branches of the Treasury. The four great offices of this kind are the Post Office, which has already been described; and the departments of Customs, of Inland Revenue, and of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues, each of which is managed by commissioners who are members of the permanent civil service, and do not change with changes of ministry.[128:1]
The Treasury bears a similar relation to the departments that deal with purely fiscal payments, the National Debt Office, the Public Works Loan Board, and the Paymaster General's Office, through which almost all disbursements are now made. For, although the Paymaster General is a political officer, he has ceased to have any real connection with his department, and it is administered under the direction of the Treasury.[129:1]
[Sidenote: The Outlying Departments.]
Besides the departments subordinate to the Treasury, there are a number of outlying departments more or less closely connected with it which have already been referred to as having nothing to do with financial affairs; and, indeed, one may say that in theory, at least, every branch of the public service--except the Ecclesiastical and Charity Commissions[129:2]--that does not have a political chief of its own, and is not connected with some other department, is under the supervision of the Treasury and represented in Parliament thereby. But while the commissioners, or other heads of such offices, are as a rule appointed on the recommendation of the First Lord, or of the Prime Minister, the degree of control exercised over them by the Treasury varies a great deal; and in some cases its responsibility, apart from regulating the amount of expenditure, is somewhat illusory. Several institutions in this position are intended to be entirely outside the range of party controversy; and the boards of trustees of the British Museum, the National Gallery, and the National Portrait Gallery habitually contain members of Parliament who would never think of resigning their posts by reason of a change of ministry. The principal outlying departments of the Treasury directly connected with national administration, are: the Civil Service Commission, which examines the candidates for the various branches of the civil service; the Parliamentary Counsel's office, which drafts all the bills introduced by the ministers; and the stationery office, which does all the government printing.
Throughout a great part of the nineteenth century the influence of the commercial classes was strong, the government was conducted on strict business principles, and the Treasury as the representative of those principles was the keystone of the administrative arch, or to change the metaphor, the axle on which the machinery of the state revolved. For a long time, indeed, there was a marked tendency to consider the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer as the most important in the cabinet after that of the Prime Minister, to regard the person who held it as heir presumptive to the premiership, and to make him leader in the House of Commons when his chief was a peer. But with the waning desire for economy, and the growth of other interests, the Treasury has to some extent lost its predominant position. A symptom of this may be seen in the fact that during the last dozen years of Lord Salisbury's administrations, the Commons were led, not by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but by a First Lord of the Treasury appointed for the purpose. The turning point came at the beginning of that period, when Lord Randolph Churchill in 1886 quarrelled with his colleagues over the estimates for the Army. The occurrence did not produce, but it did mark, a change in the tone of public opinion; and although the Treasury will no doubt maintain its control over the details of expenditure, one cannot feel certain that its head will regain the powerful influence upon general or financial policy exerted thirty years ago.
FOOTNOTES:
[115:1] An excellent description of the existing financial procedure may be found in Sir Courtney Ilbert's "Legislative Methods and Forms," 284-99.
[115:2] This did not apply to the hereditary revenues of the Crown until, with the exception of the revenues belonging to the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, they were surrendered by George III., in return for a fixed Civil List.
[116:1] 27 Geo. III., c. 13.
[116:2] The rule had not been absolutely without exceptions, for the Mercantile Marine Fund, derived from port charges on vessels, was used to defray part of the expenses of the Board of Trade without going through the Consolidated Fund. Cf. 2d Rep. Com. on Civil Estab., Com. Papers, 1888, XXVII., 1, Qs. 18211-26. In 1898 this process was restricted to the maintenance of lighthouses, buoys and beacons. It may be observed, also, that the Act of 1891 concerning "appropriations in aid" (54-55 Vic., c. 24, Sec. 2) declares that it merely gives statutory authority to an existing practice. Such appropriations are now regularly granted by Parliament in aid of the votes for the services in which they occur. The amount in aid of each vote is fixed, and listed in a separate column in the schedule to the Appropriation Act, only the excess above that amount being paid into the Consolidated Fund.
[116:3] Ilbert, "Legislative Methods and Forms," 294-95; Glen, "Law of Public Health," 1343, 1344.
[116:4] This innovation has been vigorously criticised as tending to confuse the national accounts. See a memorandum by Sir E. W. Hamilton, Com. Papers, 1902, VII., 15, App. 12.
[117:1] 29-30 Vic., c. 39.
[117:2] 54-55 Vic., c. 24.
[117:3] The sums paid to the Local Taxation Account not being included.
[118:1] These license fees go into the Local Taxation Account, not into the National Exchequer.
[119:1] It is noteworthy that from 1858 to 1895 the amount of money raised by taxation for national purposes was never less than 2_l._ 4_s._ 5_d._ and never more than 2_l._ 9_s._ 11_d._ per head of population. Of late years it has shown a steady tendency to increase. In 1899, the year before the war, it was 2_l._ 13_s._ 6_d._; and in 1902 it was 3_l._ 8_s._ 8_d._, the expenditure being 4_l._ 13_s._ 11_d._ Between 1857 and 1900 the national debt was reduced by gradual payments from 837,144,597_l._ to 628,978,783_l._ In 1902 it had increased in consequence of the South African War to 747,911,107_l._
[119:2] For the history of this rule see Todd, "Parl. Govt. in England," II., 44-46.
[119:3] Rep. of the Com. on War Office Organisation, Com. Papers, 1901, XL., 179, p. 6. But see 3d Rep. Com. Pub. Accounts, Com. Papers, 1901, V., 47, p. iv.
[121:1] 29-30 Vic., c. 39, Secs. 13, 15.
[121:2] Ibid., Sec. 13.
[121:3] For the provision made for such cases, see page 126, infra.
[121:4] The Finance Accounts give only the issues to the departments from the Exchequer, not the actual expenditures. These last are contained only in the Appropriation Accounts of the Auditor General. Except for certain departments, like the Navy, where Sir James Graham began the practice of submitting them as early as 1832, the actual expenditures were not submitted as a whole to Parliament until the Act of 1866. Memorandum by Lord Welby, Com. Papers, 1902, VII., 15, App. 13. Hatschek, Englisches Staatsrecht, I., 495-502, gives an interesting description of the influence of French methods upon the English system of keeping public accounts, including the introduction of double-entry bookkeeping.
[122:1] Fifteen or sixteen relate to the Navy; as many more to the Army; something over one hundred to the various branches of the civil service, grouped into seven classes; and five to the revenue departments.
[122:2] 29-30 Vic., c. 39, Sec. 27, and see Todd, II., 53-67.
[123:1] For the history of this matter, see Todd, II., 31-42.
[123:2] See, for a history of the question, Todd, II., 27-43, 543-45, and for recent collections of evidence the 2d and 3d Reps. of Com. on Civil Serv. Exp., Com. Papers, 1873, VII., 391, 415; 2d Rep. of Com. on Civil Estabs., Com. Papers, 1888, XXVII., 1; Rep. of Com. on War Office Organisation, Com. Papers, 1901, XL., 179; Reps. of Com. on Nat. Expenditure, Com. Papers, 1902, VII., 15; 1903, VII., 483.
[123:3] Rep. of Com. on Civil Estab., Com. Papers, 1888, XXVII., 1, Evid. of Sir R. E. Welby, Perm. Sec. of Treas., Qs. 10704-9, 10713, 10721-26, 10766.
[124:1] This was true, for example, of the Act creating the Board of Agriculture (52-53, Vic., c. 30, Sec. 5).
