as well as of those golden rules of justice and of wisdom, whose voice is so apt to be drowned in the clang of party warfare and the gladiatorial conflicts of tongue and pen. The soldier's interest in the battle is concentrated on the charge or the diversion in which he is himself engaged; the general, engrossed in the plans for the campaign, thinks little of the purpose of the war; the minister forgets the sacred principles of wise and righteous statesmanship in the new political combinations which every day or every change makes requisite ;it is for those who stand aloof and apart, judicial but absorbed spectators, to watch that the great end be not sacrificed to the little means, nor the pure cause sullied by unhallowed advocacy, nor the white banner soiled by dirty hands or dragged through miry ways.

Perhaps, however, one of the noblest and most necessary, and assuredly not the least grateful, of the functions of the Press consists in separating what is just from what is unjust in popular discontent, and giving a definite expression and a sound direction to that general and well-founded indignation which would else be inarticulate, indiscriminating, and misapplied. National dissatisfaction is never groundless, but it is often ignorant, erroneous, and blind. "Pour le peuple (said Sully) ce n'est jamais par envie d'attaquer qu'elle se soulève, mais par impatience de souffrir." Popular discontent needs guiding as well as moderating. Never mistaken as to fact, it constantly ascribes the evils it endures and observes to wrong causes, seeks their cure in a wrong quarter, and calls for vengeance on the wrong heads. Thus it is at the present moment. A sudden strain and pressure upon all our institutions and in all our public departments has revealed to the startled country a state of things which was long ago clear enough to thoughtful and historical observers. Dark places have been irradiated, weak places have given way; by an instant of unwonted hurry and exertion garments that were always threadbare have been converted into haggard and indecent rags. Practical mismanagement and faults of system have come to light, in extent and in number absolutely stunning and confounding; and the surprise and uneasiness of the nation have been aggravated into positive alarm at perceiving, both in ministers and in Parliament, an apparent entire lack of that clear vision, that superior genius, and that commanding will, from which alone a remedy was to be hoped. Ministers spoke and acted not only as if they were unequal to meet the crisis and unable to supply the want, but as if they saw no perilous crisis to be met and no imperious wants to be supplied. And the House of Commons, though dismayed and angry, was irresolute, feeble, and con

fused; restless, turbulent, and chaotic; refusing to obey the reins, yet unable and afraid to assume them. Under such circumstances we need not wonder that the people, taking their cue from the Opposition which sought only to discredit the Government, and from demagogues who sought to discredit Opposition and Government alike, should have jumped to the menacing and disheartening conclusion, that all Ministers were corrupt, and all their subordinates incapable.

Now, it is because there is so much that is substantially correct mingled with so much that is unsound and exaggerated in this conclusion; because we intend throughout our course to be such earnest reformers of what is wrong, and such zealous defenders of what is calumniated or misjudged; and because, in the movement for "Administrative Reform" which the recent apocalypse has originated, we recognize so true an instinct in the object aimed at, confused and jeopardised by so damaging an ignorance, so poor an appreciation of difficulties, and so inadequate a choice of means,-that we propose to devote a few pages of this our first Number to a rectification of what we deem a popular mistake.

We heartily rejoice at the direction which public feeling has taken. We congratulate our countrymen on having abandoned or postponed the demand for organic changes in favour of one for Administrative Reform. They are at last on the right scent; they have got hold of the right clue; their face is set in the right direction; and we have no doubt that they will soon work themselves clear of their present errors and misconceptions. At all events their efforts will not now be wasted on unattainable ends, or rendered abortive by inherent misdirection. At the point of national progress at which we are now arrived, administrative are of far more consequence than legislative questions. There may be, and there have been, times when it is otherwise; when laws are so bad that no executive ability can make them tolerable; when institutions are so imperfect that no administration can remedy their faults; when freedom is so scanty or so ill-secured, and popular action so feeble and so fettered, that organic changes are essential as preliminaries to functional reforms. But in Great Britain this stage is far back in history. We have conquered our liberties, and we have completed our instruments. Self-government is ours whenever we WILL to take it up. Our institutions are effective tools, imperfect still, no doubt, but such as no good workman will quarrel with. A jealous House of Commons and a vigilant and unsparing Press give us the means of exercising whatever control and enforcing whatever improvements we desire. The nation-by which term we mean, not the populace, but that

grand aggregate of the educated and industrial classes which together constitute the British PEOPLE-has only to know its own mind, to determine its object, and be prepared to pay down the appointed purchase-money, in order to obtain its wishes, without a single constitutional innovation, and almost without a single new law. The composition and the action of the Executive is the point to which all our reforming zeal should now be directed.

"Laws (says Burke) reach but a very little way. Constitute government how you please, infinitely the greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of the powers which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of ministers of state. The due arrangement of men in the active part of the state, so far from being foreign to the purposes of a wise government, ought to be among its very first and dearest objects.

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The far greater proportion of the duties which are performed in the office of a minister (says Henry Taylor), are and must be performed under no effective responsibility. Where politics and parties are not affected by the matter in question, and so long as there is no flagrant neglect or glaring injustice to individuals which a party can take hold of, the responsibility to parliament is merely nominal. By evading decisions whenever they can be evaded; by shifting them on other departments or authorities where by any possibility they can be shifted; by giving decisions upon superficial examinations, categorically, so as not to expose the superficiality in propounding the reasons; by deferring questions till, as Lord Bacon says, they resolve themselves,' by undertaking nothing for the public good which the public voice does not call for; by conciliating loud and energetic individuals at the expense of such public interests as are dumb or do not attract attention; by sacrificing, everywhere, what is feeble and obscure to what is influential and cognizable ;-by such means and shifts as these the functionary may reduce his business within his powers, and perhaps obtain for himself the most valuable of all reputations in that line of life, that of a 'safe man.'"

