THE MACHINERY OF GOVERNMENT

By Ramsay Muir

Professor of Modern History in the University of Manchester, 1913 to 1921.

Mr. Ramsay Muir said:—One of the most marked, and one of the most ominous, features of the political situation to-day is that there is an almost universal decline of belief in and respect for our system of government. This undermining of the confidence that a healthy community ought to feel in its institutions is a perturbing fact which it is the plain duty of all good Liberals to consider seriously. We need not be deterred by the old gibe that Liberalism has always cared more about political machinery than about social reorganisation. The gibe was never true. But, in any case, no projects of social reorganisation have much chance of success unless the political machinery by means of which they have to be carried into effect is working efficiently. Moreover, since most of the projects of social reform which are being urged upon our attention involve an enlargement of the activities of the State, it is obvious that we shall be running the risk of a breakdown unless we make sure that the machinery of the State is capable of meeting the demands which are made upon it. We must be satisfied that our engine has sufficient power before we require it to draw a double load. In truth, one reason why the engine of government is not working well is that it has been required to do a great deal more work than it was designed for. The time has come to consider carefully the character and capacity of our machinery of government in view of the increased demands which are certain to be made upon it in the future.

Our national political system may be divided into two parts. On the one hand, there is the working machine, which goes on, year in, year out, whether Parliament is sitting or not, and which would still go on quite well for a time if Parliament never met again. We call it the Government, and we habitually and rightly hold it responsible for every aspect of national policy and action, for legislation and finance as well as for foreign policy and internal administration. On the other hand, there is what Burke used to call “the control on behalf of the nation,” mainly exercised through Parliament, whose chief function is to criticise and control the action of Government, and to make the responsibility of Government to the nation a real and a felt responsibility. The discontents of to-day apply to both parts of the system, and I propose to deal with them in turn, first inquiring what is wrong with the working machine of government and how it can be amended, and then turning to consider how far the control on behalf of the nation is working badly, and how it can be made more efficient.

In what I have called the “working machine” of government there are two distinct elements. First, there is the large, permanent, professional staff, the Civil Service; secondly, there is the policy-directing body, the Cabinet. Both of these are the objects of a great deal of contemporary criticism. On the one hand, we are told that we are suffering from “bureaucracy,” which means that the permanent officials have too much independent and uncontrolled, or imperfectly controlled, authority. On the other hand, we are told that we are suffering from Cabinet dictatorship, or, alternatively, that the Cabinet system is breaking down and being replaced by the autocracy of the Prime Minister. There is a good deal of prima facie justification for all these complaints.

The Growth of the Civil Service

First, as to bureaucracy. It is manifest that there has been an immense increase in the number, the functions, and the power of public officials. This is not merely due to the war. It has been going on for a long time—ever since, in fact, we began the deliberate process of national reconstruction in the years following 1832. In itself this increase has not been a bad thing; on the contrary, it has been the only possible means of carrying into effect the great series of reforms which marked the nineteenth century. And may I here underline the fact that we Liberals, in particular, have no right to criticise the process, since we have been mainly responsible for it, at any rate in all its early stages. When our predecessors set up the first Factory Inspectors in 1833, and so rendered possible the creation of a whole code of factory laws; when they created the first rudimentary Education Office in 1839, and so set to work the men who have really moulded our national system of education; when they set up a bureaucratic Poor Law Board in 1841, which shaped our Poor Law Policy, and a Public Health Board in 1848, which gradually worked out our system of Public Health—when they did these things, they were beginning a process which has been carried further with every decade. If you like, they were laying the foundations of bureaucracy; but they were also creating the only machinery by which vast, beneficial and desperately needed measures of social reform could be carried into effect.

And there is yet another thing for which Liberalism must assume the responsibility. When Gladstone instituted the Civil Service Commission in 1853, and the system of appointment by competitive examination in 1870, he freed the Civil Service from the reputation for corruption and inefficiency which had clung to it; and he ensured that it should attract, as it has ever since done, much of the best intellect of the nation. But this very fact inevitably increased the influence of the Civil Service, and encouraged the expansion of its functions. If you put a body of very able men in charge of a department of public service, it is certain that they will magnify their office, take a disproportionate view of its claims, and incessantly strive to increase its functions and its staff. This is not only natural, it is healthy—so long as the process is subjected to efficient criticism and control.

But the plain fact is that the control is inadequate. The vast machine of government has outgrown the power of the controlling mechanism.