[124:2] For clerks of the second division by Order in Council, March 21, 1890, Secs. 3-6, Com. Papers, 1890, LVIII., 167. Positions of higher grade are regulated "by the heads of the departments to which they belong, subject to approval by the Commissioners of the Treasury;" Order in Council, Feb. 12, 1876, Sec. 3, Com. Papers, 1888, XXVII., 1, p. 571; but no vacancies in these positions can be filled or new appointments made until the Treasury is satisfied that the number of officers in the department with salaries higher than those of the second division will not be excessive; Order in Council, Nov. 29, 1898, Sec. 4, following Order of Feb. 12, 1876, Sec. 4. The evidence before the Committees of 1873 and 1888 was, however, conclusive on the impotence of the Treasury in forcing reductions, whatever its actual power might be in preventing an increase of establishment.
[124:3] Cf. 3d Rep. Com. on Civil Serv. Exp., Com. Papers, 1873, VII., 415, Qs. 474, 4902-03; 2d Rep., Com. on Civil Estabs., Com. Papers, 1888, XXVII., 1, pp. xi, xii, and Qs. 10957, 14090-91, 14918-20, 18088; Rep. Com. on Nat. Exp., Com. Papers, 1902, VII., 15, Q. 1429.
[124:4] Rep. Com. on Nat. Exp., Com. Papers, 1902, VII., 15, Q. 1425.
[125:1] Rep. of Com. on War Office Org., Com. Papers, 1901, XL., 179, Qs. 3038-41. An excess on the subheads for food and forage, for example, would be met as a matter of course by a saving on fuel or rents. Ibid., p. 425.
[125:2] Memoranda on Treasury control by F. T. Marzials, Accountant General of the Army, Ibid., pp. 424-26; and by Robert Chalmers, Rep. Com. on Nat. Exp., Com. Papers, 1902, VII., 15, App. 3.
[125:3] The control of the Treasury over expenditure connected with the courts is less than it is in the case of other branches of the civil service; but the salaries of the clerks are fixed as a rule by an understanding between the judges and the Treasury. 2d Rep. Com. on Civil Serv. Exp., Com. Papers, 1873, VII., 391, pp. vi-viii.
[126:1] Rep. Com. on Civil Estabs., Com. Papers, 1888, XXVII., 1, Qs. 18076, 18088, 19150, 19165, 19171-75, 19178-82. As Lord Farrer, formerly permanent under-secretary of the Board of Trade, expressed it, "We can cheat them in big things; they may bully us in little things." Ibid., Q. 20,021.
[126:2] Rep. of Com. on War Office Org., Com. Papers, 1901, XL., 179, p. 8; Rep. of Com. on War in South Africa, Com. Papers, 1904, XL., 1, p. 143.
[126:3] Cf. Sir R. E. Welby, Rep. Com. on Civil Estabs., Com. Papers, 1888, XXVII., 1, Qs. 20382-83.
[126:4] The real sanction of the control of the Treasury lies in the support it is almost certain to receive from the Committee on Accounts of the House of Commons. In 1901, for example, in a case where the War Office, without exceeding its total vote, but before seeking the approval of the Treasury, paid to a contractor an addition of 1000_l._ upon a contract for which no item appeared in the votes of the year, the Committee of Accounts remarked, "Your Committee deprecate in the strongest manner any diversion of Parliamentary funds without Treasury sanction." 3d Rep. Com. of Pub. Accounts, Com. Papers, 1901, V., 13, pp. iv-v.
[126:5] Public Accounts and Charges Act, 54-55 Vic., c. 24, Sec. 2 (3).
[127:1] Todd, II., 545.
[128:1] The organisation of all these offices, and their relation to the Treasury, has been described at great length in Gneist, Das Englische Verwaltungsrecht, 3 Auf., Buch III., Kap. 4.
The office of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues collects the revenue from the Crown lands, except those belonging to the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, the revenues from these last never having been surrendered to the nation, and being still enjoyed by the King and the Prince of Wales respectively. It collects also some other bits of hereditary revenue; but the total amount of its receipts is small, and the commissioners are only two in number. The Customs Establishment, which collects all duties on imports and exports, is managed by a chairman, a deputy chairman and one other commissioner; and, finally, the Inland Revenue Office, which collects the excises, and all the other national taxes, is a huge concern, and has at its head a chairman, deputy chairman and two other commissioners. This department was formed by uniting the boards of Excise, of Taxes and of Stamps; and it has been suggested that the departments of Customs and of Inland Revenue should be combined, but that has been thought inadvisable. (Cf. 3d Rep. Com. on Civil Estabs., Com. Papers, 1889, XXI., 1.)
[129:1] The Chancellor of the Exchequer is also ex officio Master of the Mint.
[129:2] The Ecclesiastical Commission manages the episcopal estates and other church property, using the revenues to pay the income of the bishops, and to promote the work of the Established Church in poor and populous places. It is not connected with any department of the government, and in fact is rather an institution belonging to the Church than a branch of the public service. The commissioners include all the bishops, several cabinet ministers, and a number of other laymen, of whom a couple sit in Parliament.
The Charity Commission, a body possessing semi-judicial powers in the regulation of charitable trusts, occupies a position more like that of an administrative department. Of the four commissioners one is unpaid, and represents the body in Parliament.
These two commissions are, therefore, in the anomalous position of having been deliberately provided with spokesmen in Parliament, who are not responsible ministers of the Crown. The British Museum, the National Gallery, and the National Portrait Gallery are in this respect in the same situation.
VI. MISCELLANEOUS OFFICES
[Sidenote: The Government and the Administration of Law.]
There is in England no single officer corresponding to the minister of justice, or attorney general, in other countries, some of the duties performed by them elsewhere being divided in England among a number of authorities, while others are not performed at all. The principal officers who fill this important gap are the Lord Chancellor, the Law Officers of the Crown, and the Director of Public Prosecutions.
[Sidenote: The Lord Chancellor.]
The greatest political dignitary in the British government, the one endowed by law with the most exalted and most diverse functions, the only great officer of state who has retained his ancient rights, the man who defies the doctrine of the separation of powers more than any other personage on earth, is the Lord Chancellor. Apart from his duties as a judge, as the presiding officer of the House of Lords, and as a member of the cabinet, all of which have been or will be described in other places, he has many powers of a miscellaneous character connected for the most part with the administration of the law.[131:1] He is, for example, at the head of the Crown Office in Chancery. This, as the place where the Great Seal is affixed, is legally and formally, although not politically, important. The Commissioners in Lunacy, also, report to him. The regulations relating to public prosecutions require his approval, and the control of the Land Registry Office devolves mainly upon him. Almost all the judicial patronage, moreover, is in his hands, for he is consulted about the highest posts, the selection of the puisne judges of the High Court is made on his recommendation, and he appoints and removes the county court judges and justices of the peace.[132:1]
Although the Lord Chancellor is a party leader, and is at once an active member of the legislative, the executive and the judicial branches of the government, the evils that might be supposed to result from such a combination of powers in the same hands do not in fact appear. He might, indeed, when sitting in the Judicial Committee, or in the House of Lords, be called upon to construe a statute which he had a share in enacting, but this does no great harm. The really serious matter is a confusion of the executive and judicial powers, the sitting in judgment by a political officer upon a question on which he has acted, or which may affect his future action, in an administrative capacity. But since the Chancellor never holds court alone at the present day, such a question could come before him only in the Court of Appeal, the House of Lords, or the Judicial Committee, where he sits with other judges, who have no connection with the ministry. Moreover, the Chancellor, although the legal member of the cabinet, is not its sole, nor indeed its official, legal adviser; and the government would never think of acting upon any doubtful point of law without obtaining the opinion of the Law Officers of the Crown. These gentlemen hold no judicial position; and curiously enough, while a part of the ministry, are never in the cabinet.
[Sidenote: The Law Officers of the Crown.]
