Walter Bagehot

Yet there are almost no two offices which are exactly alike in the defined relations of the permanent official to the Parliamentary chief.

But the unsystematic and casual arrangement of our public offices is not more striking than their difference of arrangement for the one purpose they have in common.

Of course one could give an historical reason, but I mean an administrative reason a reason which would show, not how it came to have the duty, but why in future it should keep it.

He is a judge, and it is contrary to obvious principle that any part of administration should be entrusted to a judge; it is of very grave moment that the administration of justice should be kept clear of any sinister temptations.

The whole office of the Lord Chancellor is a heap of anomalies.

According to our system the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the enemy of the Exchequer; a whole series of enactments try to protect it from him.

The central administration, the Treasury, never asked any account of the moneys the courts thus received; so long as it was not asked to pay anything, it was satisfied.

Our three courts of law--the Queen's Bench, the Common Pleas, and the Exchequer--for the sake of the fees extended an originally contracted sphere into the entire sphere of litigation.

The English offices have never, since they were made, been arranged with any reference to one another; or rather they were never made, but grew as each could.

He undoubtedly settled the administration of France upon an effective, consistent, and enduring system; the succeeding governments have but worked the mechanism they inherited from him.

But what we are concerned with now is, not Napoleon's originality, but his work.

There are but two foreign administrations probably better than ours, and both these have had something which we have not had.

But strong as is our ignorance in deteriorating our administration, another cause is stronger still.

The sort of education which fits a man for the higher posts of practical life is still very rare; there is not even a good agreement as to what it is.

They have peculiar disadvantages in the acquisition of business knowledge, business training, and business habits, and they have no peculiar advantages.

But no man would select the cadets of an aristocratic house as desirable administrators.

So if authority is given to a person, not on account of his working fitness, but on account of his imaginative efficiency, he will commonly impair good administration.

All such ornamental work is a source of friction and error; it prevents the time being marked accurately; each new wheel is a new source of imperfection.

They are like the additional and solely-ornamental wheels introduced into the clocks of the Middle Ages, which tell the then age of the moon or the supreme constellation; which make little men or birds come out and in theatrically.

So far from wondering that the English Parliament has been inefficient in foreign policy, I think it is wonderful, and another sign of the rude, vague imagination that is at the bottom of our people, that we have done so well as we have.

Who could expect such a people to comprehend the new and strange events of foreign places?

Are they not above all nations divided from the rest of the world, insular both in situation and in mind, both for good and for evil?

But would it not have been a miracle if the English people, directing their own policy, and being what they are, had directed a good policy?

The foreign policy of England has for many years been, according to the judgment now in vogue, inconsequent, fruitless, casual; aiming at no distinct pre-imagined end, based on no steadily pre-conceived principle.

A free government is essentially a government by persuasion; and as are the people to be persuaded, and as are the persuaders, so will that government be.