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Above all, it is to be hoped that, having conceded the independence of
Egypt, we shall not slip back into governing the country by martial law
with the aid of one party among the Egyptians. That would be merely an
evasion of the difficulty and a postponement of troubles. There are a
good many difficulties yet to be overcome, and the progress of events
will need careful watching by Liberals in and out of the House of
Commons, but if at length we steer a straight course and bring political
good sense to the details of the problem, there is no reason why we
should not satisfy the Egyptians and put Anglo-Egyptian relations on a
good and enduring basis. In dealing with Egypt as with all Eastern
countries, it should constantly be borne in mind that manners,
character, and personality are a chief part of good politics. To a very
large extent the estrangement has been caused by a failure to understand
and respect the feelings of the Egyptian people, and here, as in India,
it is important to understand that the demand of the Eastern man is not
only for self-government, but also for a new status which will enable
him to maintain his self-respect in his dealings with the West.

THE MACHINERY OF GOVERNMENT

BY RAMSAY MUIR

Professor of Modern History in the University of Manchester, 1913 to
1921.

Mr. Ramsay Muir said:--One of the most marked, and one of the most
ominous, features of the political situation to-day is that there is an
almost universal decline of belief in and respect for our system of
government. This undermining of the confidence that a healthy community
ought to feel in its institutions is a perturbing fact which it is the
plain duty of all good Liberals to consider seriously. We need not be
deterred by the old gibe that Liberalism has always cared more about
political machinery than about social reorganisation. The gibe was never
true. But, in any case, no projects of social reorganisation have much
chance of success unless the political machinery by means of which they
have to be carried into effect is working efficiently. Moreover, since
most of the projects of social reform which are being urged upon our
attention involve an enlargement of the activities of the State, it is
obvious that we shall be running the risk of a breakdown unless we make
sure that the machinery of the State is capable of meeting the demands
which are made upon it. We must be satisfied that our engine has
sufficient power before we require it to draw a double load. In truth,
one reason why the engine of government is not working well is that it
has been required to do a great deal more work than it was designed for.
The time has come to consider carefully the character and capacity of
our machinery of government in view of the increased demands which are
certain to be made upon it in the future.

Our national political system may be divided into two parts. On the one
hand, there is the working machine, which goes on, year in, year out,
whether Parliament is sitting or not, and which would still go on quite
well for a time if Parliament never met again. We call it the
Government, and we habitually and rightly hold it responsible for every
aspect of national policy and action, for legislation and finance as
well as for foreign policy and internal administration. On the other
hand, there is what Burke used to call "the control on behalf of the
nation," mainly exercised through Parliament, whose chief function is to
criticise and control the action of Government, and to make the
responsibility of Government to the nation a real and a felt
responsibility. The discontents of to-day apply to both parts of the
system, and I propose to deal with them in turn, first inquiring what is
wrong with the working machine of government and how it can be amended,
and then turning to consider how far the control on behalf of the nation
is working badly, and how it can be made more efficient.

In what I have called the "working machine" of government there are two
distinct elements. First, there is the large, permanent, professional
staff, the Civil Service; secondly, there is the policy-directing body,
the Cabinet. Both of these are the objects of a great deal of
contemporary criticism. On the one hand, we are told that we are
suffering from "bureaucracy," which means that the permanent officials
have too much independent and uncontrolled, or imperfectly controlled,
authority. On the other hand, we are told that we are suffering from
Cabinet dictatorship, or, alternatively, that the Cabinet system is
breaking down and being replaced by the autocracy of the Prime Minister.
There is a good deal of _prima facie_ justification for all these
complaints.

