TOPICS OF THE DAY
DEPARTMENTAL GOVERNMENT.
LAST week we pointed out the very serious character of the new financial charges which must be imposed upon the nation either in taxes or rates, or in both, if the Government's legislative programme is carried out. Not unnaturally, people are asking in regard to our article whether the Government really can intend anything of the kind, and whether we have not made some mistake as to their schemes,—though we confess that, in view of the old-age pensions policy and its extensions, this suggestion of misapprehension is not pressed very strongly. Rather the question takes the form : " Is it conceivable that so able and experienced a body of men as the present Cabinet unquestionably are can have reached a position so untenable as to propose to commit the nation to eighteen or twenty millions of new public expen- diture, possibly this year, and certainly in the very near future ? ' The answer is to be found, we believe, in the fact that the Government is a Departmental Government, and not a Cabinet Government in the old and true sense. In the present Administration each Minister acts to a very large extent in isolation, working away in his own office to the best of his ability, with very little, if any, supervision, either from the Prime Minister or from his colleagues. Ministers are very loyal one to the other,—agree, that is, to stand by each other and to back each other's Bills, and not to interfere with work outside their own Departments; but this, we take it, is almost the whole extent of the co-opera- tion practised by the Cabinet. Though such a. condition of things has been known to exist before to some degree, it must not be supposed that it represents either the theory or the practice of our political system. The theory is, in the first place, that we are under Cabinet government, and that, though Departments are conducted by individual Ministers, the Cabinet as a whole is responsible for auy new departure or important act either in administration of legislation. Each Cabinet Minister possesses, and in old days exercised, the right of making his influence felt in all acts of government. Mr. Secretary Blank's Depart- ment might nominally be responsible for a certain Bill, and Mr. Blank might have the exclusive duty of presenting it to Parliament, but it very often happened that the Bill itself was much more that of two or three of his colleagues than his own, owing to changes made in the Cabinet. Again, in questions of administration the head of the Department was often only the mouthpiece of the Cabinet, and was not by any means acting on his own personal initiative. This fact was marked by the phrase so often on the lips of Cabinet Ministers when talking to their head officials : " This is a matter which will have to go before the Cabinet." Unless we are very much mistaken, " going before the Cabinet " has become largely a matter of form, or, at any rate, measures now come before the Cabinet so late that any effective review of his measures by a Minister's colleagues must be said almost to have ceased to exist. Ministers may express alarm or anxiety at some particular scheme, but they too often feel that the Cabinet is already committed to dealing with the problem, and that they cannot take the responsibility of, in effect, wrecking the Ministerial programme by what are really ex post facto objections. To make Cabinet supervision effective, the public ought to know little or nothing of Ministerial proposals until they have been carefully con- sidered by the Cabinet as a whole, and have received an all-round criticism by persons who feel that collective responsibility which is the great preventive of blunders in the matter of government. A man absorbed and keenly interested in the affairs of his Department cannot gauge the full effect of his measure, especially in its financial aspects, until it has been submitted to the skilled scrutiny of men who are deeply versed in the work of the Government in all its aspects.
Side by side with this Cabinet control, or rather supplementary to it, there exists, or should exist, the control of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister in our system, when it is at its best, is without portfolio in order that he may act as a kind of political foreman of the works,—the man who directs and advises, but does not use the pick or shovel himself. Sir Robert Peel, who was in many respects the ideal Prime Minister, did not interfere in his colleagues' offices, but he saw each member of his Cabinet every day, and by conversation learned from them what measures or administrative Acts were being shaped. In this way he could check and co-ordinate all legislative projects. If he found that his colleague, say, at the Home Office was proposing a scheme which would cost a couple of millions a year, he was able to point out to him that, excellent as the scheme was in itself, he was afraid it would be impossible to carry it into practice at present, because he bad already ascertained that the War Office or the Admiralty or some other Department was putting into shape proposals for very heavy expenditure which it would be remembered had virtually received the sanction of the Cabinet six months before. In this way the Prime Minister acted as a kind of clearing-house between his colleagues, in which their proposals before they obtained too definite a shape were brought into relation and co-ordinated. We are afraid that at the present moment it cannot be said that such supervision exists. We have no desire to speak with anything but respect of Sir Henry Campbell- Bannerman, and we fully admit that he has very consider- able political qualities. A faculty for administrative and legislative detail is not, however, to be counted among these. If we read the situation aright, his supervision, or rather his anticipatory knowledge, of his colleagues' doings is of the very slightest. Sir Henry no doubt excels as a Parliamentary and Cabinet manager owing to his tact and generosity and power of subordinating his personal opinions. In other words, he makes the machine run very smoothly. But though there are many advan- tages in this, the machine may run too smoothly and too fast. Better a little friction than a catastrophe. One of the causes, perhaps the chief cause, of the decline of Cabinet government and the substitution of Departmental govern- ment is no doubt the huge size of modern Cabinets. A small Committee, if its proceedings are really secret, and if its members are really loyal not only to each other but to themselves in their collective capacity, may act with vigour and prescience and may maintain a consistent course of action. When the Committee is large, how- ever, not only does the foreman lose control, but the true collective action ceases to exist.