Formerly, the cry of "Measures, not Men," had in it a great truth-a truth fragmentary, indeed, but still that special fragment of truth appropriate to the exigencies of the hour. But now that nearly all the great measures for which in those days we clamoured and strove have been carried and borne fruitnot, indeed, all the fruit we looked for from them, but all that such trees could bear; now that "the harvest is reaped, the sum. mer is ended, and we are not saved" (according to the lamentation of Jeremiah),—the time has come when men are of far more consequence than measures. And a few moments' reflection, aided by the testimony of the two high authorities we have just cited, will explain why it must be so. In a great and busy country like this, with its complicated concerns and its

numberless dependencies, every executive functionary at all
high in the service every day decides some scores of questions
and issues some scores of orders, makes twenty appointments,
adopts twenty resolutions, many of which affect world-wide
interests, and are felt at the distance of a thousand miles;
scarcely one of which comes under public cognizance or is
brought under parliamentary discussion. For one act which we
hear of there are a hundred we ignore. The minister passes
one measure through the House of Commons deliberately, with
difficulty, and with noise; at the same time he transacts a
hundred in the privacy and silence of his office, after an hour's
consideration, and by a single stroke of his pen. Every
minister is virtually an irresponsible autocrat for nineteen
hours out of the four-and-twenty. On the arbitrary decisions
of the Home Office depend the welfare, the comfort, the virtue
of more fellow-creatures than we should like to enumerate.
On the sic volo, sic jubeo fiats which issue from the Horse.
Guards or the War Office, hang the fate of officers, the safety
of men, the failure or success of an expedition, the issue of a
campaign, the lives of thousands, the expenditure of millions.
Bad judgment, treacherous memory, flippant haste, want of
knowledge or want of sense in a secretary or under-secretary,
may dress soldiers so that they cannot march, or arm them so
that they cannot fight, or locate them in pestilential quarters,
or confide them to incompetent leaders and to unqualified sur-
geons. Every error and every oversight has a frightfully exten-
sive echo and reverberation. A despatch of the Foreign
Secretary may irritate a jealous enemy, or give umbrage to a
sensitive ally-may kindle a European war, or close the door
against a healing peace, and yet never be heard of at home till
the mischief is irreparably done. Or a missive from the
Colonial Office-perhaps the outbreak of an imperious temper,
perhaps the expression of a pet crotchet or an eccentric theory
-may lay the train for a series of blunders and disputes which
affect the prosperity of a dependency for years, and its loyalty
possibly for generations yet unborn. Nor is this all. The
mode of carrying out decisions is sometimes as important as
the decisions themselves; and for this the chief ministers must
be dependent upon their principal subordinates. The one pro-
minent lesson taught by the recent disclosures is the incalcu-
lable consequence of skilful and competent men in every grade
of every executive department. Nor is this all. Ministers-in-
chief cannot know all, nor be capable of deciding all; in a
thousand cases they must necessarily ask information and take
advice from those immediately around them and below them;
in a thousand cases they must delegate to their underlings

decisions and arrangements which exceed any one man's time or strength. Of what deep significance, then, becomes the choice of these secondary powers! Therefore, we fear no dissentient murmurs when we say that the selection of ministers by the Parliament, and the distribution of civil and military appointments by the ministers, is the highest and most solemn function which either has to perform, and demands knowledge, judgment, care, and conscientiousness, all in the superlative degree.

Thus far we agree with Lord Ellenborough, Mr. Layard, and the Administrative Reform Association. But we do not conceive, with the former, that all would be set right by transferring the government into Tory hands; nor can we admit, with the latter, that a certain cure is to be found by an assignment of public functions to "the middle classes," or that corruption and incapacity reign as supreme as is supposed among the present or the habitual possessors of official power.

The charge of jobbing and corruption so lavishly and recklessly brought against ministers as a class is, we are satisfied, a false, inconsiderate, and vulgar cry. With some, it is a mere hereditary shibboleth, handed down to them from times when it had its justification and significance,-times to which the present bears only a faint resemblance. With others, it is a thoughtless echo of the clamour they hear around them, which their acquaintance with the facts of the case does not enable them to correct. With a third class, again, it is the dictate of minds intrinsically suspicious, envious and low, prone to surmise evil, slow to believe in any virtue greater than their own, and instinctively predisposed to find the basest motives the most natural and the worst actions the most probable. Of political and personal favouritism there is no doubt much-far too much-permitted and practised among our public men. Cæteris paribus-i.e., where equal or nearly equal qualifications are assumed-it is customary, and it is not considered culpable, to distribute public appointments by preference among personal connections. It is natural that these should be better known, more highly estimated, possibly more correctly judged, than comparative strangers. We all, as well as ministers, think more highly of our own sons and brothers than of the sons and brothers of our antagonists or our neighbours. Imperfectlyqualified men are thus often appointed and promoted; men known or believed to be disqualified rarely indeed-at least, to any office of consequence. Cæteris paribus aside, the minor places in the civil service, such as those of tide-waiters, policemen, custom-house clerks, and letter-carriers, are habitually given away, not to the friends or dependents of the ministers them