346 THEORY AND ADMINISTRATION 



of its administration there is no necessary connection. It used to be 

 thought that despotisms were favorable to efficiency, and doubtless 

 such autocratic eighteenth-century reforming monarchs as Frederick 

 the Great did improve the management of their state affairs. The 

 example of Rome supported this view: her provincial administra- 

 tion, bad under the Republic, improved immensely under the earlier 

 Empire, and it was indeed the strong and skilled civil service that 

 more than anything else enabled the Eastern Empire so long to 

 resist the foes that encompassed it on every side. But the least pure, 

 and probably one of the least efficient, administrations in Europe, 

 is that of Russia; Turkey is, of course, much worse, but then the 

 Turks are still a barbarous people. The civil service of England 

 under a polity practically democratic is better to-day than it was 

 under the oligarchical rule which lasted till 1832, and it may, along 

 with that of France, claim to be the best in Europe after the German, 

 which is, probably, the most efficient in the world. 



It is, however, true that in popular governments the civil service 

 is exposed to some special dangers. There is a danger that it may 

 be used in the game of politics; a danger that its members may try 

 to secure their own ends by bringing pressure to bear upon politi- 

 cians. In Australia, where the railways belong to the state govern- 

 ments, the railway employees, forming in some places a considerable 

 proportion of the electors, gave so much trouble by their efforts 

 to obtain higher pay that they were at last taken out of the local 

 constituencies and given separate representation. A difficulty of 

 a quite different kind is that the masses of the people, not realizing 

 how much skill and capacity are needed in officials holding the high- 

 est kinds of posts, may be unwilling to pay adequate salaries. The 

 voter to whom $1000 (200) a year seems vast wealtn does not see 

 why he should pay one of his servants $10,000 (2000). Yet a 

 capable official may save the nation twice that sum annually by 

 his exceptional skill. 



It may give some concrete vitality to these general observations 

 if I illustrate them by a few references to the administration of Great 

 Britain, of which I know something practically, having been at one 

 time at the head of one of the largest public departments. In 

 Britain, the national administration is practically a growth of the 

 last seventy years. Before the Reform Act of 1832 the only public 

 offices were the Treasury, the Foreign Office (the names were not 

 then the same), the departments of the Navy and Army. There 

 was a Home Office and a Board of Trade and Foreign Plantations, 

 which pretended to look after North America (not very successfully) 

 and the West Indies, but they had very few duties and a very small 

 staff. There was no India Office (though a germ of it existed in the 

 Board of Control), no Colonial Office (colonial work went along with 



