The Parliamentary Papers of yesterday week contain further information as
to the Holmes circular. After some details as to when it was written, issued, and first brought to the President of the Board of Education's notice, Mr. Runciman explains that directly the Permanent Secretary (Sir Robert Morant) learned that the confidential nature of the Chief Inspector's Minute had been disregarded, and he was able to
consider the whole matter in a new light, he the Per- manent Secretary) at once sent a Minute expressing his regret for the lack of judgment which he then realised that he had shown when directing it to be printed and authorising its distribution among certain officials of the Board. Perhaps the best comment on Mr. Runciman's explanation is to be found in the chapter of Professor A. Lawrence Lowell's admirable treatise on The Government of England, which deals with Ministers and the Civil Service. He says :— " The minister alone is responsible for everything done in his department, and he receives all the credit or all the blame. The civil servant never talks in public about the policy of his depart- ment, never claims anything done there as his own work ; and, on the other hand, the minister ought not to attribute blunders or misconduct to a subordinate unless prepared at the same time to announce his discharge. . . . . Fifty years ago the public was not aware of the power of the civil servants, and Parliament, regard- ing them as clerks, paid little attention to them. But now that their importance has come to be understood, there is, in the opinion of some of their own members, a danger that they will be made too prominent, that the screen which protects them from the public gaze will be partly drawn aside, and that they will thereby lose their complete irresponsibility, and with it their permanence and their political character." (Vol. i., pp 192-4.) The official account of the episode has been greatly revised in successive versions, but it is still asserted that
the circular was distributed with the concurrence of the writer.
Previous page
