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.
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