ies and crotchet-makers of the House and the
country. So long as at any moment the policy of an office could be
altered by chance votes in either House of Parliament, there is no
security for any consistency. Our guns and our ships are not, perhaps,
very good now. But they would be much worse if any thirty or forty
advocates for this gun or that gun could make a motion in Parliament,
beat the department, and get their ships or their guns adopted. The
"Black Breech Ordnance Company" and the "Adamantine Ship Company" would
soon find representatives in Parliament, if forty or fifty members
would get the national custom for their rubbish. But this result is now
prevented by the Parliamentary head of the department. As soon as the
Opposition begins the attack, he looks up his means of defence. He
studies the subject, compiles his arguments, and builds little piles of
statistics, which he hopes will have some effect. He has his reputation
at stake, and he wishes to show that he is worth his present place, and
fit for future promotion. He is well known, perhaps liked, by the
House--at any rate the House attends to him; he is one of the regular
speakers whom they hear and heed. He is sure to be able to get himself
heard, and he is sure to make the best defence he can. And after he has
settled his speech he loiters up to the Secretary of the Treasury, and
says quietly, "They have got a motion against me on Tuesday, you know.
I hope you will have your men here. A lot of fellows have crotchets,
and though they do not agree a bit with one another, they are all
against the department; they will all vote for the inquiry." And the
Secretary answers, "Tuesday, you say; no (looking at a paper), I do not
think it will come on Tuesday. There is Higgins on Education. He is
good for a long time. But anyhow it shall be all right." And then he
glides about and speaks a word here and a word there, in consequence of
which, when the anti-official motion is made, a considerable array of
steady, grave faces sits behind the Treasury Bench--nay, possibly a
rising man who sits in outlying independence below the gangway rises to
defend the transaction; the department wins by thirty-three, and the
management of that business pursues its steady way.

This contrast is no fancy picture. The experiment of conducting the
administration of a public department by an independent unsheltered
authority has often been tried, and always failed. Parliament always
p