Note (return) — Chapter III

The fact that most Englishmen, in spite of their traditional fear of bureaucracy, would now accept the second of these alternatives, is one of the most striking results of our experience in the working of democracy. We see that the evidence on which the verdict at an election must be given is becoming every year more difficult to collect and present, and further removed from the direct observation of the voters. We are afraid of being entirely dependent on partisan newspapers or election leaflets for our knowledge, and we have therefore come to value, even if for that reason only, the existence of a responsible and more or less independent Civil Service. It is difficult to realise how short a time it is since questions for which we now rely entirely on official statistics were discussed by the ordinary political methods of agitation and advocacy. In the earlier years of George the Third's reign, at a time when population in England was, as we now know, rising with unprecedented rapidity, the question of fact whether it was rising or falling led to embittered political controversy.[84] In the spring of 1830 the House of Commons gave three nights to a confused party debate on the state of the country. The Whigs argued that distress was general, and the Tories (who were, as it happened, right) that it was local[85]. In 1798 or 1830 the 'public' who could take part in such discussions numbered perhaps fifty thousand at the most. At least ten million people must, since 1903, have taken part in the present Tariff Reform controversy; and that controversy would have degenerated into mere Bedlam if it had not been for the existence of the Board of Trade Returns, with whose figures both sides had at least to appear to square their arguments.