We trust for the control of the immense bureaucratic machine, almost entirely to the presence, at the head of each department, of a political minister directly responsible to Parliament. We hold the minister responsible for everything that happens in his office, and we regard this ministerial responsibility as one of the keystones of our system. But when we reflect that the minister is distracted by a multitude of other calls upon his time, and that he has to deal with officials who are generally his equals in ability, and always his superiors in special knowledge; when we realise how impossible it is that a tithe of the multifarious business of a great department should come before him, and that the business which does come before him comes with the recommendations for action of men who know ten times more about it than he does, it must be obvious that the responsibility of the minister must be quite unreal, in regard to the normal working of the office. One thing alone he can do, and it is an important thing, quite big enough to occupy his attention. He can make sure that the broad policy of the office, and its big new departures, are in accord with the ideas of the majority in Parliament, and are co-ordinated, through the Cabinet, with the policy of the other departments. That, indeed, is the true function of a minister; and if he tries to make his responsibility real beyond that, he may easily neglect his main work. Beyond this consideration of broad policy, I do not hesitate to say that the theory of ministerial responsibility is not a check upon the growth of bureaucracy, but is rather the cover under which bureaucracy has grown up. For the position of the minister enables him, and almost compels him, to use his influence in Parliament for the purpose of diverting or minimising parliamentary criticism.

A Check upon Bureaucracy

How can this growth of inadequately controlled official power be checked? Is it not apparent that this can only be done if a clear distinction is drawn between the sphere of broad policy, in which the minister both can be and ought to be responsible, and the sphere of ordinary administrative work for which the minister cannot be genuinely responsible? If that distinction is accepted, it ought not to be impossible for Parliament without undermining ministerial or cabinet responsibility, to devise a means of making its control over the ordinary working of the departments effective, through a system of committees or in other ways.

The current complaints of bureaucracy, however, are not directed mainly against the ineffectiveness of the machinery of control, but against the way in which public work is conducted by government officials—the formalism and red-tape by which it is hampered, the absence of elasticity and enterprise; and the methods of government departments are often compared, to their disadvantage, with those of business firms. But the comparison disregards a vital fact. The primary function of a government department is not creative or productive, but regulative. It has to see that laws are exactly carried out, and that public funds are used for the precise purposes for which they were voted; and for this kind of work a good deal of red-tape is necessary. Moreover, it is essential that those who are charged with such functions should be above all suspicion of being influenced by fear or favour or the desire to make profit; and for this purpose fixed salaries and security of tenure are essential.

In short, the fundamental principles upon which government departments are organised are right for the regulative functions which they primarily exist to perform. But they are altogether wrong for creative and productive work, which demands the utmost elasticity, adaptability, and freedom for experiment. And it is just because the ordinary machinery of government has been used on a large scale for this kind of work that the outcry against bureaucracy has recently been so vehement. It is not possible to imagine a worse method of conducting a great productive enterprise than to put it under the control of an evanescent minister selected on political grounds, and supported by a body of men whose work is carried on in accordance with the traditions of the Civil Service.

If we are to avoid a breakdown of our whole system, we must abstain from placing productive enterprises under the control of the ordinary machinery of government—Parliament, responsible political ministers, and civil service staffs. But it does not follow that no productive concern ought ever to be brought under public ownership and withdrawn from the sphere of private enterprise. As we shall later note, such concerns can, if it be necessary, be organised in a way which would avoid these dangers.

The Cabinet

We turn next to the other element in the working machine of government, the Cabinet, or policy-directing body, which is the very pivot of our whole system. Two main functions fall to the Cabinet. In the first place, it has to ensure an effective co-ordination between the various departments of government; in the second place, it is responsible for the initiation and guidance of national policy in every sphere, subject to the watchful but friendly control of Parliament.

Long experience has shown that there are several conditions which must be fulfilled if a Cabinet is to perform these functions satisfactorily. In the first place, its members must, among them, be able to speak for every department of government; failing this, the function of co-ordination cannot be effectively performed. This principle was discarded in the later stages of the war, when a small War Cabinet was instituted, from which most of the ministers were excluded. The result was confusion and overlapping, and the attempt to remedy these evils by the creation of a staff of liaison officers under the control of the Prime Minister had very imperfect success, and in some respects only added to the confusion. In the second place, the Cabinet must be coherent and homogeneous, and its members must share the same ideals of national policy. National business cannot be efficiently transacted if the members of the Cabinet are under the necessity of constantly arguing about, and making compromises upon, first principles. That is the justification for drawing the members of a Cabinet from the leaders of a single party, who think alike and understand one another’s minds. Whenever this condition has been absent, confusion, vacillation and contradiction have always marked the conduct of public affairs, and disastrous results have followed.

