340 THEOR^ AND ADMINISTRATION 



Of these aims, the first three have always existed in every com- 

 munity deserving to be called a state, and till quite recent times they 

 covered all the services an administration was expected to render. 

 Government existed for the sake of defense or conquest in rude 

 time defense passes naturally into conquest and of order. In 

 other words, the work of a national administration might be summed 

 up as war and justice, and of these justice came second. But within 

 the last two centuries, and especially during the nineteenth century, 

 the last of the four grew apace, and now in the more advanced coun- 

 tries, more than half of the functionaries whom a national adminis- 

 tration employs, as well as a considerable part of the money it 

 spends, go to providing the citizens with things which in earlier times 

 they either did without or provided for themselves. Such, for in- 

 stance, are police, the transmission of letters and other articles, 

 internal communications by railway or telegraph, the instruction of 

 the young, the health or safety of persons engaged in various em- 

 ployments, the construction of works of real or supposed public 

 utility, the development of material resources (agriculture, forests, 

 fisheries), the supplying of information serviceable for commerce or 

 industry. 



It is in this direction that new work is being undertaken in so 

 many ways and on a daily increasing scale. But in all branches of 

 administration there has been a prodigious extension of state action. 

 It is not only that the progress of civilization creates new wants and 

 leads to new demands; the old functions also have becpme more 

 complicated with the progress of science. Armies are larger; navies 

 are larger; both are incomparably more costly, because all the 

 processes of war are more elaborate. These two services cost in 

 England to-day nearly $300,000,000, as much as the total expend- 

 iture of the national government was for all purposes sixty years ago. 

 At the siege of Port Arthur, Japan has probably already spent 

 $5,000,000 in projectiles discharged and ships destroyed, not to 

 speak of the loss of men. The whole tendency of recent years has 

 been to throw upon national administration more work, to require 

 from it more knowledge and skill, to intrust it with the expenditure 

 of more money, to make its efficiency more essential, since it is ex- 

 pected to help the nation in competition with other nations, and to 

 expose its members, the civil servants of the state, to more frequent 

 and stronger temptations. This evident tendency to widen the 

 sphere of national administration raises the question, What kinds of 

 work ought it to undertake, and from what ought it to abstain? 

 Here we have a topic more than large enough for a whole course of 

 lectures, so I will indicate only the most general considerations that 

 apply to it. These considerations are not the same for all countries 

 In some countries the people are backward, ignorant, uninventive, 



