lo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



i 



End ? Against whom should be raised " the bitter cry of outcast 

 London " ? 



The German anthropologist, Bastian, tells us that a sick native of 

 Guinea who causes the fetich to lie by not recovering is strangled ; * 

 and we may reasonably suppose that among the Guinea people any 

 one audacious enbugh to call in question the power of the fetich would 

 be promptly sacrificed. In days when governmental authority was 

 enforced by strong measures, there was a kindred danger in saying 

 anything disrespectful of the political fetich, Nowadays, however, 

 the worst punishment to be looked for by one who questions its om- 

 nipotence is that he will be reviled as a reactionary who talks laissez- 

 faire. That any facts he may bring forward will appreciably de- 

 crease the established faith is not to be expected ; for we are daily 

 shown that this faith is proof against all adverse evidence. Let us 

 contemplate a small part of that vast mass of it which passes un- 

 heeded. 



" A Government office is like an inverted filter ; you send in ac- 

 counts clear and they come out muddy." Such was the comparison I 

 heard made many years ago by the late Sir Charles Fox, who, in the 

 conduct of his business, had considerable experience of public depart- 

 ments. That his opinion was not a singular one, though his compari- 

 son was, all men know. Exposures by the press and criticisms in Par- 

 liament leave no one in ignorance of the vices of red-tape routine. 

 Its delays, perpetually complained of, and which in the time of Mr, 

 Fox Maule went to the extent that " the commissions of officers in the 

 army " were generally "about two years in arrear," is afresh illustrated 

 by the issue of the first volume of the detailed census of 1881, more 

 than two years after the information was collected. If we seek explana- 

 tions of such delays, we find one origin to be a scarcely credible con- 

 fusion. In the case of the delayed census returns, the registrar-general 

 tells us that " the difficulty consists not merely in the vast multitude 

 of different areas that have to be taken into account, but still more in 

 the bewildering complexity of their boundaries " : there being thirty- 

 nine thousand administrative areas of twenty-two different kinds which 

 overlap one another — hundreds, petty sessional divisions, lieutenancy 

 divisions, urban and rural sanitary districts, unions, school-board 

 districts, school-attendance districts, etc. And then, as Mr, W, Rath- 

 bone points out,f these many superposed sets of areas, with inter- 

 secting boundaries, have their respective governing bodies with au- 

 thorities running into one another's districts. Does any one ask why 

 for each additional administration Parliament has established a fresh 

 set of divisions ? The reply which suggests itself is, To preserve con- 

 sistency of method. For this organized confusion harmonizes com- 

 pletely with that organized confusion which Parliament each year in- 

 creases by throwing on to the heap of its old acts a hundred new acts, 



* "Mensch," iii, p, 225, f " The Nineteenth Century," February, 1883, 



