THE PETTY OFFICIAL
[TO THE EDITOR OF TER " SPECTATOR.")
Sna—Will you allow an ex-Minister to bear testimony from personal experience to the absolute truth of your article in your List issue on " The Petty Official " t It is very true, as you say, that legislation of the last ten to fifteen years has increased the number of officials not only in Imperial but in local affairs, and those same men are always trying to find more work so as to got one or more other small officials under them to increase their own importance and their own pay. You also refer to the injury suffered by the State due to the rivalry between Government offices, and I can hero bear personal testimony to such rivalry being a constant source of delay and obstruction. But you do not refer to another cause of rivalry between Government Departments—I mean the personal jealousies of individual Ministers who are the political heads of such offices, and who, backed up by their per manent officials, are so often responsible for preventing another Minister anxious to initiate some real and useful reform by urging that the proposed legislation trenches upon their sphere of influence. Is it too much to hope that Lord Cromer, notwithstanding his many engagements, will take up this question in Parliament, as no man could do it better or carry more weight in the House in which he sits and with the public at large ?-
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