In the third place, the procedure of the Cabinet must be intimate, informal, elastic, and confidential; every member must be able to feel that he has played his part in all the main decisions of policy, whether they directly concern his department or not, and that he is personally responsible for these decisions. Constitutional usage has always prescribed that it is the duty of a Cabinet Minister to resign if he differs from his colleagues on any vital matter, whether relating to his department or not, and this usage is, in truth, the main safeguard for the preservation of genuine conjoint responsibility, and the main barrier against irresponsible action by a Prime Minister or a clique. When the practice of resignation in the sense of giving up office is replaced by the other kind of resignation—shrugging one’s shoulders and letting things slide—the main virtue of Cabinet government has been lost. In the fourth place, in order that every minister may fully share in every important discussion and decision, it is essential that the Cabinet should be small. Sir Robert Peel, in whose ministry of 1841-6 the system probably reached perfection, laid it down that nine was the maximum number for efficiency, because not more than about nine men can sit round a table in full view of one another, all taking a real share in every discussion. When the membership of a Cabinet largely exceeds this figure, it is inevitable that the sense of joint and several responsibility for every decision should be greatly weakened.

Modern Changes in the Cabinet

I do not think any one will deny that the Cabinet has in a large degree lost these four features which we have laid down as requisite for full efficiency. The process has been going on for a long time, but during the last six years it has been accelerated so greatly that the Cabinet of to-day is almost unrecognisably different from what it was fifty years ago. To begin with, it has grown enormously in size, owing to the increase in the number of departments of government. This growth has markedly diminished the sense of responsibility for national policy as a whole felt by the individual members, and the wholesome practice of resignation has gone out of fashion. It has led to frequent failures in the co-ordination of the various departments, which are often seen working at cross purposes. It has brought about a new formality in the proceedings of the Cabinet, in the establishment of a Cabinet Secretariat.

The lack of an efficient joint Cabinet control has encouraged a very marked and unhealthy increase in the personal authority of the Prime Minister and of the clique of more intimate colleagues by whom he is surrounded; and this is strengthened by the working of the new Secretariat. All these unhealthy features have been intensified by the combination of the two strongest parties in Parliament to form a coalition; for this has deprived the Cabinet of homogeneity and made it the scene not of the definition of a policy guided by clear principles, but rather the scene of incessant argument, bargaining, and compromise on fundamentals. Finally, the responsibility of the Cabinet to Parliament has been gravely weakened; it acts as the master of Parliament, not as its agent, and its efficiency suffers from the fact that its members are able to take their responsibility to Parliament very lightly.

All these defects in the working of the Cabinet system have been much more marked since the war than at any earlier time. But the two chief among them—lessened coherence due to unwieldiness of size, and diminished responsibility to Parliament—were already becoming apparent during the generation before the war. On the question of responsibility to Parliament we shall have something to say later. But it is worth while to ask whether there is any means whereby the old coherence, intimacy and community of responsibility can be restored. If it cannot be restored, the Cabinet system, as we have known it, is doomed. I do not think that it can be restored unless the size of the Cabinet can be greatly reduced, without excluding from its deliberations a responsible spokesman for each department of government.

But this will only be possible if a considerable regrouping of the great departments can be effected. I do not think that such a regrouping is impracticable. Indeed, it is for many reasons desirable. If it were carried out, a Cabinet might consist of the following members, who would among them be in contact with the whole range of governmental activity. There would be the Prime Minister; there would be the Chancellor of the Exchequer, responsible for national finance; there would be the Minister for Foreign Affairs; there would be a Minister for Imperial Affairs, speaking for a sub-Cabinet which would include Secretaries for the Dominions, for India, and for the Crown Colonies and Protectorates; there would be a Minister of Defence, with a sub-Cabinet including Ministers of the Navy, the Army, and the Air Force; there would be a Minister for Justice and Police, performing most of the functions both of the Home Office and of the Lord Chancellor, who would cease to be a political officer and be able to devote himself to his judicial functions; there would be a Minister of Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce, with a sub-Cabinet representing the Board of Trade, the Board of Agriculture, the Ministry of Mines, the Ministry of Labour, and perhaps other departments.

