A History of Public Administration: Volume II: From the Eleventh Century to the Present Day [1 ed.] 1138390720, 9781138390720

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Routledge Revivals

A History of Public Administration

A History of Public Administration

E. N. Gladden

Volume II

First published in 1972 by Frank Cass and Company Limited This edition first published in 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1972 E. N. Gladden All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact. A Library of Congress record exists under ISBN: ISBN 13: 978-1-138-39072-0 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-429-42321-5 (ebk)

A History of Public Administration

By the Same Author

‘Civil Service Staff Relationships’ (1943; 2nd ed. Frank Cass, 1972) ‘The Civil Service: Its Problems and Future’ (Staples, 2nd ed. 1948) ‘An Introduction to Public Administration’ (Staples, 4th ed. 1966) ‘The Essentials of Public Administration’ (Staples, 3rd ed. 1964) ‘Civil Service or Bureaucracy?’ (Staples, 1956) ‘British Public Service Administration’ (Staples, 1961) ‘Approach to Public Administration’ (Staples, 1966) ‘Civil Services of the United Kingdom 1855-1970’ (Frank Cass, 1967) ‘A Student’s Guide to Public Administration’ (Staples, 1972)

♦ ‘The Failure of the Left’ (Staples, 1947) A political study by ‘Norman Mansfield ’

♦ ‘Ypres, 1917’ (Kimber, 1967) ‘Across the Piave’ (HMSO for Imperial War Museum, 1971) A utobiographical

A History of Public Administration

E. N. Gladden M.Sc.(Econ.)/ Ph.D.(Public Admin.)

Volume II From the Eleventh Century to the Present Day

FRANK CASS: LONDON

First published 1972 in Great Britain by FRANK CASS AND COMPANY LIMITED 67 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3BT, England and in United States of America by FRANK CASS AND COMPANY LIMITED c/o International Scholarly Book Services, Inc. P.O. Box 4347, Portland, Oregon 97208

Copyright © 1972 E. N. GLADDEN

ISBN 0 7146 1310 X

A ll Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording or otherwise, with out the prior permission of Frank Cass and Company Limited in writing.

Printed in Great Britain by Stephen Austin and Sons Ltd., Hertford

Contents Introduction

vii

1 Medieval Europe: Age of Experiment 1500)

( a .d .

1000

to

1

Feudal Society — In the Anglo-Saxon Context — Finance: The Course of the Exchequer — Development of the Royal Household — Administration in the Locali­ ties — Developing Techniques — Typical Administrators of the Age — The Extending Scope of Administration.

2 Middle East: East-West Impact

( a .d .

49

1071 to 1683)

Politics and Administration in the Eastern Marches — Ottoman Government and Administration — The Harem — The City of Constantinople — Recruitment of the Ruling Institution: The Slave Family — The Phanariots — Other Administrative Developments — Some Eminent Statesmen-Administrators.

3 Sixteenth Century Europe

( a .d .

1485

to

85

1603)

Machiavelli, Administrator and Philosopher — Tudor Administrative Revolution — Tudor Administrator: Thomas Cromwell — Administration of the AngloScottish Border — Tudor Administrator: Lord Burghley — Philip II of Spain as Administrator.

4 Early American Civilizations

111

The Incas — The Maya — The Aztecs — Spanish Empire in America.

5 The New Administration Europe ( a . d . 1610 to 1786)

Begins

to

Emerge

in 141

Richelieu and Louis XIII — Colbert and Louis XIV — Prussian Administration, 1640-1786 — Lionel Cranfield: Administrative Careerist — Samuel Pepys: Civil Servant in the Making — Sale of Offices.

6 China: Sung and After Eminent Sung Administrators: Su-Tungpo and Wang Anshih — Administration under the Ming and Ch’ing Dynasties — Civil Service under the Ch’ing Dynasty — China and the West — The Chinese Civil Service: General Review.

191

vi

CONTENTS

7 Indian Statecraft

( a .d .

1556 to 1853)

231

Mughal Administration — East India Company: Commercial Phase — East India Company: Birth of a Civil Service.

8

Age of Revolutions

( a.d .

1649 to 1815)

257

England Achieves Constitutional Monarchy — Admini­ stration of the American Colonies — Burke and ‘Economical Reform’ — The American Revolution — The French Revolution — Russia, 1462-1730.

9 Development of Modern Systems of Public Admini­ stration

307

Development of Civil Service in the United States and Britain — Eminent Civil Servant: Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan — Public Service in Colonial Territories — The Russian Revolution: Bureaucracy of the Single Party State — Albert Thomas: International Statesman — International Administration.

10 Public Administration Adapting to the Needs of a New Age

365

The Era of Global Integration — The Central Govern­ ment Mould — Consolidation of the Civil Service — Local Government — Public Corporations as an Auxiliary Government Arm — Control of Public Administration — Public Administration as a Specialist Activity — The Future of Public Administration.

Index

401

Introduction Historians have always paid considerable attention to the problems of power and the wielders of power, whose importance cannot be gainsaid. On the other hand much less has been said about administration and those who carried it out on behalf of the leaders. This too is understandable, for the activities of the leaders are often spectacular, providing the very essence of a good story, while those of the administrators are inherently pedestrian. Yet today, when more and more attention is being given to the history of particular activities, to specialist as opposed to general history, there is surely a case for attempting to redress the balance between government and administration. At a time when the scope of public administration is continuingly expanding — to many persons with a frightening impetus — and more and more thought is necessarily being given to research into its nature and problems, much profit could well be derived from a better understanding of the administrative lessons of the past, so far as they can be deduced. Furthermore, even a cursory investigation of the administrative context of earlier ages raises the suspicion that administration, like human nature, may not have varied very much since human society began. If this should prove to be the case there could be much to be said for regarding administration as a common factor in all historical situations, a sort of general essence in time and place by which the entire human story can be co-ordinated. This present book is an attempt to provide a highly selective introductory history of this vast subject, with special emphasis on its public aspects. Public administration serves so many fields of activity and in such a diversity of forms that it can be approached from a number of viewpoints. Selecting universal history as the context, public administration, despite its ubiquity, suffers from not being regarded as a major activity within that context, and from, in fact, being essentially a subordinate or supporting factor in government, which is itself a subject that has not been too well served by the general historian. While accepting the signposts of universal history we have to relate such specific administrative

viii

INTRODUCTION

incidents to the system of government with which they were associated. In any case there are many gaps in the record, some of which will eventually be filled. It has to be admitted that administration is not an exciting activity at best, and administrators themselves, who are in the most favourable position to interpret their own activities, are not prone to dwell upon them, much less to set them down in writing and thus to place on record the problems they have had to face and the methods they have had to employ to solve them. Consequently, many of the existing gaps are not there because the record has been erased by tragic destruction or sad neglect. Although there have been plenty of such instances, once the individual administrator died the record itself was beyond creation. Yet, despite these gaps in the historical record, the surviving material is abundant and in some instances not easily manageable. Many fine studies of administrative events, periods and incidents have been made by scholars: many first-rate accounts, sometimes on comparative lines, exist of the administra­ tion of specific realms — states, kingdoms, principalities, insti­ tutions — but not by any means enough to build up an integrated explanation of public administration as an essential ingredient in human experience and endeavour, such as scholars have been able to attempt on an universal basis with commendable success in other specialist fields. The author has therefore chosen to select from the human record — as far as it has come within his inevitably limited knowledge — certain periods and phases when public administration can be clearly seen in contemporary per­ spective, to arrange these instances in a suitable historical pattern, but to leave it largely to the reader to discern the ebb and flow of administrative development and to sense, somewhat vaguely perhaps at this stage, their underlying contribution. The specific incidents in, or pieces of administrative history thus sketched in are inevitably slanted from different standpoints, and neither selected nor directed to sustaining a particular thesis, other than to reinforce the points already made of the subject’s inherent continuity, universality and essential subordination. There are in fact a large number of possible approaches to public administration similar to those applied to other fields, but there are six that might have been adopted as the basis of such a history, all of which have contributed ingredients to the resulting picture. These can be classified as (1) Direction and Top Manage­ ment, (2) Functions and Organization, (3) Personnel, (4) Tech­ niques, (5) Biography, and (6) Theory. (1) Direction and Top Management. This represents the normal

INTRODUCTION

IX

approach to the subject by administrators and historians without distinction. Viewed from the governors’ level the subject is con­ cerned with the exercise of power, the deployment of resources, the determination of policies and the control of the administra­ tive machine. The sphere of government extends to religious observance and the deployment of armed power. At this level, rulers and governors themselves participate in administration, in varying degrees, although they are not necessarily aware of it as a specific activity, or they appoint deputies, i.e. ministers, with power both to govern in their name and to manage the affairs of the realm on their behalf. Division of labour is quickly mani­ festing itself with the increasing complication of affairs, and the extending responsibilities of government. Normally the historian is here concerned with the form and powers of government and not in separating its administrative aspects, although the specialist in public administration must do so. (2) Functions and Organization. The extending functionaliza­ tion of society and government, arising out of the process of specialization, calls for changes in the structure of government. Consequently, rulers and their ministers become increasingly involved in organizing. The actual extent of such functions varies from system to system, with time and place, and with the level of operations: e.g. imperial, national, regional, local. To be effective, and indeed often to facilitate such developments, public administration has to be broadly and suitably based. Its organiza­ tion, or structure, must be suited to the purposes it is devised to meet. Senior administrators are concerned in securing the services of human agents who are sufficiently skilled in deploying the essential resources and in running the machinery of government. At this vital level the public services in the various functional spheres can be usefully analysed and compared. (3) Personnel. As we have seen, from the very beginning the supreme administrator has found it necessary to delegate some or most of his administrative responsibilities and functions. He has normally employed in this office a member, or members, of his own family or household, but a time comes when the public officials form an occupational group with its own place in society. A new art of personnel management develops, imperceptibly at first, formulating precedents and rules for dealing with the public business, and of such matters relating to the regulation of their occupational practices, touching upon such matters as precedence and authority, discipline, grading and selection, training, advance­ ment and so forth. As history unfolds, realms extend, govern­ ments develop, officialdom becomes professionalized. The public

X

INTRODUCTION

services can be compared and their effectiveness assessed. Bureaucracy becomes one of society’s problems. (4) Techniques. Public officials soon develop their own tech­ niques, an internal sphere closely related to the functional, (2). Where they are called upon by the ruler to undertake tasks, or to provide services, that are not solely administrative in form, in addition to being administrators, they need to be masters of such crafts and operations as, in other circumstances, would be left as a matter of course to the governed. There are, however, basic developments and techniques of society that play an important part in determining the scope and nature of administration; especially those activities concerned with communicating and record-keeping, in which the public administrator has a special interest. These cover the use and development of language, the invention of writing and of media suitable for its perpetuation — such as papyrus and paper — of printing, telecommunications, office machinery and latterly computers. Such developments which have been basic to the development of civilizations have a closely related and vital influence in the shaping of administration as an instrument of government. (5) Biography. Since administering is essentially a human activity it is important to understand what the individual official actually does. Only the involved official can know precisely how the machine works and it is to his experience the student must turn, if he can discover it. The lives of administrators, where they have been recorded, are therefore of prime importance, but in this sphere there is much that has not been recorded. Existing accounts tend naturally to concentrate upon the actions of the leaders, at the decision-reaching or policy-making levels; their relationships with the rulers, with their subordinates, if they have any, and with the administered; their effectiveness as the agents of the governors; their attitudes to their profession; the tech­ niques they have to acquire and the routines and methods of their daily work. On such matters there is much to be gleaned, not only from the general histories and the specialized studies, but from the autobiographies and biographies of statesmen and other public figures, and of course from the official papers them­ selves. Nor should fictional reconstructions be overlooked which interpret the ways and manners of a particular age, among which, for example, may be cited Lady Murasaki’s splendid The Tale of Genji, which, in probing the ways of Japanese society in the tenth century, contains a good deal of incidental information about the conduct of public business of the time. (6) Theory. Finally there are the philosophies which have influ-

INTRODUCTION

xi

enced the development of public administration and the theories that have been, or are being advanced to explain its place in the general scheme of things. Those of the past have survived in an extremely piecemeal way, while those that are currently being adumbrated are numerous and inevitably lack authority. A good deal can be gleaned from the theories of government offered by political writers as far back as Aristotle, and more so with the appearance of the so-called Administrative State. Latterly the development of general administration, both as an art and science, has been assiduously examined, particularly in the fields of industry and business enterprise, with special emphasis on the theories of organization, decision-making, management and so forth. There is growing support among scholars for the idea that public administration, well accepted as an art, is in fact also a science which can be learned and applied. We need not go all the way with these contentions to appreciate what an interesting field of human endeavour and inquiry is emerging here. These six approaches are by no means exclusive: many others are possible, depending to some extent upon the specific interests and objectives of the inquirer. The separate pieces of public administrative experience out of which the present work has been built have not been chosen to illustrate specifically any of the six approaches. Some of the sections of the work contribute to more than one of the viewpoints. A key to the appearance of the six themes in the present volume is provided by references under the six headings in the index. In conclusion, may it be suggested that, apart from its appeal to the general reader who is interested in the world around him and in its roots in the past, this History of Public Administration should be of particular interest to the student, practitioner and teacher of government, and especially of public administration. Somewhere within the vast area of the survey, in which there are inevitably many gaps both in period and level of activity, it should be practicable for the interested reader to fit his own special interest or experience of administering, and to relate it to man­ kind’s administrative experience as a whole. In this way it should be possible for almost any interested reader to make his own contribution to the overall picture; while the teacher of public administration, unavoidably concerned with a particular period or specialist activity, should be helped to perceive the broad flow of administrative development and to place his own teachings in their appropriate context. History in this way, regarded from many viewpoints, can add both interest and meaning to Public Administration, a subject in which even the expert often finds

xii

INTRODUCTION

it difficult to provide his students with a co-ordinated picture of the several sectors he is being called upon to study. This History of Public Administration is presented in two separate parts: Volume I — Early Public Administration, cover­ ing the period from the beginnings to the eleventh century a . d ., and Volume II — Modern Public Administration, covering the period from the eleventh century a . d . to the present day.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The works quoted in the footnotes may be divided broadly into (1) specialist historical studies in specific fields and periods of public administration, and (2) works on other topics, especially government, which contribute incidentally to the history of public administration. Works in both categories are legion. In fact, there are few histories which could not be assigned to one category or the other. There would therefore be little point in adding to these lists. Little attention has been given to the history of public administration in a general or universal sense and it is therefore difficult to afford useful guidance in this field. One could of course quote multi-volume works on the history of public administration like T. F. Tout’s Chapters in Mediaeval Administrative History, or L. D. White’s studies in the administrative history of the United States, which began with The Federalists (1948), but these fall squarely into category (1) above; or to Arnold Townbee’s Study of History or K. A. Wittfogel’s Oriental Despotism, which fall into category (2). However, there are signs of changes in the air. In 1964 the Fondazione Italiana per la Storia Amministrativa, of Milan, inaugurated their series of Annuali which bring together scholarly monographs on the history of public administration. In 1969 the Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, Berkeley, included in its ‘Vistas of History’ series a stimulating brochure on Perspectives on Administration, by G. D. Nash. In 1971 Scott Foresman and Co. of Illinois have included in their ‘Topics in Comparative History’, series a group of articles on Bureaucracy in Historical Perspective.

CHAPTER 1

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: AGE OF EXPERIMENT — a .d . 1000 to 1500 With the fading, as early as the ninth century, of Charle­ magne’s heroic vision of a rehabilitated central power in the image of Imperial Rome, stretches of Western Europe had subsided into the shades. To extract the essence of the admini­ strative system of the times it is necessary to look to the localities, and, unfortunately for our present objective, records are meagre if not painfully defective. Apart from the dream-picture of the Holy Roman Empire and the actual extension of the temporal sway of the Church, flowing in to fill the institutional vacuum, centralized government was everywhere at a discount. Admini­ stration had become drastically localized. By the eleventh century the process had gone far and can appropriately be described, in the terms of Jacques Pirenne,1as a ‘tide of history’. Long-standing institutions were experiencing imperceptible modifications to cope with the developing social and economic situation, while new institutions were tentatively emerging to meet the new needs, for the fulfilment of which the older institutions were proving ineffective. There were compulsive movements at the back of a situation that resembles our present predicament. Ellul2 divides the medieval period in the West into two distinct phases, the first of which actually culminated during the eleventh century. The earlier phase had been characterized by shrinking populations, forest encroaching upon pasture, regressive economy with declining commerce and partial disappearance of money. Land is the only real wealth and society rests upon personal relationships. The central power becomes divided among numerous lesser powers, while the rights of the Seigneur increase. By the end of the eleventh century a radical change is taking place: population is increasing, commerce is expanding, there is greater mobility and commercial links are being resumed. The Crusades are a characteristic symptom of the new situation. FEUDAL

SOCIETY3

Yet we must avoid a natural tendency to overemphasize the differences between the two phases, bearing in mind a real possi-

2

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

bility of exaggeration due to the paucity of records. Obviously in a situation where the basic unit was small and localized much administration was, as a matter of course, conducted verbally, while the flimsy nature of existing media and of the containing structures was not conducive to the survival of such day-to-day records as did exist. To discover the administrative pattern of the age it is necessary first to examine the basic power unit, centred in the household of the Seigneur, or Lord. There was little that was new in this, apart from its wide proliferation, for, as we have already seen, even in Rome’s imperial period, public administration continued to emanate from the Emperor’s household, while the numerous seignorial counterparts of this later age owed much to the Carlovingian pattern. The Seigneur’s household was self-supporting and dependent upon the holding of sufficient land to meet the household’s normal needs. The Seignory constituted a local power-centre wielding sufficient power to be able to defend itself from its neighbours. Thus each household became a self-contained unit, sufficient unto itself, although in practice interchange of commodities rarely ceased completely. As the central power weakened and conditions of anarchy spread, the powers of the Seigneur strengthened. The fortified household developed into the impregnable castle. In the eleventh century the ancient art of fortification was being rediscovered and shaped to meet the conditions of the Medieval world. At the same time, with the development of new methods of warfare, the household had to accommodate the magnate’s armed retainers, who supplied their own arms and horses but received subsistence from the demesne. At the base of this feudal scheme was the fief, usually in the form of a strip of land, granted by the greater landowner to the lesser who became his vassal. The vassal, thus invested with land, entered the household of his superior, who afforded him pro­ tection. A hierarchy of such relationships developed. Where there was an overlord, or king, he stood at the top of the hierarchy, in which vassals at each level held allegiance to the lord immedi­ ately above him. But the lower feudatories were not responsible to the highest, until such time should arrive that the overlord was able to impose his control over the whole community and the feudal element ceased to predominate. Feudalism was an antidote to anarchy but not necessarily a pre­ condition of integration. It belonged not to a particular age but arose whenever the situation was suitable. Its pattern and development varied from place to place. Thus in Germany, where

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500

3

the myth of the Holy Roman Empire continued to hold sway long after its real power had waned, feudal relationships were weaker and the tendency was for overlordship to be parcelled among a large number of petty princes, so that national integration was to be delayed far into the modern age. Feudalism achieved its highest development in England and France, but in the former — assisted strongly by the retaining barrier of the English Channel — integration under a compulsive kingship had begun at an early stage. In any case feudalism’s general sway was on the wane almost everywhere in Europe by the middle of the thirteenth century. Administratively the seignorial household began as a simple and essentially personal unit of direction and management. In England at least the personal aspect was maintained and institu­ tionalization resisted, and there was no question of delegation of power to a major domo, or minion of the type of the Carlovingian mayor of the palace. But the division of labour operated no less dynamically and became every bit as complicated in the later stages of its development. To manage the demesne a division between the field worker and the administrator developed at an early stage, so that by the twelfth to thirteenth centuries a distinct secretariat had emerged, usually associated with the wardrobe, or strong place, where valuables and stores were taken care of. By the beginning of this period there would normally be a steward, a chamberlain and a constable, acting as estate manager, finance officer and security guard respectively. The two former offices tended to split up to cope with increasing work-loads, while the latter, which was often hereditary, lost importance with the growth of the King’s Peace. A good general picture of the organization and staffing of a simple baronial household is given by T out4 in describing that ‘of the lord and lady of the considerable Lincolnshire barony of Easby’. ‘There was a common establishment for the lord and his wife, presided over by a steward, who was a knight, for whom two possible deputies were provided. The chief clerical officer was the “wardrober”, who jointly with the steward examined every night the daily expenditure of the household, which was only to be “engrossed” when the steward and his chief deputy were both present. The wardrober was also the chief auditor, or controller, of the steward’s account. He too has his deputy, the clerk to the offices. Besides these there was a chief buyer, a marshal, two pantrymen and butlers, two cooks and larderers, a laundress, a saucer and a poulterer, two ushers and chandlers, a porter, a baker, a brewer

4

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION and two farriers. Nearly all these officers had each his boy (or in the case of the woman her girl) attendant, and when an office was duplicated, one of the holders was to remain in the household, and the other to follow the lord. An important personage was the chap­ lain and almoner, who was, when required, to give help in writing letters and other documents and act as deputy to the wardrober in his absence, by serving as controller of the expenses of the household. When the lord was away from home the chaplain was to examine the expenses of the household and account to the wardrober before the steward. His deputies as chaplain were to be “the friars with their boy clerk . . . ” Here we have the bare minimum of organization, but the establishment included both household and wardrobe, an incipient secretariat and a system of control and registry.’

There were in fact simpler organizations than that of Easby and many that were much more complex, all reflecting a long historic development as well as exemplifying the current practices of the households of the king and the nobility. One cannot fail to be struck by the high sophistication of the normal staffing pattern. Personnel management was already an advanced art even if little was said about it. IN

THE

ANGLO-SAXON

CONTEXT

By 1066, when William, Duke of Normandy, crossed the English Channel and established his power in southern Britain, the existing feudal institutions there were already supplemented by a well-conceived pattern of local administration and the beginnings of an integrated administration under the king at the centre. What William did was to bring a new vision to the land and, while reinforcing the feudal relationships in order to establish firmly the upstart power of his Norman followers, to take such steps towards the strengthening of the central admini­ stration as would eventually lead to the feudal ‘system’s’ supersession. Despite the proliferation of officials in the seignory and the growing demand for secretarial abilities, household administra­ tion was essentially personal, resting upon oral agreement and instructions. This was the very nature of the administrative process rather than the outcome of the particular cultural quality of Anglo-Saxon society, whose backwardness has probably been much exaggerated by the non-survival of contemporary records. Naturally the Normans were not slow in boosting their own superiority, and the contrast between the two stages was undoubtedly emphasized by the introduction of the French language as the normal instrument of government. Moreover.

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500

5

widespread Norman ignorance of the existing Anglo-Saxon texts would lead them naturally to exaggerate the gap. The conduct of the business of the Church in Latin, which was to continue long after Norman-French had become an anachronism in the land, served further to favour the use of the two foreign tongues at the expense of the vernacular, especially as churchmen were practically the only experts in the administrative art. In his efforts to strengthen the royal government the new king was conscious of the need for a more effective administration. As his chief means he chose to use a special office and the issue of the sealed writ. This office was the Chancery, whose main function was the initiation of action through its chief official, the Lord Chancellor — an appointment dating back to the reign of Edward the Confessor — who combined the duties of the King’s Chief Secretary, Chief Chaplain and Custodian of the Great Seal. It has been suggested that in making these changes William found the chief obstacles less in the resentments of the conquered English than in the centrifugal ideas which his own followers had brought with them from Normandy.5 William figures in history as an energetic innovator, as no doubt he was, but it is as well to remember that the effectiveness of innovation — one might almost write revolution — depends very much upon the availability of an effective system of admini­ stration. Having cracked the Anglo-Saxon nut by a tour de force of military strategy, tempered no doubt with a little good fortune, William was fortunate in finding at hand a governing instrument which the Anglo-Saxons had brought to as high a pitch of efficiency as any in the West.6 In order to establish the authority of his notables as well as to introduce an effective system of taxation the king needed to know exactly what the situation was in the localities, for while the feudal institutions could hardly have been better devised to ensure that the local economy should work in good order, they were just as well devised to obscure the facts from the prying outsider. There had been no reason for them to operate otherwise since their real strength rested in their inherent informality and almost spontaneous capacity to achieve a high degree of local self-sufficiency. William had to find an answer to the serious practical problem of administrative integration and his main claim to fame in this sphere surely rests on the famous Domesday inquest initiated in the Council which he held at Gloucester towards the end of 1085, to investigate ‘the land, how it was peopled and by what sort of men’. In fact the king well under­ stood from experience in his own personal demesne that effective IIB

6

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

management and financial control of the larger domain would not be possible without detailed information on the country’s resources. We can hardly do better at this point than refer to the explana­ tion of this momentous administrative operation given during the following century by Richard, Son of Nigel, in the famous treatise Dialogus de Scaccario, to which further reference will be made in the following section: ‘Domesday Book, about which you inquire, is the inseparable com­ panion in the Treasury of the royal seal. The reason for its compila­ tion was told me by Henry, Bishop of Winchester, as follows: “When the famous William, ‘the Conqueror’ of England, the Bishop’s near kinsman, had brought under his sway the farthest limits of the island, and had tamed the minds of the rebels by awful examples, to prevent error from having free course in the future, he decided to bring the conquered people under the rule of written law. So, setting out before him the English Laws in their threefold versions, namely, Mercian law, Dane law and Wessex law, he repudiated some of them, approved others and added those Norman laws from overseas which seemed to him most effective in preserving the peace. Lastly, to give the finishing touch to all this forethought, after taking counsel he sent his most skilful councillors in circuit throughout the realm. By these a careful survey of the whole country was made, of the woods, its pastures and meadows, as well as of arable land, and was set down in common language and drawn up into a book; in order, that is, that every man may be content with his own rights, and not encroach unpunished on those of others. The survey is made by counties, hundreds and hides. The King’s name heads the list, followed by those of the nobles who hold of the King in chief, according to their order of dignity. The list is then numbered, and the matter in the actual text of the book relating to each tenant is easily found by the corresponding number. This book is metaphorically called by the native English, Domesday, i.e. the Day of Judgment. For as the sentence of that strict and terrible last account cannot be evaded by any skilful subterfuge, so when this book is appealed to on those matters which it contains, its sentence cannot be quashed or set aside with impunity. That is why we have called the book ‘the Book of Judgment’, not because it contains decisions on various difficult points, but because its decisions, like those of the Last Judgment, are unalterable”.’7

In order to obtain this regional, or geographical, description the country was divided into seven, or it may be nine, circuits. Sworn juries from each hundred and all other interested persons appeared before the commissioners, or legati regis, whose pro­ ceedings were written down village by village, hundred by hundred, county by county. According to their terms of reference,

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500

7

which have survived, the information required covered ‘the name of the estate, who held it in the time of King Edward, who holds it now, how many hides are there, how many ploughs en demesne and how many are held by the tenants, how many villeins, how many cottars, how many slaves, how many freemen, how many sokemen, how much wood, how much meadow, how much pasture, how many mills, how many fisheries, how much has been added and taken away, how much the whole was worth then and how much now, how much each freeman or sokeman had there or has. All this three times, namely in the time of King Edward, and when King William gave it and as it is today, and if it is possible that more can be obtained how it is to be obtained.’8 The information thus collected and entered on rolls of parch­ ment formed the basis of seven or more local volumes (of which those of East Anglia and the five south-western counties can be distinguished) which were drawn up by the clerks of each circuit and sent to the Treasury at Winchester for codifying into the Domesday Book that has been handed down to us. As it happened William was dead within a year of this comple­ tion and never came to use the instrument he had forged, but instead of disappearing with its originator, as it might well have done, the record was to continue in use at the Exchequer and the Courts of Law throughout the Medieval period. This impressive inquiry into the resources of England shows how clearly the practical William was aware, even at that time, of the need to efficient governing of an administration that was not just a question of reaching decisions and issuing edicts or instructions. Politically, the real struggle between the king and the nobles had still to come and the incipient anarchy of the atomized feudal society to be integrated into the larger unity needed by the new age. The leader, just a step or two ahead of his peers, was perhaps merely feeling his way. Yet his creation, the very mundane Domesday Book, was for long to provide an important tool in the process. Among the other development factors of outstanding importance was the working out of effective financial methods and this may best be illustrated by the Course of the Exchequer as it was conducted in the reign of Henry II ( a . d . 1154-89). f i n a n c e

:

the

c o u r s e

of

the

ex ch e q u e r

At an early epoch the supply of currency had become an important responsibility of government. It had ceased for a time in England with the withdrawal of the Romans, but the minting

8

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

of money had been resumed with the return of Christianity towards the end of the sixth century. Numerous mints were established under the Anglo-Saxons. Thus, although feudal society was based upon a subsistence economy a substantial need for coinage continued. It is estimated that in William I’s reign there were as many as 180 to 185 mints located in sixty-seven different towns. Concentration of minting in London began during the following century. The London Mint is of particular interest as one of the first government offices to acquire a graded staff of specialist officials, who included minters, assayers, keepers of dies, workers of coins, as well as ordinary workmen. So important had minting become during the thirteenth century that a royal agent was commissioned to recruit abroad foreigners with skill in the several branches of the work in order to expand the native staffs,9 an interesting instance of the growing universal­ ity of public administration at that time. In a more general sense the Anglo-Saxon period has seen the emergence of a financial system that was quite advanced for the age. The extended scope of the royal government and the increasing use of taxation by the king called for more precise financial administration. Within the royal Chamber specialization had led to the appearance of a specialist Thesaurus, or Treasury, which gradually became a separate unit. At first, it is true, this new office was a mere storehouse of things, among which were to be included, with their gradual expansion and growing importance, the royal archives. The Court was still peripatetic, since in a society with such primitive communications as then existed, the king, to demonstrate his power and to facilitate the maintenance of his entourage, had to show himself in the locali­ ties, but with the increasing difficulty of carrying around large stores and records, separate treasuries were set up as a matter of convenience in England and Normandy, particularly at Win­ chester, Rouen and Falaise. It was the Winchester Treasury, however, that transcended its original function and became the centre of the royal financial system by creating ‘a body of ministri camere who made the storehouse into something approaching an administrative office’.10 It was here, as we have already noted, that the Domesday Book was compiled and preserved. It is recorded that, by 1086, several of the royal officials were granted Hampshire mansions in consideration of making Winchester their headquarters, thus illustrating a way of remunerating such officials at a time when the monetary economy was still embryonic in form.11 The Treasury had become a fixed place but the two other

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500

9

branches of the Royal Household, namely the Chamber and the Wardrobe, continued to travel with the king. Not that the Treasury was yet finally anchored, for King John (1199-1216), to ensure the availability of local funds, established branches in his castles at such places as Bristol, Devizes, Nottingham, Marl­ borough, Corfe and Exeter.12 It is in the growth of the Exchequer (Scaccario) that we witness the most illuminating development in the financial sphere. Originally this was just the Curia Regis (King’s Council) sitting for the transaction of revenue business. Its title derived from the chequered cloth, divided like a draughts board into squares, which covered the table at which the Barons sat, using the squares for calculation by means of counters, on the lines of the ancient abacus. It was not therefore a Norman introduction, although as a separate institution the Exchequer seems to have appeared during the reign of Henry I, certainly not later than May 1118. We are fortunate indeed in having an authoritative description of its organization and working in the fascinating Dialogus de Scaccario, a practical treatise written by Richard of Ely, son of Nigel, Bishop of Ely, who had been Treasurer for Henry I and had undertaken for Henry II the restoration of its former efficiency which had degenerated during the anarchy of Stephen’s reign (1135-1154). Richard {circa 1130-98), probably English on his mother’s side, had been well brought up and educated in the monastery at Ely. His father appears to have bought for him, about 1158, the Treasurership, which was not yet a post of great dignity. Nevertheless, although subordinate to the Justiciar, who acted as the King’s deputy, and to the Barons, the Treasurer had become the mainstay of the Exchequer. Subsequently Richard was to receive preferment in the Church as Archdeacon of Ely, about 1160, and, after holding certain other offices, was elected Bishop of London on the last day of 1189. He held numerous judicial appointments and travelled abroad in 1176, probably to assist Richard of Ilchester in the reorganization of the Norman Exchequer. What was the Exchequer’s function? Its aim was, by a process which had both judicial and executive characteristics, to call to account such persons as had been appointed throughout the land to take responsibility for the king’s business. These were mainly the Sheriffs (who had originated before the Conquest as ‘shirereeves’), local officers chosen by and responsible to the king personally for finance and justice in the shires, or counties, into which the country had been divided. They were themselves important landowners who enjoyed a high-standing in the locali-

10

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

ties. As servant of the king, the Sheriff stood for the executive power of the Crown against even the greatest Earl in the terri­ tory. But his personal independence placed him in a position both to oppress the peasant and to cheat the king. It is true that he could be brought to justice, but normally only on the plea of an important citizen, and other curbs were therefore called for, especially in matters of finance. To this end the new arrange­ ment of an annual stock-taking was introduced by Henry I. Every year the Sheriffs (and the Bailiffs of liberties and franchises) were summoned to Westminster to render an account of their stewardship before the Great Officers of the Curia Regis sitting as the Exchequer. Richard is worth quoting here for his precision and humanity. The Master, in platonic style, is replying to a question from the Scholar: ‘When the Summons has been sent out, and received by the Sheriff, he must come on the day named and shew himself to the President, if present, and if not to the Treasurer. He may then, after greeting the Barons, have the rest of the day to himself, returning to the Exchequer the next day and every day after. But if he neither comes nor sends a valid excuse, he will be condemned to pay the King one hundred shillings on the first day for each of his counties, and on the day after ten pounds of silver [again one hundred]. On the third, as our predecessors have told us, whatever moveable property he possesses will be forfeited to the King. But on the fourth, because from thenceforward his contempt of the King’s Majesty is proved, he will be at the King’s mercy, not only as regards his goods, but in his own person. Some people, however, hold that the money penalty alone is enough, namely, for the first day a hundred shillings, for the second likewise a hundred and so on day by day, at the rate of a hundred shillings a day, as the penalty of absence. I have no objec­ tion to this, provided that the King, who is the offended party, consents. And it is very probable that the King will permit this moderation of the penalty, such is his gracious nature.’13

For this purpose the Exchequer consisted of the King himself, or the Justiciar as his representative, of the Chancellor, the Treasurer, the Chamberlain, the Constable and the Marshal, as well as certain tenants-in-chief, i.e. most of the Great Officers of the King’s Household. It was divided into two levels, namely (i) the Upper Exchequer (Scaccarium superius) which was a court of account, concerned with managing the royal revenue, auditing the accounts of its collection and disposal, and dealing with questions arising; (ii) The Lower Exchequer (Scaccarium inferius), or Exchequer of the Receipt, which was concerned with

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500

11

the actual receipt and issue of money. It was out of the latter that the modern Treasury was to grow. Each Exchequer had its own staff whose classification during the reign of Henry II (according to Hubert Hall in his Antiquities of the Exchequer)14 is set out below, those marked with t properly belonging to the Receipt or Scriptorium. Upper Exchequer President Treasurer •(•Treasurer’s Scribe fClerks of the Rolls Chancellor Chancellor’s Clerk t Chancellor’s Scribe Constable Marshall t Constable’s Clerk Chamberlains tCutter of the Tallies f Knight Assayer fMelter

Lower Exchequer Treasurer’s Clerk

Deputy Chamberlains Usher Tellers Weighers Watchmen Clerks, Sergeants Porters, Messengers

The Treasurer is the important official, generally responsible for both Exchequers, but specially concerned with the Sheriff’s accounts and the compilation of the Pipe Roll, in which the transactions and decisions were recorded and which was to stand as impeachable evidence, only amendable by the Barons, and in their presence during the actual session of the Exchequer for the particular Roll. Otherwise alterations could be made only by the King ‘who in these matters “can do no wrong”.’14 It is a pity that we cannot dig more deeply into the examination of the Sheriff, of his accounts, of the weight and purity of the moneys actually handed over by him, which Richard sets down in such detail that one can really see the financial machinery at work all those centuries ago, a picture of administrative action unequalled in literary form. But one thing is certain: this was an ordeal such as no Sheriff could have regarded without appre­ hension and one well calculated to ensure, in advance of judg­ ment day, that he acted with a high degree of propriety in his conduct of the King’s business. If there was often a sad falling away from its high effectiveness the reasons are to be found in the weaknesses of human nature, the ill-balance of political power, and the inefficiency of individual officials rather than in any fundamental inadequacy of the administrative machinery

12

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

itself; for this had reached a level of sophistication that does credit to the age and projects an illuminating beam into the future. It is interesting to observe that, almost concurrently, far away in Italy similar concern was being devoted to the discovery of solutions to problems of finance but that there the main interest was concentrated not upon the financial interests of the ruler but upon the growing need of the trading community for a reliable system of banking (see page 44 below). DEVELOPMENT

OF

THE

ROYAL

HOUSEHOLD

The importance of the household as a basic administrative unit in feudal society has already been emphasized. A significant trend during this period was the steady emergence of a centralized administration out of, but within the ambit of, the King’s House­ hold, the result of a gradual impulse to meet administrative situations with which the simple household organization was not capable of coping. Although as early as the thirteenth century, which was marked by the loss of Normandy and the disintegration of the Curia Regis,16 the beginnings of a modern system of government administration were already discernible, the personal and the more general aspects of royal administration were to continue to be difficult to differentiate right up until the seven­ teenth century, when a system of parliamentary ministers began to take shape. In Britain vestiges of the royal househeld admini­ stration continue to figure in the central administration today, especially in the ceremonial field. Thus the Lord Chamberlain’s function as censor of plays was only abolished in 1968. Basically, administrative change is contingent upon political change, though the two strands intermingle. In the present instance this can be characterized, according to Powicke,17 as a movement from royal rule to political rule. Under the former the King, in theory if not always in fact, was above positive law and custom and subject only to the law of God and nature, while under the latter he had to have regard to positive law and custom and to co-operate actively with the people. Nevertheless, although he came to solicit the co-operation of Parliament and to seek the advice of his councillors and ministers, the King continued to function as the executive arm of government. The Great Charter of 1215 between King John and the Barons, universally known as Magna Carta, under which the powers of the King were strictly confined within existing law and custom, was concerned only incidentally with administration, in so far as the powers of the royal servants were involved. Specific clauses

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500

13

related to the abuse of power by local officials, particularly by forest officers, who were influential at a time when considerable areas were set aside for the chase. Orders were immediately issued to Sheriffs and other royal officers that the Charter should be publicly read and all should swear obedience to the twentyfive Barons to whom its execution had been entrusted. Twelve knights were to be chosen in each county to enquire into evil customs, especially those of the forest. Compliance by the baron­ age was not invariably forthcoming and the royal officers, attempting to carry out the provisions, were widely manhandled. John and the Barons were soon at war again, and yet it is a tribute to the royal administration that it continued to function, it appears effectively, despite the severe difficulties of the general anarchy. It was not so much at the time but subsequently that Magna Carta was to have significant repercussions on public administration. Before leaving King John, whose ill-repute history may well have exaggerated, mention must be made of the notorious loss of his baggage train when crossing the Wash on his way back from an anti-baronial campaign. Everything disappeared, either in quicksands or the advancing tide — the precise facts are not known. This seems to have included horses and baggage, money for wages, and all the equipment of the itinerant court — treasury, wardrobe, stores — a tragedy that emphasizes the manysidedness of the Royal Household at the time. The King was already dying. Yet, as he lay stricken in the castle at Newark, he continued to the end dealing with the business of the day, plan­ ning for the safety of his kingdom and the welfare of his heir after his death.18 The reign of Henry III (1216-1272) was fruitful of both political and administrative reform. There were considerable advances in public administration, especially at the Exchequer which was becoming more professionalized. It was at this time that Alexander de Swerford,19 a disciple of William of Ely who had been John’s treasurer, compiled the famous Red Book, a collection of earlier treatises on Household and Exchequer practice. The course of medieval administration was being radically redefined. The situation was greatly influenced by the changed attitude of the Barons who, having dropped their hostility to the Crown, now desired to have a recognized place in the administrative system. The development of the Royal Household, its growing depart­ mentalization and increasing diversity of practice, are well recorded in the texts, but of particular interest to us is a some-