The principal Law Officers of the Crown are the Attorney General, and the Solicitor General, who is his colleague and substitute.[133:1] Their opinion on questions of law may be asked by the government, and by any department, although many of the departments are provided with permanent legal counsel of their own whose advice is sufficient for all ordinary matters. The Attorney and Solicitor General conduct personally a few prosecutions of unusual importance, file criminal informations, and appear in cases where the rights of the Crown are involved, or where their intervention is necessary to protect charitable endowments. They defend in Parliament the legality of the government's action, and explain incomprehensible legal points in its measures. While they are no longer permitted to engage in private practice, their salaries and fees are so large[133:2] that these posts are among the great political prizes for lawyers who have made their mark in the warfare of the House of Commons,[133:3] prizes the greater because, in addition to the direct emoluments, they confer a presumptive claim to the very highest places on the bench that may become vacant while the party is in power.
[Sidenote: Public Prosecutions in England.]
It has been observed that the Law Officers of the Crown conduct in person only a few criminal cases of unusual importance. In other countries the prosecution of offenders is the affair of the state, and is conducted in all the courts great and small by public officers. This is true in Scotland also, where the matter is in the hands of a body of officers, known as procurators fiscal, with the Lord Advocate at their head; and even in Ireland a similar system has developed informally by the employment of crown counsel acting under the control of the Attorney General for that kingdom. But in England criminal prosecutions in the vast majority of cases are still, in theory at least, conducted by private persons.[134:1] Any one, whether a person injured or not, may prosecute the offender.[134:2] As a rule the examining magistrate, after committing the accused for trial, binds some one over to prosecute--either the complainant, the person injured, a policeman, the magistrate's own clerk, or a solicitor employed for the purpose. The case is usually conducted by the solicitor to the local magistrate, but the person bound over may employ his own counsel to take charge of it. The costs of the trial are, however, at the present day, allowed by the court, and paid out of the national treasury, under regulations made by the Home Secretary.
[Sidenote: The Director of Public Prosecutions.]
It has always been the habit for the Attorney General to conduct great state trials, cases, for example, of high treason; and it gradually came to be the practice for the legal officers attached to the different departments to prosecute in certain other cases, such as offences against the coinage. But about the middle of the last century there arose a demand for a general system of state prosecutions under the charge of a ministry of justice.[134:3] This movement culminated, or evaporated, in the Acts of 1879 and 1884,[134:4] whereby the Solicitor to the Treasury, who is the permanent legal adviser of that department, and is also charged with a number of other duties of a legal nature, has been made the Director of Public Prosecutions. The regulations governing his actions in this capacity are made by the Attorney General with the approval of the Lord Chancellor and the Home Secretary. They provide in substance[134:5] that he shall prosecute in all capital cases, in offences against the coinage, cases of fraudulent bankruptcy, cases where he is directed to do so by the Attorney General or the Home Secretary, and cases where such action appears to him necessary in the public interest. He may employ counsel to conduct both the cases that he brings, and any other criminal proceedings before the high courts where no counsel has been retained; and he may also assist a private prosecutor by authorising special expenses for evidence or counsel. It is his duty to give advice to the clerks of justices of the peace, and to police officers; and, finally, he is in all these matters subject to the control of the Attorney General.
The Director of Public Prosecutions makes to Parliament an annual report of his doings, enlivened by narratives of the most interesting cases. But in spite of his activity the vast bulk of the prosecutions are conducted as of old under private direction; for out of the many thousands of criminal cases tried every year, only from three hundred and fifty to five hundred are in his charge, and the number shows no marked tendency to increase.
Enough has been said to justify the statement that no single officer exercises any considerable part of the functions of a minister of justice. Such duties are not only divided among a number of persons, but scattered in small fragments among different departments. An illustration of this is furnished by the Return of Public Prosecutions, which is submitted to Parliament by the Home Secretary, and bears his signature on the first page; while the return itself is signed by the Director of Public Prosecutions, and dated from the Treasury. Gneist, in his work on the English administrative system, portrays the Lord Chancellor as the minister of justice for civil, and the Home Secretary for criminal, matters,[135:1] but such a generalisation is overstrained and misleading, and it is safer to assert that when the English bring confusion into any administrative department they usually succeed in confounding utterly all general principles, and making all general statements inaccurate.
[Sidenote: The Church.]
If there is no minister of justice in England, still less is there a minister of religion such as is commonly found in countries that possess established churches. The government of the Church of England will be treated in another chapter, and it is only necessary here to point out that although a strictly national institution, often deeply involved in political controversy, the Church is in many ways singularly free from the control of the executive government. It is, no doubt, regulated by laws that cannot be altered without the authority of Parliament. Its organisation, its ritual, and its articles of faith can be changed only by statute. But in administrative affairs its dependence upon the state is very much less. The King is, indeed, its supreme head; he virtually appoints the bishops and other high dignitaries, and his assent is necessary to the exercise of their limited powers by the Convocations of the two provinces.[136:1] Beyond this, however, the Crown does not interfere in the government of the Church, or the discipline of its members, which are left under the charge of its own officers. Proceedings against a clergyman for doctrinal errors or violation of the ritual can be taken only with the consent of the bishop, the government having no part in it; and although the Crown appoints a portion of the members of the Ecclesiastical Commission, which manages much of the Church property, the bishops form a large majority of the body, and the commission itself is not subordinate to any minister of state. The only control, therefore, exercised by the cabinet upon the administration of the Church is to be found in the restraint upon Convocation, and in the fact that the responsibility for the selection of high ecclesiastics rests with the Prime Minister, who, curiously enough, is not necessarily, and in the last two cabinets actually has not been, a member of the Church of England. The Prime Minister also nominates the incumbents of a number of large livings, while the Lord Chancellor presents to several hundred others that happen to lie in the gift of the Crown.[137:1] Except for these things no minister is responsible for the conduct of the Church or of its members.
The connection between Church and State in England is thus a peculiar one. In some ways the relation is very close, but it is rather legislative and judicial than administrative. The Church is minutely regulated by state laws, the judge of its principal tribunal must be confirmed by the Crown, and appeals lie to a secular court;[137:2] but it lives upon its own revenues without any grant from Parliament, and although its highest officers are appointed by the state, and sit in the upper House of Parliament, yet once appointed, they, like all the rest of the clergy, are practically free from the supervision and control of the executive government.
[Sidenote: Scotland.]
These are all the public offices in the English government that it is necessary to mention. A description of the peculiar institutions of Scotland and Ireland is not within the scope of this book, except so far as they affect the central government. Until twenty years ago the connection of the government with matters relating exclusively to Scotland was maintained chiefly through the Home Office, but the Lord Advocate was virtually the parliamentary under-secretary for Scotch business, and took entire charge of it, unless his chief was a Scotchman, and cared to assert himself. In 1885 a Secretary for Scotland was created, one might perhaps say revived, and to him were intrusted for that kingdom duties corresponding to those discharged in England by the Home Office, the Local Government Board and the Board of Education. In fact he may be said to be the general representative for Scotch purposes of all the various civil departments of state; and in particular he is at the head of the Scotch Local Government Board and the Scotch Education Department. He is not one of the secretaries of state and receives a much smaller salary than they do, but he is a member of the ministry, usually, though not invariably, with a seat in the cabinet, and he is always a member of one or the other House of Parliament.
The contrast between the relations of England to Scotland and to Ireland is striking. By the Act of Union of 1707 England and Scotland became one state, with a common Parliament and a common executive government, but political differences have not been obliterated. The Act of Union preserved the ecclesiastical and legal institutions of Scotland; and at the present day she has her own established church, which is Presbyterian; her own system of education, which is quite different from the English; and her own system of law, based upon the Civil not the Common Law, and adorned by a nomenclature so disfigured as to pass for her own. With such differences as these it has been not uncommon for Parliament, even where the same legislative principles were to be applied on both sides of the Tweed, to enact them in separate statutes, each adapted to the institutions of the country in which it is to operate. Socially, also, the fusion has not been complete. Every Scotchman is an Englishman, but an Englishman is not a Scotchman. The Scotch regard themselves as an elect race who are entitled to all the rights of Englishmen and to their own privileges besides. All English offices ought to be open to them, but Scotch posts are the natural heritage of the Scots. They take part freely in the debates on legislation affecting England alone, but in their opinion acts confined to Scotland ought to be, and in fact they are in the main, governed by the opinion of the Scotch members. Such a condition is due partly to the fact that Scotch institutions and ideas are sufficiently distinct from those of England to require separate treatment, and not different enough to excite repugnance. It is due in part also to the fact that the Scotch are both a homogeneous and a practical people, so that all classes can unite in common opinions about religion, politics and social justice. The result is that Scotland is governed by Scotchmen in accordance with Scotch ideas, while Ireland has been governed by Englishmen, and until recently, in accordance with English ideas.
