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.
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