14

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

what later attempt to set down in writing the practical detail of the Household and its operation during the reign of Edward IV (1461-1483). The facts are to be found in the Ordinances of 1445 and 1478 and the so-called Black Book of the Household of Edward IV.20 Unlike previous Ordinances, which had been much concerned with the elaborate ceremonial of the court — formerly and in many ages and most ruling systems an important function of public administration — the Ordinances of 1445 and 1478 were primarily directed to the promotion of economy in the running of the Household. To this end permitted staff numbers were listed with their proper allowances, and an attempt was made to control the ordering and consumption of fuel and other supplies. Here we have an early example of planned establishments control. Yet the Household was still based upon the traditional pattern of normal baronial establishment and ordered to the current prac­ tices of estate management. Officials were aware of new problems in a changing world without being able to determine them precisely. The Black Booky completed probably during 1471-2, is an unfinished treatise on the organization of the Royal Household as it was at the time, and is probably the work of a clerk which was intended to form the basis of a more finished official text that, for some reason, never materialized in its final form. As far as it goes the Black Book provides a good deal of informative detail of the actual organization and working of the Royal House­ hold, which is admirably summarized by Myers in the following paragraph: ‘The first part of the book is concerned especially with the Domus Regie Magnificiencie. the maintenance of the household “above stairs”, which must be able to impress the outside world by its magnificence. The second part deals with the Domus Providencie, the household “below stairs”, which by its providence or prudence must make possible the magnificence of the chamber. This part of the book opens with a description of the duties and allowances of four of the chief officers of the household — steward, treasurer, controller, and cofferer — and continues with a lengthy exposition of the functions of the countinghouse and its staff, and a series of enactments for the conduct of the countinghouse. Then the book deals with the workaday departments which laboured behind the scenes to make possible the dazzling show upon the stage. Such departments were the bakehouse, and its associated departments, the pantry and wafery; the offices of chief butler, purveyor of wines, cellar, buttery, pitcher-house, cup-house, and ale-takers; the great spicery and the confectionary; the chandlery; the ewry and napery;

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500

15

and the laundry. After describing the office of the laundry the text ends abruptly.521

With this illuminating quotation we conclude the present section, having merely entered upon the fringes of a fascinating institution which was then, and was to continue well into the future, to be of primary importance in the development of government in England and elsewhere and of public administra­ tion in a broader sense. ADMINISTRATION

IN

THE

LOCALITIES

Despite the general pervasiveness of feudal institutions — rooted in personal responsibility for land and a series of hierarchic relationships within a myriad of local non-monetary economies — from the very outset counter-institutions with their own administrative arrangements were emerging like bubbles rising to the surface of a pond. As instruments of kingship, church, commercial or other interest these new institutions were affecting different parts of the European community in different ways. Appointment, as local agent of the King, of the Sheriff in the Counties of England (supplemented by the Bailiff in each Hundred into which some Counties were divided), now combined the duties of the Anglo-Saxon Sheriff with those of the Norman Vicomte and produced a very powerful office. This was originally held by an influential baron who frequently used his privileged position for his own benefit. So lucrative did the office become that high prices were paid for the privilege of appointment. We are told by Walter Map, the twelfth-century satirist, that ‘Even as the children of the night—the owl, the nighthawk, and the vulture — love darkness rather than light, so from the King’s Court are sent sheriffs, under-sheriffs and beadles . . . men who at the outset of their office swear before the higher judge to serve honestly and faithfully God and their master, but being perverted by bribes, tear the fleece from the lambs and leave the wolves unharmed.’ 22

Later the kings made their own appointments, constituting a sort of official class, and, as we have seen, the Sheriffs were called before the Exchequer to have their accounts examined in person, an ordeal calculated to give them little pleasure. The Hundred Rolls of 1274-75, recording the results of an inquiry ordered by Edward I, provided a comprehensive picture of the local governance of England at the time. The King, just returned from a campaign in France and finding the country in

16

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

a state of unrest, on 11th October 1274, by letters patent, ordered the holding of a thorough inquest into the conduct of the local representatives during his absence. Commissioners were sent out with a long questionnaire to put to juries in every Hundred, inquiring into encroachments by his subjects upon royal rights and liberties, and seeking information as to the behaviour of his servants — sheriffs, coroners, escheators, bailiffs — and their subordinates. These Commissioners were immediately concerned, not with general complaints and expressions of discontent, but with facts, and these facts were set down in the Rolls for later extraction at headquarters, as had been done in the case of the Domesday survey. The surviving records show how the local administration had two aspects, concerned respectively with the King’s tenurial rights as landlord and his sovereign rights as ruler. By this time his officials are to some extent differentiated: for his feudal rights are the responsibility of the Escheator or Steward, while his governmental rights are the concern of the Sheriff, who is responsible to the Exchequer for the royal revenues of the Shire and to the royal justices for putting in motion the machinery of royal justice as well as for carrying out all judgments in the shire. Assisted by the Coroner and a staff of subordinates the Sheriff administers the Shire and, with the co-operation of knights and freemen, holds the monthly Shire Court. Within each Hundred also the Bailiff is responsible, through the Sheriff, to the King. At the same time the office of Justice of the Peace is beginning to appear, first in 1264, although even then on the basis of estab­ lished practice, as a development of Custos Pacts, formerly appointed by Simon de Montfort (1208-1265) in every county to serve until King and barons should determine otherwise. At first the Justice’s duties were predominantly military, but later the civil side became more and more important until, as laymagistrate chosen from among the gentry, he became the chief agent of the Crown in the localities, linking judicial and execu­ tive action at a time when the two activities were still naturally undifferentiated. Even today these lay magistrates, as they have become, retain certain administrative functions. Supplementing the governmental sphere, the Church continued to provide important centres of local administration throughout the Middle Ages. In fact it was the monasteries that continued to provide such centres, by merely continuing as organized com­ munities, during the times of recession when the localities were being forced back more and more upon their own resources. Now, with a definite flow in a more positive direction, the

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500

17

ecclesiastical estates increased in importance, first as the basic households of the Bishops, who often vied with the nobles as wielders of seignorial power, but more and more as time went on as participators with the King in temporal government, for which they were culturally very well equipped. There was a maximum of fluidity of staff, both at top level as high officers of the Crown and important servants of the Pope, and at menial levels where the cleric had for the time being almost a monopoly of writing skills. The Church establishments led the way in the development of improved administrative techniques needed to deal with new social and economic situations. With the growing fluidity of society, in which more and more individuals were becoming separated from the demesne and no longer entitled to subsistence in their own community, Canon Law, in accordance with basic Christian philosophy, placed upon the Church authorities the onus of providing charity or hospitality.23 Thus the monastic institutions became the first organizers of social services, in the form of poor relief, aid to the sick, and education, which normally had been provided within the household communities. Social service had to some extent become a public service, though in this case the responsible body was the Church. But it had all happened before, as we have already seen in our first Volume. It was, however, in the government of the new towns that the most important administrative innovations at local level were taking place. Towards the end of the first millennium the city, so important to all earlier civilizations as a centre of aristocratic or republican power and a focal point of administration, had in the West lost much of its content, with the ebbing tide of trade removing one of its main raisons d'etre, and for the time the Church had taken over certain essential tasks of government, such as police, repair of paths and bridges, levying tolls. Town and country tended to coalesce under Church rule, which, being benevolent, was popular with the people. Yet with the rise in power of the nobility, the surviving towns tended to become strongpoints within the feudal setting, counter-powers to king or overlord, if there was one. With the gradual rebirth of commerce the ancient European cities came into their own again. Almost everywhere new munici­ palities emerged, but particularly in Flanders in the north and in Italy in the south, where the trade routes converged. A new professional merchant class began to separate itself from tradi­ tional feudal society in order to co-operate in trading transactions over widening areas. For example, this occurred at an early stage in Venice, where special conditions obtained, such as the exist-

18

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

ence of a long established lucrative salt trade in the lagoons of the Adriatic and a widespread writing ability among the Venetians.24 The new class claimed independence of the demesne and seignory. In Italy the movement had been speeded by the develop­ ment of credit and banking which was already well advanced by the time of the first surviving records in the eleventh century. The town 25 in its new guise of commercial centre, site of the market or fair designed to serve wider areas than the feudal demesne, and the workplace of independent craftsmen aiming to provide goods for such markets, stood separate from the seignory, although the process of separation was usually a slow one, advancing step by step as specific concessions were obtained. Autonomy was usually embodied in a charter, granted by seigneur or king, conceding, for suitable recompense, to the townsfolk, or a privileged group of them, the right to look after their own affairs. Each town had its individual charter: each developed its own particular organization. Such independence did not come without struggle and the emergence of propitious circumstances in the particular area. Some towns indeed continued to be attached to the Seignory with a Provost appointed by the Seigneur as his representative: others even took over the functions of the Seigneur, exercising all his rights. The craftsmen — masters and journeymen — formed themselves into guilds for mutual pro­ tection. The townsfolk, or burgesses, developed into a new middle or bourgeois class, concerned with industry and trade, but usually divorced from the land except as members of the urban com­ munity. The government of the town was normally placed in the hands of a Council, nominated in various ways and sometimes responsible to a general assembly of burgesses, which might comprise all citizens. Whether the system was predominantly democratic or predominantly oligarchic depended upon the terms of the charter or constitution, and in this the cities varied considerably. Administration was placed in the hands of officials chosen in different ways. Early to appear among these was the Maire, or Mayor, whose authority varied from that of influential chief executive to mere agent of the ruling group in whatever form this might be organized. His appointment could derive from election by the commune as a whole or by the merchant guilds, by hereditary succession, or even by the designation of the king. The towns tended as a matter of course to acquire their own financial powers, their own military force and their separate judicial system and other powers and responsibilities that tended to increase the town’s autonomy, which varied widely with the

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500

19

local situation. These new towns were widely distributed in France and England, in Flanders and Germany, and particularly in Italy. Sometimes they were in direct line with the municipali­ ties that had survived in shadowy form the Roman debacle and thus occupied long-established sites, but the movement was essentially a new one evolving to deal with the reintegration of a more universal form of society out of the feudal institutions which were ill-equipped to cope with the changes that social and economic developments were bringing about in the West. In the light of the universality of this phenomenon it is not difficult to understand Toynbee’s suggestion that ‘an observer in the four­ teenth century might well have seen the city state as the future master-institution.’ 26 The administrative techniques of these towns were still some­ what primitive in form, yet sufficient to their simple needs at the outset. The primary requirement was an effective method of recording the council’s decisions and of authenticating conse­ quent transactions. Henri Pirenne27 has emphasized the large element of novelty in this development to the new administrator grappling with strange functions of which there was as yet meagre experience to use as precedent. These practitioners would have had to delve very deep into the past for guidance from those rare cases of which definite evidence had survived from before the Dark Ages. The town council’s responsibilities usually included control of finance, commerce and industry, supervision of public works, provisioning of the city, regulation and equipment of the com­ munal army, supply of schools for children and almshouses for the old and poor, and of course preservation of law and order. If the law-keeping of the city magistrates was often cruel and ruthless, based upon the lex talionis — ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’ — and the city tended to act as though it were in a perpetual state of siege, even when it was merely that the gates were being closed as a matter of nightly routine, this must be adjudged in relation to the grave hazards of the times, for city often raised its hand against city, especially in Italy where city autonomy was carried to such great lengths that a medieval town like Florence formed the nucleus of a powerful republic with a constellation of dependencies. Moreover the citizens had often to contend with ill-controlled bands of armed mercenaries, whose strong arm, when not being actively exercised to their own advantage, was at the beck and call of anyone who could afford to pay the price. For the time being the municipal authorities were dependent

20

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

largely for their administrative services upon the clerics, who still monopolized the necessary writing skills, and the records were at first written in Latin, although by the thirteenth century the several vernaculars were coming into use in many places. Shortly, too, the merchants’ apprentices were to acquire the necessary book-keeping knowledge. Many of the medieval cities had passed through long and often glorious earlier phases — Rome, Ravenna, Constantinople, Cordova, Paris, London — and it is interesting therefore to find one that had arisen out of the conditions of the age, and in virtue of its special advantages was destined to surpass all its rivals, exercising an authority that transcended its municipal limits and made it an influential world power. This was Venice which had had its origins way back in the fifth century when, in face of the Vandal invasions, a group of refugees from the mainland had sought shelter in the isolated islands set amidst the shallow waters of the Adriatic. There a number of small townships had gradually coalesced into a completely artificial city, raised upon piles and embankments which served as a defence both against the waters and against marauders from the mainland. Gradually it became a great and magnificent city strategically situated on the vital trade route between Europe north of the Alps and the eastern Mediterranean. Venice reached her zenith during the fifteenth century when her retreat began before the Turks, a matter to which we shall return in the next chapter. Originally twelve lagoon townships had elected their own tribunes who met together to co-ordinate their communal affairs, but there had arisen a need for an executive head of state and the first Doge had been elected in a . d . 697. Within what was origin­ ally a democratic system an aristocratic party, leaning towards Byzantium and favouring a hereditary Dogeship, had emerged and under the growing power of the trading interests the democracy had gradually declined. In the meantime two Ducal Councillors were appointed to assist the Doge while the machinery of government expanded to include a General Assembly, a Senate and a Privy Council. In 1171 the General Assembly was strengthened as the Maggior Consiglio, with an augmented membership. Elected annually, it appointed all officers of state, including the Doge, who was now assisted by six Ducal Councillors. Under increasing aristocratic pressures the Great Council was restricted in 1296 and the system became predomi­ nantly oligarchic. In 1339 Venice’s expansion on to the mainland began and she outpaced her strongest Italian rivals. The category of medieval cities with a past should include

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500

21

London, the Roman Londinium. In Britain the City of London is of particular interest as a town corporation that has gradually developed and continued to subsist on its old basis from the eleventh century to the present time, when all others have been reformed by statute. It received from William the Conqueror, some time between 1068 and 1075, a charter which guaranteed its existing civic privileges and customs, but the corporate exist­ ence of its citizens gradually emerged as a prescriptive right, for no charter of incorporation has ever been granted.28 The name of Mayor of the City appears in Magna Carta in 1215, while in 1322 there exists the first evidence of a Common Council formed of representatives elected on a wide franchise by the citizens in the several wards of the city. The present governmental structure of Common Hall, with Mayor and Sheriffs, the Aldermen and Councillors in the Wards, the Courts of Aldermen and of Common Council was already in existence by the end of the fifteenth century. Originally all these dignitaries participated personally in administering the City’s day-to-day business, although no doubt at an early stage they employed their own retainers and servants as personal assistants. During the fourteenth century the influential Livery Companies, in other words the craft guilds, were given the right to share in the government of the City. They still provide the membership of Common Hall which chooses the two City Sheriffs and other important officers, and nominates two Aldermen to the Court of Aldermen annually for choice of Lord Mayor. DEVELOPING

TECHNIQUES

Parchment and Paper: The basic medium for the making of records at this time was parchment, usually manufactured from sheep- or goat-skin, an eminently durable but seriously expensive substance compared with either papyrus or paper. The export of papyrus from its main production area of the Nile Delta had been stopped by the Arabs; while paper, a Chinese invention dating back to 105 a . d . had been delayed from reaching Europe, also partly by the Arabs, until the eighth century. Its manufacture began to spread in Spain and elsewhere from the twelfth century onwards. It is interesting that the first English paper mill is thought to have been established by John Tate at Hertford in 1496, i.e. at the very end of the period covered in this chapter. Parchment therefore was in wide demand both for the per­ petuating of literary works and for the provision of administrative records. The former, mainly the work of monks, have been handed IIC

22

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

down to us in the many beautifully embellished manuscripts in which our museums and archives abound. Yet these survivals can have formed but a fraction of the product of the caligraphic ‘factories’ in which the clerks acquired and practised this most important skill, and made it into an art, as their earlier counter­ parts had done in distant China. These parchment sheets were usually sewn head to tail to form a continuous roll. Hence the use of the term ‘roll’ in a large range of official records. Others were attached along one edge by cords or string in the form of a codex, the progenitor of the book. Tallies: An interesting administrative medium was the tally. This was a piece of wood, usually of hazelwood and about eight inches long, which was notched in such a way as to represent the sum of money involved in a particular transaction, and thus to act as a receipt. The notches, which were so positioned on the tally as to represent definite sums of money, were easily read by members of the Exchequer and other experts. When completed the stick was split down the middle, one piece having a stump and being considered the tally proper. This was handed to the Sheriff on the account as his receipt, while the shorter piece was retained at the Exchequer. In case of dispute the tally could be matched up with its counterpart. In the Dialogus de Scaccario 29 there is a detailed description of how the tally-cutter shaped the tallies at the Exchequer. This use of wood as a means of record is remi­ niscent of earlier primitive uses of perishable substances, such as leaves, bark and wood. In Britain, where it had private as well as public uses, the tally was to linger as a governmental medium right into the nineteenth century. It was not in fact abolished before the end of September 1834 and, as is well known, an attempt but six days later to reduce the accumulation of waste by burning led to the conflagration which caused the destruction of the Old Houses of Parliament at Westminster. Authentication: In a semi-literate age when very few, even among the highest, could sign their names, the authentication of documents was a matter of general if routine importance and the use of seals, marked with a recognizable personal device, came into a prominence only equalled in earlier civilizations. The use of the signet seal, once common throughout the Roman Empire, had died away with the Empire’s fall, only to be reintroduced on the eve of the Norman Conquest. At the end of the twelfth century, both in England and in France, sealing was the only way of validating documentary acts, but elsewhere the procedure had fallen into the hands of professional notaries,

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500

23

or tebelliones, whose presence was necessary not only to draw up the document in strictly recognized form but also to validate it by their own particular signa. They had already become, notably in Italy, the essential servants of emperors and popes in drawing up public acts. But in England its comparative simplicity had given the edge to the use of the individual seal. At the same time the Great Seal, or seal of majesty, developed, symbolizing authority and facilitating the delegation of power by the formal transference of the seal by the principal to a deputy or agent. The first instance of such in England was the seal of Edward the Confessor. The history of these important seals significantly illustrates the development of administration, through the formulation of procedures designed to facilitate acts of government to deal with new situations. Thus by the transfer to a deputy of the custody of his Great Seal the King could ensure the continuance of his rule in his absence, while the adoption of different seals for different purposes assisted the departmentalization of the Administration; for example, in the emergence of the Exchequer. Such developments were Europe-wide and not merely AngloFrench, but there were differences of emphasis at different periods. As Tout informs us: ‘If judicial seals somewhat lagged behind as compared with the Continent, it is a proof of the advanced character of English admini­ stration that England had not only the first departmental seal in the seal of the exchequer, but also perhaps one of the first recorded seals of absence, and, more important for our purpose, the first “small” or “privy” or “secret” seal of any great European state.’30

A small seal is thought to have come into use under King John (1199-1216) as one of a new type concerned with appropri­ ate forms of business, but perhaps sometimes used in place of the Great Seal. Different chanceries, or secretariats, came to have their distinctive seals. A Secret Seal, distinct from the Privy Seal, developed under Edward II (1307-1327), but this fell quickly into disuse and is not heard of later than 18th November 1352, during the reign of Edward III. A Signet Seal began to appear shortly after and this was to become important with the development of the King’s Secretary (secretarius regis), who first appeared in 1377, as Keeper of the Signet.31 This new seal was to be used to authenticate the King’s personal correspondence. ‘Chirograph’, or Indenture: An interesting documentary example of the search for reliable authentication was the chiro­ graph, which Galbraith 32 suggests was the oldest English business

24

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

document, ‘unless we count the wooden tally, of which, so to speak, it is an adaption in parchment’. It seems to have been introduced during the tenth century and came widely into use during the following period. Originally, it consisted of a threefold text covering an agreement between two parties. The three identical texts on the same parchment were divided by the word CYROGRAPHUM through which the chirograph was cut and, in its later form, indented, in such a way that a part of the word remained on each piece, thus enabling them to be easily matched up later as proof of identity. One piece was given to each of the parties, while the other remained in a neutral place, possibly an abbey or royal treasury. Generally only two copies came to be considered necessary. Galbraith refers33 to the Final Concord as the most notable class of chirograph, of which examples found their way into the Public Record Office (London) right into the nineteenth century. This was a legal document written in the King’s Court recording a private conveyance of land. The first of these Final Concords was drawn up in 1195 in a new tripartite form in the course of a fine between Theobald, Son of Walter and William, son of Hervey. This marks a significant administrative development on the part of the Court in deciding to keep systematic records of its proceedings, and it is pertinent that it was Herbert Walter, the Justiciar at the time, who four years later, as Chancellor, began the Chancery enrolments, or record of instruments issued under the Great Seal. As a form the chirograph preceded the common employment of seals and was to prove so effective that it survived long after such seals had fallen into disuse. Inquests: In face of the epoch-making Domesday inquiry the use of the inquest as an administrative method hardly requires emphasis. The idea of sending accredited agents to take sworn evidence on matters of governmental interest had already been introduced on the Continent prior to 1086. Nor was Domesday to be an unique instance in England: for, as Helen Cam points out in discussing the provenance of the Hundred Rolls,34 we have evidence of many such inquiries between 1086 and 1316, though the information collected was usually too ephemeral to survive. However, this was not to be the case of the inquiry launched by Edward I on his return from the Continent in 1274, to which reference has already been made. The information then collected was embodied by the commissioners in the so-called Ragman Rolls, which have survived as the Hundred Rolls, thus named because their contents are centred upon these local divisions of

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500

25

the counties. In fact this was only one among several such inquiries, some of which — about which we lack evidence — could well have been more important. The technique continued to be in use in later centuries and in fact was to have a new lease of life in the Royal Commission inquiries of the industrial age. That similar needs led to similar solutions elsewhere is illus­ trated by the action of Louis IX of France when, on the eve of departing with the Crusade of 1247, he had scruples about the administrative methods employed by his baillis in the localities and sent out enqueteurs, usually ecclesiastics, to investigate com­ plaints against the Crown, with powers to give satisfaction where necessary. Punishment could be thus administered on the spot, but important cases were to be sent to the King. Upon the experience of such inquiries a tightening up of the practices of the royal agents was carried out by Grand Ordinance in 1254 and 1256. Strict rules were promulgated for application by the enqueteurs,35 One use of the method of inquiry, which for a time had customary form though it died out during the fourteenth century, was the General Eyre, under which the Royal Judges were sent out on circuit, not merely to hear judicial pleas but also to make a thorough inquiry into the affairs of the County, the proceedings being conducted under oath. The important men of the locality were assembled in County Court to meet the Justices and to answer questions, which covered the whole sphere of local administration. Thus the sessions were administrative, though judicially conducted and could hardly help having a punitive character, since the King’s representatives were ever eager to discover defaults which could be used as an excuse to impose fines, or to seize property for the royal Exchequer. Hence its general unpopularity and consequent administrative unsuitability for the particular purpose. Departmentalization: The shape of administrations was matched with that of the prevailing household pattern and its overall task was estate management in varying degrees of com­ plexity, but, with the growth of the idea of the larger realm as an estate in its own right, the introduction of administration in new forms and functions intensified the operation of the division of labour and gave rise to a trend towards departmentalization that has continued right into the present age. In the gradual departmentalization of the Royal Household can be discerned the influence of the new procedures in making administration a more specialized process than hitherto.

26

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Simplification of procedures during the tenth century had already led to the supplementation of the existing formal and solemn Charter by a new form of Writ or Writ-charter, which was an Anglo-Saxon invention not known on the Continent.36 The Writ contained no invocations, dispensed with solemn formulae and lists of witnesses, and was specifically addressed with a bare salutation to a certain person or persons. It was in fact an informal and direct notification of what the King had done or wished to be done, characterized by a workmanlike brevity, a small but significant sign that a new age was dawning. The new form was to lead to further developments and to produce more work for the royal clerks. An early departmental development was the Chancery, the working establishment of the Chancellor. In Anglo-Saxon England there had existed a scriptorium, or writing office, as well as a Chancellor to look after the Royal Seals. Under the Normans the importance of both expanded and, by the time of Henry I, the Chancellor was definitely in charge of the seals and respon­ sible for the composition of documents. The organized writing office was in the charge of a Magister Scriptorii, who had under him an important office staff and deputized for the Chancellor. Another Anglo-Saxon development had been the emergence of a separate store in the Camera, or bedchamber, the original administrative centre of the Royal Household. This storehouse was to grow into the Exchequer, as we have already seen. By the twelfth century a separate Wardrobe had also branched out of the Chamber, although their functions were as yet not clearly differentiated and they often overlapped but, as Tout remarks ‘nor was this unusual in the middle ages when they had no idea of system or symmetry’.37 In fact this pattern of cameral orga­ nization operated throughout Western Europe not only under every king and reigning prince, but in every other administrative unit — of bishop, abbot, baron or town — in Christendom.38 With the supplementation of the Great Seal by the Privy Seal and later the addition of the Signet, or personal royal seal, further degrees of departmentalization evolved. This division of the Royal Household in England was marked by the introduction of separate secretarial staffs for each department largely unrelated to one another, in radical contrast to the French approach whereby, from the reign of Philip IV (reg. 1285-1314) there was a single general secretarial department, staffed by officials of a common type under the Chancellor, an arrangement which encouraged a strong corporate tradition.39 Despite the large amount of research put into this subject, not

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500

27

least by Tout himself in his magnum opus, the records are inevi­ tably defective and the resulting picture somewhat vague. But we can observe the Household continuing as the centre of royal power, transmitting the king’s will to the separate departments of the Chamber, the Wardrobe, the Chancery, the Exchequer, the Courts of Law and the separate seal offices, each under its own head: all having grown empirically to cope with the increasing intricacies of the royal administration. The detail may often be missing but the broad picture so realistically reflects what we see going on so widely elsewhere that there is little reason to doubt its substantial validity. Birth of the King's Works: The departmentalization of the Royal Household, as we have discussed it so far, is a reflection of the growing complexity of the governmental system and the consequent need for specialization in the management of the royal estate, but the centre of gravity was beginning to move outwards and new responsibilities to fall upon the shoulders of the overlord, both regal and ecclesiastical, as upon the nobles and city corporations mentioned in the preceding section. Prominent among these responsibilities were the constructional activities of the King’s Works which, if it was still very much concerned with the characteristic household functions of providing accommo­ dation and organizing running repairs, was beginning to address its energies to many other constructional matters.40 This particular need was basic, its history lost in time, even if its institutionalization was to be slow in coming about. Thus the itinerant courts of the Anglo-Saxon kings needed a domus regis to shelter the Household and its effects, whose maintenance had already been accepted as a public duty of peasant and thegn alike.41 In addition, military defence works had to be taken in hand, sometimes as vast as Offa’s Dyke on the English-Welsh border, constructed by the Mercian King of that name (reg. a . d . 757-96). But the castle as the military work of the new age was an introduction of the Conquest, a necessary means for the creation of centres of defence and power in the hands of William’s not very numerous Norman followers, and William must be placed first among the castle builders. During succeeding centuries much constructional work, in the form of churches, palaces, and other civic buildings, as well as the numerous castles; was to be widely undertaken by ruler, baron and churchman alike. As we can all observe from survivals into the present age, the builders and craftsmen of that era achieved standards of the highest distinction with the employment of engineering abilities that, even today, are difficult fully to

28

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

account for. The royal activities were widespread. Specialization and concentration developed during the fourteenth century, and an established works organization began to take shape, with such appointments as Keeper, Comptroller, Clerk and Purveyor; while procedures of increasing intricacy developed. On 6th February 1378 letters patent were issued to one, Robert Crull, a former Chamberlain of the Exchequer, authorizing him ‘to survey the works of all the king’s castles, manors and lordships throughout England’,42 but this presumably aimed at too much and was abortive. Nevertheless, a couple of months later, on 14th April, another clerk, John Blake, was appointed Clerk of the Works at Westminster, the Tower of London, the Castles of Windsor, Berkhamstead and Hadleigh, and a dozen of the royal manor-houses. On the same day William Hanney, a former Clerk of the Works at Westminster and the Tower, became Comp­ troller of the Works in the places named in Blake’s commission. Thus maintenance of the king’s principal residences was placed under central control and for the next four centuries there was to be an unbroken succession of officials holding posts of this nature. At the same time the responsibilities of the king’s chief craftsmen were redefined, and we come across such titles as ‘King’s Master Carpenter’, ‘Surveyor of Ironwork’, and ‘King’s Chief Mason’. Thus was born the Department later to be known as the Office of the King’s Works.43 The following quotation from the Official History admirably describes the position of the Clerk in the royal service during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: ‘To be Clerk of the King’s Works was therefore to have achieved a position which carried with it the prospect, if not the certainty, of substantial rewards in Church or State. But there was no established ladder of advancement upon which the clerkship of the king’s works formed a well-marked rung. One man might come to it from the Exchequer, another from the office of the signet or the privy seal. Some were educated men with university degrees, and were dignified in the performance of their duties by the title of “Master”, others had humbler backgrounds of which little is known. Their subsequent careers in the king’s service were equally varied, and showed how readily a royal clerk passed from one administrative department to another. Arnold Brocas (1381-8) went on to the chamberlainship of the Receipt, John Bernard (1396-7) to the treasureship of Calais, Robert Rolleston (1407-13) to the keepership of the Great Wardrobe. How far the career of any individual clerk was affected by favour or influence it is now impossible to say: nor are we in a position to judge the competence with which successive holders of the office fulfilled their duties. Even the Clerk’s standing among the king’s other servants is difficult to assess except in terms of the annual gift

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500

29

of robes, which shows that in this respect at least he ranked below the keeper of the signet or the chamberlain of the Exchequer, but above the heralds, the valets of the Chamber and the serjeants-atarms. Unlike the last named, he was not a member of the royal household, but had this been the case the indications are that he would have had a status similar to that of an esquire. In the eyes of the Exchequer, then, as now, the heart of the Civil Service, he was certainly a person of importance, for he shared with the treasurer of Ireland, the treasurer and victualler of Calais, the chamberlains of North and South Wales, the keeper of the Great Wardrobe and the treasurer of the Household the distinction of being regarded as one of the “grand accountants” through whose hands large portions of the king’s revenues regularly passed ’44

Staff Organization and Management: As we have just seen in connection with the emergence of the King’s Works in England, and also earlier in the well authenticated evidence of the Dialogus de Scaccario, definite patterns of staff organization were already taking shape and indeed the foundations of an art of personnel management, or establishments, were being laid. In discussing the history of the King’s Messengers as members of the Royal Household, Mary C. H ill45 lists the grouping of the various officials and servants (in 1325-26) as follows: ‘In the first section, the wards, esquires, serjeants, and chamber staff ; in the second section, the minstrels, messengers, grooms of the offices, head carters, and head grooms; in the third section, grooms again (here clearly the subordinates and assistants) boys, hutsmen and pages........... Our messengers, therefore, occupied a position of comfortable mediocrity among the king’s servants . . . ,’46

Tout, in considering the separate development of the Wardrobe, refers to ‘the different gradings as the staff increases’. Above the menial staff of carters with livery and drivers of pack-horses were the valets and sergeants of the wardrobe, together with ostiarius garderobe who had charge of the carts, handled moneys, and seemed to be responsible for repairs of the Wardrobe and its contents. Above these there was a clericus de garderobe to draft and keep the rolls, among whom one, Odo, from 1213 to 1215, was probably official head of the Wardrobe.47 In connection with the branching off of the Privy Seal, there is a good deal of information about the staff; for example, in the writings of the somewhat garrulous Hoccleve, the poet, who worked as clerk in that office. At this time there was a staff of four clerks, who were temporarily assisted when additional responsibilities fell upon the office. In fact it is thought that there was probably a need for supernumary or assistant clerks more or

30

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

less continuously. Below these there were the more menial sumpters, valets and porters of the seal, while at the top there was the Keeper, who had clerks and deputies of his own, and also a Steward of the Household of the Seal. Normally the clerks lived in court at the king’s expense, or in commons out of court at the expense of the Keeper, in what was called hospicium privati sigilli,48 Modest allowances might be granted in lieu of this but such wages were insufficient for the clerks’ needs, without some payment in kind. The hope of obtaining promotion to a church benefice materially strengthened the clerk’s loyalty. In consequence of the special relationship between the King and his household, the former accepted personal responsibility, which was endorsed strongly by the normal religious attitudes of medieval society, for the clerks’ maintenance in sickness and age.49 This could be accomplished by granting a pension in the form of a daily payment from Wardrobe or Exchequer, or by grant from moneys set aside in some counties as alms, elemosina constituta, from which the king could grant a daily allowance to religious houses or to his servants. Another way was by the grant of a sinecure post or income from houses and land. Finally, there was the grant of a corrody, which covered food and neces­ saries, and lodging to a layman at a religious house or a hospital. This last method was favoured by Edward II, who sought to abolish pensions from the Exchequer but found it very difficult to enforce his demands. * * * T out50 rightly stresses how much efficiency in medieval administration depended upon the ordinary official rather than the occasional minister of character, upon the cumulative efforts of the lower many rather than upon the wayward excellencies of the upper few. It may well be that this is one of the universal peculiarities of administration which makes the achievements of these Obscure, rather than Dark, Ages of so great an interest to us. TYPICAL

ADMINISTRATORS

OF

THE

A GE

In a highly atomized society impulsively seeking new means of co-ordination, the administrative art was obviously in wide requisition, even if it was habitually masked as an ingredient of other activities, from the directing of affairs and policy-making of the high officer of state at the one end of the scale to the document-production of the mere clerk at the other. The literate

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500

31

man was at a premium and the churchman in particular was often the inevitable choice for office. A further factor was the absence of such skills among aristocratic holders of power, who were therefore much concerned to recruit to their personal entourage persons competent to conduct their correspondence, to keep essential records, and to look after the archives. From among the many holders of church benefices, whose names flood the historical annals of the period it would be easy to choose literally a regiment of persons whose competence as administrators was unchallengeably evidenced in their works. We have in fact already mentioned one such in Richard, son of Nigel, the distinguished author of the Dialogus de Scaccario but he is something more than the typical administrator of our title. The trouble is, of course, that any official who has left sufficient evidence of his administrative identity is unlikely to warrant the label we have chosen here! It is proposed, however, to choose two erstwhile officials whose careers demonstrate a wide range of administrative experience, from the highly important to the most menial: namely Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340-1400) and Thomas Hoccleve, or Occleve, (c. 1368-1450) both famed less for their official activities than for their literary achievements. The career of Geoffrey Chaucer began about 1357 when, still a boy, he became page or henxman (henchman) in the household of the Countess of Ulster, wife of Lionel, the third son of Edward III and later Duke of Clarence. The young Geoffrey was fortu­ nate in his apprenticeship. His training followed the pattern set out in some detail in the Liber Niger, (Black Book), already mentioned. The normal routines of courtier took him, within a couple of years, to the wars in France, from which he had the good fortune to be ransomed in 1360. During the next few years he figures as a budding poet rather than courtier, although there is a record of his having once taken letters for the King to Calais.51 Development of Chaucer’s fortune came in 1366 with his marriage to a lady-in-waiting of Queen Philippa and, upon the latter’s death, with the entry of both Chaucer and his wife into the service of the Duchess of Lancaster, first wife of John of Gaunt, who henceforth was to be his patron. During 1370 Chaucer undertook duties for the King in France, in 1374 in Genoa and Florence in nuncio regis in secretis negociis, and again in Italy in 1378, i.e. on secret missions. In the meantime promotion came to him at home, when he was appointed Comp­ troller of the Customs and Subsidies of Wools, Skins and Tanned

32

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Hides in London with the obligation of keeping the books in his own fair hand. He continued to undertake foreign missions and, in 1382, added to his home duties those of the Comptroller of Petty Customs. The following year, on his appointment as Justice of the Peace, he was authorized to appoint a deputy and the year after he entered Parliament as Knight of the Shire of Kent. In 1386 his good fortune left him: in the absence of his patron abroad he lost his appointments and had to depend upon his pension and savings. Certainly the latter may have been con­ siderable, for it is recorded that among the fines that fell to his lot was a sum of £71 4s 6d (which had considerable purchasing power at the time) levied on a man who had been condemned for evading duty on the export of wool to Dordrecht! But this change was certainly to posterity’s advantage, for Chaucer was able to devote more time to poetry, for which he had already achieved considerable fame, and it was at this juncture that he wrote the celebrated Canterbury Tales, which preserve for us with such verisimilitude and humanity the activities and manners of repre­ sentative persons of the age. Not that his official career was ended, for he was to broaden his administrative experience by holding the office of Clerk of the King’s Works from 12th July 1389 to 17th June 1391.52 That Chaucer was a man of parts is clear from this brief chronicle. His quality as litterateur and poet places him high on the roll of fame and there is no reason to assume that his admini­ strative abilities were of any mean order. The mere range of his experience in the King’s service is sufficient to testify this. Our other example, Thomas Hoccleve, although Chaucer’s counterpart in some respects, was a man of less eminence both in literature and administration. There is evidence that he knew Chaucer: certainly he admired his poetry which inspired his own. Hoccleve’s poems provide an invaluable picture of his age. He appears to have entered the Office of the Privy Seal at the age of nineteen or so, and to have already served there for twentyfour years at the time of writing De Regimine Principum, or Regiment of Princes, a long work addressed to the Prince of Wales, which, in addition to the sort of advice common to such works, contains much biographical detail and includes an address to Chaucer in which he bemoans the troubles of a scribe.53 Obviously his clerkship was of quite modest status and there is plenty of evidence in his poems of his disappointment with his career. He received a pension in 1399 and, from 1424, a corody, or charge, on a monastery. Tout pays tribute to his writings as a source of information about the everyday conduct of the business

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500

33

of the Privy Seal Office, which is much more vivid and human than anything to be drawn out of surviving official documents and records, and is usually the sole source of such information. ‘Seldom indeed can the investigation of medieval institutions so fully vivify the formal description of administrative machinery by reference to the spirit and ambitions of a man who was once part of it.’54 Tout warns us that, in assessing his interpretation of the Privy Seal Office in which he laboured, due allowance must be paid to the fact that Hoccleve was a disappointed man with many griev­ ances, about which we have little other evidence than his own writings. He was fluent and could make his own case rather better than can most men with a grievance. He certainly paints a gloomy enough picture, yet there is surely an uncommon touch of truth in his picture of the Privy Seal clerk as a poor-spirited and cowardly fellow who expected to cringe before great men and particularly before great men’s servants. In such an age when patronage was rife and it was necessary to kow-tow to all who might be instrumental in filching one’s livelihood, few could eschew the arts of the courtier. Hoccleve tells how, to collect the writs issued by the office on their behalf, the great men sent along their serving men in their stead, and he could not conceal his indignation at the tricks by which these menials robbed the clerks of their perquisites. First they told the clerks in a grand manner how their lord would show his thanks another day. Then they would not only withhold the fee due to the clerk but would complain to their lord of the extortions of the clerk, thus swindling both parties to their own advantage. The clerks dared not complain lest more dire penalties should be imposed by stronger pressures. In the present age, when protection rackets are nourished by similar opportunisms, it would be futile to dismiss such plaints even as exaggerated. There is ample evidence of Hoccleve’s competence in his clerical duties and his interest in his work is more than proved by the solid quarto volume, preserved in the British Museum, in which he set down in a businesslike and orderly fashion current forms and typical examples of documents falling within the sphere of the Privy Seal, the only source from which the actual day-to-day business and traditions of the Office can be studied. From the lives of these two poets, one major and the other minor, we can clearly see the sort of official lives they led and something of the nature of the administrative tasks which they were called upon to undertake. The first thing that strikes one is the importance of patronage, of being persona grata with people

34

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

of rank, and of being attached to a distinguished household. From the bare outline of Chaucer’s career it is clear that the public official of the age was a generalist par excellence — courtier, soldier, ambassador, tax official, clerk of works, even magistrate and parliamentarian — yet he needed to have sufficient perspicacity to be able to control technicians and to talk on equal terms with his opposite numbers outside the royal service. It is also clear that writing, the keeping of records, and the handling of correspondence were the basic essentials of the job. Thus, as Comptroller of Customs in London, Chaucer was for some time prevented from delegating the mere routine writing to another clerk. To a man of parts such as Chaucer administration meant a life of great variety and no doubt substantial influence; to one of lesser imagination and more limited connections, such as Hoccleve, it often meant slaving away in an office for year after year and his discontent can easily be accounted for by the fact that he was being employed below his true capacities. We have only to compare these two fourteenth century worthies with the Civil Service administrator and the Civil Service clerk of our own age to see that neither the human nor the technical situa­ tions have greatly altered. The administrators of either age react similarly to similar situations, and so far, at any rate, the administrative situation has maintained more similarities than differences. THE

