iking than their difference of arrangement for the one
purpose they have in common. They all, being under the ultimate
direction of a Parliamentary official, ought to have the best means of
bringing the whole of the higher concerns of the office before that
official. When the fresh mind rules, the fresh mind requires to be
informed. And most business being rather alike, the machinery for
bringing it before the extrinsic chief ought, for the most part, to be
similar: at any rate, where it is different, it ought to be different
upon reason; and where it is similar, similar upon reason. Yet there
are almost no two offices which are exactly alike in the defined
relations of the permanent official to the Parliamentary chief. Let us
see. The ARMY AND NAVY are the most similar in nature, yet there is in
the army a permanent outside office, called the Horse Guards, to which
there is nothing else like. In the navy, there is a curious anomaly--a
Board of Admiralty, also changing with every Government, which is to
instruct the First Lord in what he does not know. The relations between
the First Lord and the Board have not always been easily intelligible,
and those between the War Office and the Horse Guards are in extreme
confusion. Even now a Parliamentary paper relating to them has just
been presented to the House of Commons, which says the fundamental and
ruling document cannot be traced beyond the possession of Sir George
Lewis, who was Secretary for War three years since; and the confused
details are endless, as they must be in a chronic contention of
offices. At the Board of Trade there is only the hypothesis of a Board;
it has long ceased to exist. Even the President and Vice-President do
not regularly meet for the transaction of affairs. The patent of the
latter is only to transact business in the absence of the President,
and if the two are not intimate, and the President chooses to act
himself, the Vice-President sees no papers, and does nothing. At the
Treasury the shadow of a Board exists, but its members have no power,
and are the very officials whom Canning said existed to make a House,
to keep a House, and to cheer the Ministers. The India Office has a
fixed "Council"; but the Colonial Office which rules over our other
dependencies and colonies, has not, and never had, the vestige of a
council. Any of these varied Constitutions may be right, but all of
them can scarcely be right.

In truth the real constitution of a