Ministers of Public Health and of Education would complete the list of active administrative chiefs; but one or two additional members, not burdened with the charge of a great department might be added, such as the Lord President of the Council, and one of these might very properly be a standing representative upon the Council of the League of Nations. The heads of productive trading departments—the Post Office and the Public Works Department—should, I suggest, be excluded from the Cabinet, and their departments should be separately organised in such a way as not to involve a change of personnel when one party succeeded another in power. These departments have no direct concern with the determination of national policy.

On such a scheme we should have a Cabinet of nine or ten members, representing among them all the departments which are concerned with regulative or purely governmental work. And I suggest that a rearrangement of this kind would not only restore efficiency to the Cabinet, but would lead to very great administrative reforms, better co-ordination between closely related departments, and in many respects economy. But valuable as such changes may be, they would not in themselves be sufficient to restore complete health to our governmental system. In the last resort this depends upon the organisation of an efficient and unresting system of criticism and control.

The House of Commons

In any modern State the control of the action of Government is largely wielded by organs not formally recognised by law—by the general movement of public opinion; by the influence of what is vaguely called “the city”; by the resolutions of such powerful bodies as trade union congresses, federations of employers, religious organisations, and propagandist bodies of many kinds; and, above all, by the Press. No review of our system would be complete without some discussion of these extremely powerful and in some cases dangerous influences. We cannot, however, touch upon them here. We must confine ourselves to the formal, constitutional machinery of national control over the actions of Government, that is, to Parliament, as the spokesman of the nation.

An essential part of any full discussion of this subject would be a treatment of the Second Chamber problem. But that would demand a whole hour to itself; and I propose to pass it over for the present, and to ask you to consider the perturbing fact that the House of Commons, which is the very heart of our system, has largely lost the confidence and belief which it once commanded.

Why has the House of Commons lost the confidence of the nation? There are two main reasons, which we must investigate in turn. In the first place, in spite of the now completely democratic character of the electorate, the House is felt to be very imperfectly representative of the national mind. And in the second place, it is believed to perform very inefficiently its primary function of criticising and controlling the action of Government.

First of all, why do men vaguely feel that the House of Commons is unrepresentative? I think there are three main reasons. The first is to be found in the method of election. Since 1885 the House has been elected by equal electoral districts, each represented by a single member. Now, if we suppose that every constituency was contested by two candidates only, about 45 per cent. of the voters must feel that they had not voted for anybody who sat at Westminster; while many of the remaining 55 per cent. must feel that they had been limited to a choice between two men, neither of whom truly represented them. But if in many constituencies there are no contests, and in many others there are three or more candidates, the number of electors who feel that they have not voted for any member of the House may rise to 60 per cent. or even 70 per cent. of the total.

The psychological effect of this state of things must be profound. And there is another consideration. The very name of the House of Commons (Communes, not common people) implies that it represents organised communities, with a character and personality and tradition of their own—boroughs or counties. So it did until 1885. Now it largely represents totally unreal units which exist only for the purpose of the election. The only possible means of overcoming these defects of the single member system is some mode of proportional representation—perhaps qualified by the retention of single members in those boroughs or counties which are just large enough to be entitled to one member.

The main objection taken to proportional representation is that it would probably involve small and composite majorities which would not give sufficient authority to ministries. But our chief complaint is that the authority of modern ministries is too great, their power too unchecked. In the middle of the nineteenth century, when our system worked most smoothly, parties were composite, and majorities were small—as they usually ought to be, if the real balance of opinion in the country is to be reflected. The result was that the control of Parliament over the Cabinet was far more effective than it is to-day; the Cabinet could not ride roughshod over the House; and debates really influenced votes, as they now scarcely ever do. The immense majorities which have been the rule since 1885 are not healthy. They are the chief cause of the growth of Cabinet autocracy. And they are due primarily to the working of the single-member constituency.

The second ground of distrust is the belief that Parliament is unduly dominated by party; that its members cannot speak and vote freely; that the Cabinet always gets its way because it is able to hold over members, in terrorem, the threat of a general election, which means a fine of £1000 a head; and that (what creates more suspicion than anything) the policy of parties is unduly influenced by the subscribers of large amounts to secret party funds. I am a profound believer in organised parties as essential to the working of our system. But I also believe that there is real substance in these complaints, though they are often exaggerated. What is the remedy? First, smaller majorities, and a greater independence of the individual member, which would follow from a change in the methods of election. And, secondly, publicity of accounts in regard to party funds. There is no reason why an honest party should be ashamed of receiving large gifts for the public ends it serves, and every reason why it should be proud of receiving a multitude of small gifts. I very strongly hold that in politics, as in industry, the best safeguard against dishonest dealings, and the surest means of restoring confidence, is to be found in the policy of “Cards on the table.” Is there any reason why we Liberals should not begin by boldly adopting, in our own case, this plainly Liberal policy?