EXTENDING

SCOPE

OF

ADMINISTRATION

It is true that at this time the foundations of the nation state were being laid, under the aegis of the kings who were struggling to maintain primacy over both Church and powerful nobility; but it is misleading to read into such geographical terms as ‘England’, ‘Scotland’, and ‘France’ connotations of compact governmental units to which their inhabitants owed a specific loyalty such as we understand today. The kings, contending either to preserve or to widen their powers, looked upon their several realms as so many separate estates which they were at liberty to dispose of or to add to as they thought fit, and had the power to achieve. It is also true that even at that time the English Channel provided a boundary which was more definte than most, but for some time the bounds of England overflowed on to the Continent with frontiers that were sufficiently fluid. Calais was to be included within the English King’s realm right up to the reign of Mary Tudor in the sixteenth century. It was important there­ fore that the administrative means available to the Crown should

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500

35

be sufficiently flexible to cope with this high institutional fluidity. Although our primary aim is to concentrate upon the universal in administration our quoted examples are inevitably of local incidence, particularly in the present chapter, in which the basic feudal pattern of society is the determining factor even though expansionist trends were evidently distorting the traditional domestic relationships from the very beginning. During this period world-wide events were impelling a great upsurge in the broader administrative spheres to which a full length study could profit­ ably be devoted. Obviously only a brief sketch of some of the more interesting incidents can be touched upon in this already long chapter; but they all made contributions to the new admini­ stration that was to be vital in shaping the new world. *

*

*

The struggle between Empire and Church which had already come to a head under Charlemagne in the eighth century, had by this time reached a definitive stage, administratively to the advantage of the latter. The Holy Roman Empire had become very much a German institution, taking its form both from past traditions and from the current situation in Germany. The emphasis was with the many princely states and the Emperor, who was elected but was a faint shadow of his former Roman counterpart. By the election of Frederick I in a . d . 1152 this process had settled into the hands of seven Electors, who then included the three Rhenish Archbishops, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the Duke of the Saxons and the Margrave of Branden­ burg.55 The seventh was said to be the King of Bohemia, but his standing was challenged in the Sachenspiegel (Saxon Mirror), compiled about a . d . 1230, on the grounds that he was not German. These unusual arrangements were to continue into the modern period, an eighth and a ninth elector being added during the seventeenth century, but this apparently democratic arrange­ ment did not prevent the choice of what Bryce calls, ‘the most conspicuous example of a monarchy not hereditary that the modern world has seen’ being confined to a few powerful fami­ lies.56 One of the results of this somewhat loose power complex was that a centralized administrative system failed to emerge in Germany, the Empire’s supervision being left in the hands of the several state rulers, of whom the Emperor himself was certainly the most influential, with a centre of power at times operating beyond Germany into Flanders, Spain, Italy, Austria and elsewhere. *

*

*

With the Church of Rome, on the other hand, the situation

36

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

was much more settled and integrated. Up until the Reformation in the sixteenth century, despite the exile and period of schism, events conspired to the building of a strong central administra­ tion on the foundation of a network of local units, often based on rich properties capable of conferring an adequate income, in the shape of a beneficum propter officium, on the holder of office. This alone was sufficient to make holders of higher office — bishops and abbots — important powers, with wide scope for civil administration within their dioceses. They created power in the Church both as spiritual advisers to the growing band of Christians who determined the morality of the age and as landowners, and for a time this power was considerably enhanced in virtue of their scribal capacities, which were in high demand among kings and princes who preferred them as administrators to their less accomplished henchmen. It could have also worked the other way round, as we have already seen. In its accession to temporal power the Church could not resist, partly as a consequence of accepting the normal responsibilities of landowning, the creation of an independent Papal State. Yet this was, Partner suggests,57 ‘the result of deliberate and longevolved policy’. It had begun with the throwing off of the Byzan­ tine yoke and developed out of ‘the landed estates of the bishopric of Rome — patrimonium Sancti Petri — and the political leadership exercised by the Popes in Rome and central Italy’. It suffered an almost fatal decline during the Great Schism but was subsequently restored to great prestige by Pope Martin V (1417-31). Its effective system of government and administration functioned under the supreme authority of the Pope, advised by his Council of Cardinals. For administrative purposes the Papal State was divided into several Provinces, and some smaller divisions. The larger units were controlled by a Rector or Legate, sometimes a Governor, while later many of the more important towns had a Rector or Governor who, subject to the provincial head, were also directly responsible to Rome. The head of government in the City of Rome — successor to the traditional Commune of Rome — was the Apostolic Vice-Chamberlain. Each governmental division had its own historic pattern. The public law of the State of the Church was set out in the Constitutiones Egidiane, issued at Fano in 1357.58 Over each Province the Rector had full governmental powers and complete control of the administration, with one important exception: namely, that he could not intimidate the Treasurer, who, although subordinate in rank, was practically independent. His agreement

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500

37

was needed when revenues or castles were farmed out or compo­ sitions made with offenders. The Rector appointed and removed officials, pardoned communes and offenders for offences, and absolved them from sentences of excommunication. He imposed and executed all sentences. He was responsible for impressing troops from among both commoners and nobles, for raising mercenaries for the Church and exercising power of command over them. He was empowered to call a local Parliament, but by the time of Martin V this had been reduced to a very minor role. The Rector’s spiritual jurisdiction had also been limited and, where there was no Legate or Vicar, a Commission in Spirituals received such powers. Thus the Rector had virtually become a normal temporal governor. The Treasurer, second officer of the Province and an official of considerable political importance, was often a Clerk of the Apostolic Chamber, to which he rendered his account. He worked through his own notaries, issued letters in his own name, and used his own seals. Apart from his responsibility for all financial business, the Treasurer also acted as watchdog over the rights of the Apostolic Chamber, and had power to investigate the departments if necessary. There were numerous officials in the Provinces, including judges and such special appointments, laid down in the Constitutiones, as procurator fisci and procurator camere with the duty of looking to the rights of the Apostolic Chamber, as well as numerous minor officials, such as the notaries of the Curia, forming altogether a complex establishment. Finally one should mention the Marshall, responsible for the execution of justice, who was entitled to three lances and sufficient men-at-arms and was assisted by a band of messengers, courtiers and bailiffs. Although the Rector had the right to appoint his own officials this was a function which, under Pope Martin V, was frequently exercised from Rome. At the centre the Pope ruled through the Apostolic Chamber, which in the beginning had been confined to the control of his moneys but later became the main organ of government of the Papal State and specifically 4;he Pope’s main secretariat. Its head was the Chamberlain, who acted as both chief executive and final judge in all temporal and spiritual cases which arose from its work, and was in fact one of the two or three most influential personages of the Roman Court. He could appoint officials throughout the Papal State and exercise administrative control in some cases outside the Chamber. He acted as chief adviser to the Pope in all matters of high policy and his tenure continued IID

38

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

during the interregnum following the death of a Pope. His position was thus an interesting amalgam of high priest, grand vizir, prime minister and permanent secretary in both the ancient and modern styles, theocratical, political and administrative, all in one. Yet neither the Chamber in its ubiquity, nor the Chamberlain in his remarkable versatility, was the true equivalent of modern cabinet and ministers. The Chamber was organized as a college competent to deal with all phases of government and consisting of the Chamberlain, the Treasurer and a number of consiliari or assistentes camere, who were able lawyers and administrators, the whole being supported by the main body of domini de camera (clerks of the Chamber) responsible for its everyday work. Their financial functions were both detailed and important, for they supervised the financial network which covered the entire Papal State. The majority of them were doctors or licentiates in law, and from among them the Pope filled many important posts outside the Roman Court. In addition, many notaries — the tebelliones already mentioned — were needed for the transaction of all business requiring a public instrument, and they also carried out the routine work of the administration. The Auditor of the Court of the Apostolic Chamber exercised wide powers through his own organization and staff. Normally executive power in the Provinces operated through the Rectors and Governors, but the impact of the Apostolic Chamber, mainly through its important finance functions, bore upon all parts of the system. It had direct interest in the salt monopoly, which was operated by officials, or conduttori under agreement with them. The Chamber also had control of the armed force of the Papal State and also of the Italian mercenaries, whom they engaged, paid and supervised. It should be clear from this very summary account of what was a complex organization that the Papal State had evolved a very detailed system of government which differed from other state systems in combining both spiritual and temporal powers, and as an administration was much more bureaucratic in both organiza­ tion and operation than was usual in contemporary Europe. It was in fact an extraordinary institution for the times. The local church units figured prominently in the scheme of things and carried the Pope’s power far beyond the confines of his temporal realm. Without the Bishops many grand plans would have been unattainable. Thus, when Urban II made his famous call to the Council of Clermont in November 1095, for a holy war against the Crescent and to protect the Holy Places, he was

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39

quite unprepared for the overwhelming response that followed.59 No advance administrative arrangements had been thought out and urgent steps were needed to repair the omission. It was ever thus, with the leaders prone to ignore the more mundane assump­ tions of their grand designs. The Pope hastened to lay down regulations to protect the interests of those going on Crusade. Not only were they to receive remission from temporal penalties for any sins they had committed, but their worldly belongings were to be placed under the protection of the Church during their absence at the war. It was to be the responsibility of the Bishops in the localities to care for these belongings and to return them intact to the warrior when he came home — if he came home! This was but one of the many regulations thus promulgated, but important among them in its immediate effect upon recruitment, as well as in calling for definite administrative arrangements for its execution. * * * Personal kingship meant fluid administration untrammelled by geographical strait-jackets. Henry II of England (1154-89), as inheritor of the Angevin Empire which extended from Scotland to the Pyrenees, affords a good example of government admini­ stration that depended upon a degree of mobility which was quite exceptional. At any time his presence might be felt in Normandy, Anjou, Aquitaine, England or Ireland.60 He was the personal link that held together a diversity of territories, rivalling at the time the Holy Roman Empire. But the real test of his grasp of the art of administration rested in his capacity to ensure its effective continuance in those realms from which he was absent. Already his Norman predecessors had felt the need to delegate authority when absent from one or other of their territories. As early as 1067 William the Conqueror, when visiting Normandy, had left the governing of England in the hands of Bishop Odo of Bayeux and his Norman steward William fitz Osbern, and similar arrangements were made later with other magnates.61 Under his son, William Rufus, who was a confirmed warrior preferring war to governance and consequently prone to leave his administering to professionals, the temporary vice­ royalty developed into a more permanent and well-defined office. In this way the Justiciarship began to take shape.62 Ranulf Flambard seems to have been the first to hold the title of justiciarius. Of humble family, Flambard, under the Conqueror, had graduated through certain menial ecclesiastical offices to become William’s chaplain, and clerk to the Chancellor. Thus he acceded to impressive executive authority. He was highly

40

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

efficient but, under Henry I, after a period of disgrace, which included a spell in the Tower imposed to satisfy baronial resent­ ment, he applied his great administrative abilities to developing the Bishopric of Durham, which he held for twenty-five years. Henry himself had been loath to sidetrack Flambard in this way, but was fortunate to find a worthy, and perhaps little more scrupulous, successor in Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, whose rise from the comparative obscurity of minor priest at Caen and subsequent career are of great interest in showing how at that time the capable administrator was often discovered and brought up. Obviously, as practical men, the Kings of England were early to recognize that administration called for something more than noble blood and a talent for courtiership. When they did not they either had to do the job themselves or find real trouble on their hands. In 1139 Roger was removed from office by King Stephen and the Justiciarship remained in abeyance until the reign of Henry II, who found it an invaluable aid to his mobility. But he preferred to look to the Baronage for his appointees and, at the outset, to share the office between Earl Robert of Leicester and Richard de Lucy, although the latter became sole holder on the death of Robert in 1168. The appointment of his successor, Ranulf Glanville, marked a return to the former pattern, for he had come up from the ranks of minor officialdom. Significantly, he died in 1190 while on crusade with Richard, who appears to have taken him along Tor safekeeping’, which suggests that the office was no longer quite meeting its original function. This is rather confirmed by the practice under John and Henry III, when the Justiciarship became very much of secondary importance because these kings, after the loss of Normandy, were by necessity, and often by inclination, immersed in the detail of their home administering. John, in particular, liked to keep his hand on the executive levers, an attitude that may well have contributed to his unpopularity among his contemporaries. Subsequently, the continuing impact of both the Crusades and continental campaigns pressed upon the kings the problems of split administration, but the increasing institutionalization of government and the evolution of more settled administrative methods rendered the Justiciarship out of date, although it needs to be emphasized that the kingship had as yet lost little of its personal character. It was the sheer increase in size of the prob­ lem which meant that the King depended more and more upon the specialist assistance of his Council, Secretaries, Exchequer and Courts. Henry V (reg. 1413-22), in pursuing his policy of reconquest

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500

41

in France, decided that Normandy should be organized as a separate state.63 The existing system of local division into eight bailliages was maintained, except that the baillis were now Englishmen, although anglicization was not carried further down the hierarchy. The ancient Seneschalship was revived and placed in the hands of Richard Woodville, who supervised both civil and military officers in the areas under the King’s control, except that finance was controlled by William Abingdon who, as Treasurer-General and Receiver-General had concurrent auth­ ority and control, a power and administration dichotomy wide­ spread at the time, as we have already seen in other connections. Incidentally a branch of the King’s Works operated in Calais (and the surrounding marches) from the time of its capture by Edward III in 1347.64 The needs of defence in this area were both insistent and burdensome. A permanent staff of workmen was maintained, many of them impressed in England for service overseas. They were under the control of master-craftsmen, some of whom were Flemings. The Treasurer of Calais took responsi­ bility for the financial and clerical administration of the Works, assisted, in the fourteenth century, by the Victualler, who looked after the provisioning and safe-keeping of all food and stores needed for the running of the establishment. Sometimes the two offices were combined. *

*

*

The trend towards more settled administrative institutions also began to make itself felt in the sphere of diplomacy, essentially a personal activity and long to remain such, but hitherto carried out as a series of specific missions on an ad hoc basis. A form of regularization began to appear. This was particularly the case in the Italian states where diplomatic institutions were already well developed and strict procedures were in course of formula­ tion. The first textbook of diplomatic practice written in Western Europe, appeared in 1436 in the hand of Bernard du Rosier, Provost and later Archbishop of Toulouse.65 It discusses the organization and conduct of the diplomatic art at the time. Hitherto the activities of the agents of diplomacy had always been intermittent but the Italian state system called for a new type of representative — the resident ambassador — who was introduced probably during the fourteenth century and was well established by the end of the fifteenth. The first resident agent of whom there is authentic mention was the servant of Luigi Gonzaga, Captain of the People of Mantua, at the Imperial court of Louis the Bavarian before 1341.66 An important specialization

42

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

within the field of public alministration was thus being developed, to meet an urgent need of the new state system. * * * Away in the south on the fringes between Spain and Islam important political events were taking place which were in fact harbingers of even greater changes. Christian Spain had been largely consolidated to meet the common threat and with the Union of the Crowns of Castile and Aragon in 1481, the stage was set for the capitulation of the Moorish Kingdom of Granada eleven years later. The foundations had been laid, particularly in the Iberian peninsular, for a remarkable extension of European civilization overseas into areas as yet unknown to contemporary Western man. This expansion was greatly to extend the scope of administration, as we shall see later. Already Europe was moving into the phase known as the Renaissance, or the age of the New Learning, and while its beginnings can justly be placed in Italy, in whose perennial sun­ shine the many surviving reminders of the grandeur that was Rome stood as constant spurs to the imagination of the resource­ ful Italians of the medieval age,67 it is as well to realize that this re-awakening was manifesting itself in many parts of the landmass, to the north as well as to the south of the Alps. It was in fact assisted by the movement of men and ideas across the many frontiers of a still largely feudalized society, and aided not a little by substantial advances in the administrative competence of governments, of Church and of other institutions which were proliferating as never before. The fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, an event to which we shall return in the next chapter, was also of great significance in this great awakening. To the new movement the expansion of paper-making, already under way in the twelfth century, was an important development which led inevitably to the introduction, round about a. d . 1440-50, of printing by means of movable metal types from matrices or moulds, an idea that had actually come from the Chinese during the sixth century, in the form of copy-taking by means of wooden blocks. Printing was to be most important in the proliferation of information and spread of knowledge. On the other hand admini­ stration, which usually called for immediate record-making, was to depend upon caligraphic skills for some time to come and thus the importance of the clerk-copyist was to increase. Both sholarship and trade transcended the boundaries of government, each aided by, and in turn aiding, the drive of human curiosity to probe the unknown. Scholars wandered from monastery to monastery, from court to court, from town to

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500

43

town. Centres of learning grew up into organized schools, some literally for the universal exchange of universal knowledge, at such centres as Salerno, Bologna and Paris, where the first Universities took shape. At Oxford the University obtained its first charter in 1214. Production specifically for use being in course of replacement by production for market, the creation of organized markets became a matter of priority. Such trading called for the devising of institutions to regulate labour and to store and exchange commodities, in the form of guilds, trading corporations and the staple. Members of specific trades and industries organized them­ selves, usually under charter or statutory authority, into guilds to regulate their activities and protect their own interests. They flourished throughout the Middle Ages in all parts of the West and their administration, private rather than public in essence, is nevertheless germane to our study, for the two spheres could not be precisely defined. In London, in particular, they were already important in the twelfth century and their beginnings went back much earlier. Nor was this a purely European develop­ ment, for there is evidence of wide prevalence of a type of guild in China, of analogous trade castes in India, and of guilds in Byzantium which were the precursors of the later esnafs of Turkey, Bulgaria and Serbia.68 Although they have in Europe been superseded by later types of organization we should not overlook the surviving case, which we have already met, of the Livery Companies of London where the particular institution was to be closely associated with local government. Fairs had always been organized, almost spontaneously, at important centres or route crossings whither traders brought their wares and regular trade routes grew up, some of almost worldwide scope, such as the famed Silk Road to China which already existed towards the end of the second century b . c . linking the Roman Empire with China and flourished from the first or second centuries a . d . onwards.69 In England the important wool trade organized the exchange of merchandise in certain staple towns which provided storage facilities, and where jurisdiction of disputes was placed in the hands of the Mayor. Edward III, under the Statute of the Staple of 1353, transferred the Staple from Bruges, where restrictions had become irksome, to several towns in England and Ireland, but this arrangement proving unsatisfactory, control was some­ time in the early ’sixties transferred to Calais, where it was to remain for nearly two centuries. Foremost among these merchants of the staple were the

44

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

German hansas (leagues) or companies, consisting of groups of towns combined, first for protection against anarchy but subse­ quently as powerful trading leagues. These were already forming by the tenth century but such developments could not transcend the flow of events and the most famed amongst them, the Hanseatic League rose to the height of its powers in the four­ teenth century, when it comprised as many as 160 towns, extending from Dinant in Flanders to Revel on the Baltic, thus constituting the whole of northern Europe as a single trading area.70 Its English terminal, the Hanseatic Steelyard, was formerly located on the site at present occupied by Cannon Street railway station in London. While the League came to exercise considerable political power and was able to take warlike action when occasion required, its aims were to promote trade and it was through such channels that it operated. It established counting houses and factories in a number of countries and, although it was loosely organized, it is clear that its success must have depended to a substantial extent upon effective administration. If the Italian cities were rather less successful in their co-operative endeavours it is to them that certain advances important to administration are to be attributed, notably in banking and accountancy, both of which are primarily financial and only secondarily administrative — if indeed the two activities can be separated. Monopolizing the more important trade routes between the Mediterranean and the East and across the Alps to northern Europe, the Italian cities — particularly Florence, Siena and Genoa — wielded considerable financial control. The introduction of stable gold currencies during the thirteenth century also facilitated the creation of an internationally acceptable currency. Italian financiers, under the label of ‘Lom­ bard’, covered the whole of Europe with a banking network. To this very day Lombard Street in the City of London stands witness to their enterprise.71 They had to be efficient administrators. These seminal movements were all greatly assisted by, and had their own vital impact upon, contemporary accounting methods, which were involved in the first radical advance in such tech­ niques since classical times. During the fourteenth century, first probably in Geneva but possibly in Florence, the principle of double-entry book-keeping was being applied by Italian trading concerns. Thenceforth book-keeping developed rapidly and its practices are evident in numerous surviving business records of that age. The first treatise to place on record existing book­ keeping methods, some probably already as much as two centuries

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500

45

old, was written by Luca Paccioli (c. 1445-1523), the mathema­ tician, who in his Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Pro­ portion et Proportionality published in Venice in 1494, included sections on book-keeping, money and exchange, the former section being subsequently printed separately in Tuscany as La Scuola Perfetta da Mercanti (The Perfect School of Merchants).72 * * * The search for trade took the adventurous much father afield, and there were the traditions of the Silk Road to encourage them. Thus young Marco Polo accompanied his father and uncle on their second journey in 1271 to far Mongolia and into the presence of Kublai Khan (1216-94) the first Mongol Emperor of China, in 1275. Marco so commended himself to the great ruler by his initiative and astuteness that he became enrolled among the latter’s attendants and eventually became employed by him on secret missions which took him to all parts of Asia and, of course, provoked the jealousy of other officials of the court. To the West the Portuguese were exploring the Atlantic shores of Africa and setting up trading stations far along the Guinea Coast. Before the end of the fifteenth century their Vasco da Gama (1460-1524) had sailed round the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean and the circumnavigation of the world was in sight. For Spain the Italian, Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), had reached the shores of America. If such fruits of the European Renaissance can hardly be attributed to administrative advances, they were themselves undoubtedly the harbingers of a tremen­ dous expansion in governmental operation which would surely create new horizons for the public administrator. At the moment and indeed for a long time yet no one looked upon administra­ tion as a distinctive and separate activity in its own right but a New World was emerging which would lead to just that.

REFERENCES 1 Jacques Pirenne, The Tides of History, Vol. I, (Allen & Unwin, 1962). 2 Jacques Ellul, Histoire des Institutions, (Presses Universitaires de France, 1955). 3 Max Bloch, Feudal Society, (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961). 4 T. F. Tout, Chapters in Medieval Administrative History , Vol. II, (Manchester Univ., 1937), pp. 182-3. 5 V. H. Galbraith, Studies in the Public Records, (Nelson, 1948), p. 61. 6 See, for example, R. H. C. Davis on ‘The Norman Conquest* in History, Vol. LI, (1966), pp. 278-286.

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7 Dialogus de Scaccario, edited by Charles Johnson, (Nelson, 1950), pp. 62-4. 8 Galbraith, op. cit., pp. 94-5, quoting from J. H. Round, Feudal England. 9 Sir John Craig, The Mint, (Cambridge, 1953), p. 33. 10 Tout, op. cit., Vol. I, (Manchester University, 1920), p. 24. 11 Tout, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 75. 12 S. B. Chrimes, An Introduction to the Administrative History of Medieval England, (Oxford, 1952), p. 81. 13 Dialogus, op. cit., pp. 79-80. 14 Sir T. L. Heath, The Treasury, (Putnam, 1927), pp. 22-23, quoting Hubert Hall. 15 Heath, op. cit., pp. 28-9. 16 Tout, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 178. 17 Sir Maurice Powicke, The Thirteenth Century, 1216-1307, (Oxford, 1953), pp. 131-2. 18 A. L. Poole, From Domesday Book to Magna Carta, 1087-1216, (Oxford 1951), p. 486. 19 Powicke, op. cit., p. 65. 20 Collected and edited by A. R. Myers, The Household of Edward TV, (Manchester University, 1959). 21 Myers, op. cit., p. 15. 22 Quoted by Helen M. Cam, The Hundred and Hundred Rolls, (London, 1930), p. 59. 23 B. Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, (California, 1959). 24 Henri Pirenne, Medieval Cities, (Princeton, 1925), p. 77. 25 For a comprehensive general introduction see Lewis Mumford, The City in History, (Seeker & Warburg, 1961, and Penguin Books, 1966). 26 Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, Vol. XII, (Oxford, 1961), p. 520. 27 Pirenne, op. cit., pp. 146-7. 28 Officially published, The Corporation of London: Its Origin, Constitu­ tion, Powers and Duties, (Oxford, 1950), pp. 4-6. 29 Dialogus, op. cit., pp. 22-4. 30 Tout, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 141. 31 See J. Otway-Ruthven, The King’s Secretary and the Signet Office of the X V Century, (Cambridge, 1939), for its subsequent development. 32 Galbraith, op. cit., pp. 9-13. 33 Galbraith, op. cit., p. 11. 34 Cam, op. cit. 35 Jacques Ellu, op. cit., p. 269. 36 Chrimes, op. cit., p. 14. 37 Tout, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 169. 38 Tout, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 170. 39 Tout, op. cit., Vol. V, (1930), p. 144. 40 For comprehensive account see Official History of the King’s Works, Vols. I & II, The Middle Ages and Plans, (H.M. Stationery Office, 1963). 41 Official History, op. cit., p. 1. 42 Official History, op. cit., p. 189. 43 Official History, op. cit., pp. 189-90. 44 Official History, op. cit., pp. 195-6. 45 Mary C. Hill, The King’s Messengers, (Arnold, 1961). 46 Hill, op. cit., p. 21. 47 Tout, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 167-8.

MEDIEVAL EUROPE: A.D. 1000-1500 48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

47

Tout, op. cit., Vol. V, pp. 77-84. Hill, op. cit., pp. 62-80. Tout, op. cit., Vol. V, p. 74. The biographical detail is excellently summarized in Nevill Coghill’s Geoffrey Chaucer, a pamphlet in ‘Writers and Their Work* series (No. 79) published for the British Council and National Book Club, (Longmans, 1956). Official History, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 1045. George Saintsbury on ‘The English Chaucerians*, in The Cambridge History of English Literature, (Cambridge, 1932), Vol. II, pp. 205-8. Tout, op. cit., Vol. V, p. 74. Bryce, op. cit., p. 236. Bryce, op. cit., pp. 241-2. Peter Partner, The Papal State under Martin V, (British School at Rome, 1958), p. 1. Partner, op. cit., p. 101. Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, (Cambridge, 1951, and Penguin), Vol. I, pp. 108-9. A L. Poole, From Domesday Book to Magna Carta, (Oxford, 1951), pp. 319 et seq. Bryce Lyon, A Constitutional and Legal History of Medieval England, (Harper, New York, 1960), pp. 152-4. F. J. West traces its tentative beginnings in The Justiciarship in England, 1066-1232, (Cambridge, 1966). E. F. Jacob, The Fifteenth Century, 1399-1485, (Oxford, 1961), pp. 189-90. Official History, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 423-4 and Vol. II, pp. 1054-5. Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy, (Cape, 1955), pp. 28-30. Mattingly, op. cit., p. 71. V. H. H. Green, Renaissance and Reformation, (Arnold, 1952), p. 35. George Unwin, The Gilds and Companies of London, (1908, new edn. Cass, 1963), pp. 2-3. J. Needham, Science and Civilization in China, (Cambridge, 1954), Vol. I, pp. 170-83. Friedrich Heer, The Medieval World, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962), pp. 54-55. Heer, op. cit., p. 64. A. C. Littleton & B. S. Yamey (editors), Studies in the History of Accounting, (Sweet & Maxwell, 1956), particularly R. Taylor on ‘Luca Pacioli’, pp. 175-184.

CHAPTER 2

MIDDLE EAST: EAST-WEST IMPACT — a . d . 1071 to 1683 From time immemorial the main tides of history have flowed from east to west, and at the time we are considering they had originated far beyond the area under review. During the period from the eleventh century onwards, three main movements arc of special interest, namely: (i) the decline and fall of Byzantium, a much more prolonged event than the earlier decline of West Rome which Gibbon endowed with so much importance; (ii) the vital holding action of the Republic of Venice, greatest of the Italian city states; and (iii) the rejuvenation of the Muslim power with the rise of the Turks and their assumption of the role of successor to Byzantium. In contrast movements from the West, such as the Christian Crusades, had a much more desolutary and less effective impact. It is as well to bear in mind that the unstable frontier between east and west, pivoting along the Bosphorus and eastern shores of the Aegean and Mediterranean seas, was the creation of movements emanating in central Asia and culminating with the drive of the Mongols under Jenghiz Khan (1162-1227) and his successors, which encompassed China and India and penetrated westwards across the Russian Steppes as far as the Danube. These basically nomadic movements, generating irresistible military power, had a revolutionary impact upon the peoples who fell in their path: some, like those ancient enemies the Byzantines and the Persians, succumbing to their power, others like the Turks and Slavs being caught up in the general struggle and impelled to strike out on their own. Notable among the latter were the Seljuks of Rum, or Eastern Rome, a title by which they became known after their victory at Manzikert in 1071, the beginnings of whose movement can be traced back at least as far as 1200 b . c . They were to continue to flourish up to 1308, when their last ruler, Mesud III was murdered and the once great Seljuk empire faded away.1 The scene is so vast, the movement so complex, and the consequences so inextricably interwoven that it would be futile, within the limits of this study, to promise more than an intro-

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ductory indication of the vast changes that these few sentences suggest. Too much attention has no doubt been given, both contemporaneously and subsequently, to the war annals, the vicissitudes of victory and defeat, and too little to the contri­ bution of the more mundane factors, and consequently to the administrative efforts, needed to sustain the several realms over such wide geographical areas for such an appreciable span of time. If surviving records provide only occasional glimpses of the administrative structure and personnel that serviced these world-shattering movements, it is none the less evident that competent institutions existed and must frequently have attained to comparatively high levels of efficiency. We can devote our attention to but a few special examples of administrative activities and experience of which we have knowledge. But we should first look briefly at the more general administrative pattern behind the three main movements referred to. POLITICS

AND A D M I N I S T R A T I O N E AS TERN MARCHES

IN

THE

Byzantium: The most long-lived administrative realm in the area was the Byzantine Empire, which, by the eleventh century of our era, had existed for some seven hundred years since the founding of Constantinople in a . d . 330. With the decline of the Macedonian dynasty the disruptive efforts of the aristocracy could only be curbed by the strong bureaucracy, who were, however, anti-militarist and, ostensibly on the score of economy, allowed defence to run down by withholding funds. Everywhere the frontiers had begun to recede. Eventually, in the battle at Manzikert, Byzantium suffered its worst defeat at the hands of the Seljuk Turks, its Emperor Romanus IV, Diogenes, being captured and his troops annihilated. After a decade of unrest, Alexius Comnenus, military commander and member of a powerful family, was crowned Alexius I (1081-1118), and the army gained ascendancy over the bureaucracy. Despite serious economic difficulties Comnenus began to recover lost territories and was pre­ paring to counter-attack the Seljuks when, in a .d . 1096, the Crusaders from the West appeared on the scene to rescue the Holy Places from the hands of the Muslim. This movement could have brought support and renewal to the Christians of the East but in fact it created a diversion which, despite its immediate successes, worked in the long run in favour of the enemies of Christendom. Certainly the First Crusade was a success. Antioch and Jerusalem were captured and for the

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moment reasonably satisfactory arrangements were reached between the two wings of Christendom. But trouble inevitably arose between Byzantine and Latin, for there was much super­ stitious antagonism to the West among the common people of Byzantium. This culminated on 13th April 1204 when the armies of the Fourth Crusade assaulted Constantinople and the great and beautiful city was wantonly sacked by the Christians of the West. The East Roman Empire was now subjected to a process of political desiccation which to some extent re-enacted the earlier fate of the Western Empire eight centuries before. Yet the tide was not all in the one direction. After a period of Latin rule the image of the Byzantine Empire was restored under Michael VIII, the first of the Palaelogi, in a . d . 1259. For a moment it seemed that the great realm was again about to enter a phase of glory, but, despite the almost heroic efforts of a few great sovereigns, this was not to be. The dynasty also produced too many mediocre leaders for it to sustain the effort that might have ensured a new era of greatness. Byzantium had lost invaluable territories; its finances were exhausted, its military power whittled down, and above all its original inspiration was dead. Yet it managed in the fiinal phase to struggle along for the best part of two centuries, and indeed, had there been far-sighted leadership on both sides, it might have been saved by reunion with the West. Though the margin between success and failure was a narrow one, the agents concerned lacked vision and the essential support of the people, whom fate had already con­ demned, and all overtures proved abortive. In the East the Crescent was definitely in the ascendant. Constantinople was beseiged by the Turks under Mohammed II. On 29th May 1453 he wrested the city from Constantine XI, last of the Roman Emperors of the East, who died heroically in defence of his capital. Byzantium disappeared for ever from the stage of history and the faith of Islam replaced the faith of Christ within the great city. Henceforth, and to this very day, the muezzin was to ring out from the spires of St. Sophia which the conquerors converted into a mosque. It would not help very much to add to the brief exposition of Byzantine public administration included in our Volume I. There is little reason to believe that any radical modification in established practices took place during these last centuries. The administration had manifest vices and perhaps less obvious virtues, its mediocre and its flourishing periods, yet the mere continuance of the Empire for so long suggests that its admini­ stration was generally satisfactory. In view of the known dangers

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and difficulties with which Byzantium had to cope, and the long period over which it coped successfully, one feels justified in suggesting that, in default of a better explanation than historians have so far agreed upon, effective public administration was an important favourable factor in the outcome. As a footnote to this discussion the section below, on Michael Psellus, may be referred to. Venice: During this period the Venetian Republic, in defending its political autonomy and trading supremacy, was alternately, and sometimes concurrently, the foil or victim of both sides. Not least among the Republic’s capacities was her ability to hold the candle to the devil. The gradual weakening of the democratic and strengthening of the aristocratic element has already been mentioned, and a detailed study of how the typical institutions of a city state were employed to administer an empire would be of great interest. Indeed, in view of the parallels between Venice’s experience and the eventual history and fate of the British Empire — albeit at different levels of complexity — there is much in the Republic’s career that deserves the close consideration of both historian and administrator. City government, even of Venetian vintage, had a good deal in common with local government everywhere. The scale of opera­ tions meant that over much of the field government and admini­ stration were inseparable. A complicated division of labour was hardly called for. A high degree of exchangeability was ensured by the fact that, as traders of real competence, many Venetians were experts in office management and the handling of correspon­ dence, and they accepted as a matter of course the role of administration as a normal stage in all social operation. Sismondi in his admirable work,s provides us with a good deal of information about Venetian administration, although in this, as in other matters, his narrative is sometimes mixed up and inconsistent. Thus, after events had compelled her to become a land-power it was necessary for Venice to evolve satisfactory relationships with her new subjects. Sismondi writes: ‘Her policy to her subjects on the mainland was just and generous. It was vastly in advance of the policy of the time. The Senate publicly professed that it aimed at the love and devotion of its subjects. A Captain of War and a garrison were sent for security; a Podesta to preside over the high courts of justice. Rectors in constant communication with the Senate controlled taxation and the police, and they were compelled to observe the laws and regu­ lations of the city. It very grave cases the Ten were consulted. Local self-government was encouraged, and a system of State education

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53

was set on foot. The subject provinces became devoted to the Republic. The administration was just and strong, and they grew wealthy very rapidly owing to the connection; but those families who had been used to the exercise of authority, or had aspired to it, chafed; many of them exiled themselves, and fanned germs of jealousy and dislike of the Republic which existed throughout Italy.’3

On the other hand the Venetian’s attitude to the Republic’s Eastern subjects was quite different, ‘one of command, con­ descension and toleration’. Sismondi continues: ‘He ruled, but he did not settle permanently among the people he ruled: he went among them to make his fortune, and, that aim accomplished, he returned home. Unlike the Briton, with this sole end in view, he became unscrupulous. The administration of justice was venal, malversation was common, defence was sacrificed to cupidity, peculation invaded the public service, no care was given to ensure good and righteous government; to secure Venetian monopoly of commerce was the Venetian aim in being in the Levant at all. Fortresses were erected with the sole object of keeping the subjectpopulation under; not as defences against external foes; no attention was bestowed on agriculture, and the local soldiery consisted, for the most part, of badly trained and badly-armed natives. In fact the East was exploited for the benefit of a few merchants. The possibili­ ties of a rich soil and a fructifying climate were disregarded, and, consequently the hardy and warlike population of Dalmatia resented oppression, and were perpetually in revolt, while the down-trodden peoples of the Levant cared not a jot whether they were under the heel of Venice or of the Turk. True the Turk took children and converted them into janissaries, but tribute-money was light, and collected by local officers, and in this respect they were better off under Turkish rule.’4

For home defence Venice depended upon ships, and as leading naval power achieved mastery of the Adriatic and Eastern Mediterranean, until the Turk, having consolidated his hold on Eastern Europe, took to the sea with considerable effect. The Arsenal at Venice, founded in 1104 and extended on several occasions from the fourteenth century onwards, survives today as a massive witness to the Republic’s might and industry, and incidentally of the high capacity of a management which at one time was required to control the activities of sixteen thousand operatives. When their responsibilities spread to the mainland the Venetians’ general policy was to employ foreign mercenaries, an extraordinary institution that flourished in Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Not that these were always reliable, for their leaders could be adept at running with the hares and hunting iib

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with the hounds. These Condottieri were often poweful enough to constitute a state within the state. The ruthless way in which the Venetians dealt with unenthusiastic service throws a revealing light on the justice of the age as well as upon the single-mindedness of the Republic. For example, during their war with Milan the Venetians suspected their commander Carmagnola of treating his Milanese prisoners too liberally, with an eye no doubt upon Milan as a possible future employer. For the time being the Senate, feeling somewhat at a disadvantage, dissembled; but they did not forget.5 Following a defeat in which Carmagnola stood by and made specious excuses, he was politely invited to Venice to discuss the situation. There he was received with apparent respect, but during the night when his personal guard had gone to bed, he was arrested, tried by the Ten, put to the rack, found guilty and sentenced to death. Twenty days later Carmagnola was led to the Piazetta by the Doge’s Palace and publicly decapitated between the pillars of the two patron saints of the Republic, the columns of St. Theodore and St. Mark, landmarks so well-known to visitors today. Such treatment of a powerful condottieri leader was possible only to a State as strong and sure of itself as Venice, and in a position — to quote Sismondi — ‘to prefer the inferior talents of a general who could be depended upon to the genius of a man on whom she could not rely’.6 In practice Venice could afford to treat her condottieri well, and she had her safeguards. A close control upon their move­ ments was maintained through provveditori, who were sent to look after the war chest and to report back on any weaknesses in the conduct of operations. Venice was also helped by the efficient secret service which she maintained throughout the sphere of her commercial operations. It was during the long reign of Doge Foscari (1423-1457) that Venice may be said to have reached and passed the zenith of her glory.7 But the world upon which she now looked was very different from what it appeared to be. With the advent of the Turk to the throne of Constantinople a new power was strongly consolidating in the Levant, yet for a time the actuality was denied by more immediate events. Many small states and islands of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean rushed to the protec­ tion of St. Mark and became tributaries of the great Republic. Her citizens even interpreted her successes on the mainland of Italy as harbingers of her succession to the overlordship of all the Italians, while in Constantinople itself the ability of her diplomats — a branch of her public service for which she was

MIDDLE EAST: A.D. 1071-1683

55

justly famed — enabled her to obtain terms for her citizens in the city that were extremely liberal despite the dire circumstances. The Venetians were to continue to enjoy the same self-govern­ ment in the city that they had done under the Byzantine Emperors. Distracted by her war with the Visconti of Milan the Venetians had stood neutral when Eastern Rome was in its last extremity, and the Turk could afford to reward this, perhaps inadvertent and certainly traitorous, neutrality with some generosity. The resident Venetians retained their own courts of law and free trade in the eastern capital. Radical developments in geography and science, operating in realms far beyond the sphere in which either Venetian or Turk had any effective say, namely in the vast oceans of the world, and in the effectiveness of artillery, were bound to erode com­ pletely the assumptions on which the success of such a small state rested. It is time to consider the institutions of the Turk and their imprint upon the structure of public administration. The Turks: Turkish supremacy began with the Seljuks of Rum, whose victory over the Byzantines at Manzikert in a . d . 1071 has already been mentioned. They marked the transition from nomadic to settled existence and their institutions provided many precedents for the Ottoman Turks whose empire was to emerge with the leadership of Osman in the last decade of the thirteenth century when he threw off the protection of the Seljuks and declared himself independent. The Seljuk Empire at its height had extended across Persia and Turkistan, the Fertile Crescent and a large part of Asia Minor, to Palestine and the northern shore of the Red Sea. Increasing autonomy was enjoyed by the individual sultanates and the Seljuks of Rum reigned in Asia Minor. The Seljuks, while continuing to uphold the spiritual authority of the Caliph, (successor of Mohammed, the Prophet), looked to their Sultan as temporal master, the leadership usually passing to the eldest son. By the thirteenth century they had developed a ministerial system, in which the duties of Vizir had passed to the Pervane, or Lord Chancellor, who also acted as President of the Diwan (Council). He was responsible for domestic affairs and acted as the Sultan’s deputy, presiding over the cabinet in his absence. Following the Pervane was the Commander-in-Chief and then the Cadi, or Chief Justice, who either shared or occupied the post of chief M ufti, the supreme religious authority. Arising from the original tribal practice of the officials, of assembling at the entrance of their sovereign’s tent, the original title Kapu (or entrance) was maintained, even when the meeting place was