THE GROWTH OF THE CIVIL SERVICE

First, as to bureaucracy. It is manifest that there has been an immense
increase in the number, the functions, and the power of public
officials. This is not merely due to the war. It has been going on for a
long time--ever since, in fact, we began the deliberate process of
national reconstruction in the years following 1832. In itself this
increase has not been a bad thing; on the contrary, it has been the only
possible means of carrying into effect the great series of reforms which
marked the nineteenth century. And may I here underline the fact that we
Liberals, in particular, have no right to criticise the process, since
we have been mainly responsible for it, at any rate in all its early
stages. When our predecessors set up the first Factory Inspectors in
1833, and so rendered possible the creation of a whole code of factory
laws; when they created the first rudimentary Education Office in 1839,
and so set to work the men who have really moulded our national system
of education; when they set up a bureaucratic Poor Law Board in 1841,
which shaped our Poor Law Policy, and a Public Health Board in 1848,
which gradually worked out our system of Public Health--when they did
these things, they were beginning a process which has been carried
further with every decade. If you like, they were laying the foundations
of bureaucracy; but they were also creating the only machinery by which
vast, beneficial and desperately needed measures of social reform could
be carried into effect.

And there is yet another thing for which Liberalism must assume the
responsibility. When Gladstone instituted the Civil Service Commission
in 1853, and the system of appointment by competitive examination in
1870, he freed the Civil Service from the reputation for corruption and
inefficiency which had clung to it; and he ensured that it should
attract, as it has ever since done, much of the best intellect of the
nation. But this very fact inevitably increased the influence of the
Civil Service, and encouraged the expansion of its functions. If you put
a body of very able men in charge of a department of public service, it
is certain that they will magnify their office, take a disproportionate
view of its claims, and incessantly strive to increase its functions and
its staff. This is not only natural, it is healthy--so long as the
process is subjected to efficient criticism and control.

But the plain fact is that the control is inadequate. The vast machine
of government has outgrown the power of the controlling mechanism.

We trust for the control of the immense bureaucratic machine, almost
entirely to the presence, at the head of each department, of a political
minister directly responsible to Parliament. We hold the minister
responsible for everything that happens in his office, and we regard
this ministerial responsibility as one of the keystones of our system.
But when we reflect that the minister is distracted by a multitude of
other calls upon his time, and that he has to deal with officials who
are generally his equals in ability, and always his superiors in special
knowledge; when we realise how impossible it is that a tithe of the
multifarious business of a great department should come before him, and
that the business which does come before him comes with the
recommendations for action of men who know ten times more about it than
he does, it must be obvious that the responsibility of the minister must
be quite unreal, in regard to the normal working of the office. One
thing alone he can do, and it is an important thing, quite big enough to
occupy his attention. He can make sure that the broad policy of the
office, and its big new departures, are in accord with the ideas of the
majority in Parliament, and are co-ordinated, through the Cabinet, with
the policy of the other departments. That, indeed, is the true function
of a minister; and if he tries to make his responsibility real beyond
that, he may easily neglect his main work. Beyond this consideration of
broad policy, I do not hesitate to say that the theory of ministerial
responsibility is not a check upon the growth of bureaucracy, but is
rather the cover under which bureaucracy has grown up. For the position
of the minister enables him, and almost compels him, to use his
influence in Parliament for the purpose of diverting or minimising
parliamentary criticism.

A CHECK UPON BUREAUCRACY

How can this growth of inadequately controlled official power be
checked? Is it not apparent that this can only be done if a clear
distinction is drawn between the sphere of broad policy, in which the
minister both can be and ought to be responsible, and the sphere of
ordinary administrative work for which the minister cannot be genuinely
responsible? If that distinction is accepted, it ought not to be
impossible for Parliament without undermining ministerial or cabinet
responsibility, to devise a means of making its control over the
ordinary working of the departments effective, through a system of
committees or in other ways.

The current complaints of bureaucracy, however, are not directed mainly
against the ineffectiveness of the machinery of control, but against the
way in which public work is conducted by government officials--the
formalism and red-tape by which it is hampered, the absence of
elasticity and enterprise; and the methods of government departments are
often compared, to their disadvantage, with those of business firms. But
the comparison disregards a vital fact. The primary function of a
government department is not creative or productive, but regulative. It
has to see that laws are exactly carried out, and that public funds are
used for the precise purposes for which they were voted; and for this
kind of work a good deal of red-tape is necessary. Moreover, it is
essential that those who are charged with such functions should be above
all suspicion of being influenced by fear or favour or the desire to
make profit; and for this purpose fixed salaries and security of tenure
are essential.