Perhaps we shall be told that we exaggerate the evils of Departmental government, and that it is much better, if there are good men at the head of the Departments, that they should go their own way than that there should be a weak and inconclusive compromise on every question, which is too often the result of Committee rule. We admit, of course, that there are some advantages in indi- vidual and Departmental action, and also a good many disadvantages in strict Cabinet rule, owing to the fact that the action of a group of men can never be really swift, and is often not as decisive as it should be. There is, however, one objection to Departmental government so great that it overshadows, in our opinion, all its benefits. There cannot be effective financial control, and if there is not financial control in a modern State the country may receive almost unconsciously the very gravest of injuries. We all know what happened in the fable when the members of the body tried to ignore the belly because it was unseen. If each man is allowed without effective control to press what he thinks best in his own Department, the result may be dangerous in a' high degree, even though all the, projects considered individually are sound.
This fact can be very easily illustrated by a domestic parable. Mr. Brown was a rich country gentleman with a large family of sons and daughters who lived at home. He had great and well-placed con- fidence in the sobriety, good sense, and adminis- trative ability of his children, and knew that they could be depended upon to lay out his money for the good of the family and the estate as well as he could lay it out himself. He therefore distributed the control of the estate and of the household amongst them. To his eldest son he gave the management of the land, and full powers to arrange for the getting in of his income and making the necessary expenditure on repairs and improvements,' relying upon his skill to make the best out of the estate. To another son he handed over the management of the stables, to a third the home farm, while the fourth was to look after the motor-cars. One daughter took over the housekeeping, another the garden, a third the kennels, while a fourth ran the yacht. To every one of them he gave instructions to do things well, but to be very careful as to expenses. They were each and all to avoid waste. At the same time, he told them that he fully realised that occasionally a little special outlay might prove in the end beneficial, and a source of extra income. Therefore he did not intend to lay down any hard-and-fast rules as to expenditure. For example, he was quite prepared to believe that it was wise for the estate and the household to pay good wages and get good service rather than be niggardly in this respect. All went well for a time, and no single member of the family appeared to do, or indeed did, anything which was not perfectly sound in itself. Unfortunately, however, Mr. Brown did not provide any method by which the sons and daughters could communicate what they were doing to one another, and thus make sure they were not all launching out at once on " great permanent improvements, though no doubt improvements involving temporary sacrifices." The result was that the eldest son entered upon a large drainage scheme, the second son rebuilt the stables, the third reorganised the home farm, the daughter who looked after the house substituted electricity for oil-lamps, in- volving a very large immediate expense, though on paper a very great ultimate saving, while the fourth daughter had new engines put into the yacht. The consequence was that Mr. Brown, though he could not and would not have objected to any one item of expenditure in itself, found at the end of the year that his finances were in hopeless confusion, and that he must either mortgage the estate, or else let his house, go into furnished lodgings, and practise a strict and detestable economy for two or three years. If he only had had a family meeting each week, and the sons and daughters had proposed their schemes to him with appropriate estimates, it would have been easy to have done one thing at a time, and so have prevented a financial catastrophe.
We commend the parable to the Government. If they heed Mr. Brown's example, there is yet time to prevent a debcicle. If not, we are quite sure that Depart- mental government will prove the ruin of the present Administration, and that this ruin will be brought about by their failure to maintain strict financial control. One fate awaits Governments and individuals who refuse to face the two plain questions : " What will it cost P " and "Where is the money to come from ? "
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