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moved inside. Under the Ottomans this custom was by analogy to give the title Sublime Porte to the council hall and to retain Diwan for the actual assembly itself. Tamara Talbot Rice in her book provides a vivid insight into the administrative situation of the time: ‘In the Sultanate of Rum the work of the Divan (alternative for Diwan) was carried out by twenty-four secretaries, half of whom were concerned with military matters while the rest dealt with financial affairs. The Vizir or Pervane, wearing the ink pot presented to him on his appointment by the Sultan as his badge of office, took sole responsibility for the country’s foreign affairs; the necessary correspondence and records were entrusted by him to a special body of scribes who, although they occasionally made use of Arabic, generally carried out their work in the Persian language. All state papers were usually written in the viahat or dotless script, and all carried the Sultan’s seal. Under the Mongol occupation the Turkish language was introduced into the chancelleries, where it soon came to be accepted as the official tongue. The Sultan’s personal wishes were invariably recorded in writing, either from his direct dictation or from verbal instructions, when the messengers were expected to display the Sultan’s ring as proof of authenticity. The royal com­ mands were written on special paper reserved for the purpose; it was white, exceptionally fine-textured, and was probably imported from China.’8

With the emergence of a more sophisticated system of govern­ ment a class of courtiers and officials inevitably developed, some of whom, it is true, continued to carry out duties that had existed under the tribal regime. Naturally such appointments were frequently conditioned by the Sultan’s personal wishes, but where he had no special preference, a traditional method of selection was applied, whereby the candidates, assembled before Sultan and court, were set to discuss specific topics, the ablest and wisest dialectician being chosen, and often straightway vested with one of the honorific titles in which the Seljuks delighted.9 Among the officials the Master of Ceremonies held an import­ ant post, as did the Master of the Water. The duties of the former, customary and widespread at the time, are self-evident and were easily performed providing the appointee had the right personality and a thorough knowledge of court procedure and etiquette: those of the latter, maintaining an unfailing supply of water under recurrent conditions of drought, could prove very burdensome. Increase in court intrigue and political conspiracy led to the appointment of a Taster of Food and Drink, but even this precaution did not invariably save the ruler from sudden death, and if this was a natural hazard of the times when sanitary

MIDDLE EAST: A.D. 1071-1683

57

science was primitive enough, an official scapegoat could some­ times no doubt come in handy. A far from unusual concomitant of oriental officialdom was the Seljuk rule that a widowed consort should marry one of the deceased Sultan’s ministers, for her at least a fate preferable to the Hindu practice of suttee/ Despite their preoccupation with military activities, the Islamic lands were not backward in pro­ viding social services. The Seljuks introduced hospitals, medical schools and other charitable institutions, which were supported by private endowments, following the example of the Sultan himself. The hospital staffs included specialists in internal diseases, as well as surgeons and oculists, and they had access to well-stocked libraries of medical texts. This advanced welfare element was to serve as a model to the Ottoman Turks, who were not very inventive people, and it is on record that some hospitals of Seljukid origin continued in use well into the nineteenth century, a few even right up to the First World War (1914-18). Altogether this was an interesting system, of a pattern that we have frequently met before. A fairly simple undifferentiated government of an autocratic nature, with an administrative arrangement consisting of the ruler, a miscellany of offices, and a number of scribes and other subordinates in the background. OTTOMAN

GOVERNMENT

AND

ADMINISTRATION

The Turks, in acceding to world power from tribal beginnings, were involved, not only in the normal process of developing from a nomadic to a settled society, but in accommodating the system of government necessitated by such widespread dominion with the theocratic assumptions of Islam, which took no account of the existence of a State. In course of developing the new essential division of labour and function the evolving system had to con­ form to a religious way of life which the Turks, as well as large sections of their subjects, had not the least inclination to discard. It was indeed, despite the great successes of the new power, the decree of destiny that eventually the Ottoman power would disappear while Islam continued to receive the allegiance of a diversity of peoples of Asia and Africa. The Ottoman Turks also took on the mantle of East Rome, deriving both from the conquered Byzantium whose chief city became their capital, and from the Seljuks of Rum. Their emerging institutions were inevitably influenced by their heritage, especially in the administrative sphere, and many Byzantine practices survived under the new system. It would be both profit-

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able and exciting, but hardly within our present focus, to devote detailed attention to this immensely important development. It is in fact intended to concentrate attention upon the sixteenth century, the period of Suleyman the Magnificent (reg. a . d . 152066), when the Ottoman Empire achieved its greatest glory, and to concentrate particularly upon the Sultan’s Household, where the political leads interlinked, as in all similar systems of government. According to Lybyer,10 the Ottoman Government divides naturally into two branches: (1) the Ottoman Ruling Institution, and (2) the Muslim Institution of the Ottoman Empire. The former consisted of (i) the Sultan and his family, (ii) Officers of the Household, (iii) Executive Officers of the Government, (iv) the Standing Army, and (v) the body of young men being educated for various services. The slave elements were to achieve domination in both central and provincial spheres during the reign of Suleyman, as an integrated Ruling Institution. The power of the professional slave army was increased by the extending use of firearms, an important factor in changing the institutions of the age.11 The Muslim Institution of the Ottoman Empire was made up of educators, priests, jurisconsults and judges who took part in applying the Sacred Law. After Suleyman the trend was for the Muslim Institution to gain power at the expense of the Ruling Institution. Consequently the trend was towards decentralization.12 Ottoman government and administration were powerfully auto­ cratic, tempered, however, by pervasive Islamic customs and beliefs. In order to concentrate sufficient power to control an extensive empire the new rulers had to curb the power of the nobles, who had hitherto, in the ordinary course of things, exer­ cised a wide autonomy as governors and high provincial officials. The oriental household, which was encouraged rather than other­ wise by the limited polygamy of Islam, introduced the cruel rule of fratricide, which decreed that on the succession of a Sultan any surviving brothers should be strangled. This ruthless custom was not new, for it had already been adopted by the Byzantines, to go no further back. Its aim was to save the realm from the inevitable disorder arising when there was more than one near­ legitimate claimant for the throne. Theologians had little diffi­ culty in discovering Koranic authority for it.13 As a complete solution of their executive problems the Ottomans developed the slave household, to which both military and administrative functions were confided. This was their most characteristic contribution.

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59

These arrangements constituted an attempt, bound in the long run to fail, to accommodate existing political forms within a particularly conservative religious system in which the law had been determined for good and all. Although Suleyman the Mag­ nificent was also called El Kanuni, ‘The Legislator’, he had no real authority to change the law. Any changes had to be achieved through a process of reinterpretation. However ingenious the interpreter this meant that changes were inevitably obstructed, and even the most vigorous ruler would be encouraged to take the line of least resistance, while the people in general were inveterately in favour of the status quo. It is as well not to confuse scholarly classifications made in retrospect too closely with the actual working situations at the time. It is hardly likely that a sultan, even one as perspicacious as Suleyman, would have harboured such clear-cut divisions in his mind. In the fluid complex of relationships the several working institutions were inextricably interwoven. It is none the less helpful to realize that there were these different approaches: not only the Muslim and the Ruling ‘Institutions’ — or should we say ‘aspects’ — but also the household and the general executive postings, the inside and the outside services, the military and the civil branches, and also the private organization of the Harem, none of which was completely separable from the others, all of which afford valuable viewpoints, and the whole complex of which was interlinked by an administrative network which at its most effective was homogeneously staffed by the Ottoman Slave Household. An early description of the Sultan’s household was given by the Venetian envoy Ottaviano Bon, in his Description of the Grand Signior’s Serraglio based upon his experience in Constantinople from a . d . 1606 to 1609.14 According to him the Outside Services of the Imperial Household fell into six main groups: (1) Members of the Ulema, the professional men of religion. These included the Preceptor of the Sultan, Palace Chaplains, Chief Astrologer, Chief Physician, Chief Surgeon, and Chief Oculist. Under the Chief Physician there was a corps of physicians, who included Jewish doctors as well as Muslim Ulema. (2) Four Emin, or special commissioners, in charge of Depart­ ments of the Household. Each had his own staff. The City Commissioner was responsible for the construction and main­ tenance of the royal buildings and for running and paying the Household. Among his many officials were the Chief Architect, Water Inspector and Stores Commissioner. Another Emin, who was as much a public as a palace official, was the Commissioner

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of the Mint, which was located in the palace grounds. The other two Emin were concerned with the kitchens and the supply of fodder to the stables. (3) The important Agas of the imperial stirrup, privileged to hold the stirrups and bridle when the Sultan mounted his horse, some of whose duties extended outside the household. These included the Agas of the several military branches and such officials as the Standard Bearer, the Chief and Deputy-chief of the Gate Wardens, the Master of the Stables, the Chief Pursui­ vant, the Chief Taster and the Chief Falconer. (4) The corps of Muteferrikas, an elite guard recruited from the sons of high dignitaries and acting as the Sultan’s personal escort. (5) The corps of BaltanjVs, axemen who formed a palace guard and who were specifically concerned with the protection of the Harem, which will be desccribed below. (6) The numerous specialized corps and crafts, including archers and ceremonial guards, pursuivants, messengers and runners, bandsmen and flag-bearers, cooks, bakers, tailors, cobblers, launderers, cleaners, and numerous other artizans needed in servicing the palace. The structure of the Inside Service followed the normal pattern. First there was the Hazinedar Agha, or Great Treasurer, in charge of the finances as well as of the baltaji, or halbediers, who also came under the Kislar Agha's control. He was a high ranking Pasha who often succeeded the Chief Black Eunuch. Next was the Bash-Mussahib who acted as liaison officer between Sultan and Kislar Agha. He was served by eight or ten Mussahibs, on duty in pairs throughout the day to carry orders from the Sultan to the Mistress of the Harem. Other officers included the Oda-Lala, or Master of the Chamber, the Bash-KapiOghlan, or Chief Gatekeeper of the Apartments, and his assistant. The Sultan Valide, or Queen Mother, when she existed also had her own staff. Only one part of the Palace, between the Imperial and Middle Gates were open to the public. Here were the Treasury and the Divanhane, where the imperial Diwan, or Council, met and the Sultan received ambassadors of foreign states. In government of this type and period ceremonial was an important function, and strict rules of etiquette were laid down. As in other oriental systems the Sultan had the assistance of high officials or advisers, of whom the Grand Vizir was his righthand man, a sort of prime minister. There were lesser Vizirs, known as Dome-Vizirs because they were privileged to attend meetings of the Imperial Diwan, which were held in the Dome

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Chamber of the palace. The Grand Vizir presided over the civil and military, but not the religious, branches of the administration, and in the time of Mohammed II (1451-81) even took over the presidency of the Diwan, the Sultan retiring to an adjoining chamber whence he could observe the proceedings from behind a grid. The Grand Vizir was supported by a civilian staff, mainly freeborn Muslims, forming a quasi-hereditary caste, who staffed the chancery and finance offices. At first the Grand Vizir was chosen from among the nobility but with the conquest of Byzantium the Sultans looked to the slave-household for their chief ministers, who were henceforth invariably of Christian origin. Under the Ottoman system, as had been the case with Byzantium, holdership of the highest offices could be a precarious not to say dangerous possession. Thus during a revolt of the Janissaries in a . d . 1655, to meet the com­ plaints of the soldiers the strangled bodies of most of the principal ministers were handed over as a peace offering.15 Under Suleyman the Magnificent higher standards of civilization had been achieved and the career of Grand Vizir Lufti Pasha, who held the office from a .d . 1539 to 1541, is of special interest. He had married the Sultan’s sister and had to suffer the consequences of holding such a position of intimacy. The brevity of his service in the highest position is thus explained, for he was summarily dismissed for speaking rudely to his wife. Mercifully he was fortunate to receive a pension and to be allowed to retire to his own estate, where he spent the remainder of his life in scholarship and the study of history. Finance was controlled by the Chief Defterdar, or Keeper of the Register, who, although under the Grand Vizir, had direct access to the Sultan, and was assisted by a hierarchy of lesser Defterdars. He was a member of the Diwan. It is under the Chief Defterdar that we find the nearest approach to a departmentalized executive organization with characteristics that are distinctly modern and that also emphasize the importance of finance in the Ottoman system. There were twenty-five of these departments, or bureaux, staffed by scribes of several grades under a khojagan, or departmental head, as well as several intermediate officials. The finance organization totalled more than 800 staff. The two leading bureaux were the Burjuk Rusnameh Kelemi, or chief book-keeping bureau, to which all accounts were brought from the bureaux, and the Bash Muhasebeh Kalemi, or the chief bureau of accounts, which (1) looked after the accounts of tithes and taxes, of all munitions of war and of the garrisons of Rumelia

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and Anatolia, and numerous other supplies, (2) received copies of all contracts, and (3) registered and countersigned all orders on the Treasury. The other twenty-three bureaux dealt with different branches of work, classified according to type of trans­ action, of persons dealt with, or of particular geographical areas, some covering receipts, other expenditure. There were supple­ mentary bureaux, attached to specific bureaux, such as the Bureau of Confiscations and Escheats of the Crown, the Bureau of the Tax on Animals, and the Bureau of the Christian Churches and Monasteries. An important office was the Oda of the Treasury which attended to the correspondence of the Defterdars, and attached to the Treasury was a special court empowered to adjust disputes between the department and private citizens.16 During the sixteenth century the Reis Efendi, or Chief of the Scribes, as senior state secretary, was also responsible for foreign relations. He had the assistance of the Terjuman-bashi, the Chief Dragoman of the Diwan. With other officers they attended the Diwan but were not full members. The armed forces were represented in the Diwan by the Aga of the Janissaries and the Kapundan Pasha, or Grand Admiral, providing they had attained the rank of Vizir; the two Bylerbey, or Governors General, of Rumelia and Anatolia also attended when in the capital. Thus the Diwan represented all branches of government — chancery, treasury, law, religion, armed forces — and was competent to decide all important questions of state. It was sup­ ported by a series of departments each with its own hierarchy of officials to implement the decisions reached. Here was the centre of power in the Ottoman system — after the Sultan of course — but with the growing complexity of the administration and the increasing responsibilities thrown upon the shoulders of the Grand Vizir, the centre gradually shifted over to the Chief Executive, and the new situation was formalized by Mohammed IV in 1654 when he presented his Grand Vizir with an official residence and office, known as Pasha Kapisi — or Pasha’s Gate — after the temporary quarters near the palace where he and his predecessors had for long transacted certain business left over from the Imperial Diwan.]1 THE

HAREM

In the midst of all this was the Harem which, with some reason, has been called a state within the state. It was closely associated with the Inside Services, which were controlled by the separate corps of the Black Eunuchs and the White Eunuchs, the former under the Kislar Aga, or Aga of the Girls, the latter the Kapi

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Aga, or Aga of the Gate (of Felicity), which was open only to members of the Sultan’s household. At first the white eunuchs had been predominant, but control of the Harem gradually went over to the black eunuchs, and of the other Inside Services to the pages recruited from among the foreign boys. The employment of eunuchs to guard the women of the house­ hold was well-established in history, in both the Middle and the Far East. Thus it was known in Mesopotamia and Assyria and is frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, but was not needed by the Ottoman Turks before their assumption of settled govern­ ment, acquirement of slaves and the emergence of the Seraglio, called for this special type of security system based upon the degrading practice of castration. Whatever its immediate need and success it constituted a system whose progressive degenera­ tion was inevitable. It was in 1591, under Murad III, that the Chief of the White Eunuchs lost his high position as Chief of the Girls, as well as the lucrative post of Nazir, or inspector of the vakfs — i.e. the religious endowments of the mosques, which included those of Mecca and Medina.18 Henceforth the Kislar Aga became para­ mount and his powers increased. Among other privileges he acted as confidential messenger between Sultan and Grand Vizir, and had the right to approach the Sultan at any time. We should not therefore be surprised at his reputation of being the most bribed official in the empire, and he could not help being extremely rich. His favour was also sought because, in consultation with the influential Sultan Valide, he made appointments to vacant posts in the Harem, as well as some outside. But his control over posts in the Outside Service varied under different sultans, some of whom restored certain of the powers to the Chief of the White Eunuchs. The position of the Harem in the government is not easy to determine. In Western eyes it figures as a not very admirable personal realm of the ruler, an area in which unorthodox hap­ penings took place and which acted as a drag upon the whole system by channelling off resources — human, financial and material — which could have been used to better purpose for the general benefit. Obviously much of this was true and surviving records indicate goings-on that were deplorable, to say the least, and frequently had repercussions far beyond the confines of the court. Much of course depended upon the whim and will of the individual Sultan, who could devote his interest to the Harem, leaving the wider affairs of state to officials who had little reason to act responsibly.

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A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

There was the well authenticated case of Roxelana, the Russian slave-girl, who by fascination and intrigue established herself as the favourite of Suleyman himself, even to becoming his legal wife, a custom that preceding Sultans had dropped. She allowed nothing to stand in the way of her desires, even plotting the removal of the well-favoured Grand Vizir Ibrahim, who after thirteen years service was strangled for no apparent reason. An even more extraordinary case was that of Safieh, a beautiful Venetian woman of the house of Baffo, who, while Sultan Murad III was engrossed in the sensualities of the Harem — an occupa­ tion in which, characteristically, he was encouraged by the Sultan Valide as a counter to Safieh’s charm — Safieh was in secret correspondence with both Catherine de Medici and the Venetian ambassador with the object of preventing the Turks from attack­ ing Venice. She is even alleged to have gone so far as intervening in the movement of the Ottoman army and fleets with this end in view. She also did her utmost to ensure the succession of her own son and for a time exercised personal control over the govern­ ment. It was her fate to be strangled in her bed. Apart from its influence upon, and interference with, the affairs of State the household administration in its several branches undoubtedly performed functions which elsewhere would have fallen to the central state administration, so that it can hardly be left out of account in assessing the contribution made by the Ruling Institution to the administration of the Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, in considering the intricate structure of control — or should one say ‘miscontrol’? — there are two other factors that need to be brought into account: namely the administration of the capital city outside the palace walls and the institution of the Imperial Slave Family. THE

CITY

OF

CONSTANTINOPLE

After its capture and sack Constantinople re-emerged as the Turkish capital, in which the Sultans sought to preserve, or absorb, many of its existing institutions. Special attention was given to the building of mosques, medreses (a type of theological university) and dervish cloisters; while among other permanent structures were the covered bazaars, the great khans, or caravan­ serais (places where visiting merchants could stay and offer their goods for sale) and hamams, or bath-houses, important in Islamic custom, and such centres as hospitals, asylums, hospices, alms­ houses, schools, colleges and libraries. An inventory of the city prepared in a . d . 1638 under the instructions of Murad IV lists

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these institutions, and one is surprised, for example, to learn that the total number of mosques of various types amounted to between fifteen and sixteen thousand. The list is multitudinous but the following items suggest the vast scope of ‘public’ administration at that time: nineteen dining establishments for the poor; nine hospitals; 1,993 primary schools; ninety-one sickhouses for strangers; 14,536 baths (public and private); two hundred establishments for distributing water; thirty-five imperial balances; four prisons of state; four prisons for criminals; several houses for inspectors of provisions, vegetables, mutton, the town, the kitchen, salted-meat, and slaughter-houses; barracks for the Janissaries and other armed corps; the royal lion house; the musket manufactory, and many others.19 Such an inventory is calculated to suggest a vast and compli­ cated bureaucracy, and while obviously there were plenty of officials one has to visualize a sort of social administration, rather than public administration in the modern sense. Much was left to the communities and the guilds. Some seven hundred of the latter are mentioned, distributed in fifty-seven sections, within which several grades and different activities are listed. It was with these closely organized guilds that the maintenance of good order largely rested. Without civic corporateness or individual representation — both ideas strange to Islamic legal theory — much depended upon the conduct and responsibility of the guilds, which acted on behalf of their members. Among the many guilds listed, the following, reproduced by Bernard Lewis from Evliya Chelebi’s Narrative of Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa deserves quotation in full, not least for the close connection it has with our own subject: ‘The Stamp-men. The Stamp-office is a great building close to the factory of the goldsmiths, with a garden and bath, wherein seventy men are employed. They stamp the Tughra [Imperial cypher] on all the silver worked at Constantinople, which however differs from the Tughra on the coins, in as much as the words “ever victorious” are on it. The chief of the stamp-office is at the same time the inspector of all the goldsmiths, because he puts the stamp on their work after having made the assay of the silver. The tax for the stamp is six aspers, three of which go to the treasury and three are divided between the head of the stamp-office and the three Sufis of the tower; if the three Sufis dare to stamp silver or lower alloy than is prescribed, their heads are cut off and righteous men appointed in their places. If the silver put in the fire of the assay is found to be impure, the chief of the stamp-office confiscates it for the Emperor, or breaks it with a hammer into small pieces and gives it back to the owner; he does the same with silver buttons, if found to be hollow,

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A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION or to be filled with some spurious alloy. All this is according to the kanun of Sultan Selim I, who was himself at the same time a gold­ smith, dye-cutter and stamper. The building devoted to the stampoffice is his foundation.’20

The supervision of the administration, in the four units into which the city was divided for administrative purposes, was in the hands of officers of the Sultan’s court, both civil and military, to whom specific authority was delegated and who were particularly concerned with the maintenance of public security; while various duties of adjudication and enforcement were left to the members of the Ulema class, experts in the provisions of the Islamic law. For the policing of the city there was a network of guardhouses on which a system of day and night patrols was based.21 Responsi­ bility for policing the ports and shores of the Golden Horn was in the hands of the Bostanji-bashi, Head of the Palace Gardeners, who had military equipment and training. The Admiral of the Fleet and other military leaders shared police duties for other areas, while the Aga of the Janissaries had general responsibility for public order and security. These officials also had extensive executive and enforcement powers. R E C R U I T M E N T OF T HE R U L I N G I N S T I T U T I O N . * THE S L A V E F A M I L Y

Hitherto we have regarded the Ottoman administration very much as if it were a system of offices and hierarchical relation­ ships of normal pattern, ignoring its basis, as its peak of achieve­ ment, in the Slave Family to which all members of the Ruling Institution, except the royal family, had come to belong. In short all its members were enslaved Christian youths carefully selected and brought up to be soldiers and officials of the realm. It was a truly amazing experiment which deserves separate and special consideration. To quote Lybyer: ‘The Ottoman system deliberately took slaves and made them ministers of state; it took boys from the sheep run and plow tail and made them courtiers and husbands of princesses; it took young men whose ancestors had borne the Christian name for centuries and made them rulers in the greatest of Muhammedan States, and soldiers and generals in invincible armies whose chief joy was to beat down the Cross and elevate the Crescent . . . . The members of this system were, in a general way, as long as they lived, at once slaves, proselytes, students, soldiers, nobles, courtiers and officers of government.’22

The idea was not new. Plato had put forward the concept of

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an ideally nurtured elite in his Republic, while in actual practice the Abbasid Caliphs had purchased Turkish slaves and trained them as soldiers and administrators, and had passed on the idea to the Samanidae princes (reg. a . d . 819-999) who had given it greater attention and prominence; while in Egypt, in a .d . 1250, the Mamluks, themselves ex-slaves, perpetuated a similar slave system, which they were permitted to continue after their own conquest by the Ottoman Turks in a . d . 1516-17.23 Recruitment of the Slave Household, from Christian boys between the ages of ten and twenty was effected by capture in war, by purchase, by gift, or as tribute. It is estimated that they formed a corps of some 80,000, calling for an annual recruitment of some seven to eight thousand. The most effective method was through the levying every four years, of tribute boys, who were selected by an expert body of officials whose aim was to choose only the most suitable — physically and mentally. Although the system was against all the normal ideas of affection and freedom, parents were not necessarily unco-operative, since selection meant that their sons might achieve high positions such as would not be abailable in the precarious state of their own world. The absence of all family ties and the sense that they owed everything to the Sultan ensured the boys’ allegiance. These recruits were subjected to a hard regime, but a career open to the talents was really available to them, a result that few systems manage to achieve. Incentives were provided and the highest prizes could be considerable. The slave boys were examined and divided into two classes according to physical or intellectual promise, nine out of ten falling to the former, which did not, however, preclude their promotion later, though naturally those chosen for the higher training started off with a considerable advantage. The Spahi-oghlans, or ‘flyers’ as they might be called today, were assigned to the households or provincial governors or high officials of the capital. The more promising of them went to the Sultan’s three palaces as Ig-oghlans, or pages, while thirty-nine of these attained the highest post of Khas Oda, or gentlemen of the Sultan’s bedchamber. They were taught horsemanship and the arts of war, and each learned a handicraft that would be of use to them. The pages were subject to a strict discipline, but there was a scale of rewards and they received payment, with annual increments. At age twenty-five they left school, a few to take over important posts but the majority to join the regular cavalry, as Spahis of the Porte. The rest of the recruits, the Ajemi-oghlans were in the main

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destined to become Yenicheri, or Janissaries, the famed and ruth­ less footsoldiers on whom the success of Ottoman arms so much depended. But there was no real division between the army and the rest of the government, and this was exemplified in the training of the Ajemi-oghlans who were first assigned to the service of country gentlemen to be employed in hard agricultural labour to strengthen their bodies. After two or three years, when they were expected to qualify in the Turkish language, they were brought to the capital to undertake public labour of an arduous type. During this stage they were distributed in bands, were expected to develop their bodily strength to the utmost and to learn a trade useful in war. They could also learn to read and write, if they wished, and they received modest payment. The next step was assignment to the service of the odalar, or messes of the Janissaries, and as soon as they were sufficiently skilled they became available to fill vacancies as Janissaries, usually at about the age of twenty-three. Some, however, who had become gardeners and servants of the palaces instead of becoming Janis­ saries later had an opportunity to take over supervisory posts in the transport, commissary and artillery services according to their achievement. The Turks had worked out a system of personnel administra­ tion whereby each individual was closely observed and tested and advanced according to suitability. Merit was strictly assessed. Of course favouritism did occur, as it occurs in all human systems, but in this case the responsible authorities were too much concerned in achieving the best results and were so placed as to be able to dissociate themselves completely from the social cross-currents inseparable from most personnel systems. The discovery of human merit in terms of the administrative needs of the Ruling Institution was raised to the status of a principle. For the training of the Slave Household highly efficient teaching establishments had to be built up, and among these the State School of Royal Pages achieved an outstanding reputation.24 The school was unique in being completely non-Turkish: the boys included Austrians, Hungarians, Russians, Greeks, Italians, Bosnians, Bohemians, possibly Germans and Swiss, as well as Georgians, Circassians, Armenians and Persians. The Palace School also had the far-reaching responsibility of looking after its pupils for life. It was at one time supplemented by a series of preparatory schools in the Palaces of Adrianople and Galata. The Palace School was organized in separate Odas, or Cham­ bers — four during the reign of Mohammed, rising to six by that of Ahmed I ( a . d . 1617). Each Oda had it own hall, dormitory

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and classroom, while there was also a conservatory of music, two mosques, a common room for the staff and chief pages, offices of administration, the Baths of Selim II, and the Library of Ahmed III. The usual course of study, which extended over fourteen years, included Turkish, Arabic and Persian in all their branches, and such sidelines as leather-working, making bows and arrows and quivers, falconry, dog-breeding, music, shampooing, manicuring, haircutting and turban-dressing according to choice. Rewards in terms of pay were given to encourage progress, and discipline was strict. Precautions were taken to prevent unnatural relationships, a matter in which, it has to be admitted, some Sultans set a very bad personal example. It is said that the boys themselves invented a sign language to express their passions. Discovery could mean their being beaten nearly to death and expelled from the Seraglio.25 The names and scope of the six Chambers, as classified by Penzer, give a good idea of the place of these establishments in the organization of the Ruling Institution which we have already described: T. Has Oda, Royal Chamber {has, or khas, meaning “proper”, “pure”, or “private”, and so “Royal”), the highest and most exclusive unit, consisting of 39 members only, the Sultan himself making the fortieth. From the time of Selim I they were made custodians of the Holy Relics in the Pavilion of the Holy Mantle. 2. Hazine Oda, Chamber of the Treasury. This was under the Inside Hazinedar-bashi, a white eunuch, and numbered 60 or 70. The duties were the care of the Sultan’s treasure, making all payments, and keeping accounts. 3. K iler Oda, Chamber of the Pantry. This was under the Kilerjibashi, who controlled the kitchen service of the Seraglio. The numbers of this hall seem to have varied, but the average was between 70 and 100. Their duties consisted in supervising the Sultan’s food, and they rode with him whenever he left the Palace. 4. Buyiik Oda, Great Chamber, originally called Yeni Oda, or New Chamber, the change of name being apparently due to the creation of the Ktiguk Oda, or Little Chamber, founded by Suleyman. Both these chambers were concerned only with the education of the pages, the honorary position sin the higher odas mentioned above being awarded according to merit. 5. Kiigiik Oda, Little Chamber; additional to the above. Both halls were under the Ikinji-Kapi-oghlan, or Eunuch of the Second Gate. The numbers in the Great Chamber were originally between 100 and 200, and rose to 400, at which time the Little Chamber housed some 250 ig-oghlans. 6. Seferli Oda, Chamber of Campaign. Founded by either Ahmed I or Murad IV, about a dozen years later. This chamber actually came IIF

70

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION immediately after No. 3, the Kiler Oda, in order of seniority, and maintained its strength (from 70 to 150) by drawing from the Great and Little Chambers. The pages of the Seferli Oda combined the duties of laundering the Sultan’s clothes for campaigns and running the military band . . . . These last three odas appear to have been under the general command of the Sarai Aghasi, who was the Assistant Director of the entire School.’26

At its peak this system was highly successful, but its artificiality inevitably led to instability. The Slave Household formed a privi­ leged class free from the burdens of taxation and subject to its own type of jurisdiction. It was envied by its Muslim masters, whom it had been designed to serve. There was a constant pressure from outside to share its opportunities. It depended upon an expanding environment, but with the waning of the power and forward drive of the Ottoman war machine, the flow of slaves of suitable quality began to slacken: sale of offices became preva­ lent and broke into the structure, while the favouritism that became general under Suleyman marked a falling away from the basic impartial design. When, therefore, towards the end of his reign, under the continuing pressures from without, the entry of free Muslims was permitted, the downfall of the system was just a matter of time. Impartiality and merit principles had ensured the success of a system which in many senses was humanly illogical from the outset. Here, as elsewhere, the smallest break away from principle seems inevitably to lead to the decline and fall of the system that depends upon it. Before leaving this highly dramatic topic some reference should be made to another administrative experiment which arose from the peculiar nature of the Ottoman method of government, namely the Phanariots of the seventeenth century. THE

PHANARIOTS

One of the consequences of the concentration of governmental power in the Ruling Institution of the Ottoman Empire was the practice of leaving to the subject population far-reaching autonomy in the conduct of affairs in which the Institution took little interest. The subject peoples were organized in autonomous ‘millets’ which were non-territorial and intermixed throughout the realm, coterminous in fact with the Ruling Institution and one another. Each was placed under its own communal authority and, apart from its normal and natural function of cultivating the soil, tended to become adept in some craft or profession. Similar principles of organization were applied also to the Muslim subjects and to the resident aliens.27

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It happened that, as part of this development, a group of Orthodox Christian subjects had regained a foothold in Constan­ tinople. Certain of these, who had settled in the extreme north­ western corner of the city near the Phanar (i.e. Lighthouse) of the Golden Horn, had become established as merchants with wide relations with the Western world and thus had acquired first-hand knowledge of Western customs and languages. These Phanariots, as they came to be called, also specialized in the service of the Greek Patriarchate, which had been allowed to reestablish itself in the capital. In this capacity they had become widely knowledge­ able in Ottoman public administration, with which the Patriarchate was in daily contact as the established channed of communication with the Orthodox Christians throughout the Empire. Following their military reverse before the walls of Vienna in a . d . 1683 the Turks had been compelled to give preference to diplomatic over military methods in their relations with the West, and for this office they were singularly ill-equipped. The only administrators available with the right sort of diplomatic experi­ ence were the Phanariots, upon whose assistance the Turks were impelled to call. So successful were the Greeks in supplying the right sort of professional skills that they were granted a monopoly of four key offices of State, namely the two newly created Dragomanships of the Porte and of the Fleet, and the two already existing Hospodarships of the autonomous principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. These four officials were much more influential than their titles might suggest and considerable powers came to be placed in the hands of these expert outside administrators. The Phanariots’ power within the Empire tended to increase right up until the latter part of the eighteenth century, when nationalist ideas began to gain general acceptance and the suitability of the millet system to be questioned. Unwisely the Phanariots allowed their Greek nationalism to overcome common sense and in a . d . 1821 to discard their previously highly successful policy of peaceful penetration for war, the result of which was to compel the Turks to discard the foreign administrative skills on which they had depended so long, and to destroy the Phanariot system once and for all.28 OTHER

ADMINISTRATIVE

DEVELOPMENTS

It has already been remarked that the Islamic communities were not great administrative innovators yet, on the other hand,

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the success with which the complex communities under Islamic rule were controlled suggests that, in the main, practical adminis­ tration was carried out with a high degree of competence and that there may be a good deal still to be learned from surviving records. The most interesting administrative institution was surely the recruitment system of the Ottoman Slave Household, to which ample consideration has been given. Reference should however be made to an important adminis­ trative incident in a contiguous area at a little later date; namely, compilation of the Tadhkirat Al-Muluk, or Manual of Safavid Administration,29 in Persia early in the eighteenth century. It is of particular interest, not merely as a contribution to the history of Persian public administration, which has an age-long tradition, but also in the peculiar circumstances of its composition. The Safavid Kingdom was consolidated at the beginning of the sixteenth century by the victories of Shah Isma’il over the many principalities that occupied the area after the fall of Tamer­ lane a century before ( a . d . 1405) and had continued to thrive for the next two centuries, maintaining itself against the Ottoman Turks, from whom it was radically divided on religious grounds: for though both empires were Islamic to the core, the Safavids supported Shi’ism, while the Ottomans belonged to the Sunni majority. The fall of the Safavids came dramatically with the defeat of Shah Sultan-Husayn at the hands of his Afghan vassal Mahmud, with the capture of Isfahan in October 1722. Famine, followed by ruthless and excessive bloodshed, meant that a great and ancient community with a long administrative tradition 30 had been virtually wiped out. The new rulers, strong in arm but weak in the skill necessary to administer a civilized realm, soon realized the magnitude of the task before them and, in the absence of a group of former officials who could have acted as their right-hands, commissioned the compilation of a manual of administration that might prove better than nothing. Its author, whose writing is focused on the past, is anonymous, although such is the nature of the detail of the work as to suggest that he was fully briefed on the practicalities of his subject. As V. Minorsky suggests, there is evidence in the text that he had been personally associated with the financial depart­ ment, and probably with the Mint. Certainly, he did his work well. Apart from the broad picture it conveys of the Safavid system, the Tadhkirat Al-Muluk is notable for its detailed lists of official posts and functions, and even of their salary entitlements. Clearly we are confronted by a typical theocratic system, in contrast to the normal Western-type state. It conforms to the normal Islamic

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pattern with its religious corps, provincial governors, military organization, royal court and harem with high officials, a distinct financial organization, several specialized departments, city administration, but without the all-pervading Ottoman Slave Family. The higher posts had been occupied by tribal leaders, but as time went on officials who had made good at court came increasingly to the highest amirships. Interesting as this manual undoubtedly is to both historian and public administrator, it would be repetitive to attempt even a summary here and more profitable for our purpose to pick out certain points and details that are of particular administrative interest. But we should certainly not do this without first emphasizing the wide interest and great value of Minorsky’s own interpretations. The administration of the Safavid Empire was divided between state provinces under the Divan-i-mamalik and the Khassa, or demesnes. Under the former the governors had a high degree of autonomy and every interest to ensure the welfare and prosperity of their provinces: the latter was really a branch of the Royal Household, whose accounts were kept by the Divan-i-khassa. The territories under the Khassa were controlled by royal stewards, or intendants, who owed their posts to the favour of courtiers and the Harem, to whom they had advanced large sums of money, which they expected to recoup by exploting their ‘parishes’. The dire result was impoverishment and even depopulation of the areas under the Khassa administration and the economic decline of the realm. Among the several causes of the eclipse of the Safavid Empire Minorsky cites the irresponsible character of the ‘shadow government’ represented by the Harem, Queen Mother and the eunuchs, that Trojan horse of the Muslim way of life. Exploitation of the inherent weaknesses of the Khassa system was clearly one of the ways in which this influence operated. The titles held by many of the important Court officials are listed and their several duties outlined. The pattern is very similar to what we have already encountered and here we mention only the Munshi al-mamlik,31 or State Scribe, whose duty it was to draw in red ink and liquid gold the Tughra (substitute for the Sultan’s signature) on all royal missives, documents authorizing appointments and other orders. He was an important official, belonging to both private and general assemblies. His approval was required for the salaries of the muharrir (scribes) and munshi (redacteurs) of the Secretariat, and he was responsible for their conduct and competence. The administration was regarded as a series of individual office-holders with their own staffs, and the

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idea of an organized departmental system had not far developed. Yet on the evidence of the Tadhkirat Al-Muluk the Royal Household was divided into as many as 33 departments or work­ shops,32 each under a Sahib-jam. The various officials are listed, together with their salaries. They deal severally with services and supplies for the Household, e.g. Treasury, Military, Food, Drinks and Medicines, Clothes, Furniture, Lighting, etc., Arts, Animals, Stables, etc. These buyutat, or workshops, are a special feature and included both simple domestic departments and also units organized and run like state-owned manufactories. Among those mentioned which are in this category are a weaving mill, tailoring departments, the Mint and the Arsenal. The workmen belonging to the buyutat occupied a privileged position.33 Each had a letterpatent of his appointment indicating his salary. Every three years the salary was raised and often a bonus, up to as much as a year’s pay, was added. They received food in addition, or an equivalent in cash. Salaries were paid annually, through representatives of the workmen, a procedure which meant that they had to surrender five to ten per cent of their entitlement. The workers were permanent, not subject to dismissal or loss through illness, and they received free treatment from the court physicians. They were provided with camels and horses when travelling with the Court, but could easily obtain permission to stay at home. They could work on their own account when their services were not required by the Sultan, thus forming a privileged class of public artizans, if the evidence of the Tadhkirat Al-Muluk is to be taken at its face value — and that would perhaps be going too far in light of the peculiar circumstances of its provenance. Special patronage was given to European artizans in Isfahan. Finally a quotation from Minorsky based upon a work by Chardin,34 to which he referred to fill in gaps of the text, illumi­ nates the nature of Safavid office practices: ‘Safavid bureaucracy was a very complicated machinery, the object of which was to establish a minute control over the official proceedings, and on the other hand to give satisfaction to the holders of some sinecures.’ A democratic element in the system of government was indi­ cated by the custom of freely accepting petitions either person­ ally or in writing. This could take place even from the midst of the crowd as the ruler went out for a ride. The next stage was for the application to be read to the Sultan by the Grand Vizir, or the Nazir (Grand Intendant). The Sultan’s decision was anno­ tated on the margin and the petition returned to the applicant or handed to the officer responsible for its execution. Appoint-

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ments to a governorship or post of manager in the khassa districts were subject to at least eight separate operations: (i) The order, together with the original petition, first went to the respective Mustaufi — a high official of Amir rank — who endorsed on the back that it should be registered. (ii) The daftar-khana-yi Lashkar-nivis, or Register of Officials, inscribed the document that ‘it has been entered in the register of the palace’ and the Lashkar-nivis applied his seal. (iii) The Darygha-yi daftar-khana checked the text in accord­ ance with the original petition and the draft of the order, added the endorsement ‘it is correct’ and added his seal. (iv) The Naziri daftar endorsed that he had seen it and added his seal. (v) The head of the Daftar-i taujih, or Expenditure Office, endorsed it formally and appended his seal. (vi) The head of the Daftar-i khulasa endorsed that it had been noted and added his seal. (vii) It went back to the Mustaufi al-mamalik to be endorsed ‘it has passed through registration’ and he added his seal slightly above the others. (viii) Finally the document was sealed by the Grand Vizir. This sequence is claimed by Chardin to be typical of Persian bureaucracy. Meticulous and roundabout procedures of this sort are of course common to many administrative systems, and tend to become more complicated as time goes on, new offices are created and new checks are introduced. Charles Dickens’s notorious attack in Miscellaneous Papers upon Victorian Patent administration provides a classical instance of the same sort of thing. But, as Chardin points out, the whole object was to ensure that everything was done according to rule and in proper sequence, so that the administrators could account to the Sultan at any time precisely for anything that had been done, an example of the problem of public accountability that remains with us today. SOME