Representation of “Interests”

There is a third reason for dissatisfaction with the composition of the House of Commons, which has become more prominent in recent years. It is that, increasingly, organised interests are making use of the deficiencies of our electoral system to secure representation for themselves. If I may take as instances two men whom, in themselves, everybody would recognise as desirable members of the House, Mr. J.H. Thomas plainly is, and is bound to think of himself as, a representative of the railwaymen rather than of the great community of Derby, while Sir Allan Smith as plainly represents engineering employers rather than Croydon. There used to be a powerful trade which chose as its motto “Our trade is our politics.” Most of us have regarded that as an unsocial doctrine, yet the growing representation of interests suggests that it is being widely adopted.

Indeed, there are some who contend that we ought frankly to accept this development and universalise it, basing our political organisation upon what they describe (in a blessed, Mesopotamic phrase) as “functional representation.” The doctrine seems to have, for some minds, a strange plausibility. But is it not plain that it could not be justly carried out? Who could define or enumerate the “functions” that are to be represented? If you limit them to economic functions (as, in practice, the advocates of this doctrine do), will you provide separate representation, for example, for the average-adjusters—a mere handful of men, who nevertheless perform a highly important function? But you cannot thus limit functions to the economic sphere without distorting your representation of the national mind and will. If you represent miners merely as miners, you misrepresent them, for they are also Baptists or Anglicans, dog-fanciers, or lovers of Shelley, prize-fighters, or choral singers. The notion that you can represent the mind of the nation on a basis of functions is the merest moonshine. The most you can hope for is to get a body of 700 men and women who will form a sort of microcosm of the more intelligent mind of the nation, and trust to it to control your Government. Such a body will consist of men who follow various trades. But the conditions under which they are chosen ought to be such as to impress upon them the duty of thinking of the national interest as a whole in the first instance, and of their trade interests only as they are consistent with that. The fundamental danger of functional representation is that it reverses this principle, and impresses upon the representative the view that his trade is his politics.

But it is useless to deplore or condemn a tendency unless you see how it can be checked. Why has this representation of economic interests become so strong? Because Parliament is the arena in which important industrial problems are discussed and settled. It is not a very good body for that purpose. If we had a National Industrial Council charged, not with the final decision, but with the most serious and systematic discussion of such problems, they would be more wisely dealt with. And, what is quite as important, such a body would offer precisely the kind of sphere within which the representation of interests as such would be altogether wholesome and useful; and, once it became the main arena of discussion, it would satisfy the demand for interest-representation, which is undermining the character of Parliament. In other words, the true alternative to functional representation in Parliament is functional devolution under the supreme authority of Parliament.

But still more important than the dissatisfaction aroused by the composition of the House is the dissatisfaction which is due to the belief that its functions are very inefficiently performed. It is widely believed that, instead of controlling Government, Parliament is in fact controlled by it. The truth is that the functions imposed upon Parliament by increased legislative activity and the growth of the sphere of Government are so vast and multifarious that no part of them can be adequately performed in the course of sessions of reasonable length; and if the sessions are not of reasonable length—already they are too long—we shall be deprived of the services of many types of men without whom the House would cease to be genuinely representative of the mind of the nation.

Consider how the three main functions of Parliament are performed—legislation, finance, and the control of administration. The discussion of legislation by the whole House has been made to seem futile by the crack of the party whip, by obstruction, and by the weapons designed to deal with obstruction—the closure, the guillotine, the kangaroo. A real amendment has been brought about in this sphere by the establishment of a system of committees to which legislative proposals of various kinds are referred, and this is one of the most hopeful features of recent development. But there is still one important sphere of legislation in which drastic reform is necessary: the costly and cumbrous methods of dealing with private bills promoted by municipalities or by railways and other public companies. It is surely necessary that the bulk of this work should be devolved upon subordinate bodies.

