4.00 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



laws which failed so miserably, is administered in rooms so crowded 

 and noisy that due care and thought on the part of officials are scarcely 

 possible ; and, further, that, as one part of the court sits in the City and 

 another part in Lincoln's Inn, solicitors have often to he in both places 

 at the same time. Do I need more illustrations ? They come in 

 abundance between the day on which the foregoing sentence was 

 written and the day (November 20th) on which I revise it. Within this 

 short time mismanagement has been shown in a treatment of the police 

 that has created a mutiny among them ; in a treatment of government 

 copying-clerks that causes them publicly to complain of broken prom- 

 ises ; in a treatment of postmen that calls from them disrespectful be- 

 havior toward their superiors : all at the same time that there is going 

 on the controversy about Park-rules, which have been so issued as to 

 evade constitutional principles, and so administered as to bring the 

 law into contempt. Yet, as fast as there come proofs of mal-adminis- 

 tration, there come demands that administration shall be extended. 

 Just as, in societies made restive by despotism, we see that, for the 

 evils and dangers brought about, the remedy is more despotism; just 

 as we see that, along with the failing power of a decaying Papacy, 

 there goes, as the only fit cure, a reassertion of Papal infallibility with 

 emphatic obligato from a Council ; so, to set right the misdoings of 

 State-agency, the proposal is always more State-agency. When, after 

 long continuance of coal-mine inspection, coal-mine explosions keep 

 recurring, the cry is for more coal-mine inspection. When railway ac- 

 cidents multiply, notwithstanding the oversight of officials appointed 

 by law to see that railways are safe, the unhesitating demand is for 

 more such officials. Though, as Lord Salisbury lately remarked of 

 governing bodies deputed by the State, " they begin by being enthu- 

 siastic and extravagant, and they are very apt to end in being wooden " 

 though, through the press and by private conversation, men are per- 

 petually reminded that, when it has ceased to wield the new broom, 

 each deputy governing power tends to become either a king-stork that 

 does mischief, or a king-log that does nothing yet more deputy gov- 

 erning powers are asked for with unwavering faith. While the unwis- 

 dom of officialism is daily illustrated, the argument for each proposed 

 new department sets out w T ith the postulate that officials will act wise- 

 ly. After endless comments on the confusion and apathy and delay 

 of Government offices, other Government offices are advocated. After 

 ceaseless ridicule of red-tape, the petition is for more red-tape. Daily 

 we castigate the political idol with a hundred pens, and daily pray to 

 it with a thousand tongues. 



'to' 



The emotion which thus destroys the balance of judgment lies 

 deep in the natures of men as they have been and still are. This root, 

 out of which there grow hopes that are no sooner blighted than kin- 

 dred hopes grow up in their places, is a root reaching down to the 