EMINENT

STATESMAN-ADMINISTRATORS

In the highly fluid situation which characterized the history of the Middle East during this period the contribution of the public official can hardly be over-rated, although, as is usual with the type, his personal story has been poorly perpetuated. It is by their works that we must know them and, as we have suggested in the case of Byzantium in decline, so great were the short­ comings of the system at the time, that it is surely to the effective-

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ness of such poorly documented factors as the administration and its minions that the success of the long rear-guard action can be largely attributed. Let us therefore begin with one member of that group who has left his record, namely the eminent Byzantine litterateur Michael Psellus ( a . d . 1018-78) who lived at the very beginning of our period and, as in the case of the others to be mentioned, was not just one of the humble officials whose records have not survived, but a statesman-administrator of considerable stature. Michael Psellus: In the Chronographia35 in which Psellus gives his interpretation of the reigns of as many as fourteen con­ temporary Byzantine rulers — a large number to cross the stage in one working lifetime and a sufficient commentary in itself upon the instability of the times — Psellus writes as historian and not as administrator, and is at pains to assert his aim to be objec­ tive and not to let his friendship for the ruler cause him to fall into the normal practice of providing a mere eulogy.36 He is critical of most of the rulers with whom he is concerned, so that in the main he probably managed to achieve a reasonable level of objectivity in a somewhat delicate situation. To maintain, in all the circumstances, such acceptability with so many different, usually wayward and often vindictive persons says much for his tact. No doubt he was a natural trimmer. He attributes his own success to his eloquence, a skill for which his services had often been sought. In a society based primarily upon personal relation­ ships this was no doubt highly important. The Chronographia is not therefore an account of Psellus’s own administrative achievements, which have to be taken for granted, but it is invaluable as a source from which we may draw first-hand conclusions on the administrative activities of the times in which he wrote. Psellus came from a patrician family that had fallen upon hard times, such that at one stage his education had had to be inter­ rupted while he acted as judge’s clerk in Anatolia. It was of the nature of Byzantine society, and certainly much in its favour, that the importance of a sound education was generally recog­ nized. It was due to the devotion of his mother that he was given the best possible tutor, namely John Mauropous, the future Archbishop of Euchaita, among whose pupils were many destined to hold high positions in contemporary society. During his career Psellus was to hold such high posts as those of Secretary of State, Grand Chamberlain and First Minister under different rulers as well as to take a leading part in several vital diplomatic missions.37 Of his abiding humanity a reading of his magnum opus can leave

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no doubt: it most certainly throws a searching light upon many aspects of Byzantine administration. Only a few points can be touched upon here. Psellus tells how Basil II, whose long rule stretched from his twentieth to his seventy-second year ( a .d . 976 to 1025), imperi­ ously unwilling to share his designs with others yet recognizing his lack of experience in military affairs and civil administration, placed wide responsibilities upon the shoulders of his uncle, the eunuch Basil, a man of outstanding ability and unimpeachable loyalty who acted as Parakoimomenus, or Lord Chamberlain. Basil II, in the meantime, cast aside the profligacy of youth and became a man of great energy devoted to his regal duties. For some nine years he allowed his able Parakoimomenus to take full responsibility for the administration, and then, for no apparent reason except perhaps his own accumulating jealousy, he turned completely against him. Not only was the eunuch Basil dismissed but Basil II went out of his way to have rescinded every act and initiative taken without his actual certification by the former during his reign. As Psellus writes: ‘Suddenly cast down, in one brief moment, from his great position of power, this high and mighty man, whose heart had once been filled with pride, now became unable to govern his own body. His limbs were paralysed and he a living corpse. Not long afterwards he died, in very truth a pillar of remembrance, his life a fine subject for story-tellers, or shall I say a proof of the fickleness of all worldly fortune. Basil the Parakoimomenus had fulfilled his destiny.’38

While Basil II had subsequently divested himself of all personal pomp and applied himself with single-minded devotion to the affairs of state, his successor Constantine VIII (reg. 1025-28) took the affairs of state much more lightly. He allowed his officials to do the work while he gave his personal attention to embassies and other matters that could be directed from the throne. Yet, despite a lack of learning, he was a man of great eloquence and abundant horse-sense who was able to carry off his position with dignity. He took upon himself dictation of some of the imperial rescripts, and so quick were his mind and tongue that even the quickest writers were unable to keep up with him. Despite the number and quality of his secretaries, whose speed was above the average of the time, they were able to succeed only by interpreting his thoughts and expressions by special symbols invented for the purpose.39 Psellus does not use the word ‘shorthand’. About his personal relationship with Constantine IX (reg. 104255) Psellus is particularly revealing:

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A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION ‘Constantine was more active than his predecessors, although it must be admitted that he was not uniformly more fortunate. Indeed, in some ways he was greatly inferior. There is no reason why I should not be candid about this and tell the true story. Immediately after his accession I entered his service, served through his reign, was promoted to the Senate, entrusted with the most honourable duties. Thus there was nothing I did not know, no overt act, no secret diplomacy.’40

One final illustration: about the policy of Isaac Comnenus (reg. 1057-59) we are told of his succumbing to the common weakness of radical reformers who fail to get their priorities right. He tried to do too much too soon, expected too much from his human agents, and over-estimated the material resources avail­ able. ‘But lack of restraint, refusal to accept reason as his guide, these were the ruin of his noble character.’41 Furthermore, he must have been a source of annoyance to his administrators, for he wished to know every detail of what was going on, and, realizing that this was not practically possible, did his utmost to obtain all the information he could without disclosing his ignorance. Psellus’s brilliant cameo demonstrates how little human nature has changed in the meantime: ‘He used to send for an expert and, without questioning him on the subject about which he was ignorant, by clever manoeuvring round it, he would make the other reveal what he himself did not know, in such a way that the expert was apparently explaining something that was common knowledge to both of them alike. He often tried to catch me in that way too, but when one one occasion I ventured to tell him it was a secret he was taken aback and blushed as if he had been caught doing something wrong. Being a man of great pride, he had a horror of being rebuked, whether openly or subtly.’42

Psellus thrived for many years, but at last the inevitable hap­ pened, for this was a system in which the gratitude of princes conformed closely to the traditional. Without apparent reason, during the reign of Michael VII (reg. a .d . 1071-78) the ageing official was demoted, while the next emperor merely ignored him. His old friends and his beloved daughter dead, the lonely dis­ illusioned old man expired in a . d . 1078. Nizam al Mulk: Turning to the Islamic scholar-officials we are immediately confronted by the outstanding contribution of Nizam al Mulk who, born in Tus in a . d . 1019, was raised at the age of forty-two to the Vizirship by the Seljuk Sultan Alp Arslan who entrusted him with the reorganization of the military machine.43 Yet, despite his reputation as an organizer, his greatest contribution seems to have been made in the field of education.

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He was himself able as a writer and his works include a treatise on government designed to instruct a prince of the royal house, Malik Shah, who was destined to rule over the Seljuks of Iraq ( a . d . 1134-52). The Nizam was instrumental in obtaining preference for the Persian language in official correspondence, and his general ideas and policies were influential in moulding the outlook of the Seljuks of the period. He endeavoured to attract writers of distinction to the royal court and it is of interest that Omar Khayyam, whose poems, The Rubaiyat, in translation are famed in the West, figured among these notabilities. In fact it was not for his poetry, which can be regarded as little more than a means of relaxation, but for his outstanding mathematical gifts that Khayyam was attracted to the court and equipped by the Nizam with an up-to-date observatory. It was he who, in a . d . 1079 was instrumental in introducing what is still known as the Celalian, or Seljukid, calendar.44 A natural outcome of Nizam al Mulk’s policy was the encouragement of learning throughout the land. Nizam appealed personally to students to devote themselves to the study of law and theology, and he set out to encourage teachers by raising their salaries, and equipping libraries for their use. Existing educational establishments were reorganized and extended, and given the status of state schools. Fixed salary scales were intro­ duced for teachers and poor students were aided with state grants. He founded the Nizamiye University at Baghdad and attracted to it outstanding Islamic scholars from far afield. This distinctly modern touch in public administration, which was in fact characteristic of Islamic communities and may well astonish some who minds are still permeated with the idea that modern institu­ tions have arisen as the inevitable consequence of steady progress. I bn at-Tiqtaqa: Safi ad-din Mohammed, known as Ibn atTiqtaqa, or the Rapid Speaker, was born in a . d . 1281, the son of a tax-collector of Iraq. He was the author of the Arab treatise on government Al-Fakhri, which he wrote in a . d . 1302 when held up by snow at Mosul on his way to Tabriz, and dedicated to the local prince, Kakhr’ ad-din Isa, son of Ibrahim, in gratitude for his hospitality and the grant of library facilities. It is mentioned here for its numerous references to administration but there is space only for two brief extracts. The writer has no modest doubt upon the value of his book, for he writes in his introduction This book will be indispensible to the statesman and the administrator. If people do it justice, they will make their children learn it by heart, and ponder its ideas, after they themselves have pondered them.’45

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The following quotations are of particular interest in showing the sort of attitudes Ibn at-Tiqtaq recommends in the conduct of official business: T o each type of subjects corresponds a type of administration. The upper classes are administered by nobility of character and gently guiding aright. The middle classes are administered by a combina­ tion of interest and fear, while the common people are administered by fear and by being constrained to the straight path and forced to the obviously right. Understand that a ruler stands to his subjects as a doctor to an invalid. If the latter’s constitution is delicate, the former’s regimen is delicate too, and the former insinuates nasty medicines into pleasant tasting things, and, by every possible means, tricks the latter, to attain his objective of curing him. But if the latter’s constitution is strong, the former treats him with bitter “straight” and strong medicine.’46

Our Rapid Speaker was a worthy forerunner of Machiavelli: They say that administration is of five kinds: of the home, the village, the city, the army and the state. He who administers his home well, will administer his village well; he who administers his village well, will administer his city well; he who administers his city well, will administer his army well; and he who administers an army well, will administer a state well. But I do not think that this necessarily follows, for how many a member of the public who administers his home well lacks the power to administer important affairs, and how many a ruler administers his realm well, but his home badly? The iealm is guarded by the sword and administered by the pen. People disagree about the sword and the pen, as to which of the two is superior, and takes precedence. Some think that the pen has it over the sword, and urge, in support of their view, that the sword guards the pen, and so stands to it as a guardian and servant. Others think the sword superior, and urge that the pen serves the sword because it provides the soldiers with their pay, and so is a servant to it. Others say they are equal and that neither of them can function without the other. They say a realm is fertilised by generosity, populated by justice, secured by commonsense, pro­ tected by courage, and administered by leadership.’47

Ibn Khaldun: Ibn Khaldun, whose astonishing Muqaddimah has already been mentioned, was not merely another outstanding statesman-official but also an historian of world significance. His Muqaddimah, actually the mere introduction to his World History, provides inter alia a rich store of contemporary admini­ strative information. Ibn Khaldun was born in Tunis in May, 1332. After a normal education he entered in his twentieth year the service of the unstable Hafsid dynasty as Sahib al-alamah. His post, as Master

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of the Signature, was an important court position which involved writing the words ‘Praised be God’ and ‘Thanks are due to God’ in large letters between the opening formula and the text of official documents, but does not seem to have included any executive functions. Nevertheless the position brought him in close contact with important government business and enabled him to act in an advisory capacity.48 It was obviously an auspicious start, but Ibn Khaldun felt unsettled by the political situation in Tunis and decided within a few months to make his way westwards. On the way he joined a group of scholars in Fez and stayed to complete his education there. It is well to remember that both in theory and in practice Islamic scholarship was a protracted life process, a fact that was certainly to be borne out in Ibn Khaldun’s case.49 As a member of Abu Inan’s circle of scholars in Fez, Ibn Khaldun had the duty of attending public prayers with the ruler. This brought him the offer of a post as the ruler’s secretary, which he accepted with reluctance since he felt that a mere clerical position, however important, was below the family’s dignity. His job now was to record Abu Inan’s decisions on petitions and other documents. Within a short while he came under suspicion on account of his links with Tunis and was imprisoned for twentyone months, until the ruler’s death. It seems that his enforced inactivity was turned to account by his continuing his scholarly pursuits.50 Under the succeeding ruler, Abu Salim, Ibn Khaldun was made Secretary of State, and later he was entrusted with the mazalim, namely jurisdiction over complaints and crimes not covered by Muslim religious law, a modest step in the judicial career.51 However, this did not last long, for in a revolt a couple of years after his accession Abu Salim was killed in a palace revolution organized by civilian and military officials, and again Ibn Khaldun decided to move away from a place where the situation was so unsettled. He travelled to Granada via Ceuta in the winter of a . d . 1362 and was welcomed by Muhammad V, the ruler in Granada. Two years later we find him in charge of a mission to Pedro the Cruel, King of Castile, who received him with great honour and even offered to take him into his service and to restore his family’s former property in Spain. This Ibn Khaldun was bound to refuse.52 Political instability continued to mould Ibn Khaldun’s career and we next find him in Bougie in a . d . 1365 in the service of Abu ’Abdallah, who died during the following year. For him he undertook the dangerous task of collecting taxes from the Berber tribes in the mountains of Bougie. These fluctuations of fortune

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continued but his abilities as a public official were so widely in demand that his own inherent desire to evade the snares and pains of high office in order to devote his time to scholarship were, except for brief periods, frustrated. Eventually Ibn Khaldun found his way to Tlemcen, where his family joined him in a . d . 1375 and he was glad to escape the vicissitudes of public life by undertaking a political mission to the Dawawidah Arabs, which enabled him to settle down for sufficient time to write his Muqaddimah at a period when his mind was literally teeming with ideas.53 In a . d . 1382 the opportunity came to sail eastwards and to reach Alexandria towards the end of the year, and, except for occasional journeys, Ibn Khaldun was to remain in Egypt for the remainder of his days. With the esteem of al-Malik az-Zahir Barquq, he was able to become established at court and to occupy a succession of high positions as professor, college president and judge. This phase was to continue for twenty years until his death in a . d . 1406 and at last he was able to enjoy the sort of life to which he had so long aspired. His teaching was officially con­ cerned with the religious sciences. He concentrated mainly on jurisprudence and traditions, although he did lecture on the Muqaddimah, and continued to work on the revision of his History. For a brief period he occupied the post of Chief Maliki Judge of Egypt, but, somewhat out of character, attempted to introduce radical reforms, which went down very badly with his colleagues. It seems that his main object was to eliminate the corruption and bribery rampant among notaries and clerks, and to get rid of incompetent muftis and ignorant legal advisers. He held this judgeship for less than a year, his will to fight having already been broken by the tragic loss of his family, shipwrecked near the harbour of Alexandria on their way to join him from Tunis in a . d . 1384.54 An interesting incident when the great historian met a great history-maker is worth mention. In a . d . 1400 Ibn Khaldun accom­ panied an Egyptian expedition to Damascus which was being besieged by the Tatar hordes under Tamerlane. The Egyptian ruler Faraj, having to return to Egypt because of threatened revolt, left behind a mission which included Ibn Khaldun. The civil authorities, as opposed to the military, decided to surrender the city. Tamerlane, having heard of his presence from the judges sent to negotiate the surrender, requested his attendance. Ibn Khaldun’s main concern for the moment was to save his colleagues and himself from the inevitable sack of the city, but Tamerlane himself seems to have had in mind the great advantage

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it would be for his future plans of conquest to have such a man as Ibn Khaldun at his court. As it was, he made use of the historian immediately by demanding from him a detailed account of the geography of the West, a task that clearly went against the latter’s conscience, and the possible effect of which he afterwards tried to neutralize by supplying the ruler at Fez with information about Tamerlane and the Tatars. He was able to obtain the conqueror’s permission to return to Egypt in March 1401, where he held a succession of judgeships up to his sudden death five years later. Certainly Ibn Khaldun was a very special case, but his career exemplifies the ubiquity of the higher officials of the period. He was par excellence the statesman-administrator-scholar who, at so many points in history, has done so much honour to the administrative profession.

REFERENCES 1 For further information see Tamara Talbot Rice, The Seljuks in Asia Minor, (Thames & Hudson, 1961). 2 J. C. L. Sismondi, History of the Italian Republics in the Middle Ages , (one volume edition, edited by William Boulting, Routledge, 1906). 3 Sismondi, op. cit., p. 532. 4 Sismondi, op. cit., pp. 627-8. 5 Sismondi, op. cit., p. 537. 6 Sismondi, op. cit., p. 538. 7 Sismondi, op. cit., p. 546. 8 Rice, op. cit., pp. 85-6. 9 Rice, op. cit., p. 90. 10 A. H. Lybyer, Government of the Ottoman Empire in the time of Suleiman the Magnificent, (Harvard, 1913). 11 See particularly Bernard Lewis, Istanbul and the Civilization of the Ottoman Empire, (Univ. of Oklohama, 1963). 12 Lybyer, op. cit., p. 38. 13 Lewis, op. cit., pp. 47-8. 14

15 16 17 18 19 20

Q u o ted by L ew is,

op. cit., pp. 66 et seq.

N. M. Penzer, The Harem, (Harrup, 1936), p. 73. Lybyer, op. cit., pp. 168-72. Lewis, op. cit., pp. 94-5. Penzer, op. cit., p. 129. Lewis, op. cit., pp. 114-5. Lewis, op. cit., p. 123, quoting Chelebi’s Narrative of Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa, translated by J. von Hummer, (London, 1834). 21 Lewis, op. cit., p. 129. 22 Lybyer, op. cit., pp. 45-6. 23 A. J. Toynbee, A Study of History, especially Vol. Ill, (1934), pp. 28-31. There are a number of references to the Ottoman Slave Family in the several volumes of Toynbee’s magnum opus. It was as a result of reading the first volumes of the Study and of Lybyer’s work, referred

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24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION to therein, that the present author contributed an early paper on the subject of ‘Administration of the Ottoman Empire under Suleiman* in Public Administration, Vol. XV, (London, 1937). Penzer, op. cit., p. 238. Penzer, op. cit., p. 239. Penzer, op. cit., pp. 239-40. Toynbee, op. cit., Vol. VIII, (1954), pp. 184-5. Toynbee, op. cit., Vol. II, (1934), pp. 222-28. V. Minorsky, translation of Tadhkirat AUMuluk; A manual of Safavid Administration (circa 1725), with Persian Text in facsimile, (Luzak, 1943). Minorsky, op. cit., p. 10. Minorsky, op. cit., p. 61. Minorsky, op. cit., pp. 134-5. Minorsky, op. cit., p. 21. Minorsky, op. cit., pp. 197-8, quoting Voyages du Chevalier Chardin, (Langles, Paris, 1811). E. R. A. Sewter translates as Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, (Penguin, 1966), to which references are made. Sewter, op. cit., pp. 240-1, Psellus states his own views. Sewter, op. cit., p. 14. Sewter, op. cit., p. 39. Sewter, op. cit., p. 56. Sewter, op. cit., p. 162. Sewter, op. cit., p. 314. Sewter, op. cit., pp. 314-15. Rice, op. cit., p. 81. Rice, op. cit., pp. 120-2. C. E. J. Whitting, translation of Al-Fakhri, (Luzac, 1947), p. 11. Whitting, op. cit., p. 37. Whitting, op. cit., pp. 46-7. Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, An Introduction to History. (Trans­ lation by Franz Rosenthal in three volumes, Bollington Foundation, N.Y., 1958), Vol. I, p. xli. Ibn Khaldun, op. cit., Vol. I, p. xlii. Ibn Khaldun, op. cit., Vol. I, p. xlvii. Ibn Khaldun, op. cit., Vol. I, p. xlviii. Ibn Khaldun, op. cit., Vol. I, p. xlix. Ibn Khaldun, op. cit., Vol. I, p. liii. Ibn Khaldun, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. lix-lxi.

CHAPTER 3

SIXTEENTH CENTURY EUROPE: a . d . 1485 to 1603 Administratively at least the sixteenth century marks a water­ shed between the feudal and the modern world. In all European countries the struggle within the Christian Church had a shatter­ ing impact upon society, imposing, especially in the Protestant countries, new responsibilities upon government. Overseas expansion, deriving a new dimension from Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America in 1492, added new problems of imperial administration, initially to Spain who were in the forefront of this development, with Cortes’s invasion of the Aztec kingdoms of Mexico in 1519. Government administration was still basically personal admini­ stration, the typical relationship of king and minister, sultan and vizir, continuing on its traditional basis, but with increasing emphasis on the chief minister’s role. Ruler and minister had to grapple with government problems of increasing complexity, calling for continuous attention such as could only be effectively provided through permanent administrative institutions, manned by persons with specialized skills. Outwardly the old relationship continued, but the rule of the court favourite had to give way to the manipulations of the administrative expert. Kings discovered that it was essentially to their advantage to choose the right man for the job. They proved their competence to rule no more effectively than when they made this choice with proper foresight. The Tudor monarchy in England provides an instructive example of this development with the appointment of such out­ standing chief ministers as Thomas Cromwell by Henry VIII and William Cecil, Lord Burghley, by Elizabeth I. In the wider sphere of government the ruler found it con­ venient to give more scope to the long established privy, or advisory, council, and the period was characterized by an exten­ sion of conciliar government — for example, in England and France, and especially in Spain. Administrative execution through courts of justice continued to predominate, since the govern­ mental division of labour had not yet developed so far as to differentiate administration per se as a distinct activity. IIG

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The proportion in which the ruler shared his power with his chief minister, or impinged upon the latter’s administrative function, varied from zero to near-infinity. Both Henry and Elizabeth in England were capable of keeping close control over all state activities performed on their behalf, though the former was erratically inclined to leave practically everything to his minister in order to be able to follow his own inclinations. Eliza­ beth’s control was just as vigorous but much more reliable. At the other extreme Philip II of Spain, whose realm transcended those of all his rivals and whose administrative responsibilities were therefore incomparably greater, attempted the impossible of not only supplying the overall leadership that was vital but also of supervising, and even participating in, the very detail of administration, a task well beyond any one man’s competence, and certainly well beyond Philip’s somewhat mediocre talents. Administrative rationalization was being imposed upon the chief minister by the facts of the situation. Thus Thomas Crom­ well holds a special place in administrative history in recognizing, well ahead of his time, the need for the creation of a system of offices which would continue to work effectively, irrespective of the specific holdership of the directing posts. To him public administration was already appearing as something more than a web of personal relationships between ruler and minister, rather a separate governmental activity calling for impartial expert operation. The idea was there: its development would take some time yet. The subordinate official continued to be the servant of the king’s chief servant, but social and educational changes had reduced the monopoly of clerical work hitherto exercised by the churchman even before the Reformation had reduced his acceptability for this particular activity. The development of a salaried officialdom was still impeded by the continuance of medieval fee-taking practices while, under new commercial influences, offices were coming to acquire a regular market value. There was no outstanding administrative invention during the period, although the extension of printing, which had come to Europe during the preceding century, if it was not a specifically administrative technique, was to have important long-term repercussions upon the scope of administration. Printed materials would later become important, but in the meantime, while the manuscript ‘book’ which for so long had been a primary concern of monasteries and universities in Europe would gradually be displaced by printing, the manuscript record would continue right into the twentieth century as the basic administrative medium. Apart from the preliminary section on Machiavelli, as a link

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with the Italian city state era, and another section on the feudalistic administration of the Scottish Frontier, this chapter will concentrate upon outstanding administrative contributions by statesmen in England and Spain. It was an age of men rather than organizations, albeit an age in which the shape of organiza­ tions to come was being impressively determined. MACHIAVELLI, A D M I N I S T R A T O R AND P H I L O S O P H E R

It may seem strange to introduce any section of this work with a name that has added a derogatory adjective to the language, but there is good reason, as we shall see. The Republic of Florence had risen to its height under Lorenzo the Magnificent, whose death in 1494 marked the downfall of the Medici, the city’s ruling family since the rise of Cosimo de Medici in 1434. The clever and ruthless manipulation, to the advantage of the para­ mount family and its satellites, of the various electoral processes whereby the several organs of the city’s government were consti­ tuted, marks an interesting stage in the development and decline of the city state system that properly belongs to our preceding phase.1 Here we are particularly concerned with one of Florence’s most noted sons, Niccolo Machiavelli, who was a public official before he became an eminent if much criticized political philoso­ pher. Born in 1469, his youth coincided with the high tide of Medicean power, so that his formative years were constantly influenced by the spectacle of Lorenzo’s astute if ruthless states­ manship. Obviously it was something more than coincidence that determined his entry into public office following Lorenzo’s fall in 1494 and hardly surprising that his public service to the Free Republic should end with the brief return of the Medicis in 1512. By the long arm of coincidence Machiavelli died in 1527, the year the Medicis were again expelled, and so was not destined to make a further contribution in practical administration. His early service for four years in one of the public offices, commended him sufficiently to earn the important appointment of Second Chancellor, which enabled him to take a leading part in the affairs of Florence. It was the job of the Chancery officials not to make policy decisions, but to see that they were carried out. Under the First Chancellor there were six secretaries, including the Second Chancellor, each of whom was assigned to different branches of government. Saving radical changes of regime, appointments were on a long-term basis, though the actual duties could be varied. This degree of permanency of

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officials was essential to offset the excessive rotation in office of the Councillors and Executives, which is generally regarded as one of the great weaknesses of Florentine government. Machiavelli was first allocated to the Died di Balia (Ten of War), which was concerned with diplomacy, and to some extent overlapped the Signoria, the important organ that exercised high legislative, executive and judicial powers. In 1507 he was trans­ ferred to the Nove di Milizia (Nine of the Militia) responsible for organizing the peasant army. Apart from running the office, which was the very basis of the Secretaries’ work, these posts involved executive participation, in the first case, in diplomatic missions to other cities and lands, and, in the second, travelling within Florentine dominions, recruiting and organizing units of the defence force. Although policy-making was the task of the several executives, it is clear that the work that Machiavelli undertook did not completely exclude him from this activity. He seems to have been an assidious official although there is little to suggest that he stood out above his fellows.2 It was after his loss of office that Machiavelli at last found time for, and no doubt solace in, literary activities that led to the production, among other works of The Prince (1513) and History of Florence (1515), on which his fame firmly rests. It is interesting to remember that the History was undertaken on the advice of Cardinal di Medici, who became Pope Clement VII, disproving that Machiavelli was completely persona non grata to the ruling house. The Prince is particularly interesting as the outcome of Machiavelli’s experience as public official, though it embodies his advice to governors rather than to their servants. His examination of political systems is specially relevant only to his own times, but his advice on the sort of statecraft needed to ensure stable government is of much wider applicability. His postulation of two standards — namely his practical deduction that the morality applicable to the state does not necessarily coincide with the morality required of the individual — has been widely criticized as opportunist, and the label ‘machiavellian’ applied to action that is ruthlessly conceived, irrespective of ordinary accepted morals, to further the aims of the state. But Machiavelli was only reading from experience and telling the prince that, accord­ ing to his own observations and his study of history, this was the best way to achieve the ruler’s aims. Machiavelli did not invent machiavellianism: he merely exposed what he saw happening in politics from the beginning of the human adventure. Through his own experience he was holding a mirror to statecraft as it

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was, and had been, and would continue to be in the future. It is sad perhaps, but too evident to be denied, that governments of all types have adopted, and do adopt, different standards for the conduct of the public business from those that their citizens as individuals are expected to, and normally do, adopt. Few observers, least of all in this twentieth century, would agree that there was much evidence that governments which adopt a strictly non-machiavellian approach long survive, except perhaps by chance, as governing powers. In the governing of peoples there is little evidence that the meek and pusillanimous, however fit, are likely to inherit the earth. But such deviation from normal morality is not to apply to the activities of officials, who are admonished to be loyal and assiduous in their masters’ business, as Machiavelli had undoubtedly proved himself. We may suitably conclude this section by quoting the chapter of The Prince entitled ‘Concerning the Secretaries of Princes’, as touching upon the very heart of our subject: T he choice of servants is of no little importance to a prince, and they are good or not according to the discrimination of the prince. And the first opinion which one forms of a prince, and of his under­ standing, is by observing the men he has around him; and when they are capable and faithful he may always be considered wise, because he has known how to recognize the capable and to keep them faithful. But when they are otherwise one cannot form a good opinion of him, for the prime error which he made was in choosing them. There were none who knew Messer Antonio da Venafro as the servant of Pandolfo Petrucci, Prince of Siena, who would not con­ sider Pandolfo to be a very clever man in having Venafro as his servant. Because there are three classes of intellects; one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless. Therefore, it follows necessarily that, if Pandolfo was not in the first rank, he was in the second, for when­ ever one has judgment to know good or bad when it is said and done, although he himself may not have the initiative, yet he can recognize the good and the bad in his servant, and the one he can praise and the other correct; thus the servant cannot hope to deceive him, and is kept honest. But to enable a prince to form an opinion of his servant there is one test which never fails; when you see the servant thinking more of his own interests than of yours, and seeking inwardly his own profit in everything, such a man will never make a good servant, nor will you ever be able to trust him; because he who has the state of another in his hands ought never to think of himself, but always

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This is a high standard for relationships between government and servant, but not so far out of focus if we substitute ‘common­ wealth’ for ‘prince’. And even if Machiavelli’s political thesis points to an age that was passing, his central doctrine was destined to find plenty of followers in the centuries that lay ahead. TUDOR

ADMINISTRATIVE

REVOLUTION

When Henry VII (reg. a . d . 1485-1509), the first of the Tudors, came to the throne of England the times were ripe for admini­ strative change. The royal power had been consolidated, and in every direction the medieval prerogatives of the Crown deter­ mined the shape of government. If the demands upon such government were in course of radical modification in face of the social and economic changes that were taking place in the wider world it was all to the good that the new rulers looked to the future rather than the past and had a genius for selecting lieutenants who were prepared to adopt an empirical approach to the business of Crown and State, the latter term inclining to include the shadowy nation that was beginning to emerge. J. D. Mackie states in an authoritative text: 4 ‘That there was a transition to the modern world is not to be disputed, but the transition was gradual, especially at first, and only with the great movement known as the Reformation did it become spectacular.*

We are concerned in this chapter mainly with the reigns of Henry VIII (reg. 1509-47) and Elizabeth I (reg. 1558-1603) and it seems logical and convenient to look at the administrative aspects under three headings: (1) Conciliar Government, (2) Financial Administration, and (3) Institutionalization. If, in accordance with our selective approach, these two important reigns are given precedence, it would nevertheless be wrong to assume that the politically retrogressive intervening

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reign of Mary I (reg. 1553-58) was without its administrative importance. (1) Conciliar Government: The Anglo-Saxon Curia Regis, con­ tinuing into the modern age as the King’s great council of important persons of the realm, was still called together from time to time to advise the sovereign on the conduct of affairs, but with the growth of specialized organs of government its scope had become restricted. Nevertheless, at the same time there existed in a somewhat indefinite way a smaller edition of the council, consisting of a group of trusted advisers, although there was no real movement towards a system of conciliar government on the scale, for example of contemporary France. The king had his councillors, but no formal cabinet to share his burdens. The Royal Household was becoming stretched beyond its natural compass and tending to specialize in the business of the court. A definite need for something more than an advisory body was growing with the extending scope of the central executive. Elton in The Tudor Revolution in Government5 — an out­ standing contribution to the subject — quotes from a con­ temporary record to demonstrate the varied and nondescript nature of the Council, which had demonstrated the normal tendency of such bodies to grow too large even to provide effec­ tive advice, when he writes: ‘A document of 1520-1 gives a striking list of “the kynges Counsayle” which illustrates the wide sweep of the whole council. There are listed: Wolsey, Ruthal (as privy seal), four bishops, two dukes (Norfolk and Buckingham), the marquess of Dorset, seven earls, fifteen barons, the dean of the chapel, the dean of St. Paul’s, the archdeacon of Richmond, the dean of Salisbury, two clerical doctors and four abbots, and “All knyghtes and other of the kynges counsayle”; if the list is to be believed implicitly, the three secretaries (principal, French and Latin), the clerks of the privy seal and signet, the heralds, the officers of the household, and the minstrels could also be described as of the council. Indeed, the principal secretaries and the head officers of the household were undoubtedly members of the whole council, and usually of the inner ring, too. Such a coun­ cil could not govern; it could hardly ever meet in anything like com­ pleteness even for the transaction of ceremonial business or the endorsement of Wolsey’s judicial decisions.’6

Already, he suggests, an inner ring of ministers had begun to meet, as a sort of privy council, to deal with matters of administration. During the ascendancy of Cardinal Wolsey (1475-1530) — the last of the great English clerical statesmen, who became a member of Henry VIII’s Council in 1511 — a smaller ring

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continued to operate in a minor key as a group of individual advisers and not as an organized body with a corporate function. Yet this was only a temporary setback in its progress towards a more definite existence, for already under Henry YII it had a clerk associated with the Privy Seal Office and later an occasional president, who would only be needed when the King was absent. It was after the fall of Wolsey and the remarkable phase of administrative construction under Thomas Cromwell that the Privy Council materialized as such, a group of rather less than twenty members, most of them leading officers of state and house­ hold, attendant upon the King and concerning itself not only with advising on policy but also with matters of execution and administration. A more rationalized system of administration had been called for by the growing demands upon the central executive. The Council dealt with the several sectors of government — foreign affairs, home affairs, defence, royal dependencies overseas, the household, petitions — administrative projects — and had also to consider individual cases. Such was the volume of work that it was compelled to be almost in daily session. The inner ring of notabilities and high officers of state in 1536-7 had a membership of nineteen, which included 7 Thomas Cromwell (Lord Privy Seal, etc.), Thomas Cranmer (Archbishop of Canterbury), Sir Thomas Audeley (Lord Chancellor), the Duke of Norfolk (Lord Treasurer), the Duke of Suffolk (President of the Council), the Earl of Oxford (Lord Great Chamberlain), William Sandes (Lord Chamberlain of the Household), Sir William Fitzwilliam (Lord Admiral, Treasurer of the Household, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster), Sir William Paulet (Controller of the Household and the Master of the Wards), Sir William Kingston (ViceChamberlain of the Household and Captain of the Guard), several other high ecclesiastics and gentlemen, including also the Earl of Shrewsbury (Lord Steward of the Household), who was very old and rarely able to attend, and Stephen Gardiner (Bishop of Winchester) absent as resident ambassador in France. Apart from the notabilities included in this list the offices themselves are of particular significance as an indication of the scope of the royal executive at the time. The new departure was institutionalized on 10th August 1540 when nineteen men described as ‘his Highnes Pryvey Counsaill, whose names hereafter ensue’, came together to appoint a clerk and provide for the keeping of a register.8 One vital outcome of this development was to divest the Council of most of its judicial functions, which adhered to the

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once closely associated Court of Star Chamber, and to permit the Privy Council henceforth to concentrate upon its executive and administrative functions. Thomas Cromwell was not the inventor of a system that had been gradually developing for some time but his was the hand that put on the finishing touches at a vital juncture. In all spheres of public activity he was the inno­ vator who paved the way to the effective management of the State business in the future. (2) Financial Administration: By the time of the Tudors the old system of household finance had become quite inadequate to meet the needs of the Crown in an expanding society. It was in the hands of the Exchequer, where there had been no substantial reforms since 1325. Its procedures were too long-winded for the new tempo of government and, for a time it was over-shadowed by the revival of Chamber finance by Henry VII, until its rejuvenation by the reforms of 1554. In this sphere too the con­ tribution of Thomas Cromwell was vital. Important steps had been taken, however, in 1515, even before the rise to the Lord Chancellorship of Cardinal Wolsey. In Feb­ ruary 1511 two General Surveyors of Crown Lands (Sir Robert Southwell and Sir Bartholomew Westly) had been appointed by letters patent, thus freeing the greater part of the royal revenues from Exchequer control and redefining the manner in which these revenues were to be administered.9 It is true that they were to be dependent upon the activitation of the Privy Seal and upon the Exchequer for keeping their records and dealing with their legal business, but in their own right they formed an active department of audit, with some of the characteristics of a court, while still functioning as a sector of household govern­ ment. It was a step in the right direction. No one minister was yet responsible for finance, but Cromwell, by a method adopted by him in other spheres, managed to accumulate in his own hands — as was possible at the time — a number of important posts (i.e. Jewel House, Hanaper and Chancellorship of the Exchequer)10 which enabled him to approach to the status of minister of finance. He acted both as collector of revenue and paymaster. In the meantime the confiscation of the monasteries, following the assumption by Henry VIII, on 15th January, 1535, of the headship of the Church in England, gave rise to a development, interesting in itself and about which there will be more to say later, namely, the establishment of the Court of Wards in 1540, as a department of state to deal with the increase in royal ward­ ship attaching to the much extended Crown estates. The post of

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Mastership of the Wards, with an office of its own, had already been created at the beginning of the century, but now there was an obvious need for a full-scale organization. To some extent this development was a resuscitation of feudalism, whereby a wardship fulfilled the seigneur’s right to service during the minority of the heir of a deceased tenant, and incidentally gave the owner of the wardship not only control of the income from the property but also the power to ensure in his own interest suitable marriage for the ward. Wardships thus created had a definite market value and such wardships were freely saleable. The acquirement of monastic lands added greatly to the Crown’s incomes and the new department thus added a further branch to the state’s financial machinery. Cromwell’s reforms had had the effect of transferring control of the royal finances from the household to separate offices of state and, by holding these several offices himself, he was able to ensure co-ordination of the finan­ cial machinery. He may well have had ideas of further admini­ strative consolidation in mind, but his fall in 1540 came too suddenly for such to materialize. In 1542 there existed six main revenue collecting departments, dealing with different sectors of the king’s income. These were (i) the Exchequer (ancient revenue), (ii) the Duchy of Lancaster (its own lands), (iii) the Court of the General Surveyors (the lands acquired by Henry VII and Wolsey), (iv) the Court of Augmenta­ tions (lands acquired since 1535), (v) the Court of First-Fruits and Tenths (Ecclesiastical revenue) and (vi) the Court of Wards and Liveries (feudal revenue), (iii) and (iv) were to be amalga­ mated five years later, to deal with all Crown lands outside the Duchy of Lancaster. During the remainder of the reign of Henry VIII and through the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I, the movement to reconstitute the financial machinery continued, culminating in the general reform of 1554. This was a co-opera­ tive effort in which the Privy Council and the special commissions of inquiry of 1546 and 1552 took part, and it is interesting to note that the individuals behind the work were William Paulet, Marquess of Winchester, who was Lord Treasurer from 1550 to 1572, assisted by Sir Walter Mildmay, a prominent official who held public office for forty years from about 1545.11 In the new system the traditional structure was recast in the light of the institutional ideas of Cromwell. The Lower Exchequer, after a period of decline, came back into prominence as a true central treasury, under the presidency of the Lord Treasurer, successor to the ancient Treasurer, who at last pro­ vided a real minister of finance. At the same time the Chancellor

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of the Exchequer became more important, at the expense of the Barons of the Exchequer, who lost significance as administrators and turned to ordinary judicial work. The Lord Treasurer’s personal office and staff grew into a Treasury department which was on the way to becoming the leading state department in which fiscal policy would be determined. Elton’s masterly sum­ ming up deserves quotation: ‘The reforms represented a remarkably efficient compromise between the highly speeded up administration of Thomas Cromwell and the safety of the old ways. They provided the government of Elizabeth with a workmanlike tool in its pursuit of solvency, and seventeenthcentury governments with a reasonably efficient basis for further reform in detail. The preservation of such out-dated relics from an illiterate past as tallies, and of involved processes designed to protect the king against his officers, and the officers against their king, was a disadvantage which Winchester and his men did something in their practice to minimize; in their theory and ostensible intent they paid it all a deference which to some extent detracts from their high achievement and convicts them of being less thoroughly efficient than Henry VII had been, or more particularly Thomas Cromwell who laboured to create a new bureaucracy; for both these men had done their best to get round the ponderous “ancient course of the exchequer” which the reforms of 1554 in some degree served to perpetuate into the nineteenth century.’12

(3) Procedural: It has not been possible in this sub-section to provide more than a bald sketch of the Council and finance adminstration under the Tudors. The points briefly introduced are but a selection of the numerous incidents that accompanied the change-over in England from personal to institutionalized royal government, thus marking an important step towards the nation state, whose advent was postulated by developing condi­ tions that were literally world-wide. It is this institutionalization of the machinery of government with which we have been primarily concerned, the creation, out of a series of personal attachments to the ruler, of administrative offices with an existence and organization of their own, subsisting outside and apart from the specific office holders, subject to definite rules, and staffed by officials forming a permanent establishment. TUDOR

ADMINISTRATOR:

THOMAS

CROMWELL

The name of Thomas Cromwell (1485-1540) has been so closely associated with these reforms that it is considered desirable to devote the present subsection to a further examination of his seminal contribution. Fully to appreciate this it is desirable to

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consider the man. Son of a dissolute London tradesman, Thomas Cromwell left home at eighteen and acquired a varied experience in military and business affairs on the Continent before settling down in England and devoting himself to business, moneylending and law. It was not before his mid-thirties that he entered the service of Thomas Wolsey, who was impressed both by his wide knowledge of affairs and ability to get things done,13 a charac­ teristic that all too rarely accompanies an aptness to administer. From personal secretary to Cardinal Wolsey, Cromwell obtained Henry VIII’s confidence after the great statesman’s fall, and was soon on his way to high public office. He was made Privy Councillor in 1531, Master of the King’s Jewels in 1532, Keeper of the Privy Seal in 1533, and King’s Secretary three years later. By sheer force of character he enhanced the offices to which he was appointed, and astutely widened his scope to intervene as a pluralist who continued to hold offices that were not invariably of great weight or value in themselves. His leadership was very different from that of Wolsey who, as legalist and churchman, based his statesmanship on the conduct of judicial and diplomatic affairs. Cromwell’s real interest was in administration. While Wolsey remained a medievalist, his suc­ cessor adopted a more modern, almost professional approach to the business of government. Both leaders were helped by Henry’s character. The king certainly was no fool, but he was lazy and casual, preferring to leave the business of government in all its detail to deputies, except when personally involved and stirred to interfere, which he was quite capable of doing, with vigour and decision. But the times were changing; new needs were being created, and, among others, the necessity of the cleric as public administrator was in eclipse with the expansion of learning into other fields. It is said that the six Chancery clerks, permitted to marry under statute of 1516, were the last of the royal clerks to have been kept celibate. Cromwell was the lay statesman whose career rested upon membership of Parliament and not of the Church. But he was very much the administrator, interested primarily in getting the State’s business in ship-shape order and managed effectively. As a member of Wolsey’s personal civil service he had acquired the right office experience and an actual liking for the detail of administration which was often to distract him, even when weightier matters filled his mind. It is true that in his dominance he acted very much as his predecessors, and even improved upon them as a pluralist, but there is little doubt that he regarded this

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merely as a personal expedient which would become unnecessary and even impossible under a regularized administrative organiza­ tion which he rightly considered as a crying need of the future. In his genius as administrator he placed an imprint upon the King’s administration that was to continue after his fall. This came suddenly, when Cromwell was at the very height of power, ironically as a result of his participation in the making of high policy. As his original support for the supremacy of the Crown in the Church had commended him specially to Henry VIII, now his participation in the negotiations which led to the King’s marriage with Anne of Cleves, with whom the royal spouse was mortally disappointed from the very beginning, forfeited the King’s confidence in him and, although there were clearly other reasons, his past services did not stay his arrest, condemnation for treason, and execution within the space of a fortnight from the 10th June 1540. ADMINISTRATION

OF T HE BORDER

A N G L O - SCOTT I S H

With the recession of the feudal system and the dissolution of the monasteries weakening the executive agencies in the locali­ ties, the problem of maintaining effective local government in Tudor England became acute. The solution was not to appoint powerful agents of the Crown to operate in all localities on an established pattern, as was done in parts of the Continent, but in fact further to weaken the place of the Sheriff as representative of the Crown and to strengthen those of the Justice of the Peace who, since his introduction two centuries before, had continued to accumulate new duties by Act of Parliament. In the manner of the age the Justices’ duties were executive and administrative, as well as judicial. These officials were to figure as important agents of government under the new Privy Council, but as mem­ bers of the local gentry they embodied a high degree of decentralization. The Justices of the Peace dealt with agriculture, industry, vagabondage, and economic matters generally, but they were mainly concerned with the preservation of order and of the Crown’s rights in general as against the over-mighty subject,14 who was a real problem of the dynamic society. For the latter purpose the Tudors also extended the conciliar system in the unruly marches of Wales and of the Scottish frontier, although the administrative problems were quite different in the two areas. The Council of the Marches in Wales was not new, for it had existed in some form during the previous century, but on its

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activities before the reign of Henry VIII little information has survived. Statutory powers were conferred upon this body in 1534 and 1543.15 It was generally subject to the orders of the Privy Council, and its jurisdiction could be taken over by the Court of Star Chamber. It differed from its northern counterpart in operating, not only in Wales but also in the four English counties of Shropshire, Worcester, Hereford and Gloucester. Its main object was to minimize the privileges of the Marcher lords and to prevent the private war which was endemic among them. The situation on the Scottish border was wild and anarchic: to both nations the maintenance of law and order was a major problem of government. The terrain on both sides of the border constituted a sort of administrative no-man’s land in which the edicts of neither government were accepted other than sporadic­ ally. Nationalist feelings existed of course, but they were inevitably cut into by religious, social and economic streams which weakened them, often to extinction. Enmities and friend­ ships were not necessarily divided at the border and, while each side had to be defensively oriented against the other, a high degree of administrative co-operation was essential if the law was to be even moderately obeyed and wrong-doers ever brought to justice. Each side appointed a Warden, with power to call out armed forces and to hold Warden Courts, either for the whole March on that side or for separate sectors known as the East, West and Middle Marches respectively. Following the Pilgrimage of Grace, a rising in the English northern counties in 1536, which was in essence a reaction in favour of the old days and the old ways, aided by a breakdown of authority over the area, an existing council, modelled on the Council for Wales, was given permanent form under a com­ mission of Henry VIII in July 1537. This Council of the North consisted of a Lord President and six Councillors with powers to restore order and was destined to function as an effective instru­ ment of central government for just over a century, although it should not be concluded that even when its activities had ended public order in the area had reached the levels that the govern­ ment of the day desired. In an age of chronically divided loyalties, inefficient or hardly existant communications, and restricted executive power, the situation on the Anglo-Scottish border was obviously far from unique, and no doubt equally interesting administrative arrange­ ments could be quoted of many other areas of the Continent of Europe. But the specific Scottish approach to the problem has a special interest of its own.