[Sidenote: Ireland.]
The Act of Union with Ireland in 1801 abolished the Irish Parliament, and vested the whole legislative power for the United Kingdom in the joint Parliament at Westminster; but the executive government for Ireland was left at Dublin. It is conducted in the name of the Lord Lieutenant as the representative of the Crown.[139:1] The work is nominally done by him in his Privy Council, subject to such instructions as may be sent to him by the English government through the Home Secretary. In practice, however, matters have worked out very differently, for the administration of Ireland has been far too important to rest under the wing of the Home Office. The Lord Lieutenant is always a great nobleman, and he is expected to keep up a vice-regal state, sometimes at an expense exceeding his enormous salary of 20,000_l._ a year; but he is not ordinarily the real head of the Irish Office. Since 1868 he has been a member of the cabinet less than eleven years, whereas his Chief Secretary has been in the cabinet during the whole of that period, except from 1882 to 1885, and for three other intervals that were very brief. Moreover, the Chief Secretary is always a member of the House of Commons, where he must defend the administration of Ireland against the attacks of the Irish members, and often of the English Opposition also. Thus it has come about that the Chief Secretary habitually plays the part of minister for Ireland, and is practically the ruler of the country. He is at the head of the Irish Local Government Board, Congested Districts Board and Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, and in general he is held responsible for all administration of a political character, except in the case of the revenue and the Irish Board of Works, which are under the direct control of the Treasury.[140:1] He possesses, indeed, not only the authority vested in a number of ministers in England, but also powers not conferred upon them at all. During the greater part of the time since the Union in 1801, Ireland has been subject to a long series of coercion acts, temporary in duration, but renewed at short intervals under different names.[140:2] The provisions have varied, but the object has always been to arm the Irish government with extraordinary and arbitrary powers for the suppression of disorder. Moreover, the police of Ireland, instead of being, as in England and Scotland, under the control of the local authorities, is under the direct orders of Dublin Castle. This force, the Royal Irish Constabulary, contains over twelve thousand men, a number twice as large in proportion to the population as that of the police in Great Britain.
[Sidenote: Causes of Misgovernment.]
The administration of Ireland has been the conspicuous failure of the English government. Its history for a century has been a long tale of expedients, palliations and concessions, which have never availed to secure either permanent good order or the contentment and loyalty of the inhabitants. Each step has been taken, not of foresight, but under pressure. The repressive measures have been avowedly temporary, devised to meet an emergency, not part of a permanent policy; while concessions, which if granted earlier might have had more effect, have only come when attention to the matter has been compelled by signs of widespread and grievous discontent. Catholic emancipation was virtually won by the Clare election; disestablishment of the Anglican Church was hastened by the Fenian movement; the Home Rule Bill followed the growth of the Irish parliamentary party, culminating in Parnell's hold upon the balance of power in the House of Commons; and the land laws have resulted from agrarian agitation. It has been said that the same thing is true of English reforms, that Parliament seldom gives redress until a wrong has been brought forcibly to its notice, and this is no doubt a natural if not an inevitable result of the parliamentary form of government. It is a part of the general tendency to treat symptoms rather than causes, to which we shall have occasion to refer again. But while Parliament, now that all classes are represented there, is certain to be made aware of an English grievance long before it has become intolerable, it is by no means so keenly sensitive to an Irish one. The fact is that Irish problems lie beyond the experience of the English member and his constituents. Being unable to distinguish readily a real grievance from an unreasonable demand, he does not heed it until he is obliged to; and the cabinet, with its hands already full, is not inclined to burn its fingers with matters in which the House is not deeply or generally interested. All this is merely one of many illustrations of the truth that parliamentary government can work well only so far as the nation itself is fairly homogeneous in its political aspirations.
[Sidenote: Difficulty of the Problem.]
But if the parliamentary system has proved an instrument ill-fitted for ruling Ireland, it is also true that the problem has been one of extreme difficulty. English statesmen might have repeated what Lord Durham said of Canada in his famous report: "I expected to find a contest between a government and a people. I found two nations warring in the bosom of a single state."[141:1] For centuries Ireland has remained a conquered land without a thorough fusion of the victors and the vanquished; the native stock has been subjected without being assimilated, and the difference of race has been intensified by a difference of creed. The Celt still looks upon his Saxon landlord, and upon the Orangemen in Ulster, as aliens, and upon the constabulary as the garrison of a foreign power. This has not only made the management of Ireland an exceedingly hard thing for an English government to carry on, but it also stands in the way of any other solution of the problem. To allow the Irish to govern themselves means putting the under dog on top and the upper dog underneath. The difficulty has been further increased by a deep-seated divergence in the conceptions of law and justice. Unlike Scotland, Ireland has the English system of jurisprudence. Her courts are modelled on those at Westminster, and administer the English Common Law, while most of the statutes affecting civil rights are the same. But, as men have often pointed out, there are in times of agitation two laws, and two governments, in the country; on one side the English law, administered by the English government through its officials, and on the other a hostile system resting upon very different principles, and applied by an extra-legal political organisation, but in fact more vigorously enforced than the first, and often more in harmony with the popular sense of justice.
[Sidenote: The Land Question.]
The divergence between the legal conceptions of the English and Irish is most marked in the case of land. According to the ideas of Englishmen, and of Irish landlords, the land belongs to the owner, and apart from special statutory provisions, the tenant has only a contractual right of possession, during the continuance, and subject to the terms, of his contract. But the tenants feel that, subject to somewhat indefinite duties towards the landlord in the way of rent, they have rights in the land, of which their forbears were robbed, and which they have reclaimed from the waste.[142:1] Such a difference is fundamental, and cannot be adjusted to the satisfaction of both parties. People speak of the hunger of the Irish for land, as if that were the cause of the difficulty, but the Irishman has no general land-hunger. When he has emigrated to America, instead of going, like the Swede, to the great open prairies where any industrious man can easily own a farm, he has settled, like the landless Hebrew, in the great cities. What the Irish want is Irish land, and to this they think they have a right.
Various remedies for solving the relation of landlord and tenant have been tried. First came the Act of 1860, which based that relation strictly upon contract, though restraining to some extent its enforcement by summary eviction. Ten years later the Act of 1870 proceeded upon quite a different principle, for it extended the Ulster tenant-right over the whole country, giving to the tenant a salable property in his holding. It granted, even to a tenant from year to year, a claim against his landlord for disturbance; and it conferred a right to compensation for past as well as future improvements. But these provisions did not set the questions at rest. Later followed in 1881 the judicial reduction of rents,--the fixing by public authority of fair rents as they were called. But here trouble arose on both sides. If the landlord's views were right, and the land belonged absolutely to him, it was clearly unjust to deprive him of its market value in rent, and he was entitled to feel that the government was giving away his property to smooth its own political difficulties.[143:1] On the other hand, the fair rents did not end the matter for the tenant. The English, deeply impressed with the sanctity of contract, meant the new rents to be paid as rents are paid in England; but the Irishman, living in what might almost be called a world of status, and brought up under a system of rack rent, had far less respect for contract, and regarded rents as things to be paid approximately rather than exactly. The result was more friction, and a further judicial reduction in 1887. Finally, after a series of land-purchase acts designed to promote peasant proprietorship, but too limited in scope to affect general social conditions, had been tried, a number of landlords and some of the Irish leaders held a conference in 1902, and virtually agreed that as both parties claimed rights in the land, the government should pay the landlord for it and transfer it to the tenant, an arrangement the more easy because by that time the landlords' interest had fallen greatly in value. The government undertook to carry out the plan by the Land Purchase Act of 1903, making not indeed an immediate gift, but a loan of its credit, and charging the tenant a low rent which is expected eventually to repay the advance, and leave him the owner of the land.[144:1] Since that time the purchase and distribution of estates, under the act, has been going on, but the process naturally takes time, and as might be expected, it has been far more rapid in the prosperous than in the poor parts of the country. One may hope that by this means the land question will in time be solved, but he must have a blind faith who believes that with it the Irish question will disappear.
