it
has been required to do a great deal more work than it was designed for.
The time has come to consider carefully the character and capacity of
our machinery of government in view of the increased demands which are
certain to be made upon it in the future.

Our national political system may be divided into two parts. On the one
hand, there is the working machine, which goes on, year in, year out,
whether Parliament is sitting or not, and which would still go on quite
well for a time if Parliament never met again. We call it the
Government, and we habitually and rightly hold it responsible for every
aspect of national policy and action, for legislation and finance as
well as for foreign policy and internal administration. On the other
hand, there is what Burke used to call "the control on behalf of the
nation," mainly exercised through Parliament, whose chief function is to
criticise and control the action of Government, and to make the
responsibility of Government to the nation a real and a felt
responsibility. The discontents of to-day apply to both parts of the
system, and I propose to deal with them in turn, first inquiring what is
wrong with the working machine of government and how it can be amended,
and then turning to consider how far the control on behalf of the nation
is working badly, and how it can be made more efficient.

In what I have called the "working machine" of government there are two
distinct elements. First, there is the large, permanent, professional
staff, the Civil Service; secondly, there is the policy-directing body,
the Cabinet. Both of these are the objects of a great deal of
contemporary criticism. On the one hand, we are told that we are
suffering from "bureaucracy," which means that the permanent officials
have too much independent and uncontrolled, or imperfectly controlled,
authority. On the other hand, we are told that we are suffering from
Cabinet dictatorship, or, alternatively, that the Cabinet system is
breaking down and being replaced by the autocracy of the Prime Minister.
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 reconstr