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As the weaker member Scotland had found it politically desirable to pursue a policy of balance of power with the Continent, which often meant a close alliance with France as the inveterate enemy of England nicely placed to form the other arm of the pincer. This situation was modified during the six­ teenth century when Scotland followed England into the Reformation lobby, and new difficulties arose in accommodating national policy with local whims and fancies. It is not often that we are presented with such a natural case-study of how problems of local administration can be influenced by the repercussions of national diplomacy, a point that comes out incidentally in the excellent study by T. I. Rae of The Administration of the Scottish Frontier, 1513-1603. The ordinary sheriff system was not really efficient anywhere in Scotland, but under the lawless conditions of the border areas its incapacity — for example in connection with tax collection — was notorious. Much was therefore left to the Wardens, who were usually men of position and power with high status in their respective areas. They were appointed by the Council in Edin­ burgh, although the area of choice was usually a somewhat restricted one. As a royal official the Warden represented the King in his march: the relationship of the inhabitants to him was similar to their relationship to the Crown. They were subject to the same duties and entitled to the same privileges. The Warden’s duties were threefold: the military duty of defending the realm of Scotland, the diplomatic duty of negotiating with the English in connection with frontier incidents, and the administrative duty of maintaining law and order intern­ ally. The Warden could call upon the inhabitants for military service. As Rae states The duties of the warden were onerous if properly carried out, and an efficient official could rapidly create against himself a body of hostile opinion which would lay him open to the legal danger of false accusations and the physical danger of assassination’.16 The Warden received a yearly fee or salary, or some other payment, from taxes or thirds of benefices or grant of land. Such income could be supplemented by escheats of criminals who had been ‘justified’. He paid all expenses out of receipts, so that the financial arrangements were designed to be self-contained. He had the power to appoint officials, including a deputy who assisted him over the whole range of his duties, and such clerks, sergeants and dempsters as were necessary to the effective execu­ tion of his judicial functions.17 Special arrangements were reached with the English Wardens

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for co-ordination of administration. Meetings were arranged at convenient places near the border on stipulated days of truce when claims for damages would be considered and the handing over of offenders carried out. A system of accepting others as pledges for the actual offender was adopted, with consequent complications. Beginning as a mainly international system the wardenships became more and more concerned with internal administration. During the sixteenth century the military duties of the Warden were minimized when more military assistance was forthcoming from the centre, while internal control received special emphasis in Edinburgh. The Council tended to assume closer control, e.g. by sending representatives to accompany the Warden on certain business.18 After the Reformation protestantism had come to Scotland, and with the advent in 1587 of James VI to the throne of Scotland with special expectations as the lawful heir to the English throne, (to which he was to accede as James I), the warden’s international problems became less acute and more attention could be concen­ trated upon matters of internal order. During this period Commissioners were sometimes sent by the Council in Edinburgh to define the legal code that was to operate in the Marches. At times of crisis it had been the practice to appoint Lieutenants of the Marches to take over part of the Wardens’ functions. Some Lieutenants were primarily military, others concentrated on administration and adjudication. But this method of operating a closer control from the centre was not confined to the border Marches. The administrative efficiency of the Warden system has been challenged by historians, but Rae holds that this was a case where administration was not enough, as one would be well justified in concluding when all the peculiarities of the border situation had been taken into account. Besides mere administrative com­ petence there had to be a burning desire to solve existing problems. In his summing up Rae rightly avers ‘ . efficient frontier administration depended partly on the ups and downs of internal politics, especially in Scotland, and partly on the relationships between the two powers; and this latter factor was generally conditioned by the balance of power on the Continent’.19 Here we have a peculiar administrative situation which threw up problems that provide a fascinating study, but one to which unfortunately we have been able to do little more than provide a few pointers. This is in fact an important aspect of public

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administration in the localities at that time, which forms a vital ingredient of the general picture we are gradually building up. TUDOR

a d m i n i s t r a t o r

:

l o r d

bu rghley

In Sir William Cecil (1520-98), whom she quickly appointed as her Principal Secretary, Queen Elizabeth I (reg. 1558-1603) was to find a steady and competent administrator, well equipped and fitted to consolidate the system built up for her royal father by Thomas Cromwell. He had already served in a similar capacity under the Lords Somerset and Northumberland and, as a good diplomat, had astutely masked his protestant leanings during the Marian interlude. In his selection at a stage when his great administrative ability was still a matter for the future the young queen undoubtedly showed great perspicacity.20 The words used by Elizabeth at his swearing in are significant: ‘This judgment I have of you: that you will not be corrupted by any manner of gift and that you will be faithful to the state; and that, without respect of my private bill, you will give me the counsel that you think best . . . .’ As the Queen’s personal adviser Cecil was involved in matters of high policy not only touching upon the realm of England in its relations with France and Scotland, but also in personal matters such as when the Queen was involved in a love affair with Lord Robert Dudley whose wife conveniently broke her neck in falling down the grand staircase at Cumnor Place, Lord Dudley’s Berkshire residence. In such situations only a diplomatic genius could have hoped to survive in office, as Cecil did, until his natural death. He handled the Queen’s correspondence, both domestic and foreign, and performed tasks which we should classify as both ministerial and administrative. His responsibility was simply to the Queen, and in no way to Privy Council or Parliament, so that he was not a prime minister in the modern sense. He was made a peer in 1571, and it is as Lord Burghley he is best known to history. The following year Lord Burghley relinquished the Secretary­ ship of State for the Lord High Treasurership, which he was to hold for twenty-six years, The Queen in fact never ceased to dominate the policy-making of the realm, although she undoubtedly relied heavily upon the wise advice of Lord Burghley, upon whose work, both as states­ man and administrator, much of the glory of her reign surely rested. It is plain to see how, in the open, he provided valuable counsel for the statesmen who served the Queen, without IIH

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menacing the position of his rivals in the Privy Council, but what is less easy to discern are his essentially administrative activities behind the scenes, in the doing of which in that expanding age he fulfilled what today would be considered the professional tasks of a civil servant. As was the fashion, he held other offices besides those mentioned, among which his long tenure of the Mastership of the Queen’s Wards, at the Court of Wards — to which reference has already been made — is of special interest. This post he held continuously from 1561 to 1598. The Mastership was an important office in terms of power, patronage and profit, and it is not surprising that many outstand­ ing men figured among its holders. Incidentally this had been the office coveted by the court favourite, the Earl of Essex, whose romantic story has supplied the theme for so many literary and dramatic works. His failure to obtain it in 1599, when the Queen appointed Sir Robert Cecil, Lord Burghley’s son, was the final straw that led him to undertake the unfortunate Irish adventure which was to destroy him.21 The Court of Wards formed a widely ramifying department which was large for the times. The Court itself consisted of the Master and four other principal officers: Attorney, ReceiverGeneral and two Auditors — ranking in this order — who had corporate responsibility for the grant of wardships, but the Master and any two others could officiate. Under these officers the chief executive was the Clerk, an official of considerable importance. When the Liveries administration 22 was brought into the Court in a . d . 1542, the existing Master of Liveries was added as second officer with the title ‘Surveyor of Liveries’, and the appointment of a Clerk of Liveries was authorized. These appointments were made by the Queen, who undoubtedly consulted the Master. In addition there were, in London, junior officials, clerks, messengers and ushers who were also royal nominees, although the system was further complicated by the appointment by the principal officers of clerks and personal assistants outside the official payroll, but eligible for privileges and perquisites of the office. The Court was represented in the provinces by forty-five county Feodaries who were appointed by the Master. Although appointees of the Crown the Feodaries shared with local officials in the same category — namely the Sheriffs and the Justices of the Peace — the disadvantage of being under the influence of the neighbouring lord or other local potentate, over whom the distant Crown frequently had little hold. The efficiency of the Court of Wards’s provincial organization was therefore substan-

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tially diminished by the systematic struggle that had to be waged with the gentry and their hangers on. The Feodary was not a new invention, but his office was important to the Court of Wards for which he acted as maid-of-all-work in the county. The post usually went to a man of modest social status and means, whose main task was to look after the Queen’s interest in the deceased’s estate at the post mortem and subsequently to survey and rate the ward’s lands. Comprehensive local knowledge and an ability to trace down undeclared wardships on behalf of the Court were essential qualifications. The Mastership involved a number of not altogether com­ patible objectives. Primarily it had been established (1) to preserve the interests of, and ensure the proper profit from the royal wardships to, the Crown, whose finances were organized very much on a personal basis, but (2) the interests of the wards themselves were to be cared for, though this was often overlooked by owners of wardships, and, in addition, (3) the disposal of a wide range of royal patronage was involved; while, last but not least, (4) fees and personal profits were of first importance to the Master. The administration involved difficult problems of the wards’ relations and purchasers at large, as well as general questions of land tenure and current economic change. There is a good deal of evidence that Burghley was insistant upon doing justice to the royal wards, and for many placed in his own care he did his utmost, notably in his concern for their education, a matter that owners of wardships also too frequently neglected. He set up a school at Cecil House in the Strand, London, which was not reserved only for wards, and so high was its reputation that there was strong competition for admission from sons of the gentry who recognized that they would have access not only to unique educational opportunities but to attractive prospects of advancement in later life.23 It was, however, the incompatibility of objectives (1) and (4) that has led to the greatest controversy and to the accusation that, in exploiting to his own advantage prerogatives of the Crown, Lord Burghley was no better than any of his contempo­ raries. This may very well be true without being particularly reprehensible, for such was the way of the Tudor world, and we know well that matters were to get worse before they got better. As we shall see, the deriving of private profit from control of public office was to become a scandal in other lands than England, where it was usually to be tempered by positive advantages. In an age before set salary scales were normally attached to public positions the perquisites of office were inevi-

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tably important. Fees were commonly payable for any official service rendered and not infrequently collected excessively at several stages of the administrative process. The Queen’s minis­ terial assistants had to be remunerated and this was one way of doing it. It is known that Lord Burgley maintained expensive establishments, but hardly out of line with his high position and the custom of the times. The system itself was an excessively expensive one and new methods had to be discovered if the new economic age was to become operational. It would be only human to expect that the new ways would generate their own evils which in their turn would need to be vigorously tackled. It is really more important to ask the positive question whether Lord Burghley conducted his office with efficiency and reason­ able satisfaction to all the interests involved. It seems hardly likely, especially at a time when officials’ lives were cheap and courtiers’ heads could fall at a raising of the royal eyebrow, that he would have stayed in office so long had he not at least satisfied a Queen not notorious for suffering fools gladly. Incidentally, although the whole business of wardship was a feudal anachronism it was recognized by governments as a valu­ able source of revenue, at a time when revenue-earning sources were still scarce, and it was to continue under the Stuart reigns of James I and Charles I, and even for a time under the revo­ lutionary Parliamentarians until they closed the doors of the Court in a . d . 1646. It was finally abolished at the Restoration in a . d . 1660. By this time its demise was welcomed by contempo­ raries who, as is the universal way with administrative institu­ tions, were not usually inclined to give the Court even the small due that it deserved. PHILIP

II

OF

SPAIN

AS A D M I N I S T R A T O R

The reign of Philip II of Spain (1556-1598) is of special interest to us for two good reasons: first, the administrative complexity of controlling a large and diverse realm; second, the unusual administrative contribution of the ruler. Even when the office of Holy Roman Emperor, together with the Habsburg German possessions, had been passed by his father, Charles V, to his uncle, Ferdinand, there remained to Philip, on his father’s abdi­ cation in a . d . 1556, a vast realm, which comprised the lordship of the Netherlands, the Crowns of Spain and the Two Sicilies, as well as the recently founded and continually expanding Spanish Colonial Empire. The fact that the three areas in Europe were without land intercommunication greatly complicated what was

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already an almost impossibly complex administrative task. It is perhaps more logical to look at the second reason first by asking what manner of man Philip II was.24 He had been something of an infant prodigy, with an aptitude for mathematics. He had been able to read and write Latin at an early age, which was an educational necessity of the times of course, while later his personal addiction to architecture undoubtedly had a favourable influence upon city landscaping in Spain during the period. Special care had been taken of his education by his father, who in 1533 gave Philip his own house­ hold with tutors handpicked to prepare him for his future responsibilities. Their characters seem to have been carefully balanced by the Emperor to eliminate the habitual failings of such mentors: the one, a professor from Salamanca, Juan Mar­ tinez Siliceo, being possessed of an accommodating character and inclined to be easygoing with his pupil, while the other, Commendador Mayor of Castile, Don Juan de Zuniga, being outspoken and unflattering with his pupil.25 Although Philip’s role as the great potentate, concerned with a widespreading realm, called pre-eminently for a physically active man, Philip’s own preference for a sedentary way of life caused him to combine with the normal responsibilities of kingship, an excessive interest in the widely extending administrative machinery, and to take personal responsibility for activities that should have been delegated to subordinates. Nor did his penchant for administrative detail end there, for Philip quite literally liked undertaking the mundane activities of clerkship. He was never happier than when writing or dictating letters and consequently spent much of his time at the desk, from which, literally, he attempted to undertake the rulership of the world. He had some­ thing in common with Thomas Cromwell, though the latter, apart from being more appropriately positioned in the hierarchy of power, was a much more perceptive administrator with a sense of proportion that Philip lacked. Philip worked out a routine which he endeavoured to apply to his governing for fully forty years, carrying his assiduity in clerk­ ship into all spheres of government. As Von Pastor rightly prognosticates ‘His unwearied assiduity at the council table would have been an excellent thing in the ruler of a small state, but in the case of a monarch who was master of half the world it could not fail to become a grave disadvantage, all the more so as it was united to a great want of decision’.26 Philip was a man of great industry, conscientious and pious, yet capable in the manner of such rulers, and despite his own nature, of being

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completely ruthless; believing in his destiny as ordained by the Almighty, yet withal stubborn, slow and inefficient. It is not that his reign was an uneventful one. He had to grapple with grave revolt in the Netherlands under the brilliant leadership of William the Silent and was for a time ( a . d . 1554-58) King of England as the husband, not merely consort, of Mary I, while later, as Elizabeth’s arch-enemy, he organized the Great Armada which was to reduce the presumptuous island power for good, and might well have done so had he not delayed the launch­ ing of his grand design too long. On the other hand he undertook, successfully, to add Portugal to his Iberian dominions and thus to unite the whole peninsular under his control. The Spanish kingdoms were notable in having parliamentary institutions in the form of elected Cortes, representing usually three or even four separate estates, but these were not to develep into the predominant branch of government, as, for example, the Parliament in England. The government of Philip’s dominions was conciliar in form, a system that could have per­ mitted a flexible delegation of authority had Philip so desired. The truth is that he did not desire this very much and, in any case, the success of such a course would have depended upon the ruler’s essential capacity to choose the right councillors to act as his lieutenants. The Spanish dominions were linked by the personal authority of the sovereign, which depended upon differing constitutional arrangements. As monarch Philip ruled within each separate realm and welded together the diversity of the several realms only through his control of their widespread resources and the operation of his foreign policy. He was assisted at second level by his secretaries, who acted as liaison with the individual Councils. These were men of varying aptitude and quality. Each Secretary received a set of written instructions upon appointment and took an oath of service to a senior Secretary acting on the King’s behalf. He received a lump sum payment to cover his own salary and remuneration for his clerks. Office arrangements were primitive by any standard. No room being provided at the palace, the Secretaries took their papers home. They attended council meetings, without taking active part. Incoming despatches went straight to the king or to the President of the council concerned. It was a matter of chance therefore whether the papers were handled by the King’s own staff or not. In its multiple form the conciliar system was unavoidably disintegrative and the idea of binding it together with a closely organized central secretariat had not emerged. Philip was obviously certain and quite happy

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that this side of the business was well within his personal scope. Membership of the councils came from among the nobles, military officers, ecclesiastics and lawyers, or litrados. The latter were probably the best equipped, having come from the hildagos and middle class and had a proper university training in Roman Law, although decadence of university education was shortly to affect the general competence. The clerks who, according to contemporary authority, were much too numerous, were usually young men of small learning, or conversos (converts or lay brothers). The councils are classifiable in three groups. The first included those formed to advise the king on general policies, such as the Council of State, which, when reinforced with generals and military experts, operated as the Council of War, and the Council of the Holy Supreme Inquisition. In the second and larger group were those councils which formed the governments of the sepa­ rate countries, namely the Councils of Castile, Aragon, Flanders, Portugal, Italy, and the Indies. They functioned also as high courts of justice for the territory concerned. Together these two groups were supremos, namely councils which were not in any way dependent upon any other council above them. The third group included those councils which dealt with particular aspects of the administration of the Crown of Castile, e.g. Councils of Military Orders, the Cruzada Council, for a time the Hermanidad, and the Council of Finances.27 Philip IPs rule over Sicily encountered some of the problems of administering a foreign realm, for it was separated from the homeland, but incidentally it provided governing experience of value in Spain’s far-flung empire. To the Spaniards Italy was an extension of their own country, and therefore care had to be taken not to sacrifice the loyalty of the Italian gentry and others by excluding them from offices in their own land. At the same time there was an understandable desire among Spaniards, who knew Sicily, to take over such offices as were available, and much depended upon the Crown’s restraint in exercising its patronage. Ecclesiastical offices were the most easily taken over, but as military power was the real basis of the union, Spanish occupancy of certain key posts, especially the control of castles and strongpoints, had to be maintained. This was moderated by leaving captaincies of the local militia and the feudal levies generally to Italians.28 As we have seen, Philip’s own view of his empire was not as a living unity transcending his own rulership, but as a collection of separate political entities with himself as the sole connecting link.

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A Council of Italy, similar to those already established for the Spanish kingdoms, was set up on 26th July 1558 under the presi­ dency of the Duke of Francavilla, while early the following year Gonzalo Perez was appointed Secretary of State for Italy and Diego de Vargas Secretary responsible for judicature, provincial government and royal patronage. The Council’s organization, powers and functions were defined in detailed instructions issued by Philip from Toledo, on 3rd December 1559, following closely the experience of the existing councils. Under the President these six councillors, known as Regents, were all lawyers, paired — one Spaniard with one local appointee — for each of the three Italian provinces — Sicily, Naples and Milan. Under these principals there were various lesser officials, who were appointed progressively as local needs seemed to demand. Philip himself never attended council meetings, but communicated with the councillors through his secretaries. In accordance with his usual custom the procedures of the Council were laid down in the instruction in minute detail. The Council also functioned as a Court of Appeal for the Italian dominions, although in the case of Sicily certain feudal rights were excluded from its jurisdiction. In addition the Council supervised all branches of the administra­ tion of the Italian dominions, including all patronage and the grant of privileges, titles and benefices. Thus, in the manner of the times, the Council was essentially a court performing admini­ strative functions as a matter of course. It was not a policy­ controlling body, although certain routine questions of diplomacy were left to it. The king insisted on being consulted on practically the whole range of the Council’s business, including appointments and advancements. The volume of this work was increased by the practice of limiting tenure of office to one or two years. Lists of recommended persons were sent, with comments, by the Council in the form of consulta for the king’s decision, and many personal requests for advancement were also submitted independently. A regular mountain of paper had to be worked through and transmission of authority to the Council was inevitably delayed, causing consequent dislocation on the spot. This patronage involved lengthy correspondence with councillors and higher officials, and the result was certainly not to provide the king with the control over his servants that he sought. In the main the Council’s recommendations had to be followed, in default of closer personal knowledge at court, and the net result of the king’s carefully devised procedures was to bring down on his head the dissatisfaction of those who were disappointed, that is to say

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of the majority, while giving ministers the good will of the successful who felt that it must be to them that they owed the favourable decision. Clearly, many of the traditional evils of bureaucracy were built into this system of personal government and administration. Absence of a clear demarcation of functions as between the several authorities was characteristic of the government of the Spanish Empire, increasing the confusion already inherent in the system and giving rise to bitter quarrels: for example, between the several Councils, or between the Regents and the Secretaries, but, as Koenigsberger suggests,29 this had its good side in pro­ viding some elasticity in a system otherwise noted for its rigidity. At the head of the government in Sicily was the Viceroy to whom, in theory at least, complete control of the country was delegated. He was entitled to a high salary, certain extraordinary tax revenues, and to the income of any office which happened to be vacant (a rule that could provide a somewhat dangerous temptation). He had to take a personal hand in all functions of government, and it was discovered in practice that a careful division of his time was necessary between attendance at coun­ cils, public and private audiences, correspondence with other Viceroys and with the Council of Italy, as well as in the prepara­ tion of memoranda to the king. Dissatisfaction with the service of Sicilian officials caused the Viceroys to depend more and more upon their personal secretaries, upon whom, as members of their own household and not appointees of the Crown, they felt they could rely. The latter in fact formed a personal cabinet the members of which (1) ensured that all incoming despatches went to the right council or department, (2) kept the Viceroy posted on important matters and (3) briefed him on subjects for dis­ cussion in council. The Viceroy signed all despatches and this task became so burdensome that Colonna, a Viceroy who had made other innovations, introduced a stamp for routine authenti­ cations, the manipulation of which was confided to one of the secretaries. Gradually the administrative machine was rational­ ized to cope with the growing burden and complexity of the work, and in Sicily, as elsewhere, the change over from a feudal to a conciliar and bureaucratic system of government went on apace. It came about in much the same way as the process of forward-planning is entering into public administration today, not as part of a preconceived grand reform, but as a response to an emerging community need, the inwardness and extent of which is only realized as the requirement itself becomes more and more clearly defined and is creatively interpreted by percep-

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tive participants. The success of the contribution depends not only upon foreseeing what the future holds in store but also in assessing correctly the tempo of the change that is taking place. In conclusion, it is to be realized that there is much more in the Sicilian experience than it has been possible even to hint at here, but we shall have cause to consider further the Spanish way of coping with an expanding administrative environment in the following chapter.

REFERENCES 1 See especially Nicolai Rubenstein, The Government of Florence under the Medici, 1434 to 1494, (Oxford, 1966). 2 See, for example, J. R. Hale, Machiavelli and Renaissance Italy, (English Universities, 1961). 3 Quoted from The Prince, (translation by W. K. Marriott, Dent’s Everyman edition, 1908), pp. 185-7. 4 J. D. Mackie, The Earlier Tudors, 1485-1552, (Oxford, 1952), p. 23. 5 G. R. Elton, The Tudor Revolution in Government, (Cambridge, 1953). 6 Elton, op. cit., pp. 61-2. 7 Elton, op. cit., p. 339. 8 Elton, op. cit., p. 317. 9 Elton, op. cit., pp. 46-8. 10 Elton, op. cit., p. 110. 11 Elton, op. cit., pp. 223-4. 12 Elton, op. cit., p. 258. 13 Mackie, op. cit., p. 351. 14 Mackie, op. cit., pp. 194-5. 15 J. R. Tanner, Tudor Constitutional Documents, a . d . 1485-1603, (Cam­ bridge, 1948), p. 331. 16 T. I. Rae, The Administration of the Scottish Frontier, 1513-1603, (Edinburgh University, 1966), p. 27. 17 Rae, op. cit., p. 33. 18 Rae, op. cit., p. 91. 19 Rae, op. cit., p. 157. 20 J. B. Black, The Reign of Elizabeth, 1558-1603, (Oxford, 1936), pp. 6-7. 21 Joel Hurstfield, The Queen’s Wards, (Longmans, Green, 1958). See particularly pp. 241-8 for information on Burghley’s predecessors. 22 Hurstfield, op. cit., pp. 168-80. 23 Hurstfield, op. cit., p. 255. 24 Sir Charles Petrie, Philip, II of Spain, (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1964). 25 Petrie, op. cit., (Readers’ Union edn.), pp. 36-7. 26 Petrie, op. cit., quoting from Lives of the Popes, Vol. XVI, p. 357. 27 J. M. Batista i Roca in ‘Foreword’ to H. G. Koenigsberger’s The Government of Sicily under Philip II of Spain, (Staples Press, 1951). 28 Koenigsberger, op. cit., p. 50. 29 Koenigsberger, op. cit., pp. 69-70.

CHAPTER 4

EARLY AMERICAN CIVILIZATIONS Distinct civilizations had developed in Central and South America long before the date set for the beginning of the present volume. However, since their existence was not known until after the Spanish invasions of the sixteenth century of our era and earlier histories of their beginnings do not exist it would have been somewhat artificial to have dealt with them in our first volume, although in fact their beginnings go back at least to the second millennium b . c ., to a time when the Egyptians were build­ ing their pyramids, Babylon was being unified and the Minoans were still flourishing. For these earlier periods the evidence is to be gleaned from archaeological, anthropological and cultural sur­ vivals, or the oral traditions of the later Inca, Aztec and Maya peoples, whose current records were so unfortunately and misguidedly destroyed by the invading Spaniards. Nevertheless their existence is less open to challenge than that of many ancient communities of the West, for the evidence is still to be seen abundantly on all sides. The stepping-stone to the New World was Hispaniola (the island today divided between the Haiti and Dominican Republics) where the Spaniards established their own government. Christo­ pher Columbus himself, in 1502 on his fourth voyage to the Indies, was the first European to make contact with the Mayas at Guanaja, an island off the coast of Honduras. Very quickly his presence was reported to the Aztecs of Mexico. Their priests, believing him to be the long-expected white god, prophesied the end of the world. Hernando Cortes (1485-1547), commissioned in 1518 by Velazquez, Spanish Governor of Cuba, to lead an expedition to conquer Mexico, landed on the mainland at a spot now known as Vera Cruz and, with some five hundred Spaniards, marched over the mountains to the central plateau and the magnificent Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, situated in the centre of a lake which was subsequently drained and is today the site of Mexico City. The Emperor Montezuma, who received him with his following, was shortly taken prisoner and compelled to admit vassaldom to Spain. The warlike Aztec civilization fell and withered with hardly any resistance before the impact of out-

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siders, defeated not solely by Spanish fire power but partly by their own superstitious interpretation of the fate that was over­ whelming them. The Mayas, occupying territory contiguous to the Aztecs, already a dying civilization, presented a less attractive prey and consequently were able to put up a longer resistance in Yucatan until 1546. In fact outlying areas continued to resist, and the Maya Empire was not finally liquidated before 1697. The Inca realm was somewhat less accessible on the western Pacific seaboard of South America, subsequently to be known as Peru. The thriving Incas became aware of the white man’s presence when Vasco Nunez of Balboa reached the Pacific in 1513. Early contacts made the adventurers aware that the Inca Empire was likely to prove a considerable prize. Francesco Pizarro (circa 1475-1541), born in Trujillo, Spain, first landed in Peru in 1527. He reached Tumbez in May 1532, by a ruse captured their leader, Atahualpa, then at the height of power, and with his firearms massacred a massive army. Within three years the Inca Empire was completely subjugated. The Spaniards crowned Manco II as the ruling Inca, who within a couple of years withdrew and established a Neo-Inca state which lasted till 1572. The Inca realm managed to survive till 1781. Before examining the governmental and administrative arrange­ ments made by the Spaniards to control their new territories a brief survey should be made of the administrations of the three ancient civilizations, which had novel features that inevitably had their particular influence upon those that followed. THE

INCAS

On the long South American Pacific shore, stretching from modern Peru northwards to Ecuador and southwards to Chile, a varied geographical area extending from the hot coastal plains inland to the forested plateaux and cool highlands of the Andes, early farmers had established themselves during the second millennium b . c . During the pre-Inca period, which began about 1200 b . c ., there is evidence of a number of different cultures, which included that at Chavin de Huantar that left evidence of its ways and beliefs in its pottery, building and weaving artefacts, and had, by the period a . d . 400 to 1000, developed a network of cities with people highly skilled in all these techniques. Remains of temples in Huaca del Sol in the Moche Valley on the coast indicate a society that had warriors, messengers, weavers and ‘doctors’, a system of roads and couriers, and a complex social organization which was to leave its mark on the political organi-

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zation of the Incas.1 During the same period, in the valleys of Nazca, there arose the Ica-Nazca culture which has left engraved in sand and waste gravel, running for miles, a complication of lines of a type that suggest some sort of calendar or even geneological symbol trees. These Ica-Nazcas came under the impact of mountain people, called the Tiahuanacan, who swept down from their stronghold, either about Lake Titicaca or the city of Huari, and left considerable evidence in their extensive stone­ work which was the most advanced in the area. These several cultures left only oral ‘history’, since there was no system of writing, and the Incas saw to it that their own history, which was cared for by official remembrancers,2 should include no specific reference to these cultures. Apart, therefore, from surviving anthropological and archaeological evidence, we depend very much upon these official interpretations for whatever we can deduce about the earlier peoples. There is direct information only about the Chimu Empire ( a . d . 100-1466), also a coastal people, who survived into the Inca phase and on whom they had not had time to operate their methods of historical assimilation before the Spaniards arrived to make direct contacts. Otherwise steps would no doubt have been taken to eliminate them too from human memory.3 This historical function of Incan public admini­ stration draws to mind similar institutions in China. Vague though much of this surviving information may be, all the evidence supports the view that advanced social systems and cultures existed in Peruvian lands long before the Inca began their climb to prominence, somewhere about 1250, and that they drew heavily upon existing cultures which they either absorbed or suppressed and, expanding from the Cuzco Valley, their special pattern developed entirely within the Andean area. Their great contribution was to add a new sense of organization, which was to prove their real key to success. A disciplined people gradually grew into a powerful empire. With the Incas the ayllu was the basic social unit covering a sort of clan or group of families, which could vary in size from a unit inhabiting a small area to a complex city like Cuzco, the capital. The ayllu owned the land, which it loaned to its members to meet their necessities of life. An ayllu was controlled by an elected leader, guided by a council of elders. Upon this base was built a hierarchic system, a group of ayllus forming a district, districts forming territories, and territories arranged into four quarters of the realm each under a Prefect answerable to the head of all, the Sapu, or Lord Inca (or Royal Inca) himself. Basically both the political and the economic pattern formed a decimal

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hierarchy, at the foot of which was the puric, or able-bodied male worker. Ten workers were controlled by a straw-boss, ten bosses by a foreman, ten foremen by a supervisor, who might be the head of a village, and so on up to the Lord Inca, who was at the apex of the hierarchy. These officials formed a large element in Inca society numbering 1,331 for every 10,000 people.4 Marriages were arranged. Once a year the communal lands of the ayllu were reallocated to the people, each married couple receiving from the headman a standard plot sufficient to supply their needs. This land was divided into three portions, first for the people, second for the Inca, namely the state, and third for the sun religion: the two latter portions being tilled and harvested communally as part of the labour tax.5 Villages were laid out on a general plan, presumably under public direction. Officials advised on food production, which was developed so effectively by the Incas that today more than half the foods of the modern world were originally developed by these Andean farmers and subsequently acclimatized throughout the world after the con­ quest — our remarkable debt both to this distant civilization and particularly to the officialdom of the Incas. Systematic terracing and advanced irrigation engineering, improving upon the work of their predecessors, were also undertaken under official direc­ tion. Surplus wool and other stocks were kept in official storagebins and accounted for by officials, who recorded stocks on the quipu string counters with which the Incas overcame the lack of written numerals. Frequent markets were officially organized, the market being the ‘speaking place’ where the people came to hear decrees emanating from the Lord Inca or his council. As there were no property taxes, only the rnita labour service, the people were able to dispose of their excess stocks at the market. The Lord Inca was both supreme ruler and god, whose primary concern was the well-being of his people and who personally called to account all officials for any maladministration.6 In virtue of his religious leadership any crime was at once dis­ obedience and sacrilege.7 Punishment was therefore severe, but the rule seems to have been more benevolent than some early Spanish reporters concluded superficially from what they saw, or thought they saw. The Lord Inca held his position hereditarily and was revered by all, but there was no clear line of succession, for he himself chose the heir apparent from among the most competent sons of his chief wife. The chosen one was subjected to a thorough training for his future responsibilities, in arms, religion and statecraft. Administration was not least among his essential skills. If these arrangements led on occasion to the usual

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instabilities and intrigues arising from family jealousies, as no doubt they did, the records do not exist to show. The Lord Inca, being polygamous, had a large number of dependents, forming his immediate family, his own royal ayllu, a court circle of educated men trained in the imperial ideology and interested in its perpetuation,8 from whom he chose his top administrators whenever possible. They formed a ruling class and carried special distinguishing marks and privileges. It is to them that the term ‘Inca’ was really assigned, though today we use it for the entire people. There were also the curacas, Incas by privilege, not necessarily born in the royal ayllu but drawn upwards by their abilities,9 who were also given administrative posts, whose number, by imperial expansion, had been increased beyond the scope of the original royal Inca circle. It is recorded that the sons of conquered chieftains were sometimes taken to special schools at Cuzco for an orientation course and to return as curacas. It is unfortunate that so many of these records were destroyed, together with much else, by the crusading fathers of the Church, who in their blind, but misguided, religious fervour ‘knew not what they did’. These schools were placed under the care of the amautas, or wise men, by whom the students were instructed in various branches of knowledge with an eye to the positions they were to occupy in life — the laws of the community, the achievements of royal ancestors, the principles of governing, and where necessary, the secrets of religious ceremonial and practice, as well as the special administrative skill of manipulating the quipu. In their organization of the officials nothing was left to chance. Each was assigned his particular niche. All were exempt from the work tax and remunerated through the service of the common Indian. Lacking a system of writing, even of the pictorial type developed by the other Pre-Columbian civilizations, Inca public administration suffered from serious disadvantages. Officials needed to have good memories, but there was the quipu, to record the statistics on which so much of their organizing depended. We can hardly do better than turn to Prescott’s great work, The Conquest of Peru, to obtain a sufficiently detailed account of this medium and how it was used. ‘The quipu was a cord about two feet long, composed of different coloured threads tightly twisted together, from which a quantity of smaller threads were suspended in the manner of a fringe. The threads were of different colours and were tied into knots; the word quipu, indeed, signified a knot. The colours denoted sensible objects; as, for instance, white represented silver, and yellow, gold. They sometimes also stood for abstract ideas; thus, white signified peace,

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and red, war. But the quipus were chiefly used for arithmetical purposes. The knots served instead of ciphers, and could be com­ bined in such a manner as to represent numbers to any amount they required. By means of these they went through their calculations with great rapidity, and the Spaniards who first visited the country bear testimony of their accuracy. Officers were established in each of the districts, who, under the title of quipacamayus, or ‘‘keepers of the quipus”, were required to furnish the government with information on various important matters. One had charge of revenues, reported the quantity of raw material distributed among the labourers, the quality and quantity of the fabrics made from it, and the amount of stores, of various kinds, paid into the royal magazines. Another exhibited the register of births and deaths, the marriages, the number of those qualified to bear arms, and the like details in reference to the population of the kingdom. These returns were annually forwarded to the capital, where they were submitted to the inspection of officers acquainted with the art of deciphering these mystic records. The government was thus provided with a valuable mass of statistical information; and the skeins of many-coloured threads, collected and carefully preserved, constituted what might be called the national archives. But, although the quipus sufficed for all the purposes of arith­ metical computation demanded by the Peruvians, they were incompetent to represent the manifold ideas and images which are expressed by writing. Even here, however, the invention was not without its use. For, independently of the direct representation of simple objects, and even of abstract ideas, to a very limited extent, as above noticed, it afforded great help to the memory by way of association. The peculiar knot or colour, in this way, suggested what it could not venture to represent; in the same manner — to borrow the homely illustration of an old writer — as the number of the Commandment calls to mind the Commandment itself. The quipus, thus used, might be regarded as the Peruvian system of mnemonics. Annalists were appointed in each of the principal communities, whose business it was to record the most important events which occurred in them. Other functionaries of a higher character, usually the amautas, were entrusted with the history of the empire, and were selected to chronicle the great deeds of the reigning Inca or of his ancestors. The narrative thus concocted, could be communi­ cated only by oral tradition; but the quipus served the chronicler to arrange the incidents with method, and to refresh his memory. The story, once treasured up in the mind, was indelibly impressed there by frequent repetition. It was repeated by the amauta to his pupils; and in this way history, conveyed partly by oral tradition, and partly by arbitrary signs, was handed down from generation to generation, with sufficient discrepancy of details, but with a general conformity of outline to the truth. The Peruvian quipus were, doubtless, a wretched substitute for

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that beautiful contrivance, the alphabet, which, employing a few simple characters as the representatives of sounds instead of ideas, is able to convey the most delicate shades of thought that ever passed through the mind of man. The Peruvian invention, indeed, was far below that of the hieroglyphics, even below the rude picture-writing of the Aztecs; for the latter art, however incompetent to convey abstract ideas, could depict sensible objects with tolerable accuracy. It is evidence of the total ignorance in which the two nations remained of each other, that the Peruvians should have borrowed nothing of the hieroglyphical system of the Mexicans, and this, notwithstanding that the existence of the maguey plant {agave) in South America might have furnished them with the very material used by the Aztecs for the construction of their maps.