A crude outline of the land legislation has been given simply to show the enormous difficulty of governing a country where the legal conceptions of rulers and ruled are irreconcilable, and yet that is precisely the kind of obstacle that arises at every step in the Irish problem.
FOOTNOTES:
[131:1] He has some powers that have no relation to the law, such as the appointment to a large number of Crown livings; and in this connection it may be noted that the offices of Lord Chancellor of Great Britain and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland are the only ones that cannot be held by Roman Catholics. The subject is not free from doubt. See Anson, II., 158, and the debate in 1891, Hans., 3 Ser. CCCXLIX., 1733 et seq. On that occasion the House of Commons refused to remove any disability that might exist.
[132:1] The list of justices of the peace for each county is in practice drawn up by the Lord Lieutenant, except in Lancashire, where it is made by the Chancellor of the Duchy, and that list is almost always adopted by the Lord Chancellor. No little controversy has, however, arisen of late over this subject.
[133:1] There are also a Lord Advocate and a Solicitor General for Scotland, and an Attorney General and a Solicitor General for Ireland.
[133:2] The salary of the Attorney General is 7000_l._; that of the Solicitor General 6000_l._; and the fees in each case amount to about 1000_l._ more.
[133:3] The Solicitor General for Scotland, and the Attorney and Solicitor General for Ireland, although political officers who change with the ministry, are not always in Parliament.
[134:1] See the excellent chapter on prosecution in Maitland's "Justice and Police."
[134:2] The prosecution is, however, in the name of the King, and the Attorney General can put a stop to it by nolle prosequi if he considers it vexatious.
[134:3] In an article in the Fortnightly Review for March, 1873, entitled, "The Organisation of a Legal Department of Government," Mr. Bryce showed the need, and sketched the outline, for such a ministry.
[134:4] 42-43 Vic., c. 22; 47-48 Vic., c. 58.
[134:5] Com. Papers, 1886, LIII., 321.
[135:1] Englische Verwaltungsrecht, II., 1022-26.
[136:1] Without action by Parliament these extend only to the making of canons binding on the clergy.
[137:1] All Crown livings with less than 20_l._ of yearly revenue are in the gift of the Lord Chancellor, Hans., 3 Ser. CLXIX., 1919, and so are many livings of considerable size. Hans., 3 Ser. CLXX., 131. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster nominates to Crown livings belonging to the Duchy, and the Home Secretary to those in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. Hans., 3 Ser. CCCXLIX., 1745-46.
[137:2] The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
[139:1] The provisions of the Test Act still apply to this office, so that the Lord Lieutenant must necessarily be of a faith different from that of the large majority of the people he is appointed to rule.
[140:1] Public non-technical education is directed by the Commissioners of Irish National Education, and the Board of Intermediate Education. These boards are not political, but the members, who must be partly Protestant and partly Roman Catholic, are appointed by the Lord Lieutenant, and the Chief Secretary has a certain measure of control over them.
[140:2] The last of them, the Crimes Act of 1887, is a permanent statute, but its provisions come into force only on a proclamation by the Lord Lieutenant, which is revocable at any time.
[141:1] Com. Papers, 1839, XVII., 1, p. 8.
[142:1] The fact that improvements have been generally made by the landlord in England, and by the tenant in Ireland, has much to do with this feeling.
[143:1] The case for the landlords has been very strongly stated by Mr. Lecky in his "Democracy and Liberty," I., 167-212.
[144:1] 3 Edw. VII., c. 37. The Act of 1903 was hailed with joy, but the Irish members soon complained of its administration, and on July 20, 1905, they moved successfully to reduce by 100_l._ the appropriation for the Land Commission as an expression of dissatisfaction. Hans., Ser. CXLIX., 1409-86.
VII. THE PERMANENT CIVIL SERVICE
[Sidenote: Sharp Distinction between Political and Non-Political Officials.]
The history of the permanent civil service would be one of the most instructive chapters in the long story of English constitutional development, but unfortunately it has never been written. The nation has been saved from a bureaucracy, such as prevails over the greater part of Europe, on the one hand, and from the American spoils system on the other, by the sharp distinction between political and non-political officials. The former are trained in Parliament, not in administrative routine. They direct the general policy of the government, or at least they have the power to direct it, are entirely responsible for it, and go out of office with the cabinet; while the non-political officials remain at their posts without regard to party changes, are thoroughly familiar with the whole field of administration, and carry out in detail the policy adopted by the ministry of the day. The distinction has arisen gradually with the growth of the parliamentary system.
[Sidenote: Exclusion of Non-Political Officials from Parliament.]
A dread of the power of the King to control Parliament, by a distribution of offices and pensions among its members, gave rise to a provision, in the Act of Settlement of 1700, that after the accession of the House of Hanover no person holding an office or place of profit under the Crown should be capable of sitting in the House of Commons.[145:1] But before this act took effect the disadvantages of excluding entirely from the House the great officers of state was perceived. The provision was, therefore, modified so as to shut out absolutely only the holders of new offices created after Oct. 25, 1705, and of certain specified posts already existing. Members of the House of Commons appointed to other offices were to lose their seats, but be capable of reelection.[146:1] As there were many old offices the number of placemen in Parliament continued large, and no sharp line was drawn at once between the great officers of state and their subordinates. But two processes went on which in time rendered the distinction effective. When a new office of a political nature was created it became the habit to make a special statutory provision permitting the holder to sit in the House of Commons; and, on the other hand, place bills were passed from time to time excluding from Parliament whole classes of officials of a lower grade. These acts apply, for example, to all the clerks in many of the government departments,[146:2] and together with the provision excluding the holders of all new offices created since 1705, they cover a large part of all the officials under the rank of minister.[146:3] The distinction between the offices which are and those which are not compatible with a seat in the House of Commons, is made complete by the regulations of the service itself. These cannot render void an election to the House which is not invalid by statute. They cannot make the holding of office a disqualification for Parliament, but they can make a seat in Parliament a reason for the loss of office. They can and do provide that if any civil servant intends to be a candidate he must resign his office when he first issues his address to the electors.[146:4]
If it were not for three or four ministers, such as the Irish Law Officers, who are expected to get themselves elected to Parliament if they can, but whose tenure of their positions does not depend upon their doing so, one might say that the public service is divided into political officers who must sit in Parliament, and non-political officers who must not.
[Sidenote: Permanent Officials take no Active Part in Politics.]