In short, the fundamental principles upon which government departments
are organised are right for the regulative functions which they
primarily exist to perform. But they are altogether wrong for creative
and productive work, which demands the utmost elasticity, adaptability,
and freedom for experiment. And it is just because the ordinary
machinery of government has been used on a large scale for this kind of
work that the outcry against bureaucracy has recently been so vehement.
It is not possible to imagine a worse method of conducting a great
productive enterprise than to put it under the control of an evanescent
minister selected on political grounds, and supported by a body of men
whose work is carried on in accordance with the traditions of the Civil
Service.

If we are to avoid a breakdown of our whole system, we must abstain from
placing productive enterprises under the control of the ordinary
machinery of government--Parliament, responsible political ministers,
and civil service staffs. But it does not follow that no productive
concern ought ever to be brought under public ownership and withdrawn
from the sphere of private enterprise. As we shall later note, such
concerns can, if it be necessary, be organised in a way which would
avoid these dangers.

THE CABINET

We turn next to the other element in the working machine of government,
the Cabinet, or policy-directing body, which is the very pivot of our
whole system. Two main functions fall to the Cabinet. In the first
place, it has to ensure an effective co-ordination between the various
departments of government; in the second place, it is responsible for
the initiation and guidance of national policy in every sphere, subject
to the watchful but friendly control of Parliament.

Long experience has shown that there are several conditions which must
be fulfilled if a Cabinet is to perform these functions satisfactorily.
In the first place, its members must, among them, be able to speak for
every department of government; failing this, the function of
co-ordination cannot be effectively performed. This principle was
discarded in the later stages of the war, when a small War Cabinet was
instituted, from which most of the ministers were excluded. The result
was confusion and overlapping, and the attempt to remedy these evils by
the creation of a staff of _liaison_ officers under the control of the
Prime Minister had very imperfect success, and in some respects only
added to the confusion. In the second place, the Cabinet must be
coherent and homogeneous, and its members must share the same ideals of
national policy. National business cannot be efficiently transacted if
the members of the Cabinet are under the necessity of constantly arguing
about, and making compromises upon, first principles. That is the
justification for drawing the members of a Cabinet from the leaders of a
single party, who think alike and understand one another's minds.
Whenever this condition has been absent, confusion, vacillation and
contradiction have always marked the conduct of public affairs, and
disastrous results have followed.

In the third place, the procedure of the Cabinet must be intimate,
informal, elastic, and confidential; every member must be able to feel
that he has played his part in all the main decisions of policy, whether
they directly concern his department or not, and that he is personally
responsible for these decisions. Constitutional usage has always
prescribed that it is the duty of a Cabinet Minister to resign if he
differs from his colleagues on any vital matter, whether relating to his
department or not, and this usage is, in truth, the main safeguard for
the preservation of genuine conjoint responsibility, and the main
barrier against irresponsible action by a Prime Minister or a clique.
When the practice of resignation in the sense of giving up office is
replaced by the other kind of resignation--shrugging one's shoulders and
letting things slide--the main virtue of Cabinet government has been
lost. In the fourth place, in order that every minister may fully share
in every important discussion and decision, it is essential that the
Cabinet should be small. Sir Robert Peel, in whose ministry of 1841-6
the system probably reached perfection, laid it down that nine was the
maximum number for efficiency, because not more than about nine men can
sit round a table in full view of one another, all taking a real share
in every discussion. When the membership of a Cabinet largely exceeds
this figure, it is inevitable that the sense of joint and several
responsibility for every decision should be greatly weakened.

