1917J on Some Guarantees of Liberty 109 



to the Captaincy of the District. The Captain of the District 

 appointed a commission of legal experts, who debated the question at 

 great length and reported that the legal principle was so important 

 that they were incompetent to give a decision. They therefore 

 referred it to the Lord Lieutenancy of Lower Austria, an adminis- 

 trative department which employs several hundred legal experts. 

 The Lord Lieutenant appointed a special commission of lawyers in 

 his turn. They debated the question in its length and breadth for 

 several weeks, and finally agreed that the legal issue was so grave 

 that it must be decided by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. 

 The President of the Council, Count Clary, appointed yet another 

 commission of legal experts, whose chairman eventually reported as 

 follows to the assembled Cabinet : — " The legal principle involved 

 is so serious that your Commission is unable to agree in regard to it. 

 Arguments of equal weight may be adduced in support of either 

 view. In doubt as to the right decision, I ventured to consult my 

 wife, who said, ' Dry or fresh, vegetables are vegetables.' In this 

 sense I beg to report to your Excellencies." This view was accepted 

 by the Cabinet, and the greengrocer, after eight months' suspension, 

 was allowed to sell dried vegetables ! 



One point upon which 1 cannot venture to express a definite 

 opinion is whether the officials who man our departments of State 

 in England yet feel that they are " the Government," or aspire 

 deliberately and wittingly to manage public affairs according to their 

 own ideas or interests. I do not know — notwithstanding some alarm- 

 ing symptoms — whether our officials, as a body, have yet acquired a 

 corporate consciousness, whether they regard themselves as forming 

 a State within the State, and as having a vested right in the manage- 

 ment of pubhc affairs. On the whole, I doubt whether tbey have yet 

 reached this stage ; whether the cumbrous practices which we call 

 red-tape are more than an inherited routine developed by dislike of 

 individual responsibility, or whether they are contrivances, deliberately 

 and consciously maintained, for putting sand in the wheels of the 

 State whenever those wheels threaten to revolve in other directions, or 

 more rapidly, than officials approve. AVe call our officials "civil 

 servants " of the Crown. The danger is that they may consciously 

 become, if they are not already, civil masters of the community. In 

 this danger may lie one of the gravest menaces to public freedom, 

 unless adequate safeguards are sought and applied in time. 



I feel no hostility towards officials either individually or as a 

 class. The majority of them are upright, hardworking men, some 

 of whom constantly save the community from the effects of mini- 

 sterial incompetence. It may indeed be said that without permanent 

 officials drawn from the most intelligent and best educated classes of 

 the community, the parliamentary system would be unworkable and 

 continuity in administrative methods impossible. These high per- 

 minent officials might often, in other circumstances, have become 