[Sidenote: But are not Disfranchised]
In a popular government, based upon party, the exclusion of the subordinate civil servants from the legislature is an essential condition both of their abstaining from active politics and of their permanence of tenure. But it does not by itself necessarily involve either of those results. This is clear from the example of the United States, where office-holders of all grades are excluded from Congress by the provisions of the Constitution, but by no means refrain from party warfare. The keeping out of politics, however, and the permanence of tenure must, in the long run, go together; for it is manifest that office can be held regardless of party changes only in case the holders do not take an active part in bringing those changes to pass; and if, on the other hand, they are doomed to lose their places on a defeat at the polls of the party in power, they will certainly do their utmost to avert such a defeat. In England the abstinence and the permanence have been attained, and it is noteworthy that they are both secured by the force of opinion hardening into tradition, and not by the sanction of law.[147:1] At one time, indeed, large classes of public servants were deprived of the parliamentary franchise. An Act of 1782, for example,[147:2] withdrew the right to vote from officers employed in collecting excises, customs and other duties, and from postmasters; but these disqualifications were removed in 1868.[147:3] The police, also, were, by a series of acts, deprived of the franchise in the constituencies where they held office. Except as regards Ireland, however, these statutes were, in their turn, repealed in 1887;[148:1] and the only disqualifications now attaching to public officials relate to such positions as those of returning officers at elections.[148:2]
England enfranchised her officials at the very time when she was enlarging the suffrage and the number of office-holders. In some other countries the political danger of a large class of government employees has been keenly felt. This has been particularly true of the new democracies in Australia with their armies of public servants on the state railroads; and, indeed, the pressure constantly brought to bear in the legislature in favour of this class caused Victoria in 1903 to readjust her election laws.[148:3] The employees of the government have not been disfranchised altogether, but they have been deprived of the right to vote in the regular constituencies, and have been allotted one representative in the legislative council and two in the assembly to be elected entirely by their own class. They have, therefore, their spokesmen in the legislature, but they are no longer able to influence the other members as of old.
[Sidenote: Effect of Giving them Votes.]
In England these dangers are by no means unknown; but they have not taken the form of work done by civil servants for purely party ends. From that evil the country has been almost wholly free; for although all office-holders, not directly connected with the conduct of elections, have now a legal right to vote, and are quite at liberty to do so, it is a well-settled principle that those who are non-political--that is, all who are not ministers--must not be active in party politics. They must not, for example, work in a party organisation, serve on the committee of a candidate for Parliament, canvass in his interest, or make speeches on general politics. All this is so thoroughly recognised that one rarely hears complaints of irregular conduct, or even of actions of a doubtful propriety. In this connection it is worthy of note that the revenue officers were disfranchised in 1782 at their own request. At that time the government controlled through them seventy seats in the House of Commons, and Lord North sent them notice that it would go hard with them if they did not support his party. His opponents sent them a similar warning, and the result was that in self-protection they sent up a strong petition asking for exclusion from the franchise.[149:1] The bill to reenfranchise them was carried in 1868 against the wishes of the government of the day.[149:2] But on that occasion, and in 1874, when the acts imposing penalties upon their taking an active part at elections were repealed, it was perfectly well understood that they would not be permitted to go into party politics, and that the government was entitled to make regulations on the subject.[149:3] Those regulations are still in force,[149:4] and it is only by maintaining them that the civil servants can continue to enjoy both permanence of tenure and the right to vote.
[Sidenote: Attempts to Improve their Position.]
[Sidenote: The Dockyards.]
The danger arising from the votes of public servants has been felt in a different way. While the government employees have kept clear of party politics, they have in some cases used their electoral rights to bring pressure to bear upon members of Parliament in favour of increasing their own pay and improving the conditions of their work. This has been peculiarly true of the dockyards. The members of the half dozen boroughs where the state maintains great shops for the construction and repair of warships are always urging the interests of the workmen; and they do it with so little regard to the national finances, or to the question whether they are elected as supporters or opponents of the ministry, that they have become a byword in Parliament under the name of "dockyard-members."[149:5]
[Sidenote: Other Officials.]
Unfortunately the difficulty has not been confined to the dockyards. At the time when the revenue and post-office employees were enfranchised, Disraeli dreaded their use of the franchise for the purpose of raising their salaries;[150:1] and Gladstone said he was not afraid of government influence, or of an influence in favour of one political party or another, but of class influence, "which in his opinion was the great reproach of the Reformed Parliament."[150:2] These fears have not proved groundless. As early as 1875 it was recognised that the salaries paid by the government were above the market rate;[150:3] and ever since the officials in the revenue and postal departments obtained the right to vote, pressure on behalf of their interests has been brought to bear by them upon members of Parliament, and by the latter upon the government. Complaints of this have been constant.[150:4] It has been a source of criticism that members should have attended meetings of civil servants held to demand an increase of pay,[150:5] and that they should receive whips urging their attendance at the House when questions of this sort are to come up.[150:6] Owing to the concentration of government employees in London the pressure upon the metropolitan members is particularly severe.
[Sidenote: Recent Efforts of Postal Officials for More Pay.]
For nearly a score of years a continuous effort has been made in Parliament to secure the appointment of a committee to inquire into the pay of postal and telegraph employees, and into grievances which are said to exist in the service. The government has in part yielded, in part resisted; but in trying to prevent pressure upon members of Parliament, it took at one time a step that furnished a fresh cause of complaint. The story of this movement illustrates forcibly the dangers of the situation. In 1892 the Postmaster General, Sir James Fergusson, called the attention of the House of Commons to a circular addressed by an association of telegraph clerks to candidates at the general election, asking whether if elected they would vote for a committee to inquire into the working of the service.[151:1] He then sent to the clerks an official warning that it is improper for government employees to try to extract promises from candidates with reference to their pay or duties.[151:2] Nevertheless two of the clerks, Clery and Cheesman, who had been chairman and secretary of the meeting which had voted to issue the circular, signed a statement that the notice by the Postmaster General "does not affect the policy of the Association." Immediately after the election these two men were dismissed.[151:3] That became a grievance in itself, and year after year attempts were made in Parliament to have them reinstated. Shortly after they had been dismissed Mr. Gladstone came into office; and he made a vague statement to the effect that the government intended to place no restraint upon the civil servants beyond the rule forbidding them to take an active part in political contests.[151:4] But it would seem that Fergusson's warning circular was not cancelled,[151:5] and certainly Clery and Cheesman were not taken back.
[Sidenote: Demand for a Parliamentary Committee.]
[Sidenote: Pressure Brought to Bear.]
The motions for a parliamentary committee to inquire into the conditions of the service were kept up; and in 1895 the government gave way so far as to appoint a commission, composed mainly of officials drawn from various departments, which reported in 1897 recommending some increases of pay both in the postal and in the telegraph service. These were at once adopted, and in fact further concessions were made shortly afterward, but still the agitation did not cease. The employees would be satisfied with nothing but a parliamentary committee, no doubt for the same reason that led the government to refuse it, namely the pressure to which members of Parliament were subject,[152:1] and the additional force that pressure would have if brought to a focus upon the persons selected to serve on a committee.[152:2] Year after year grievances on one side, and on the other charges of almost intolerable pressure were repeated. In 1898 the interest centred in a motion to the effect that public servants in the Post Office were deprived of their political rights. A long debate took place in which the whole history of the subject was reviewed,[152:3] and Hanbury, the Financial Secretary of the Treasury, exclaimed, "We have done away with personal and individual bribery, but there is a still worse form of bribery, and that is when a man asks a candidate to buy his vote out of the public purse."[152:4] In 1903 Mr. Austen Chamberlain stated that members had come to him, not from one side of the House alone, to seek from him, in his position as Postmaster General, protection in the discharge of their public duties against the pressure sought to be put upon them by the employees of the Post Office.[152:5] He consented, however, to appoint a commission of business men to advise him about the wages of employees; but again there was a protest against any committee of inquiry not composed of members of Parliament.[152:6] The report of the commission was followed in 1904 by a debate of the usual character.[152:7] Finally in 1906 the new Liberal ministry yielded, and a select committee was appointed.[152:8]
There are now employed in the postal and telegraph services about two hundred thousand persons, who have votes enough, when organised, to be an important factor at elections in many constituencies, and to turn the scale in some of them. If their influence is exerted only to raise wages in a service recruited by competitive examination,[153:1] the evil is not of the first magnitude; but it is not difficult to perceive that such a power might be used in directions highly detrimental to the state. There is no reason to expect the pressure to grow less, and mutterings are sometimes heard about the necessity of taking the franchise away from government employees. That would be the only effective remedy, and the time may not be far distant when it will have to be considered seriously.