MODERN CHANGES IN THE CABINET

I do not think any one will deny that the Cabinet has in a large degree
lost these four features which we have laid down as requisite for full
efficiency. The process has been going on for a long time, but during
the last six years it has been accelerated so greatly that the Cabinet
of to-day is almost unrecognisably different from what it was fifty
years ago. To begin with, it has grown enormously in size, owing to the
increase in the number of departments of government. This growth has
markedly diminished the sense of responsibility for national policy as a
whole felt by the individual members, and the wholesome practice of
resignation has gone out of fashion. It has led to frequent failures in
the co-ordination of the various departments, which are often seen
working at cross purposes. It has brought about a new formality in the
proceedings of the Cabinet, in the establishment of a Cabinet
Secretariat.

The lack of an efficient joint Cabinet control has encouraged a very
marked and unhealthy increase in the personal authority of the Prime
Minister and of the clique of more intimate colleagues by whom he is
surrounded; and this is strengthened by the working of the new
Secretariat. All these unhealthy features have been intensified by the
combination of the two strongest parties in Parliament to form a
coalition; for this has deprived the Cabinet of homogeneity and made it
the scene not of the definition of a policy guided by clear principles,
but rather the scene of incessant argument, bargaining, and compromise
on fundamentals. Finally, the responsibility of the Cabinet to
Parliament has been gravely weakened; it acts as the master of
Parliament, not as its agent, and its efficiency suffers from the fact
that its members are able to take their responsibility to Parliament
very lightly.

All these defects in the working of the Cabinet system have been much
more marked since the war than at any earlier time. But the two chief
among them--lessened coherence due to unwieldiness of size, and
diminished responsibility to Parliament--were already becoming apparent
during the generation before the war. On the question of responsibility
to Parliament we shall have something to say later. But it is worth
while to ask whether there is any means whereby the old coherence,
intimacy and community of responsibility can be restored. If it cannot
be restored, the Cabinet system, as we have known it, is doomed. I do
not think that it can be restored unless the size of the Cabinet can be
greatly reduced, without excluding from its deliberations a responsible
spokesman for each department of government.

But this will only be possible if a considerable regrouping of the great
departments can be effected. I do not think that such a regrouping is
impracticable. Indeed, it is for many reasons desirable. If it were
carried out, a Cabinet might consist of the following members, who would
among them be in contact with the whole range of governmental activity.
There would be the Prime Minister; there would be the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, responsible for national finance; there would be the Minister
for Foreign Affairs; there would be a Minister for Imperial Affairs,
speaking for a sub-Cabinet which would include Secretaries for the
Dominions, for India, and for the Crown Colonies and Protectorates;
there would be a Minister of Defence, with a sub-Cabinet including
Ministers of the Navy, the Army, and the Air Force; there would be a
Minister for Justice and Police, performing most of the functions both
of the Home Office and of the Lord Chancellor, who would cease to be a
political officer and be able to devote himself to his judicial
functions; there would be a Minister of Agriculture, Industry, and
Commerce, with a sub-Cabinet representing the Board of Trade, the Board
of Agriculture, the Ministry of Mines, the Ministry of Labour, and
perhaps other departments.

Ministers of Public Health and of Education would complete the list of
active administrative chiefs; but one or two additional members, not
burdened with the charge of a great department might be added, such as
the Lord President of the Council, and one of these might very properly
be a standing representative upon the Council of the League of Nations.
The heads of productive trading departments--the Post Office and the
Public Works Department--should, I suggest, be excluded from the
Cabinet, and their departments should be separately organised in such a
way as not to involve a change of personnel when one party succeeded
another in power. These departments have no direct concern with the
determination of national policy.

On such a scheme we should have a Cabinet of nine or ten members,
representing among them all the departments which are concerned with
regulative or purely governmental work. And I suggest that a
rearrangement of this kind would not only restore efficiency to the
Cabinet, but would lead to very great administrative reforms, better
co-ordination between closely related departments, and in many respects
economy. But valuable as such changes may be, they would not in
themselves be sufficient to restore complete health to our governmental
system. In the last resort this depends upon the organisation of an
efficient and unresting system of criticism and control.

THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

In any modern State the control of the action of Government is largely
wielded by organs not formally recognised by law--by the general
movement of public opinion; by the influence of what is vaguely called
"the city"; by the resolutions of such powerful bodies as trade union
congresses, federations of employers, religious organisations, and
propagandist bodies of many kinds; and, above all, by the Press. No
review of our system would be complete without some discussion of these
extremely powerful and in some cases dangerous influences. We cannot,
however, touch upon them here. We must confine ourselves to the formal,
constitutional machinery of national control over the actions of
Government, that is, to Parliament, as the spokesman of the nation.

An essential part of any full discussion of this subject would be a
treatment of the Second Chamber problem. But that would demand a whole
hour to itself; and I propose to pass it over for the present, and to
ask you to consider the perturbing fact that the House of Commons, which
is the very heart of our system, has largely lost the confidence and
belief which it once commanded.

Why has the House of Commons lost the confidence of the nation? There
are two main reasons, which we must investigate in turn. In the first
place, in spite of the now completely democratic character of the
electorate, the House is felt to be very imperfectly representative of
the national mind. And in the second place, it is believed to perform
very inefficiently its primary function of criticising and controlling
the action of Government.

First of all, why do men vaguely feel that the House of Commons is
unrepresentative? I think there are three main reasons. The first is to
be found in the method of election. Since 1885 the House has been
elected by equal electoral districts, each represented by a single
member. Now, if we suppose that every constituency was contested by two
candidates only, about 45 per cent. of the voters must feel that they
had not voted for anybody who sat at Westminster; while many of the
remaining 55 per cent. must feel that they had been limited to a choice
between two men, neither of whom truly represented them. But if in many
constituencies there are no contests, and in many others there are three
or more candidates, the number of electors who feel that they have not
voted for any member of the House may rise to 60 per cent. or even 70
per cent. of the total.

The psychological effect of this state of things must be profound. And
there is another consideration. The very name of the House of Commons
(Communes, not common people) implies that it represents organised
communities, with a character and personality and tradition of their
own--boroughs or counties. So it did until 1885. Now it largely
represents totally unreal units which exist only for the purpose of the
election. The only possible means of overcoming these defects
of the single member system is some mode of proportional
representation--perhaps qualified by the retention of single members in
those boroughs or counties which are just large enough to be entitled to
one member.

The main objection taken to proportional representation is that it would
probably involve small and composite majorities which would not give
sufficient authority to ministries. But our chief complaint is that the
authority of modern ministries is too great, their power too unchecked.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, when our system worked most
smoothly, parties _were_ composite, and majorities were small--as they
usually ought to be, if the real balance of opinion in the country is to
be reflected. The result was that the control of Parliament over the
Cabinet was far more effective than it is to-day; the Cabinet could not
ride roughshod over the House; and debates really influenced votes, as
they now scarcely ever do. The immense majorities which have been the
rule since 1885 are not healthy. They are the chief cause of the growth
of Cabinet autocracy. And they are due primarily to the working of the
single-member constituency.

The second ground of distrust is the belief that Parliament is unduly
dominated by party; that its members cannot speak and vote freely; that
the Cabinet always gets its way because it is able to hold over members,
_in terrorem_, the threat of a general election, which means a fine of
L1000 a head; and that (what creates more suspicion than anything) the
policy of parties is unduly influenced by the subscribers of large
amounts to secret party funds. I am a profound believer in organised
parties as essential to the working of our system. But I also believe
that there is real substance in these complaints, though they are often
exaggerated. What is the remedy? First, smaller majorities, and a
greater independence of the individual member, which would follow from a
change in the methods of election. And, secondly, publicity of accounts
in regard to party funds. There is no reason why an honest party should
be ashamed of receiving large gifts for the public ends it serves, and
every reason why it should be proud of receiving a multitude of small
gifts. I very strongly hold that in politics, as in industry, the best
safeguard against dishonest dealings, and the surest means of restoring
confidence, is to be found in the policy of "Cards on the table." Is
there any reason why we Liberals should not begin by boldly adopting, in
our own case, this plainly Liberal policy?

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