rt which should be taken
by any elected body as a whole in appointing the officials who serve
under it is much more difficult, and cannot be discussed without
considering what are to be the relative functions of the officials and
the representatives after the appointment has taken place. Do we aim at
making election in fact as well as in constitutional theory the sole
base of political authority, or do we desire that the non-elected
officials shall exert some amount of independent influence?

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.

[84] Bonar's _Malthus_, chap. vii.

[85] _Hansard_, Feb. 4th, 5th, 6th, 1830.

If official figures did not exist in England, or if they did not possess
or deserve authority, it is difficult to estim