As we shall have occasion to see hereafter, the pressure in behalf of individuals is comparatively small, and it is characteristic of modern English parliamentary government that political influence should be used to promote class rather than personal interests.
[Sidenote: Permanence of Tenure of Officials.]
Permanence of tenure in the English civil service, like the abstinence from partly politics, is secured by custom, not by law, for the officials with whom we are concerned here are appointed during pleasure, and can legally be dismissed at any time for any cause. Now, although the removal, for partisan motives, of officials who would be classed to-day as permanent and non-political, has not been altogether unknown in England, yet it was never a general practice. The reason that the spoils system--that is, the wholesale discharge of officials on a change of party--obtained no foothold is not to be found in any peculiarly exalted sense, inherent in the British character, that every public office is a sacred trust. That conception is of comparatively modern origin; for in the eighteenth century the abuse of patronage, and even the grosser forms of political corruption, were shamelessly practised. It is rather to be sought in quite a different sentiment, the sentiment that a man has a vested interest in the office that he holds. This feeling is constantly giving rise, both in public and private affairs, to a demand for the compensation of persons displaced or injured by a change of methods which seems strange to a foreigner.[154:1] The claim by publicans for compensation when their licenses are not renewed, a claim recognised by the Act of 1904, is based upon the same sentiment and causes the traveller to inquire how any one can, as the result of a license ostensibly temporary, have a vested right to help other people to get drunk.
The habit of discharging officials on party grounds never having become established, it was not unnatural that with the growth of the parliamentary system the line between the changing political chiefs and their permanent subordinates should be more and more clearly marked, and this process has gone on until at the present day the dismissal of the latter on political grounds is practically unheard of, either in national or local administration.
[Sidenote: Former Party Patronage.]
While the discharge of public servants on political grounds never became a settled custom in England, such vacancies as occurred in the natural course of events were freely used in former times to confer favours on political and personal friends, or to reward party services. Such a practice was regarded as obvious, and it continued unchecked until after the first Reform Act. It was particularly bad in Ireland, where Peel, who was Chief Secretary from 1812 to 1818, took great credit to himself for breaking up the habit of treating the Irish patronage as the perquisite of the leading families, and for dispensing it on public grounds, that is, using it to secure political support for the party in power.[155:1] That the patronage was used for the same purpose in England at that period may be seen in the reports and evidence laid before Parliament in 1855, 1860 and 1873 after a different system had begun to take its place.[155:2] It was no doubt an effective means of procuring political service, and Lord John Russell speaks of the Tories in 1819 as apparently invincible from long possession of government patronage, spreading over the Church, the Law, the Army, the Navy, and the colonies.[155:3] The support most needed by the ministry was that of members of the House of Commons, and they received in return places for constituents who had been, or might become, influential at elections. Thus it came about that the greater part of the appointments, especially to local offices, were made through the members of Parliament.[155:4] The system hampered the efficiency of administration, and harassed the ministers. Writing in 1829, the Duke of Wellington used words that might have been applied to other countries at a later time,--"The whole system of the patronage of the government," he wrote, "is in my opinion erroneous. Certain members claim a right to dispose of everything that falls vacant within the town or county which they represent; and this is so much a matter of right that they now claim the patronage whether they support upon every occasion, or now and then, or when not required, or entirely oppose; and in fact the only question about local patronage is whether it shall be given to the disposal of one gentleman or another."[156:1]
[Sidenote: The Introduction of Examinations.]
At last a revulsion of feeling took place. Between 1834 and 1841 pass examinations, which discarded utterly incompetent candidates, were established in some of the departments, and in several cases even competitive examinations were introduced. But the great impulse toward a new method of appointment dates from 1853, and it came from two different quarters. In that year the charter of the East India Company was renewed, and Parliament was not disposed to continue the privilege hitherto enjoyed by the directors of making appointments to Haileybury--the preparatory school for the civil service in India. A commission, with Macaulay at its head, reported in the following year that appointments to the Indian service ought to be made on the basis of an open competitive examination of a scholastic character. The plan was at once adopted, Haileybury was abandoned, and with some changes in detail, the system of examination recommended by the commission has been in operation ever since.[156:2]
[Sidenote: Open Competition.]
In 1853, also, Sir Stafford Northcote and Sir Charles Trevelyan, who were selected by Mr. Gladstone to inquire into the condition of the civil service in England, reported in favour of a system of appointment by open competitive examination. The new method met with far more opposition at home than in India, and made its way much more slowly. Foreseeing obstacles in the House of Commons, Lord Palmerston's government determined to proceed, not by legislation, but by executive order, resorting to Parliament only for the necessary appropriation. An Order in Council was accordingly made on May 21, 1855,[156:3] creating a body of three Civil Service Commissioners,[156:4] who were to examine all candidates for the junior positions in the various departments of the civil service. The reform was not at the outset very radical, for political nomination was not abolished, and the examinations--not necessarily competitive--were to be arranged in accordance with the desires of the heads of the different departments. The change could progress, therefore, only so fast as the ministers in charge of the various state offices might be convinced of its value; but from this time the new method gained favour steadily with high administrative officials, with Parliament and with the public. In 1859[157:1] it was enacted that (except for appointments made directly by the Crown, and posts where professional or other peculiar qualifications were required) no person thereafter appointed should, for the purpose of superannuation pensions, be deemed to have served in the permanent civil service of the state unless admitted with a certificate from the Civil Service Commissioners. In 1860 a parliamentary committee reported that limited competition ought to supersede mere pass examinations, and that open competition, which does away entirely with the privilege of nomination, was better than either.[157:2] The committee, however, did not think the time ripe for taking this last step, and the general principle of open competition was not established until June 4, 1870. An Order in Council of that date,[157:3] which is still the basis of the system of examinations, provides that (except for offices to which the holder is appointed directly by the Crown, situations filled by promotion, and positions requiring professional or other peculiar qualifications, where the examinations may be wholly or partly dispensed with) no person shall be employed in any department of the civil service until he has been tested by the Civil Service Commissioners, and reported by them qualified to be admitted on probation.[157:4] It provides further that the appointments named in Schedule A, annexed to the Order, must be made by open competitive examination; and this list has been extended from time to time until it covers the greater part of the positions where the work does not require peculiar qualifications, or is not of a confidential nature, or of a distinctly inferior or manual character like that of attendants, messengers, workmen, etc.[158:1]
[Sidenote: A Test of Capacity rather than Fitness.]
Since the general introduction of open competition, by the Order in Council of 1870, two tendencies have been at work which are not unconnected. The first is towards simplification, by grouping positions that have similar duties into large classes, with a single competition for each class, and thus diminishing the number of examinations for separate positions.[158:2] The second is the tendency so to examine the candidates as to test their general ability and attainments, and hence their capacity to become useful in the positions assigned to them, rather than the technical knowledge they possess.[159:1] This distinction marks an important difference between the system of civil service examinations as it exists in the United States, and the form which the system has assumed in England. For in the United States the object is almost entirely to discover the immediate fitness of the candidates for the work they are expected to do; in England the object in most cases is to measure what their ability to do the work will be after they have learned it. The difference arises partly from the fact that in America the examinations were superimposed upon a custom of rotation in office and spoils, while in England permanence of tenure was already the rule; and partly from the fact that the system is applied in America mainly to positions requiring routine or clerical work, whereas in England it affects also positions involving, directly or prospectively, a much greater amount of discretion and responsibility. Now, it is clear that if men are to be selected young for a lifelong career, especially if that career involves responsible administrative work, any acquaintance with the details of the duties to be performed, and any present fitness for the position, are of far less consequence than a thorough education, keen intelligence and capacity for development. Proceeding upon this assumption, Macaulay's commission on the Indian Civil Service laid down two principles: first, that young men admitted to that service ought to have the best general education England could give; and, second, that ambitious men should not be led to spend time in special study which would be useless if they were not successful in the competition. The commission urged, therefore, that the examinations should be closely fitted to the studies pursued in the English universities. This plan was adopted, and although at one time the age of admission, and with it the standard, was lowered, they were afterwards restored; and the same principle is now also applied to the higher grades in the home service. For the lower positions in that service, where the work is of a clerical nature, and hence less discretion and responsibility are involved, it was formerly the habit to make the examinations more of a test of immediate preparation for the duties of the office; but this, as we shall see, has recently been replaced by a system based upon Macaulay's ideas, though applied, of course, to an inferior scale of education.