When we pass to finance, the inefficiency of parliamentary control becomes painfully clear. It is true that a good deal of parliamentary time is devoted to the discussion of the estimates. But how much of this time is given to motions to reduce the salary of the Foreign Secretary by £100 in order to call attention to what is happening in China? Parliament never, in fact, attempts any searching analysis of the expenditure in this department or that. It cannot do so, because the national accounts are presented in a form which makes such discussion very difficult. The establishment of an Estimates Committee is an advance. But even an Estimates Committee cannot do such work without the aid of a whole series of special bodies intimately acquainted with the working of various departments. In short, the House of Commons has largely lost control over national expenditure. As for the control of administration, we have already seen how inadequate that is, and why it is inadequate.

These deficiencies must be corrected if Parliament is to regain its prestige, and if our system of government is to attain real efficiency. For this purpose two things are necessary: in the first place, substantial changes in the procedure of Parliament; in the second place, the delegation to subordinate bodies of such powers as can be appropriately exercised by them without impairing the supreme authority of Parliament as the mouthpiece of the nation. I cannot here attempt to discuss these highly important matters in any detail. In regard to procedure, I can only suggest that the most valuable reform would be the institution of a series of committees each concerned with a different department of Government. The function of these committees would be to investigate and criticise the organisation and normal working of the departments, not to deal with questions of broad policy; for these ought to be dealt with in relation to national policy as a whole, and they must, therefore, be the concern of the minister and of the Cabinet, subject to the overriding authority of Parliament as a whole. In order to secure that this distinction is maintained, and in order to avoid the defects of the French committee system under which independent rapporteurs disregard and override the authority of the ministers, and thus gravely undermine their responsibility, it would be necessary not only that each committee should include a majority of supporters of Government, but that the chair should be occupied by the minister or his deputy.

Devolution

Nor can I stop to dwell upon the very important subject of the delegation or devolution of powers by Parliament to subordinate bodies. I will only say that devolution may be, and I think ought to be, of two kinds, which we may define as regional and functional. To regional bodies for large areas (which might either be directly elected or constituted by indirect election from the local government authorities within each area) might be allotted much of the legislative power of Parliament in regard to private Bills, together with general control over those public functions, such as Education and Public Health, which are now mainly in the hands of local authorities. Of functional devolution the most important expression would be the establishment of a National Industrial Council and of a series of councils or boards for various industries endowed with quasi-legislative authority; by which I mean that they should be empowered by statute to draft proposals for legislation of a defined kind, which would ultimately receive their validity from Parliament, perhaps without necessarily passing through the whole of the elaborate process by which ordinary legislation is enacted. I believe there are many who share my conviction that a development in this direction represents the healthiest method of introducing a real element of industrial self-government. But for the moment we are concerned with it as a means of relieving Parliament from some very difficult functions which Parliament does not perform conspicuously well, without qualifying its supreme and final authority.

One final point. If it is true, as I have argued, that the decay of the prestige and efficiency of Parliament is due to the fact that it is already overloaded with functions and responsibilities, it must be obvious that to add to this burden the responsibility for controlling the conduct of great industries, such as the railways and the mines, would be to ensure the breakdown of our system of government, already on the verge of dislocation. In so far as it may be necessary to undertake on behalf of the community the ownership and conduct of any great industrial or commercial concern, I submit that it is essential that it should not be brought under the direct control of a ministerial department responsible to Parliament. Yet the ultimate responsibility for the right conduct of any such undertaking (e.g. the telephones, electric supply, or forests) must, when it is assumed by the State, rest upon Parliament. How is this ultimate responsibility to be met? Surely in the way in which it is already met in the case of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners or the Port of London Authority—by setting up, under an Act of Parliament, an appropriate body in each case, and by leaving to it a large degree of freedom of action, subject to the terms of the Act and to the inalienable power of Parliament to alter the Act. In such a case the Act could define how the authority should be constituted, on what principles its functions should be performed, and how its profits, if it made profits, should be distributed. And I suggest that there is no reason why the Post Office itself should not be dealt with in this way.

It is only a fleeting and superficial survey which I have been able to give of the vast and complex themes on which I have touched; and there is no single one of them with which I have been able to deal fully. My purpose has been to show that in the political sphere as well as in the social and economic spheres vast tasks lie before Liberalism, and, indeed, that our social and economic tasks are not likely to be efficiently performed unless we give very serious thought to the political problem. Among the heavy responsibilities which lie upon our country in the troubled time upon which we are entering, there is none more heavy than the responsibility which rests upon her as the pioneer of parliamentary government—the responsibility of finding the means whereby this system may be made a respected and a trustworthy instrument for the labours of reconstruction that lie before us.