*

*

*

Yet we must be careful not to underrate the real value of the Peruvian system; nor to suppose that the quipus were as awkward an instrument, in the hand of a practised native, as they would be in ours. We know the effect of habit in all mechanical operations, and the Spaniards bear constant testimony of the adroitness and accuracy of the Peruvians in this. Their skill is not more surprising than the facility with which habit enables us to master the contents of a printed page, comprehending thousands of separate characters, by a single glance, as it were, though each character must require a distinct recognition by the eye, and that too without breaking the chain of thought in the reader’s mind. We must not hold the inven­ tion of the quipus too lightly, when we reflect that they supplied the means of calculation demanded for the affairs of a great nation, and that, however insufficient, they afforded no little help to what aspired to the credit of literary composition. The office of recording the national annals was not wholly confined to the amautas; it was assumed in part by the haravecs, or poets, who selected the most brilliant incidents for their songs or ballads, which were chanted at the royal festivals and at the table of the Inca. In this manner, a body of traditional minstrelsy grew up, like the British and Spanish ballad poetry, by means of which the name of many a rude chieftain, that might have perished for want of a chronicler, has been borne down the tide of rustic melody to later generations.’10

The Incas’ system was a mixture of the autocratic and the socialistic. The lives of all were fully controlled, literally from the cradle to the grave. Everyone knew his proper niche, and this applied to the Lord Inca himself. Religion was state-organized under the supreme inspiration of Viracocha, the Creator,11 though the Inca were sun-worshippers and their temples, raised high on artificial mounds, were common here as in the Mayan and Aztec cultures, but the general spirit was benevolent. There were human sacrifices but they were organized only on very sacred m

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occasions when the ‘offerings’, usually children, had to be perfect and were brought up to regard the sacrifice as a high honour. The priesthood formed a separately organized sector of the public service under the Villac Umu, or High Priest, who was resident in Cuzco, the capital.12 A close relative of the Lord Inca, and ranking high in the state, he held his office for life and had no alternative but to live an exemplary life, for he was subject to many restrictions and taboos. He presided over a council of nine senior priests, each of whom was in charge of his own province. Other high-ranking priests were elected from among members of the royal blood, each serving for a definite term of office. The lower priestly group consisted of commoners who were not paid by the state. They were often local patriarchs who were too old for agricultural labour. While smaller shrines needed no more than one attendant, the large temples called upon the ministrations of a large body of clergy, diviners, sacrificers and servants, as well as women and monks. The women, about whom much has been written, though not always with certitude, were of two types: the acllacuna, or the Chosen Women, and the mamacuna, the so-called Virgins of the Sun. The former were transients who could be taken as secondary wives by nobles or by the Lord Inca himself, while the latter were permanent and took vows of perpetual chastity. Their task was to serve the priests in the convents, in particular to weave the fine cloths from which the imperial garments and fine tapestries were made. Selection of the women was made from among the most beautiful and physically perfect girls at about the age of ten, by a govern­ ment inspector who made periodical rounds of the villages. They received a careful four-year education in domestic science, religion, weaving and other suitable skills. As in the case of the secular government oversight of the religious institutions was exercised by a corps of inspectors, who made frequent visits and reported back deficiencies to the higher authorities. Public administration provided, through the system of hierarchic devolution described, a unifying network which centralized power in an extensive realm. Considerable achieve­ ments were accomplished by the Inca public services in con­ structional engineering, irrigation and bridge-making. In fact it was recognized that the key to effective administration was the achievement and maintenance of efficient communications. In this the Incas were past masters, and they managed to solve the considerable problems set by the conjunction of a wide and extensive geographical environment with a backward state of technological development.

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A comprehensive road system, obviously constructed to a master-plan, formed a network which covered the whole empire and converged upon the great plaza at Cuzco. It was a tremen­ dous achievement, including as it did the Andean Royal Road which stretched for 3,250 miles, longer than the longest Roman road from Hadrian’s Wall in the north to Jerusalem. In com­ paring, however, the Roman and other early road systems it has to be remembered that wheeled traffic had not yet been invented in South America, so that the constructional job was much less complicated, since the roads there had not to be specially surfaced. A coastal road, stretching some 1,520 miles, was linked to the Royal Road by a series of lateral roads. The Royal Road was marked along its entire length by topos (‘mile’-stones) placed at intervals of 4± miles.13 Convoys were organized for the transport of goods by llamas, the only available baggage animal, which were capable of carrying eighty pounds about twelve miles a day; while litter teams were available for the porterage of nobles and high officials.14 There was also a twenty-four hour relay service for the rapid trans­ mission of messages and light objects. Small shelters were con­ structed at regular intervals, each capable of holding two young men, one of whom was on the look-out to take over from the previous relay to learn the message quickly and carry on at top speed with the object, and possibly a quipu, to the next post, when the process would be repeated. The runners were highly trained, serving for short periods as part of their labour tax. The system survived the conquest and it is recorded that the journey from Lima to Cuzco, a distance of 420 miles over a bad road surface, could be completed in three days. There was also a system of smoke signals whereby messages could be transmitted much faster than by courier.15 Authority and religious acceptance were at the root of the Inca system of government, but without the superb sense of organization which permeated their administrative arrangements and procedures their empire could not have functioned so efficiently as it did. THE

MA Y A

The Mayas inhabited an area covered by the Yucatan Peninsu­ lar — including today’s British Honduras and Guatemala — and overlapping into El Salvador, Honduras and the Mexican borderstates. Although they survive today as the largest group of native Indians north of Peru, their impact upon the Spanish Conquista-

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dors was nothing like so great as that of the Incas and the Aztecs, no doubt partly because the invaders did not expect to gain so much from them and partly because of their scattered distribu­ tion. In any case the Maya culture had already passed its heyday, so that for the period from about 2000 b .c., when widely distributed Maya-speaking settlements already existed, to about a.d . 900, after the great cities had been built, our information has to be deduced from the tangible evidence of archaeology, pottery and art. No books and traditions had survived, but with their abandonment — for reasons we do not know — of the great centres of population, the Mayas did leave some glyph-written illustrated books, dealing mainly with mythology and astrology, and a kind of vague history can be drawn, in relation to evidence, both oral and written, from outside the Maya area. The Spanish conquest was slow and not finally achieved till a.d . 1697,16 but in the new cities, raised by the conquerors out of the rubble of the old, European priests began to write reports in the form of relaciones, which were informal histories intended to instruct the Spanish court, notable among which was the manuscript Account of the Things of Yucatan of the Franciscan Diego de Linda, who had taught himself the Mayan language. Many sites, especially those hidden deep in the tropical forest, still remain to be uncovered, but the massive archaeological evidence that already exists of this amazing civilization is being added to yearly. Although Maya society was Neolithic, for they had no metals or draught animals or the wheel, their soil and climate were so fruitful that they had an excess production sufficient to support a leisured society.17 They comprised a widely scattered collection of autonomous cities, which continued for fifteen hundred years from 500 b .c. and were bound together by cultural rather than political links, a city-state system with some parallels with that of the Greeks. A common culture, a common language, a com­ mon religion, widespread inter-city trade and an efficient road network, all added up to create a loose unity that was to be more enduring than most empires. But in their heyday there was apparently no empire, no capital city. At the focus of the city was the temple, serving a religion based upon a cosmogony which the Maya deduced from their own reading of the heavens and upon which they based the calendar by which the various ceremonies and state rituals were set and shaped. The welfare of the city depended upon successful farming, and the farmers attributed their good fortune to the gods, who enabled the maize to grow better. The priests of the temple, who acted as official astrologers, were supported out of

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the produce, as in so many earlier city civilizations, notably those of Sumer. Society depended upon the clan, to which the domain of the god was parcelled by the city elders, or councillors. It is believed that each family was assigned a plot of four hundred square feet, or uinic, which was measured with a forty-foot tape. This was definitely a class society, of farmers and nobles, on a simple pattern but with a standard of living advanced for the times. Hot baths were provided, even for the field-worker, and in the larger centres communal steam baths are known to have existed. Water conservation was important and at suitable points vast reservoirs were constructed. Trading was carried on in surplus products and slaves, in which there was a considerable traffic. Warehouses were built to store surpluses and credit was granted by the merchants. In the absence of written documents contracts, where such were necessary, had to be concluded orally. Such deals were carried through with due ceremony and closed by public drinking, a method of achieving legality through publicity.18 In the vast ruins of Chichen Itza, which had an extensive market, there are the remains of a stone dais on which, it is assumed, an official sat to administer sales and trading.19 At the head of each Maya city-state there was the halach uinic, translatable as ‘the man’, ‘the real man* or ‘the true man’, who wielded the plenary powers of a demigod, subject only to a Council which, it is presumed, were related to him by blood ties. He was also called ahau, defined as ‘king, emperor, monarch, prince or great lord’. The system was neither selective, as the Inca, nor elective, as the Aztec. His actions were subject to the most restrictive rituals and even his person was remoulded and adorned in accordance with religious custom: head, face, ears, nostrils were twisted, enlarged and retrained to conform with a traditional concept of beauty, whose devastations to the human form were by no means confined to the ruler. The halach uinic dressed differently for his several offices, or aspects of his unique office, carrying a different symbol of authority according to the function he was performing at the time. The office descended from father to son, normally to the eldest, though a brother might succeed if no son were considered fit, or, if there were no member of the royal family available, a capable more distant relation might be chosen by the Council. The system seems to have worked well, although we are lacking in information of the detail of administration. The Maya citystate was a complex structure presupposing a high degree of social organization. For the construction of temples, buildings, reser-

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voirs and the like a vast effort of labour deployment and manage­ ment was called for. Except for the making of the pictorial glyphs the writing work of the normal clerk was absent, admini­ stration being confined to personal contacts and the transmission of orders and other information by word of mouth, possibly through messengers. The restricted scope of Mayan recordmaking may well have been the main reason for the failure of the Mayas to develop a national political unity, though it is obvious that the nature of the economy was an even more important reason for the pattern that subsisted for so long. Had there been an imperative urge for a more integrated system of administration it would be gratuitous to suppose that the Mayas, who achieved so much, could not have devised a type of admini­ strative structure that would have served them effectively. There is, on the other hand, the fact that the Mayan system had failed for some reason long before the Spaniards came on the scene and that the impact of the Aztecs and their forerunners hardly explains the failure. It may well be that the existence of more sophisticated administrative methods might have turned the scale in a positive direction.20 Attention must be given to at least one attempt to form a league of city states, as a result of which Mayapan seems to have been the only known organized Mayan capital. This was a late development, for Mayapan did not function as a capital until after 1200. It gave its name to a league of states, which included Chichen Itza and Uxmal, covering most of the north of Yucatan. This was a joint enterprise of two tribal dynasties claiming both Mayan and Toltec ancestry and the development was quite out of keeping with previous Mayan experience, in so much as all the surrounding lands were held in tribute to the capital, within whose walls all the inhabitants — including nobles from all over the area — were enabled to dwell without paying tribute tax. The League of Mayapan was an autocracy based upon the two ruling groups. Inevitably it exploded in violence, and in 1194, when Chichen Itza was conquered by the dominant dynasty, with the assistance of Toltec mercenaries, Mayapan became the ruling city. The defeated group nursed their hatred for two hundred and fifty years until 1441 when an opportunity occurred to massacre the ruling group within the city. The power of Mayapan was ended.21 While the Maya did not need such an advanced system of inter­ communications as the Incas there is plenty of evidence of an extensive road system with the appointment of an alcalde meson in each village to keep a travellers’ house and to see that ample

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provisions were kept on hand. The roads were designed both for ceremonial and for trade purposes and it is thought that ‘mile­ stones’ were set up, as well as rest shelters outside the villages. As there were no draft animals all burdens had to be carried on human backs. Paper for the Mayan books was pounded from tree fibres. The sheets were folded in leaves and glued to wooden boards. Owing to the misplaced piety of the discoverers only three of these codices have survived. It was said by the Spaniards that these Maya books were concerned with the lives of lords and people, historical data, but the truth of this is likely only to be confirmed by the fortunate discovery of other survivals. The glyphs were painted in a variety of colours by the priest-scribes with brushes made of the bristles of wild pig. The system was ideographic not phonetic, and the pictures are not easy to under­ stand. In the absence of effective clues only a fraction of the surviving material has so far been deciphered. The mere existence of such a system of ‘writing’ vouches for the high culture attained by this ancient race, whose life of some 3,700 years terminated on 14th March 1697, under the continuing impact of a more technically skilled, but in many ways less morally justified, civilization. THE

AZTECS

It is with the Aztecs of Mexico that the most dramatic contact between Spain and the Americas took place, when Cortes in 1519 marched from the shores of the Caribbean over the mountains to confront the magnificent city of Tenochtitlan, stituated in the midst of its shallow defensive lake. The warlike Aztecs had emerged, as the Tenochas tribe, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a . d ., but their culture had been preceded by that of the Olmecs, who were already established at La Venta on the coast as far back as 800 b . c ., and the Toltecs occupying the plateau. Since all the best lands were already occupied it was only by warlike methods, by raising systematized rapine and war to a form of polity, that the Aztecs were able, not merely to survive, but to conquer. There were probably contacts between the Mayas and the Olmecs, who had developed a simple but force­ ful art which was to influence subsequent cultures in the area. The Zapotec culture, whose ceremonial centre and temple city on Monte Alban existed from about 500 b . c . to as late as a . d . 1469, had already developed glyph writing and a calendar at the beginning of that period. On the central plateau the Toltecs developed, after 2 0 0 b . c ., a community which, through improved

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agriculture, was able to produce a social surplus capable of sup­ porting vast ceremonial cities, such as that of Teotihuacan — ‘the place where men become gods’ — whose magnificent ruins, covering eight square miles at a spot some thirty miles to the north-east of Mexico City (Mexico’s modern capital built on the site of Tenochtitlan and its lake) continue to astonish even the most sophisticated traveller. During this phase the Toltecs became the master craftsmen, who gave their name to the artisans, painters and writers down into Aztec times. By this period ideographic writing, tribal records, amatl paper books picturing their astonishing cosmogony, including a complicated calendar, had been perfected.22 Following a period of decline whose cause is not understood, Teotihuacan ceased to function between a . d . 650 and 700, five hundred years before the arrival of the Aztecs. Theirs was a theocratic and apparently pacific state, whose story remains a mystery, but as the city ruins emerge from the soil with numerous functional buildings, some of which have bass reliefs and paintings still to be fully studied, something at least of their public administration is being pieced together. Mexican scholars are not agreed that the Teotihuacan civilization is of Toltec origin. The Aztec social system was tribal, based upon clans, each consisting of a cluster of families. Land was divided by the tribal council equitably among the clans, portions were also allocated to the maintenance of the temple staffs, for war supplies, for the payment of tribute, as well as for other expenses of government and religion, and for the construction of large engineering works. There were twenty clans in the Tenochas tribe, each with its elected leader. The oldest and wisest of these formed an inter-clan council, which provided the link between the clans and the tribe’s governing body.23 The economy was basically agricultural, depending upon the production of a surplus, much of which was appropriated by the ruling tribe. So long as they rendered tribute, in men and resources, the tribes were left to their own devices. The system was essentially exploitative and their lack of true unity was to prove one of the main reasons for the Aztecs’ rapid collapse. The ruler of the Tenochas tribe, and overlord of the Aztecs — known as ‘He who speaks’ — was elected, but from a very select group. The interclan council, for this and other important purposes, was narrowed down to four tlatoani, or principals, who acted as advisers of the ruler. They chose him from among the brothers or nephews of the previous ruler, selecting the man whom they considered most distinguished in valour, war and

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knowledge. Montezuma — ‘Courageous Lord’ — who was overlord of the Aztecs when Cortes reached Tenochtitlan, had thus been selected in 1503, sixteen years before. Although elected, the Chief Speaker was regarded as a demigod. He was high priest, supreme war-leader, head of state and plenary ruler, whose power was ultimately held in check only by ancient custom. Certainly his powers were curbed by the burdensome ritual that had to be followed to the letter. His counsellors, although of inferior calibre, were undoubtedly able to exert a good deal of pressure by insisting upon adherence to proper ceremonial. The superstitions in which they all shared would do the rest. There is some evidence that Montezuma, by excluding from the palace members of rankless groups, hitherto represented there, limited the democratic nature of the system.24 He decided that only the most noble and most famous men of his realm should live within his palace. Montezuma had been trained, with other aspirants to the rulership, in the religious school, known as calmecac, or ‘house of large corridors’. Here he learned to interpret glyph writing and, by means of glyphic charts, acquired the history of the Tenochas. He became proficient in the use of arms and the art of war, in understanding astrology and the calendar, in religious ritual and the interpretation of phenomena. Similarly the numerous progeny of his polygamous marriage were trained for office. Montezuma had the reputation of being a good ruler. His realm is said to have spread further than ever before, covering as many as 371 states from which tribute was collected. Justice was well organized if inclined to excessive strictness. One of his ways of keeping a personal eye on his officials was to travel incognito among the people. The capital city had its efficient military organization, each quarter being equipped with its tlacochcalco, or house of darts, an arsenal of military stores strategically situated in relation to the chief temple, which was also a strong point in time of emergency. At these rallying points clan leaders on call could rapidly assemble and equip themselves.25 The processes of administration worked through the council of four already mentioned, down to the clan, through the clan heads, where another official carried out normal administrative business in peace and, as a matter of course, acted as clan leader in war, which was fairly continuous. The Aztecs were not interested in participating in the affairs of the conquered tribes. So long as they paid their tribute, in produce and sacrificial victims, they were left alone. It was in fact a system of adminis-

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tering by force majeur: warrior and tax-collector were one and the same. The system worked so long as the Aztecs were feared and highly efficient war-makers, as indeed they were. Their war machine was truly shocking in its ruthless efficiency. The Aztecs’ own products were restricted in scope. To obtain luxuries trade was essential. A pochteca, or merchant, class emerged, organized in guilds and protected by the state. Roads were opened and Aztec garrisons maintained at strategic points. The pochteca had freedom of movement. Trade was extended by warlike means. Central granaries were established to store tribute foodstuffs supplied by the clans, there to be noted in the account books of the Tribute Recorder of the Chief Speaker.26 In addition the clan groups had to supply levies for public works, which comprised dikes, aqueducts, ceremonial buildings, roads, and the like, constructed under the direction of architectbuilders whose achievements continue today as witness of the high competence of Aztec engineers and the great skills of Aztec designers. For the Aztecs, religion and war were inseparable. The political system was completely theocratic, the Chief Speaker counting his priestly functions as first among his responsibilities. Priests directed the intellectual life of both Aztec and conquered tribes. They were controlled by two Quequetzalcoa (high priests) under whom a third took responsibility for administering the tribute, schooling new priests and establishing the faith in newly conquered villages. The priests, of whom there are said to have been as many as five thousand in the central temples alone, were concerned with ritual, running the religious schools, teaching the hieroglyphic writing and complicated mathematical and astro­ nomical symbols essential in this all-pervasive religion.27 The objective of the Aztec’s religion was to persuade favour­ able forces to aid the community, especially in supporting pro­ duction by providing rain. The beneficient gods for this purpose had to be sustained with the human blood deemed necessary to their existence. Hence the carefully devised method of extracting the palpitating heart of the sacrificial victim by the surgeonpriests at the alter and its rendering up to the god. Thus was it necessary for the Aztec warriors and priests to co-operate in providing a continuing blood-bath that was unparalleled in the long record of human blood-thirstiness. The Aztec warrior was supreme in his craft and, so long as his superiority was maintained, the list of subject states continued to expand. It remained for a small band of marauding Spaniards, with their firearms, to throw the entire system completely off

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balance and for the great Aztec power to crumble literally over­ night. There were of course other factors besides explosives to account for this. The highly superstitious Aztecs were con­ ditioned to accept the white invaders as so many gods, as worthy of service in their own right as any of the gods of old. While the Aztecs were predisposed by their superstitions to invite disaster, the Spaniards were preconditioned by their own religion to be almost heroically strengthened against the shocking rituals that were being practised before their eyes. In addition to this, their oppressive system had left the Aztecs friendless. They had been alone in their great strength and were destined to be equally alone in their fatal weakness. Other tribes did not hesitate to befriend the invaders against their hated overlords. Inherent division brought inevitable disaster to them all. Aztec administration was extremely effective. The chief per­ sonnel consisted of the relatives of the ruler holding high offices, members of the priesthood and certain clan office-holders. No attempt had been made to administer in detail the conquered tribes who, so long as they conformed to tribute requirements, were left very much to their own devices. Thus there was a high degree of administrative decentralization in its very nature. Yet the whole system was bound together by an effective communi­ cations system, which facilitated the transference of both power and information to points of urgency without delay. Warriors, couriers and traders could move easily about an efficient roadnetwork. The roads were equipped with rest-houses and shrines. Couriers carried pictographic communications in forked sticks. It is said that for important missions an artist accompanied the runner to interpret the message. Cortes certainly remarks that an important embassy from Montezuma was accompanied by some clever painters, and it is known that the Aztec ruler knew all about the Spaniards and just what they and their equipment looked like before they actually met.28 Travel and communica­ tions in contemporary Europe were much less reliable. The Aztecs improved upon the inventions of others. They held stocks of amatl (paper) supplied to them as tribute. The paper was made up into rolls and sheets. There were a number of types, a common one being the yellow paper from Amocoztitlan, made from the fibre of the wild fig, known as ficus petiolaris.29 The Aztec writing was non-phonetic but of an advanced pictographic type. The majority of records comprised genealogies, territorial reports, land records, registers of the calpulli (or wards) and tribute rolls. Literature comprised annals and history, year counts, books of the day and the hours, even diaries. Among the items

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that survive are tonalamatl, or reference books for priestly guidance, consisting of a long paper strip folded screen-wise for easy handling.30 The constant theme was the past. It is sad that so much was destroyed by the Conquistadores, whose minds were set on the gold and other riches that the Aztec exploiters had themselves collected to excess, followed closely by the pious ignorants who sought to destroy everything they thought idola­ trous. How much could the dominance in the minds of the invaders of a sound administrative awareness have served both themselves and those who came after! THE

SPANISH

EMPIRE

IN

AMERI CA

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the world was looking westwards across the oceans and the two Iberian kingdoms of Portugal and Spain were well placed to exploit their geographical advantages. Of the two, Spain was to prove the best-equipped to sustain an overseas empire, though this must not lead us to belittle the really remarkable contribution made by Portugal in this field.31 The Spanish development took place largely within a framework of medieval ideas and institutions. The actual dis­ coveries and conquests were undertaken by freelance adventurers on a basis of private enterprise, the acquirement of riches being the main objective, although it would be unwise to assess at an unduly low level the great flowering of the spirit of adventure that inspired at that time the seafarers of all the western nations. The political and administrative institutions required by the over­ seas expansions would be organized out of existing forms as the situation developed, but the existence of effective governmental machinery and traditions of public service in the European homeland was to facilitate the remarkable expansion of Spain in the vast territories of Central and South America with which we are concerned here. This was greatly assisted by the issue of a Papal bull in 1493 assigning and dividing legal ownership of the New World between Portugal and Spain. In Spain, Cadiz and Seville were both strategically placed to contend for primacy as the centre from which the transatlantic navigation and trade should be organized, but the matter was settled by royal decree in 1503 when the first organ of colonial administration, the Casa de la Contratacion de las Indias, was established at Seville, with the object of promoting and regu­ lating trade and navigation to the New World. Henceforth all sailings were to clear from and return to Seville, Cadiz becoming a mere port of call. Unlike the already established Casa da India

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at Lisbon, the Casa at Seville was not designed to organize the West Indies trade on the Crown’s behalf. It was to be a purely regulatory body, the actual trading being left to private enter­ prise. It operated at the outset very much as a customs house, with a Treasurer, an Accountant and a Factor, or business manager.32 It transferred imported gold direct to the Seville mint. But it was soon to extend its functions by taking over trusteeship of the numerous estates of those who died in the Indies, looking after the heirs’ interests. It also licensed and recorded passengers to the Indies, the State being concerned to prevent the migration of Muslims and Jews. The Casa, as the expert body, was in a position to supply a good deal of the technical knowledge and control, especially in fitting out the fleets which operated on the Crown’s behalf. It inspected privately-owned vessels in the interests of safety and seaworthiness. It licensed navigators, operating as early as 1508 through its piloto mayor (chief pilot). The first eminent holders of this office were, in succession, Amerigo Vespucci, Juan de Solis and Sebastian Cabot. Under them Europe’s first school of navigation was established. The Casa kept important records of discoveries in the Indies, main­ tained an up-to-date chart and a continuing oversight of charts issued to shops in the trade. Apart from its regulatory and administrative functions, the Casa, as was normal practice, exer­ cised both civil and criminal juridiction in cases involving trade and offences on board ship. Part of this jurisdiction, relating to the local shipping interests, passed in 1543 to the Consulado, or merchant guild established by the merchant houses of Seville, which took over control of this trade and developed into a rich and powerful body.33 The Casa was virtually a ‘Board of Trade’ concerned with the execution of policy. Except at such times when the Crown allowed matters to run by default, it looked outside for overall direction. This was the task of the monarch, advised by the Council of Castile, and a matter to which Ferdinand had paid special attention, although his major object had been the some­ what restricted one of obtaining as much as he could out of the new lands. Matters of general policy were apt to get lost among the many more compulsive questions with which the Council had to deal. Administrative problems, on the other hand, where policy was involved were usually referred by the King to individual Ministers, usually bishop Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca, who was assisted by the royal secretary, Lope de Conchillos. Together they drafted almost all decrees concerning the Indies, and selected, with the King’s approval, most of the senior officials,

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who operated through their informal secretariat, which had to deal with increasing volumes of paper work. They even organized a special postal service to carry correspondence between Court and Casa, and Casa and the Indies, which was remarkably efficient for the times.34 Thus in Seville administration of the Indies was concentrated in a tightly organized bureaucracy with its own services, from 1514 even with its own royal seal, entrusted by the King to Fonseca for the authentication of important decrees and decisions relating to the Indies. The operation of the Casa administration has been criticized for its complications and procrastination, but in this it reflected the normal administrative methods of the age which, as we well know, were invariably involved — there can be little doubt that this organization did an essential job with an effectiveness that was seldom equalled elsewhere. The overseas ends of the system were still somewhat sketchy. At the outset the men on the spot, the Conquistadors, were very much a law unto themselves. An established pattern of government and control had to be gradually evolved and if not tactfully imposed ruthless power would certainly be forthcoming. Columbus had been made Viceroy over the new territories, as well as Admiral of the Seas of the New World. He lost his governorship in 1499 but retained his emoluments and Admiralty jurisdiction until his death seven years later. Subsequent viceroys and governors acted autocratically and had to be curbed. Patronage and jurisdiction were retained by the Crown. At an early stage, in accordance with established custom at home, townships were incorporated at the request of the settlers. In 1511 the first Audiencia of qualified lawyers was appointed in Santo Domingo, also at the settlers’ request, to provide appel­ late jurisdiction independent of the Governor. An independent Treasury organization, consisting of Treasurer, Comptroller and Factor, was also established and made directly responsible to Fonseca’s office in Spain. Thus already in Hispaniola there were three more or less independent organs of royal authority: the Governor, the Audiencia and the Treasury.35 With the expansion of the empire to the mainland, following the victorious exploits of Cortes in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru, and the extension of Spanish settlement in the new realms, similar problems of government and administration inevitably arose, and in an even more complex form. In Mexico Cortes was made Captain-General, a commander without an army, but the King would not entrust him with the civil power. In fact, in 1535 Antonio de Mendoza was made

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Viceroy with both civil and military authority and Cortes was left to concentrate his energies upon the management of his considerable New World properties, until he lost patience and returned to Spain in 1539. Francisco Pizarro, with the spectacle of Cortes’s earlier triumph before his eyes, was astute enough to obtain before he set out appointment as adelantado and governor of the kingdom he proposed to conquer. After the capture of the Inca capital, Cuzco, in 1533 Pizarro decided to establish his own capital at Lima, the City of the Kings, situated near the sea, which was militarily more defensible and more accessible to the outside world. In Peru feuds among the conquerors and continu­ ing war with the resisting Inca meant the gradual elimination of the adventurers. Francisco Pizarro himself was murdered in 1543. Thus the rule of the Conquistadors was quarrelsome and brief, for they were hardly the men to settle down as obedient bureaucrats. Inevitably they were supplanted, once their con­ quests were consolidated, by officials from Spain who were more of the standard pattern. But these in their turn were to discover on the spot that the conditions and problems were very different from what they had been used to at home. The new society in America continued to exist as two distinct layers: the Indian peasantry and the new emigrant settlers who came out from Spain in considerable numbers to create a restless, turbulent community, which was to be much less amenable to official supervision than their less enterprising countrymen at home. There was no question of assimilation. The new settlers found it both expedient, for reasons of personal security, and desirable, since it fitted their own inclina­ tions, to settle together in townships, leaving the people to look after the land as they had done under the old regime. In order, however, to control and exploit the land, the system of granting encomiendas, originally used in Spain for territory taken from the Moors, was introduced. An encomienda was basically the right to demand tribute, and initially also labour, from the Indians of a specified district.36 In this way the encomendero stepped into the shoes of the Aztec or Inca ruler and drew tribute and services hitherto rendered to them. In return for defending the encomienda against other exploiters, for the appointment and payment of priests in the villages, and for the cost of the general defence of the province, the encomendero was able to build himself a house, maintain a household and feed and arm a personal following. As the economy developed the encomienda system also developed, and such other factors as grazing and mining rights had to be provided for. The

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encomiendas themselves were destined to decline with the subse­ quent decline of the native economy. Another institution brought from Spain was the traditional municipality which was already in decline at home, but was destined to have a new lease of life in the New World. Incorpora­ tion was obtained from the Crown and the institution of corporate towns was used initially for settling conquered armies, either as officials of the municipality or as vecinos, i.e. legally enrolled householders. The town was controlled by a cabildo, or council, of up to twelve regidores, initially nominated by the commander. These regidores were to elect annually from among the general body of vecinos two alcaldes, or municipal magistrates. Usually they were selected from a limited list by the commander, but there were instances of open election, although this was regarded not as a virtue but as a dangerously anarchic method in con­ temporary Spain, where it was customary for such offices to circulate among heads of leading families. With the discovery of silver at Potosi in Peru this precious metal was to become the chief motive force of the Spanish American economy. The cabildos were the main instrument of administration. They tended to become closed oligarchies of the wealthy. Their regi­ dores were usually unpaid but they had many perquisites. Thus they controlled the distribution of the land and, as ranchers, produced provisions for the town. As mine-owners they could control the labour allocation. They selected the alcaldes, who would be responsible for hearing any private suit in which they might be involved. They were privileged and too frequently venal.37 Records of the Cabildo of Mexico City indicate that it met regularly, followed a set procedure and conducted its meetings in an orderly and serious manner. Almost anything of interest to the neighbourhood could figure in its agenda, from the impound­ ing of straying pigs and the disposal of garbage to such matters as water supply, police regulation, organization of Indian labour and the management of municipal property. Public entertain­ ments, such as bullfights and processions, had to be organized. Administrative arrangements were made with neighbouring towns. In 1533 Mexico City became involved in the consequences of too much timber felling and five years later a strict licensing system was introduced. There was literally no end to the scope and variety of the responsibilities thrown upon local government in these rapidly developing communities. Nor were the cabildos backward on occasion in sending advice to the King concerning questions of empire.38

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There was quite a burden of administrative work. At the outset it was not unusual to apportion the major offices among the regidores: one serving as alferez or standard-bearer, in charge of public ceremonial; one as alguacil mayor or chief constable, another as fiel ejecutor, inspector of weights and measures; and yet another as obrero mayor, or commissioner of public works. These prominent citizens drew their remuneration from the fees and fines levied in the normal course of public business. They employed salaried officials to carry out the actual work, chief among whom was the escribano de cabildo, or town clerk, who kept the records and dealt with the correspondence. Each of the regidores mentioned had his own personal staff, whom he paid out of the perquisites of his office. Very soon the large cities found a need for technicians, such as a medidor, or surveyor, or an alarife, or municipal architect. Extensive town planning was undertaken from the outset, which implied the development of the gridiron pattern of building-block and street layout. The extent and monumental magnificence of Mexico City had already struck English travellers and filled with pride the settlers, who had known nothing so grand in the homeland; even such cities as Seville and Toledo were eclipsed.39 The Church of Rome occupied an important place in the development and government of the Indies. By special Papal bull of 1506 the rulers of Castile were given authority for the organi­ zation and management of churches in overseas territories. On this basis Ferdinand developed the Patronato, by which the over­ seas churches were organized. As Patron, the King endowed his viceroys and governors with the power to act as vice-patrons, to enforce his will in matters ecclesiastical. The central administra­ tion of the Patronato was placed in the hands of a committee of the Council of the Indies. Within the larger organization the Patronato had its own secretariat and archives, but the King often intervened personally in ecclesiastical affairs, exercising a quasi-pontificial authority. Tithes were granted to the overseas bishops on all products — except precious metals which were to be distributed on a similar basis to those at home, including the reservation of one-ninth to the Crown. At the outset missions under the Mendicant Orders had carried the Christian religion to the villages and for a time there was controversy between them and the Bishops of the Patronato, who sometimes had a foot in both camps. But eventually the former were superseded by a gradually extending system of parishes. The Indian version of Christianity had overtones of its own: many natives continued to adhere to paganism. IIK

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The new colonial system of the Spanish New World was exploitative, the settlers depending upon the native economy for its food and most of its labour. Its original band of propertyowning settlers eventually expanded to accommodate the growing crowd of professional men, officials and traders called into existence by the developing town community. Maintaining a fair balance between the two communities was a function of the agents of the royal paternalism,40 but, in the light of the prime importance placed upon increasing the revenues of the Crown from the Indies, such a balance was not easy to achieve. A regular flood of petitions from individuals and groups seeking favours — which could often be granted only at the expense of others — poured in upon the Crown, which did its best to apply equitable rules in reaching its decisions. Every consideration was given to the stream of recommendations from clergy, officials, lawyers and other bodies, which flowed in from America, and the outcome was a massive volume of statute law, whose magni­ tude and quality is well exemplified in the Recopilacion de los leyes de las Indias of 1680, which gathered existing legislation together. As Parry remarks, referring to the more general decrees and codes, ‘It is possible to trace in them — though with many vacillations and inconsistencies — the development of conscious official policy in the ordering of colonial society.’41 It had soon become evident in Spain that the Crown’s initial object of applying the same rules and creating the same sort of society in the new territories was being frustrated by the very different basic conditions. The natives were not conditioned either to accept obligations or to reap the fruits of freedoms which were novel to them, though accepted in Europe as a matter of course. For example, to the Indian the grant of free­ dom meant the liberty to run off into the bush to live as he wished. Consequently, to ensure the continuance of food and labour supplies to the settlements it was considered necessary to place each village under a Spanish patron with enhanced powers of compulsion. One thing led to another and, with conditions as they were, it became clear that the necessary degree of flexibility was lacking on both sides. In this way the encomienda, which had been introduced to solve this very difficulty, inevitably infringed the legal liberty of the Indian by replacing a general compulsion to work by a specific personal servitude to an individual Spaniard. It can of course be argued that from the standpoint of freedom there was little in it, but the basic assumptions were different, so that the rules applicable to one type of society were found to be quite inappro-

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priate to the other. The encomienda system began to draw criticism from Spanish quarters and, while the Laws of Burgos of 1512 — the first general code governing the status and treat­ ment of natives in the Spanish Indies — continued the system, an attempt was made to limit its obvious abuses. Persistent criticism had had the effect of turning King Charles (reg. 151856) against the system — a dislike shared by many of his advisers — with the result that every opportunity was taken to ameliorate its weaknesses. A basic trouble was that the authorities in Spain and the settlers on the spot were at cross-purposes as to the needs of the situation, and were both incapable, from their frequently diametrically opposed standpoints, of comprehending what would in the long run prove the best solution to all the parties concerned. For the time being the encomienda was often the only means by which the necessary supplies could be assured and it was to continue as a working institution until, with its progressive weakening throughout the sixteenth century, it practically disappeared in the seventeenth.42 The labour problem came to be dealt with by a different form of compulsion, virtually the introduction of the corvee system, which was commonplace at the time in Europe. In America it was really an adaptation of the mita of the Incas in Peru and was known in New Spain as repartimiento. Each pueblo, or settled place, was called upon to supply a fixed proportion of its male population for a fixed number of weeks to undertake public work, covering especially the construction of roads, bridges and buildings of many kinds, and also silver mining. The allocation was made by the juez repartidor, a local magistrate who had to decide upon the scale of priorities, but subject always to the overriding authorization by administrative order granted only by the Viceroy, governing Audiencias or, in New Spain, a specially introduced court of summary jurisdiction, the Juzgado General de lndios.43 With the object of encouraging the Indian communities to adopt Spanish habits, techniques and forms of government, a staff of district supervisors known as corregidores had been intro­ duced. In the second half of the sixteenth century these officials took over the social responsibilities which had been left to the encomenderos. Unlike the corregidore of a Spanish town, whether at home or in the Indies, who, as representative of the Crown, was a magistrate and professional administrator of con­ siderable dignity and usually a trained lawyer, the corregidore de lndios was an amateur, selected usually from among the settlers, who had no encomienda or landed estate. The latter

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were untrained, appointed for only two or three years, paid only a small salary and inevitably encouraged by the conditions to regard their office as a source of quick profit. This was in practice the least successful of the Spanish colonial experiments in public administration. The local corregidores lacked supervision and there was little to prevent the office from becoming a greater source of petty tyranny than the encomienda had ever been.44 Complaints were rife and obviously much oppression went by without redress. Yet in New Spain the vigorous Juzgado de Indios has left extensive records of the cases, handled with exceptional dispatch for the times and a high degree of accessibility to the Indian. In Peru, which had no such court, petitions had to go through the complicated and dilatory procedure of the audiencias. The whole system was weakened by the absence of effective local supervision. Complete assimilation was seen by responsible officials and others as the only real solution to the problem of control and administration, but as we have seen this was never achieved. The King depended mainly on the Council of the Indies for advice on the conduct of overseas affairs. This council had originated, sometime between 1511 and 1519, as a standing com­ mittee of the Council of Castile and graduated to independent status in 1524. It began in a small way as a President, originally a churchman, four or five Councillors, all lawyers, a Secretary, a Fiscal, a Relator and a Porter. The membership varied, but lawyers always predominated, and the number of councillors was increased to nine under Philip II, and twelve under his successor. Apart from its important advisory functions the Council acted both as a supreme court of appeal and as a directive bureau for the supervision of colonial affairs. It deliberated, assessing the validity of proposals emanating usually from viceroys and audiencias: the King decided. Its authority, however, extended over all overseas matters, except (1) that after its establishment overseas in 1570 the Inquisition was subject to its own Supreme in Spain, and (2) after the accession of Philip II royal revenue and expenditure in the Indies, as in Europe, was centralized under the Council of Finance. In all other matters the Council of the Indies was independent of the Council of Castile and other royal councils. Inevitably its early informality was gradually eroded by the introduction of a code of rules, and, with the growing burden and complexity of its functions, the practice developed of entrusting administrative matters to small specialist committees. Under Ovando’s leadership it became a very well-informed and effective

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body. As part of the movement to build Madrid as the administra­ tive capital of Spain the Council was able to develop an adequate secretarial organization and to accumulate effective archives which ‘survive to this day as impressive evidence of its slow, thorough, bureaucratic efficiency’.45 Under such an assiduous administrator as Philip II, whose flair for grappling with administrative detail we have already touched upon above, the system worked well, applying ‘restrain­ ing discipline rather than inspiring leadership’,46 a brake upon rash violence rather than a spur to creative action. In the existing situation this was a wise policy, but with the advent of a less competent ruler, procrastination became the rule, decisionreaching practically impossible. The inevitable increase in staff and paper rose to a flood. Thus in 1604 the office of secretary was divided into two, one for each viceroyalty. Ornamental offices were added. Numerous supernumerary appointments were made. The time required to answer a colonial governor’s request, never short, was doubled and more. More and more rules were laid down for the conduct of government and administration on the spot. Surveillance by Crown officials was extended. The tasks of administration passed beyond the capacity of the available officials, especially in the sphere of finance, where the audit of accounts dropped chronically in arrear. Such a degree of bureaucratic centralization, coupled with slow and difficult communications meant that local initiative and expedition were placed at a discount. Lack of trust in the Crown led to an insistence that all important and many unimportant decisions should be made in Spain. A year was the best one could expect for an expeditious answer, two was nearer the average, and this did not allow for the common administra­ tive need to obtain further information before any such decision could be made. No system could work to such requirements. And when we add to the intricacies of procedures the mountains of paper prescribed by the centre, it is only necessary to visualize the great complexity and numerousness of the local bureaucracy, eager to draw its perquisites of office but lacking almost as a normal consequence any eagerness to get the job done, to wonder that anything at all was ever accomplished. Even so, Philip II had been able to infuse sufficient purpose into the administrative system to enable it to survive with few changes for a century and a half after his death. This was no mean achievement, but during this period the control of the Crown was greatly weakened, especially by developments in the sale of office, to which reference will be made below.