[Sidenote: The Different Grades in the Civil Service.]
The permanent officials of a typical department comprise a permanent under-secretary at the head, and one or more assistant under-secretaries and chiefs of branches. These offices are treated as not subject to examination under the Order of 1870, either because they are filled by promotion, or on the ground that the positions require peculiar qualifications.[160:1] As a matter of fact such posts are by no means always filled by promotion, and persons are sometimes selected for them who are outside of the service altogether. Next in rank come the principal clerks; but they are recruited entirely by promotion from the first-class clerks, who are, therefore, the highest grade of officials entering the service by competitive examination. Below them are the men now properly called clerks of the second division, although the title of this class of civil servants has been changed so often that one finds strange variations of nomenclature in the different departments. Below these again come the assistant clerks (abstractor class), and finally the boy clerks.
[Sidenote: Their Origin.]
The sharp separation of the clerks into classes, with distinct examinations for each class, did not arise at once. The first examinations under the original order of 1855 were required only for a "junior situation in any department," and they were not the same in the different departments. They were elementary affairs,[161:1] evidently designed to sift out incompetence rather than to test superiority; for it must be observed that in only a very small proportion of these examinations was there even a limited competition.[161:2] When, however, the Order of 1870 extended the admission examinations to all positions in the service, not specially excepted or filled by promotion, and set up the principle of open competition, it became necessary to distinguish between the higher posts, involving discretionary powers and requiring a liberal education, and the lower ones where the duties are of a clerical kind; to distinguish, in other words, between the administrator and the clerk. Such a distinction was made by the commissioners in their earliest regulations under the Order of 1870,[161:3] the two classes being recruited separately by examinations of different character, the first of which was adapted to university graduates, and the second to young men from commercial life. At the outset the line was drawn somewhat at haphazard without sufficient attention to the real nature of the work to be done, and it was readjusted several times before it assumed its present form.[161:4]
[Sidenote: Exceptional Positions.]
Aside from the regular grades of clerks recruited by open competition, there are various kinds of inspectors, clerks and other special officials, appointed after open competition, limited competition, pass examination or no examination at all. In fact the departments are full of anomalies, some of them the necessary result of peculiar conditions of service, and others due apparently to no very rational cause. The reader will, no doubt, be sufficiently wearied by a description of the more common methods of examination, without going into the eccentricities of the system. It may be convenient to consider first the open competitions, and then the appointments that are made in other ways.
[Sidenote: The First-class Clerkships.]
The highest posts in the permanent civil service to which admission is obtained by competitive examination are known as the first-class clerkships. In 1895 the examinations for these positions and for the Indian Civil Service were consolidated, and in the following year those for the Eastern Cadets[162:1] were added; so that a single annual competition is now the gateway to all three careers, the successful candidates being allowed, in the order of their rank at the examination, to choose the service they will enter. In spite of the smaller pay the first men on the list have usually selected the home service, because the life is more agreeable; and so far as the vacancies make it possible they are assigned to the particular department they prefer.
[Sidenote: The Entrance Examinations.]
Although these positions are called clerkships, the work is not of a clerical, but of an administrative, and in the upper grades of a highly responsible, character. The aim of the commissioners is, therefore, to recruit young men of thorough general education for an important and lifelong administrative career. With this object the candidates are required to be between twenty-two and twenty-four years of age, and the examination, which has no direct connection with their subsequent duties, is closely fitted to the courses of study in the universities. As a matter of fact the papers in mathematics and natural science are based upon the requirements for honour degrees at Cambridge, the papers in classical and other subjects upon those at Oxford; and thus it happens that by far the larger part of the successful candidates come from one or other of these two great universities.[163:1] The range of subjects is naturally large, and a candidate is allowed to offer as many as he pleases, but by an ingenious system of marking a thorough knowledge of a few subjects is made to yield a higher aggregate of marks than a superficial acquaintance with a larger number.[163:2] The examination papers are set, and the books are read, by well-known scholars, instructors at the universities and others, who are selected for the purpose. That the papers are severe any one may convince himself by looking at them. Moreover the number of candidates, which is two or three times as large as the vacancies in all three services together, insures a rigorous competition; and the result is that the candidates who win the appointments are men of education and intellectual power. They belong to the type that forms the kernel of the professions; and many of them enter the civil service simply because they have not the means to enable them to wait long enough to achieve success in a professional career. They form an excellent corps of administrators, although the time has not come to express an opinion on the question whether they will prove the best material from which to draw the permanent under-secretaries and the other staff officers at the head of the different services. As yet few of them have attained positions of this grade, but it must be remembered that they have only recently begun to reach an age when they could be expected to do so.
[Sidenote: Their Social Effect.]
When the government was considering the introduction of competitive examinations, in 1854, fears were expressed that such a system would result in driving the aristocracy out of the civil service, and replacing it by a lower social class.[164:1] Mr. Gladstone himself did not share that belief. On the contrary, he thought the plan would give to the highly educated class a stronger hold than ever upon the higher positions in the service.[164:2] In this he proved a better prophet than his critics. By far the greater part of the successful competitors for the Class I clerkships now come, as we have seen, from Oxford and Cambridge; and the men educated at those universities are still drawn chiefly from the upper classes, from the aristocracy, the gentry, the sons of clergymen, of lawyers, of doctors, and of rich merchants who have made, or who hope to make, their way into the higher strata of society. Men of more humble extraction go, as a rule, to the provincial colleges. The Civil Service Commissioners have given in some of their annual reports the occupations of the fathers of the successful candidates at the chief open competitions; and while in the case of the joint examination for the Class I clerkships and the Indian Civil Service the list includes no peers, and does include some tradesmen, yet on the whole it consists of persons belonging to the upper and the upper middle class. Thus it has come about that competitive examinations, instead of having a levelling tendency, by throwing the service open to a crowd of quick-witted youths without breeding, has helped to strengthen the hold of the upper classes upon the government, by reserving most of the important posts for men trained in the old aristocratic seats of learning. In this connection it may be observed that the highest positions in the civil service are often held by men of noble blood, and it has sometimes happened that the permanent under-secretary has been a man of higher social position than his political chief. Sir Robert Herbert and Sir Courtenay Boyle, for example, who were recently the permanent heads of the Colonial Office and the Board of Trade, were scions of ancient families in England and Ireland; and the latter had at one time as his political chief Mr. Mundella, who had begun life as a printer's devil.[165:1]
[Sidenote: The Second Division Clerkships.]
Ranking below the Class I clerkships, there is a large body of persons whose work is mainly clerical. These are known as the second division clerks, and they are recruited by open competition. The standard of education required by the examination is naturally much less high than in the case of the first-class clerks, and the candidates are consequently younger, the competition being now limited to youths between seventeen and twenty years of age.[165:2]
[Sidenote: Nature of Examinations.]
As the work done by the second division is of the same general character 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.