OUR SILENT RULERS.
COMPARATIVELY little notice has been accorded to the retirement of Mr. Alexander Redgrave, C.B. The public has learnt that one Chief Inspector of Factories has resigned, and another has been appointed, but beyond this no distinct impression has been received. Yet, as a matter of fact, the event is of no small importance. By Mr. Redgrave's retirement from active work, the country loses a prominent member of a band of men who, in no merely nominal sense, govern the country. Mr. Redgrave was one of our silent rulers,—one of the men in whose hands the real work of governing is reposed. There is a story that the great Turgot, while Chief Minister, was asked who were the real rulers of France. He replied by leading his questioner to a back room in a public office, and showing him a committee of commonplace-looking middle- aged gentlemen gathered round a table, "Those," he said, "are the men who really govern France ; and if I told you their names, you would probably not recognise one of them." Turgot had exhibited a meeting of the Intendants of the Provinces, the men in whose hands was lodged the power nominally possessed by the King. If the permanent heads of the English Departments were for any reason to be collected in one room, it would be equally fair to point them out as the real though silent rules s of England. Power in England nominally belongs to the Cabinet appointed by the House of Commons, but in truth it is exercised by the great permanent officials. It has been shown again and again that if a change of policy is to be carried out, and if it is a change which the Permanent Under-Secretary of the Department concerned is strongly opposed to, there is only one way out of the difficulty,— namely, to get rid of the silent ruler. Mr. Balfour could not possibly have carried out his Irish policy if Sir William Hamilton, a convinced Home-ruler, had remained at the Castle. As a rule, no doubt, the great permanent officials do not take sides, and as far as possible train themselves to carry out any orders that may be given to them. In spite, however, of the most sincere attempts to efface themselves, they must and do retain a chief voice in the management of the affairs of the country. The maxim that knowledge is power is nowhere truer than in the work of administration. But it is the permanent officials who have all the knowledge in administrative matters. The more experienced the statesman, the more eager and anxious he is to get the Chief of the Department on his side, and to work heartily with him. If the whole truth were told, we should find that many of our politicians have made more strenuous efforts to persuade and influence their so-called subordinates than even to get hold of the House of Com- mons or a popular constituency. A Minister has a scheme of reform to which he is pledged, and to which he knows the country is looking forward. Unless, how- ever, he can get it heartily carried out in his De- partment, nothing but failure and disappointment await him. The House of Commons and the Cabinet are power- less before a scheme which will not work, and ultimately it depends upon the men we have called our" silent rulers" to say whether a scheme shall or shall not belong to that category. Their approval and sympathy will be enough to oil the wheels and get rid of all friction. If, however, they are cold and neutral, and only do what justice and duty demand, the scheme will very likely collapse altogether. Nor is the power of the great officials confined to administra- tive detail. They profoundly affect the legislative product. Bills are passed in Parliament, but they are prepared in the public offices, and hence the permanent heads have a great deal to say to the proposals which they contain. One has only to imagine the situation created when a Cabinet Minister sends for the Permanent Under-Secretary to discuss a new Bill for reforming,—say, the prison system of the United Kingdom. The Cabinet Minister is a youngish man. He is keen, too, and has only just come into office. He has read and thought a good deal on the subject, and has contrived to produce what he considers some very wise and ingenious proposals. No sooner, however, does he begin to discuss the subject, than he finds that the Under- Secretary is conveying to him with perfect politeness that thirty years ago the same ground was gone over by Lord Palmerston or Lord John Russell, and that it turned out, on a. closer survey, that very little could be done. The Under-Secretary is able to point out that many of the Cabinet Ministers' most noteworthy proposals have already been actually tried and found wanting. Scheme after scheme, and memorandum upon memorandum, are pro- duced from handy pigeon-holes, till at last it is quite clear even to the Cabinet Minister that as far as the subject of his Bill is concerned, he is a child in the hands of the per- manent head of the Department. The latter's information is fundamental ; his own, superficial. The official has been over the same ground twenty times before, knows all the difficulties, and has helped a succession of Ministers out of blunders into which they had got themselves by their ignorance. The usual result of such discussions—indeed, we might almost say, the only one—is that the Cabinet Minister suggests the general direction in which he wants his Bill drawn, and the permanent head of the Department undertakes to see how far it is possible to carry out his chief's suggestions. As was once said by a great official, he does his best to translate crude nonsense into sense. But, as may be imagined, this process puts an enormous amount of power into the hands of the Under-Secretary and the Parliamentary draftsmen. Between them they make the Bill. A wise Minister, as a rule, accepts this process as inevitable, convinced that the permanent officials will loyally do their best not to put in their own ideas, but to make his scheme workable. Occasionally, no doubt, a Minister rebels, and insists upon his own words and his own ideas; but in nine cases out of ten the officials have the satis- faction of seeing the particular proviso come to grief, either in the House of Commons, in the Law Courts, or in the ad- ministrative working of the measure. We expect that very often a so-called change of Ministerial policy, or an un- accountable volteface in Parliament, is due to nothing but departmental opposition. The Ministry feel as many a housekeeper has felt, that they dare not face the silent resistance of their own servants.
It may be asked, perhaps, how it is that our silent rulers have been allowed to attain their present position without protest, and why strong Ministers have not put an end to the tyranny. We believe that the answer is to be found in the fact that Ministers are forced to recognise that the permanent Heads never fight for their own hands, and do not try to impose a particular policy. They are, as they profess, willing to obey orders, but they hold it their duty to point out clearly what will be the results of particular orders. They are like the architect, in fact, who declared that he made it a rule to put the chimneys at the bottom of the house if his clients wished, but who at the same time always considered it his duty to point out that chimneys wrongly placed would smoke. In a word, the power of our silent rulers is accepted and allowed because it is felt that it is based upon common sense, and not upon caprice, or even individual opinion. The Under-Secretaries supply a cold douche of reason, which may often be too potent to be quite pleasant ; but in spite of that, it is recognised that their influence is not only wholesome but necessary. Where the permanent, highly paid, and much-respected great official does not exist, there is sure to be bad government. Half the ills and incon- veniences of American and Colonial administration would be remedied by allowing more power and influence to a capable Civil Service.
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