n answer, I think it may be
shown not, indeed, that this precise change is necessary to a
permanently perfect administration, but that some analogous change,
some change of the same species, is so.

At this moment, in England, there is a sort of leaning towards
bureaucracy--at least, among writers and talkers. There is a seizure of
partiality to it. The English people do not easily change their rooted
notions, but they have many unrooted notions. Any great European event
is sure for a moment to excite a sort of twinge of conversion to
something or other. Just now, the triumph of the Prussians--the
bureaucratic people, as is believed, par excellence--has excited a kind
of admiration for bureaucracy, which a few years since we should have
thought impossible. I do not presume to criticise the Prussian
bureaucracy of my own knowledge; it certainly is not a pleasant
institution for foreigners to come across, though agreeableness to
travellers is but of very second-rate importance. But it is quite
certain that the Prussian bureaucracy, though we, for a moment, half
admire it at a distance, does not permanently please the most
intelligent and liberal Prussians at home. What are two among the
principal aims of the Fortschritt Partei--the party of progress--as Mr.
Grant Duff, the most accurate and philosophical of our describers,
delineates them?

First, "a liberal system, conscientiously carried out in all the
details of the administration, with a view to avoiding the scandals now
of frequent occurrence, when an obstinate or bigoted official sets at
defiance the liberal initiations of the Government, trusting to
backstairs influence".

Second, "an easy method of bringing to justice guilty officials, who
are at present, as in France, in all conflicts with simple citizens,
like men armed cap-a-pie fighting with defenceless". A system against
which the most intelligent native liberals bring even with colour of
reason such grave objections, is a dangerous model for foreign
imitation.

The defects of bureaucracy are, indeed, well known. It is a form of
Government which has been tried often enough in the world, and it is
easy to show what, human nature being what it in the long run is, the
defects of a bureaucracy must in the long run be.

It is an inevitable defect, that bureaucrats will care more for routine
than for results; or, as Burke put it, "that they will think the
substance of business not to be much more important t