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In considering how great a boon the invention of a really competent and incorrupt public administration might have proved to the future of the Spanish Empire it is as well to recollect that the task itself was bound in any case to be an almost superhuman one, calling upon its minions to deal with situations that could not possibly have been foreseen very far in advance, and affected by social and economic changes whose impact was to impose upon the administration tasks such as had never been undertaken before. Parry’s summing up could hardly be bettered: ‘These bureaucrats, passing their offices from one to an o th er by private sale, were m any of them the products of the universities and law schools of Spain or Spanish A m erica. They m ight be rapacious and — within recognised limits — venal, but they h ad an e s p r i t d e c o r p s , a training, a respect fo r precedent, a pride in their profession, which surm ounted the shoddy, hand-to-m outh system which appointed them . T he Spanish E m pire in the seventeenth century suffered from a crippling lack of resources and faltering direction a t the centre, its adm inistrative procedure was pettifogging, com plex an d slow; but, subject to these defects, by the standards of the tim e the governm ent was well served by its officials. It h ad detailed and accurate inform ation regularly supplied; on the few occasions w hen it succeeded in m aking up its m ind to give a definite order it w ould usually in tim e get th a t order carried out, though only a t the cost of im m ense persistence and effort. This degree of centralised control was dearly bought. A dm inistrative costs absorbed an ever-greater proportion of the Indies revenue. F o r the private citizen the cost in tim e and m oney of even the simplest official business cam e n ear to prohibition. A t the end of the century the w hole life of the em pire seemed in danger of strangulation, n o t only by external enemies preying upon its trade and cutting its com m unications b u t by the host of internal parasites preying upon the livelihood of its people.’47

REFERENCES 1 Victor W. von Hagen, The Ancient Sun Kingdoms (Thames & Hudson, 1962), p. 234. 2 Von Hagen, op. cit., pp. 230-1. 3 Von Hagen, op. cit., p. 237. 4 Von Hagen, op. cit., p. 243. 5 Von Hagen, op. cit., p. 244. 6 Von Hagen, op. cit., p. 269. 7 Von Hagen, op. cit., p. 265. 8 Von Hagen, op. cit., p. 271. 9 Von Hagen, op. cit., p. 275. 10 William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Peru (1847, Dent’s Everyman edition, 1908), pp. 71-4.

EARLY AMERICAN CIVILIZATIONS 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

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J. Alden Mason, T h e A n c ie n t C iv iliz a tio n s o f P eru (Penguin, 1957), pp. 202-23. Mason, op. c it., pp. 208-10. Von Hagen, op. c it., p. 305. Von Hagen, op. c it., p. 312. Mason, op. c it., p. 167. Von Hagen, op. c it., p. 120. Von Hagen, o p. c it., p. 128. Von Hagen, o p. c it., p. 155. Von Hagen, o p. c it., pp. 155-6. Sylvanus G. Morley, T h e A n c ie n t M a y a (Stanford, U.S., Revised 1956), p. 145; q.v. for further detail of the Mayan system. Von Hagen, o p. c it., pp. 170-1. Von Hagen, o p . c it., p. 30. Von Hagen, op. c it., p. 67. Von Hagen, o p. c it., p. 68. George C. Vaillant, T h e A z t e c s o f M e x ic o (Doubleday, Doran, N.Y., 1944; Penguin edn., 1950), p. 68. Von Hagen, o p . c it., p. 47. Von Hagen, op. c it., pp. 100-1. Von Hagen, o p. c it., p. 114. Von Hagen, o p . c it., p. 116. Vaillant, op. c it., p. 190 and plate 59. F or example, see C. R. Boxer, T h e P o rtu g u e se S e a b o rn e E m p ir e 1 415-1825 (Hutchinson, 1969). J. H. Parry, T h e S pan ish S e a b o rn e E m p ir e (Hutchinson, 1966), p. 56. Parry, o p . c it., pp. 124-5, Parry, o p . c it., p. 58. Parry, o p. c it., pp. 59-60. Parry, o p. c it., p. 100. Parry, op. c it., p. 108. Parry, o p . c it., p. 109. Parry, o p. c it., p. 111. Parry, o p. c it., p. 173. Parry, o p. c it., p. 174. Parry, o p . c it., p. 186 Parry, op. c it., p. 187. Parry, op. c it., p. 190. Parry, op. c it., p. 196. Parry, op. c it., p. 197. Parry, op. c it., pp. 210-11.

CHAPTER 5

THE NEW ADMINISTRATION BEGINS TO EMERGE IN EUROPE : 1610 to 1786 The present chapter will be concerned mainly with, though not confined strictly to, the seventeenth century in Europe. Out of the social and economic complexity that marked the polity of the West at this time two important movements, or rather trends, have been selected for special attention by scholars,1 labelled respectively ‘absolutism’ and ‘mercantilism’, which, although denoting what are on the surface diametrically opposite aspects, are in fact closely interwoven ingredients of a greater com­ plexity. As concepts they are imprecise, being very variously defined, but since they both presuppose a remoulding of the administrative structure and practices and can often be associ­ ated in the same political context, they are ideas of particular significance to the administrator, and, with such outstanding administrators as Colbert in France and Samuel Pepys in England actively involved, the administrative importance of the period needs no further emphasis. Absolutism involved the drawing away of the power from the smaller areas, or provinces, and its concentration in the hands of the central, usually royal, government, a movement calling for the active aid and development of administration and finance, the strengthening of the bureaucratic element in human, especially government, affairs and the improvement of the information services. Statistics were becoming important, though mainly for government use, since the citizenry, still wedded to the old ways and suspicious of state action, were obstructive to the collection of personal data. As late as 1753 proposals for a census were rejected in Britain. Although the United States, not unduly influenced by tradition, introduced its first census in 1790, France and Britain did not follow suit until 1801. The strength of abso­ lutism varied widely, flourishing in France until the Revolution and execution of Louis XVI in 1793, but receiving a mortal setback in England when Charles I was eliminated by Parliament in 1649. It throve in Russia right up to 1917, while in Germany, its sway greatly weakened by the survival of medieval decentrali­ zation, it continued well into the nineteenth century. Mercantilism is essentially an economic concept, symptomatic

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of the growing state system. It was concerned with wealth as the basis of state power, filling the phase between feudal decentraliza­ tion and the brief expansionist period of laissez faire. The state, in intervening to break down internal barriers to economic inter­ change which were characteristic of the earlier phase, was con­ cerned to manipulate foreign policy in the direction best calcu­ lated to maximize the nation’s riches. The later view of mercantilism as primarily a system designed to achieve an excess of exports over imports in terms of goods, in order to ensure an overall importation of bullion, if erroneously conceived, had a logic of its own. The excessive urge to obtain gold and silver, which except for display are unproductive in themselves, was a serious factor in Spain’s spectacular decline during the inter­ vening centuries. As the first important objective of mercantilism was the coalescence of a multitude of internal markets into one, it was in France, where such barriers had proliferated to a high degree, that both central and local administration had to be most radically recast. It is with France therefore that we should begin. RICHELIEU

AND

LOUIS

XIII

Both movements just mentioned are clearly exemplified in seventeenth-century France in the reigns of Louis XIII (reg. 1610-43) and Louis XIV {reg. 1643-1715). Under Louis XIII the important period was the administration of Richelieu from the time he became chief minister in 1629 to his death in 1642. He had been consecrated bishop in his father’s preferment in 1607, at the early age of twenty-two which had required the special dispensation of the Pope, and in 1614 he served as a clerical deputy to the last States General to be called before the French Revolution. His advancement at Court began with the almonership to Anne, Louis’s consort, whence he passed to the secretary­ ship of the King. By 1624 he had received the status of chief minister, though for the actual appointment he had to wait five more years. Richelieu had become Cardinal in 1622 and received a dukedom in 1631. Thus, quite apart from his natural ability he occupied a position of power in state, society and church. His over-riding objective as statesman was to concentrate the power of the King at the expense of the localities; to maintain, by strong administration, the internal peace against personal intrigue and rebellion and, by power diplomacy, France’s power beyond her borders. If his personality was not such as to make him a favourite, even of the King, his unchallenged competence was to ensure his paramountcy in the royal favour.

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Royal government in seventeenth-century France was personal government. All political action was taken in the King’s name and Louis X III’s ministers did not receive delegated powers of any consequence. They were guided by rights and traditions which permitted them to act in limited spheres, but individually and not collectively as members of Council. The King’s great interest in the detail of administration meant that special attention had to be given to the preparation of despatches and other documents for his information or signature. His displeasure at the mere suspicion of his being left out of any piece of business was instant and unmeasured. Such a situation provided an admirable opportunity for a man of Richelieu’s drive and ability, who had the full confidence of the King. As principal minister he found little difficulty in working through his colleagues and some element of hierarchy took shape within the ministry, with Richelieu acting as inter­ mediary between ministers and King. With the motive power in such appropriate hands it was possible to obtain a degree of speed and efficiency in action such as the situation required but which was so generally lacking in the regulation-bound admini­ strations of the time. Not that his was an example to be recom­ mended and copied, for he chose his colleagues not so much for their administrative capacities or for their knowledge of the affairs of state, as for their personal attachment and loyalty to him. His was a genius-system that worked well so long as there was a human dynamo at the seat of power. Ranum sums up: ‘W ithout creating new offices or institutions, Richelieu acquired certain pow ers reserved only fo r the king. T he force of his person­ ality, first on the king and next on the m inisters w hom he selected, was responsible fo r the nature of the central governm ent in the last years of Louis X III.’2

Richelieu’s masterly deployment of the royal patronage was not of course achieved without a fierce struggle for power, which he had to carry forward continuously to maintain his dominance, but he seems to have played his cards so adeptly that his supremacy was never really threatened right up to his death. The Chancellor, Superintendents of Finance and Secretaries of State, and other place-holders who made up the royal executive, frequently wrote to Richelieu acknowledging themselves out­ wardly and with affection as his ‘creatures’, a term widely used at the time which indicated a relationship between Richelieu and the other ministers very different from anything that exists today.3

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It was moreover Richelieu’s firm policy to obtain royal appoint­ ments for members of his family. Thus a brother became a cardinal, a niece a duchess and a cousin was even made marshal of the royal armies. Preference in a multitude of official posts was given to more distant members of the family and, though he might be angered should he discover that he had appointed an incompetent, the family honour was never permitted to be depreciated by dismissal. Such a system met the family require­ ments left over from a declining feudalism and at the same time gave Richelieu a powerful weapon against the opposition endemic in such a system. It formed a natural means of communication, so that Richelieu appeared to sense every intrigue and scandal before anything had actually occurred. He is credited with having built up an efficient secret service, but it seems that with so many relatives and friends in key positions, a formal security service was hardly necessary.4 Naturally the demand for office was insatiable and the great personal advantages of the system were offset not only by the normal inefficiencies of having incom­ petents in administrative positions but also by the additional burden placed upon the chief minister himself from having to cope day in and day out with the importunities of seekers after office. Among the higher administrative officials the Secretaries of State considerably increased their status and responsibilities during this period. As in England their office had grown out of a select body of royal clerks whom the king had from early times appointed to assist with his personal correspondence. As has been usual with this sort of development we find little contemporary reference to it. Nothing much was written in France about the work of the royal secretariat. In a reglement of 1568, however, Henry III had taken steps to curtail the powers of the royal secretaries. Four of them were to be commissioned and desig­ nated ‘secretaries of state’ but as yet the title had no special significance. Their main duty was to read the king’s correspon­ dence to him, to prepare replies at his dictation and to keep extracts for future reference. The king signed the letters, which also bore the counter-signature of the secretary below. Obviously these secretaries were just simple clerks occupied in manual work, but it is not easy to exaggerate the inestimable personal advantage arising from their close access to the king, and it was logical that out of these modest offices the more powerful secretaryships of state should develop. Specialization had come during the sixteenth century when the royal correspondence came to be organized on a geographical

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basis, by country and province, and the secretaries allocated to specific departments, which were originally assigned to them on the basis of seniority. But rotation was adopted by Henry III to prevent the growth of political friendships with ambassadors and provincial officials, which might enhance the power of the secretaries against the king. The organization of the departments was geared to the system of couriers, in which, certainly under Louis XIII, the secretaries took part. Details of the geographical distribution during the reign of Francis II (reg. 1544-60) show that to each secretary was assigned certain foreign countries as well as a group of home provinces.5 Not only had these positions become hereditary, passing from father to son, but also the archives had been passed down as family possessions. Richelieu is known to have complained that, because of this custom, copies of the royal correspondence were not readily available, and to fill the gap he requested ambassadors and other officials to send him copies. During the seventeenth century the old geographical basis was superseded. Separate departments of War and Foreign Affairs appeared which were to provide the basis of later ministerial assignments. In Louis X IlI’s last reglement for the Secretaries of State, made in 1626, the Departments of War and of Foreign Affairs were given permanent jurisdictional form for the first time.6 By this reglement the scope of the war-secretaryship was extended from purely internal matters to cover correspon­ dence with the armies outside France. The growth of the importance of the office of Secretary of State can be attributed to the expanding contribution of admini­ stration in the new centralized system of government and the occupancy by the secretaries of a vantage point in the com­ munications network between provincial councils, royal councils and the king himself, which was of key importance, and in which the secretaries were well placed to understand what was going on throughout the realm. As repositories of unique information their advice was needed; they were expert interpreters of the working of the administration; and to their basic menial duties were added those of counsellor. They also accumulated budgetary and legal knowledge, and of course their constant contacts with the king enhanced their influence if only through the power of suggestion. They did not, it is true, supersede the royal councils but their administrative responsibilities took them into all areas of government and involved them in the handling of administra­ tive matters from the more insignificant to the most important. They even shared in the making of recommendations for appoint­ ments. As Ranum states,7 ‘Although the secretaries were not

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equal in rank and precedence to the great officers of the realm, they enjoyed broad administrative powers, making them an integral part of the administration at the highest level’. With the consolidation and centralization of power in the royal hands financial matters automatically gained in importance. It had long been the custom to discuss finance en conseil and even to appoint a surintendant des finances, but he did not collect or spend the king’s monies and his position continued on an informal basis. Yet under Louis XIII the Superintendent of Finance — frequently held jointly — was recognized as a chief councillor of the king. He remained outside the influence of Richelieu himself, who showed little interest in and even less knowledge of the details of accounting and taxation. Although his position was not defined in the reglements the Superintendent was head of the financial administration, which was certainly subject to and constantly modified by reglement. He seems to have submitted his decisions for review both to the king and to the administrative councils, and this subjected him to a serious check, although his prestige and knowledge usually left him with the function of deciding.8 Council meetings for financial purposes and the sub­ mission of regular accounts were carefully prescribed by the rules. The Superintendent’s instructions, following council approval, had to be properly sealed and countersigned. Although the superintendents’ financial activities were care­ fully controlled, their office carried certain concurrent authority to act executively within the sphere of the particular council with which they were associated. For example, they might be asked to execute orders of arrest in the king’s name or share with the Chancellor responsibility for keeping close watch over Paris for disturbances due to unpopular measures, especially where decisions concerning taxes and prices were involved. They were also responsible for a good deal of the higher financial administration: for example, preparation of the etat general des finances, a budget showing estimated revenues and allocations for expenditure.9 They worked with officials of the Treasury throughout the year and supervised the accounts.10 They counter­ signed the approved statements of payments and other disburse­ ments. They worked closely with the courts and other bodies outside the Conseil du Roi and conducted personal correspondence with the several provincial institutions as well. Thus they already took responsibility for those several financial activities of the government which were eventually to be specialized and shared among a number of separate officials and authorities. At the same time they participated in a wide range of other administra-

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tive activities. As servants of the King they also had the unenviable duty of meeting the royal demands, couched as imperative requests for money, without any question raised as to whether sufficient funds were available. In this sense Richelieu himself was often brought into the picture, upon the special request of the king that he should see that such an order was promptly fulfilled. Moreover, he in his turn often depended upon the Superintendents for necessary supplies and sometimes had to call upon the king’s assistance in extracting the necessary funds. The changes in French government and administration during this period were to have important consequences in the future, but their immediate development was largely informal, brought about by Richelieu ‘by inspiring confidence in a well-meaning but unimaginative king’.11 The changes that have been briefly outlined, namely, in the functions of the Secretaries of State, in the relationships between the several sectors of the Administra­ tion and in the increased attention given to finance under the Superintendents of Finance, were to pave the way to the much more sophisticated system of administration that was to be shaped during the following, much more purposive, reign. In the wider realm a definite shift of power was taking place, away from the nobility to the Crown. Fortified castles were being demolished; local administration was passing to public officials. A basic remoulding of society was both an essential cause and an accumu­ lating effect of the administrative metamorphosis. In considering the administrative consequences of political action, whose under­ lying impulsions are not easy to differentiate, it is essential, though difficult, sometimes to avoid putting the cart before the horse. COLBERT

AND

LOUIS

XIV

As we have just seen, Richelieu, despite his addiction to the older governmental forms and objectives, had in fact inaugurated administrative changes which were to facilitate the flowering of French power and culture that was to take place during the long reign of Louis XIV. With the royal government accepting new duties in pursuance of its autocratic aims, more information was essential and the need for statistics imposed itself upon practical men. Certainly this was the age of reason which was marked by remarkable scientific advances, but it is possible in retrospect to read too much into the rational activities of government. Even Richelieu in his Testament Politique had paid tribute to the ideal of government by reason, an attitude which,

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in the light of his actual methods, may well have been more a reflection of current public opinion than a true interpretation of how he really felt. After all the scientific approach was not new: it originated way back in the days when the most primitive members of our race began to apply their brains to the things they saw around them, to devise the simplest tool, particularly to reach for more effective ways of verbal communication. Louis XIV, oftimes known as le Roi Soleil, was in some ways akin to the meticulous Philip II of Spain, whom we have already considered. He concerned himself with every aspect of govern­ ment, extending from broad policy to the least significant detail, involving perhaps a problem of the most humble citizen. He had a passion for information. He gloried in his capacity for work and invited reams of correspondence, so that there was some justification for Saint-Simon’s judgment that his government was an association of clerks.12 Yet, while he insisted upon making the decisions, he was extremely flexible in seeking advice and encouraging his ministers to use their powers of persuasion in influencing such decisions. He called for full examination and discussion by his ministers, secretaries of state, councillors and maitres de requetes, from whom he insisted upon liberty of opinion and was known on occasion to have been so swayed by such advice as to follow majority opinion against his own inclinations. It was a serious fault for a minister to withhold information or fail to keep him well-informed. Among them Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619-83) was assiduous in his responsi­ bilities as a reporter, as his many detailed but concise reports to the king on proposed reforms and changes amply testified. In response Louis was careful to reciprocate by keeping his ministers up-to-date on his own attitudes, and ministers did not hesitate to ask for information which they thought had been withheld from them, presumably inadvertently! There is an enduring lesson here for the modern administrator, but like everything else the process of top participation can be carried too far, particularly in the conduct of less important business at unduly high levels. On this point J. E. King may be quoted with interest: T h e variety of the K ing’s interest extended from the m ost elevated problem s of state to the trivial needs of personal and selfish whim, and im posed on such a faithful m inister as C olbert m ultiple tasks which m ust have been truly galling to him, burdened as he was with so m any real responsibilities. It might, fo r instance, be necessary to take tim e off from his other duties to purchase bracelets and other costly gifts for the ladies of the C ourt and carefully arrange the

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details fo r a pleasant lottery. A t another time, the K ing expressed his satisfaction to the m inister w ith the painter Le Brun, sent by him to the arm ies to render perm anent the glory of the K ing’s presence at the siege of C am brai. T he royal Palaces, parks an d hunting lodges were closely supervised by Louis X IV who carried a know ­ ledge and application to them w hich suggest the enthusiasm of a F rench peasant fo r the adm inistration of his lands. As superintendent o f buildings C olbert h ad an official interest in furthering the K ing’s plans in th a t direction. W hen it was a m atter of the Louvre, this interest was real, but, unfortunately, as the first supervisor o f the construction of V ersailles he perform ed tasks the end of which was an extravagance he consistently deplored. Nevertheless, the correspondence exchanged betw een the M inister and his m aster shows them both carefully inspecting and providing fo r w ork on its canals, lakes, reservoirs, aqueducts and fountains, speculating on the desirable dim ensions and depths of them ; projecting, rejecting and altering buildings, and stairw ays; dealing with architects, gardeners and w orkm en arranging the finances and touching the thousand intricacies which confront any housebuilder. But the building of Versailles was n o t the only such job which possibly proved disagreeable to Colbert. T he K ing also requested plans, suggestions and progress reports on such chateaux as th a t o f his mistress, which he built a t Clagny, his own a t C ham bord, and th at o f the D uke of M aine. In his position, the m ost m enial duties could fall to the lot of C olbert; as w hen he was forced to play the role of the royal pim p, negotiating the differences between Louis X IV and the U riah of his Bath-sheba, M ontespan.’13

Lest this illuminating paragraph leave a wrong impression of Louis’s general approach it must be emphasized that, in wider spheres, he did not confine his activities to the normal interests of a monarch, such as fell within the spheres of foreign affairs and war. He was fully aware of the importance of the economic health of the nation and thus directly interested himself in and supported Colbert’s mercantilist programme for industry, by personally encouraging subsidies for manufactures, soliciting the advice of merchants, presiding over councils of commerce, and visiting factories and other establishments.14 Colbert was the minister who clearly symbolized the new order. He moulded the new government in a form designed to give expression to the aspirations of the King. Every detail of organization and procedure passed under his review. He ‘suggested the issues of policy and generally performed the heavy tasks of advisor, secretary, planner and activator’. He applied to the sphere of government the principles he adopted in planning his own life and activities. He insisted that decision must be based upon information that was as full and accurate IIL

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as could be obtained, and he maintained a critical attitude to all reports and generalizations. He would not allow his orders just to run on without subsequent inquests by technicians and other agents. One can understand that this ‘interference’ contributed to his unpopularity and agree that, while there are occasions when persistance is an administrative virtue and the situation in which Colbert had to impose these new disciplines was probably as difficult as could be, it is still an important qualification of his art that the administrator should know where to draw the line. As a matter of fact it was quite natural to Colbert to assume the role of teacher, a faculty that was invaluable when instructing his agents how to obtain the information he needed, often on subjects of a technical nature. Authority and science combined to shape the theory behind Louis XIV’s system of government. It was thought that if only the governmental machine could supply the exact information, the royal common sense could be depended upon to do what was needed. When set out in detail as in J. E. King’s stimulating study, this doctrine cannot appear other than naive, for even when the initial complexities of administering have been brushed aside, as they so often have been by the pundits, there is still the problem of ensuring that execution is both expeditious and in conformity with the decisions reached at the top. As we have just seen the French machinery of government had already been modified empirically in the right direction during the preceding reign. A working system of administration already existed, calling only for practical adjustment to grapple effectively with the needs of an expanding policy. The King at the top was the natural source of law, justice and the police power. Did he not with crashing self-assurance claim L ’etat c’est moi? Under him were the ministers who, after a .d . 1661, were appointed by verbal command, usually in council, either d'en haut or d'etat. Colbert, in senior ministerial office from 1661 to 1685, also at different times held the positions of Secretary of State for Marine, Controleur General des Finances and Surintendent des Batiments. The ministers were in constant consultation with the King and there were never more than five at any one time. The Secretaries of State continued to hold the next positions, and with them the Chancellor who was chief representative of the King in the councils and chief magistrate of the kingdom, head of all courts and tribunals. His former function of Keeper of the Seals had been separated to the Garde des Sceaux, but the two offices were frequently held by the same person. The office of Controleur General des Finances, as chief

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economics and finance administrator, was created for Colbert in 1665, but most of the functions and privileges of the position had been held by him since 1661 in his capacity of lntendant des Finances in the Council of Finances.15 Apart from finance the Controleur had direction of agriculture, general industry, domestic and foreign commerce, and colonies. In his capacity of Surintendant des Batiments he was responsible for royal buildings and royal arts and manufactures of France. Outside the personal relationships between king and ministers there was a complex system of councils and bureaux to undertake detailed administra­ tion. There were now four great councils. (1) The Conseil d’Etat et Prive, more commonly known as Conseil des Parties, had become supreme regulator and interpreter of all laws, with the power to direct all courts and parlements as to their procedures and duties. Its membership, under the chancellor, consisted of twenty-four Councillors of the Robe, three councillors representing the church and three the nobility. All these were collectively the Councillors of State. The member­ ship included the Controleur General des Finances, and two lntendants des Finances. Ministers and secretaries of state had ex officio rights of entry. There were also a group of from 80 to 88 maitres des requites who served the councillors as aides, officiating alternately in four sections. Their main duty was to study and to report, with the councillors, on all affairs introduced for the jurisdiction of the body. There were in fact reporters and clerks for the councillors, serving as a pool for recruitment of future secretaries of state, ministers and intendants. This Conseil des Parties was the supreme deliberative tribunal of France, usually functioning in comparative independence of the King but issuing decrees in his name and finally responsible to him. Dukes, peers and other highly placed persons, previously eligible for membership, were left only the title of conseillers du Roi et ses conseils.16 (2) The Conseil d’en Haut, also known as the Conseil d’Etat, was introduced by the King early in 1661 in place of his previ­ ously existing private councils. Besides the King it included high notabilities and the secretaries of state but, after the death of Jules Mazarin — cardinal and statesman (1602-61) — the membership was reduced to not more than four or five, and the secretaries of state did not attend unless specifically requested. This was the royal council in which all great affairs of state were decided, but it became the authority in the last resort in judicial cases of a civil or administrative nature, which had been prepared by committees of councillors of state and reported

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from the Conseil des Parties by maitres de requetes for final decision of the King in his highest council.17 (3) The Conseil des Depeches served as the chief administrative body of the kingdom, co-ordinating the functions and policies of ministers and secretaries of state with regard to internal affairs. It consisted of the ministers and secretaries of state sitting under the King. Business from the provinces, unless of little importance, was introduced by the four secretaries of state. The Council’s competence was extensive, covering the supervision and administ­ ration of the Church, the communities and municipal corpora­ tions, judiciary, nobility, royal representatives in the provinces, and so on. Decisions on matters of current administration were executed by the secretaries of state in their own departments, and for this purpose all the normal administrative processes were operated, i.e. by letters, depeches, declarations, lettres de cachet, brevets, letters patent, ordonnances or r&glements. It was the rule for the secretaries of state individually to submit at each meeting of the Council a list of the executive authorities signed on the King’s behalf in the fortnight since the last session. (4) The Conseil des Finances or Conseil Royale was also pre­ sided over by the King. This was an original institution forming part of Colbert’s reformed financial structure. It had a Chief de Conseil but, in the absence of the King, the Chancellor presided. After the King, Colbert was undoubtedly the key-member in his capacity as Intendant des Finances and, after 1666, as Controleur General Two other councillors of state who were members actually acted as assistants to Colbert. The Council fixed the annual amount of direct taxes to be levied and the shares to be borne by each area. It arranged leases for indirect levies with tax farmers and supervised their execution. It also dealt with numerous other financial and accounting matters.19 The actual work of these major councils was co-ordinated and executed in committees and sub-committees of the several councils and bureaux, functioning under the ministers and secretaries of state. In the provinces execution was shared with the areas. For financial administration, including economic matters and finance, there were 26 large tax districts, each sub­ divided into elections, the elections into parishes. Over these were 25 intendants (one only for Montpellier and Toulouse) appointed by the King, each of whom was served by a hierarchy of officials. The military government was exercised by the royal Governors in the 37 Governments, usually peers of the realm or princes of the blood, although many of their powers had been transferred to agents of the Secretary of State for War or the intendants.

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But a capable Governor could still wield considerable influence.20 Their main duty was the maintenance of law and order and the provision of armed support to the other administrations if needed. If the birth of the important position of intendant is somewhat obscure and its attribution to Richelieu unsupported, there is no doubt that the intendants* position as supervisors of the royal services of justice, police and finance in the provinces became clearly defined during the reign of Louis XIV. They had achieved a position which was to continue to the end of the Ancien Regime — and, one may add, well beyond. Colbert’s contribution was to consolidate their authority as the executive arm of the Controleur General. Under him the intendants extended their function as information officers by their abundant submission of reports, surveys and memoirs to headquarters, an innovation which King, quoting Usher,21 suggests was Colbert’s most striking contribu­ tion to government. Commenting upon the system King states: \ . . The King recognized the physical limitations of his own personal desire to learn of the details of his realm “piece by piece”, details which he would acquire himself if it were possible; therefore, trusted emissaries must perform the vicarious functions of a protean crown. At the top, the King observed all that a mortal man of royal capacities might of the conditions of his realm; his ministers added their lesser powers to his, and the intendants informed the ministers of affairs escaping their notice, and, below the intendants, subdelegues, echevins and cures extended the threads of the royal sense into the remotest parish. The doubt which ruled the intelligence of the age was reflected in a king who, had it been possible, would have personally discovered and administered every need of his kingdom. The same spirit directed the actions of Colbert, and, if his admonitions were as seriously accepted as rendered, guided his subordinates. From the King downwards, the best test in all matters was personal inspection.’22

Colbert’s influence upon the future position of the intendant as the central government’s main information official is amply demonstrated in his voluminous correspondence. His insistence upon accurate and almost continuous reports on the situation in their provinces had the effect of giving a characteristic stamp to their approach to their multifarious responsibilities. The con­ sistent nature of this specific governmental attitude is set out with emphasis in the Instruction pour les maitres de requites, commisaires departis dans les provinces of September 1663, which outlined the policy to be adopted with regard to the duties of the intendants and initiated a vast inquest into the state of the realm, that was not to be completed within the lifetime of its originator.23

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Such was the scope and volume of their individual assignments that the intendants adopted the practice of appointing subdelegues to report to them. Important as the intendants were becoming they were not the only agents who had the privilege of writing to the government. Reports and correspondence were welcomed from any notability, engineer, technician, ambassador and the like who was in a position to provide useful information. In addition, Colbert established commis or inspecteurs regionaux des manufactures, whose job was to carry the economic instructions and reglements of the Controleur General into the most distant areas of industrial France.24 Similarly commissaires general de la marine were appointed to travel with the ships, to report upon crews and supplies and any matter of importance to the efficiency of the fleet, and particularly to look into the activities of the ecrivain, a sort of purser and appointed member of a ship’s company. Reports from ambassadors on economic matters abroad were also welcomed and where special information was required on, for instance, shipbuilding methods in Venice, Holland or Britain, Colbert commissioned special agents in the countries concerned. The whole policy had a profound effect upon the shape of public administration. The proliferation of data and the expan­ sion of the bureaucracy automatically generated new administra­ tive problems for the government, but changes went far beyond those actually needed by the growing requirements of the administration. Hitherto departmental records had been of little moment; now the activities of the administration needed to be placed upon record. Hitherto the preservation of such records as existed had been largely accidental, depending upon the accumulation and survival of documents in the hands of private individuals and institutions, since it rested upon the whim of the erstwhile minister or secretary of state whether or not he decided to take the documents with him. Certainly the practice varied. Richelieu willed his own papers to his niece, the Duchess of Aigullon; Mazarin on the contrary left his records to Colbert for the King’s use if required. Michel le Tellier, a contemporary of Mazarin, left three hundred volumes of despatches to his son, the Arch­ bishop of Reims.25 But administrative archives were now a governmental necessity and their official preservation was to become a matter of policy. A financial system that had hitherto failed to channel large sums of public money into the royal coffers also called for radical review. The King was wise to replace the Abbe Fouquet, who for

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his own purposes had misrepresented the financial position to him, by Colbert, who was to need and indeed to receive the royal support in implementing his own ideas in this vital sphere, the very life blood of government and a necessity of efficient admini­ stration. Colbert became the guiding hand in finance. As we have already seen the new Conseil Royale was to be the key instrument here. Colbert had direct responsibility for the Treasury, much of the business of which he pursued with the King. A new and relatively simple system of accounts was introduced. J. E. King’s succinct description of the actual procedure could hardly be bettered: ‘At the beginning, three registers were maintained: first, the journal in which was entered, day by day, notation of authorized ordonnances of expenditure, and, in the margins, the funds on which they were assigned and the receipts in the treasury. Secondly, a registre des funds contained extracts, or summary statements, of sums due the treasury from farms, general receipts, forests and other sources with note of sums actually received and the deduction which should be made thereby. A third, the registre des d'epenses noted the ordonnances of expenditures arranged by the nature of expenditures authorized. All three registers contained separately what they contained together and could thus be used to check each other. In 1667, the last two registers were combined into one. At the end of each month these registers were totaled and checked by the controleur general and carried by him to the council. Each article was called aloud by controleur, using the journal, and checked by the King, using the registre des fondst with the word “Bon”. After this verification was made the King noted his initials in his own hand in the journal*26

The statement goes on to detail the King’s endorsements and the method of signing, and altogether provides an illuminating example of the extent to which highly placed administrators expected, and were able, at that historical juncture to enter into the routine processes of administering. Despite current inno­ vations it was still a comparatively simple world administratively. The extent of the royal participation is also illuminating. Colbert’s accounting reforms extended far. All provincial organizations were brought into line and the intendants were given further responsibilities of supervision. Naturally the Controleur General extended similar principles to all the departments under his own direction. Quarterly and annual abridgements of records were demanded, and periodical checks were undertaken of accounts against receipts by the Courts of Accounts and the Treasury. Similar responsibilities for naval finance were imposed upon the intendants of marine.

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All this attention to accounting procedures may be taken as a matter of course and in its actual details may seem rather jejune today, but the approach was sufficiently original in the circum­ stances of the times. In the seventeenth century the practice of good housekeeping in the public field was exceptional. There was already a superfluity of finance officials of various categories but the system was inadequately enforced and poorly co-ordinated. The whole structure called for examination with a view to clari­ fication and this was an essential administrative virtue of Colbert’s approach to the task before him, a virtue which he demonstrated in all his activities. In the sphere of statistics the effect of Colbert’s initial survey of 1663 and of its influences upon the intendants as collectors of information was to continue under his successors, and to give a special impulse to the evolution of a science of statistics to which Bodin and Montchretien,27 among others, had already assigned urgency by emphasizing their value ‘to ascertain the wealth and manpower of the kingdom, to facilitate tax-collection and the just distribution of the tax-burden, to detect and eliminate vaga­ bondage, and to determine the proper regulations necessary to the maintenance of production, export, import, colonies and warfare.28 In furthering his mercantilist designs Colbert was concerned with the entire sphere of industry and production, in the general control of which primary reliance was placed upon the issue of general regulations. Possibly his lack of interest in the important sphere of agriculture was due to the fact that in this field reglementation was of little use. For such a comprehensive policy control of existing corporations, guilds and other associations was vital, and this rendered it necessary to supplement the activities of the royal officials — intendants, subdelegues, inspectors of manufactures — together with such local officials as the maires and echevins, with jurisdiction over manufactures by associating with them officials traditionally concerned with corporations and city governments, notably the gardes and jures who had previ­ ously been elected by the masters of corporations, but who were now assimilated to the State administration by decree of 1669. Their main duty was, by inspection and report, to prevent fraudu­ lent manufacture. They had authority to attach stamps of royal approval to finished products. To introduce the weight of royal power into the organization of production steps were taken to control the ancient corporations or guilds, frequently called jurandes29 Colbert’s responsibility for the Department of the Navy enabled

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him to apply his normal administrative policies to that branch to such good effect as to earn the praise of his great English con­ temporary Samuel Pepys, for the effective government of the French Navy as compared with the British.30 In this sphere the initiation of the inscription maritime was a considerable inven­ tion. It had been designed to deal with chronic desertion by French sailors for service abroad, over which there had been little control. As early as 1661 Colbert had ordered the drawing up of a register of all naval officers, no adequate documents having previously existed. A general enrolment of sailors commenced in 1665. By this means it was possible to keep track of seamen of different categories and to call up those required by the navy, for terms of a year for which service standards were laid down. In default, those not reporting were punishable as deserters, a very serious matter in those days. As was to be expected the system encountered a number of administrative difficulties, but its success was sufficient to render unnecessary any arbitrary impressment, and this despite the fact that the navy had con­ siderably expanded. This also received due praise from Pepys, in his Naval Minutes.31 It is clear that Colbert was an enthusiast for regulation in general and economic planning in particular. He had many of the virtues of the efficient administrator, but of course there were blind spots. Thus his historical knowledge was defective and his scorn for the individual businessman unmitigated. Above all he regarded work as the divine source of the welfare of the state, and consequently saw in the habitual laziness of his fellow men its greatest scourge. He opposed vehemently current depreciation of commerce by the upper classes, whose members traditionally, and by no means peculiarly, hastened to dissociate themselves from business activities. Colbert felt that he had plenty of reason to advocate state intervention in almost every sphere. He was indeed a heaven-sent lieutenant to such a monarch as le Roi Soleil, though to distinguish the latter’s policies from those of Colbert is hardly possible. Following J. E. King, we can perhaps sum up by stating that, together they attempted ‘to create a rational and mechanical state which operated according to set principles and in which the presiding intelligence of sovereign reason could be made to control individual instincts. This reason was to supply security, certainty, and efficiency in the conduct of private life and subordinate this conduct to the interests of the state. As in natural science, this security, certainty and efficiency were to be obtained by the application of rational formulae. Their political expression was in the laws and reglements'.32

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Almost an administrator’s dream, but not one that subsequent history was to endorse, perhaps with good fortune to humanity if not to France, whose Ancien Regime was not destined to save itself. PRUSSIAN

ADMINISTRATION,

1640-1786

During the seventeenth century professionalization of the public service received an impulse in Germany ahead of anywhere else in the West. We have it upon the authority of Dr. Herman Finer33 that it had begun with the employment of gemietete docktoren (hired doctors) as public officials in the late fifteenth century. These councillors, learned in the law, were attached to the entourage of the prince for varying periods as were many other skilled categories of men at that time. They were not permanently recruited or assigned to specific tasks, but given posts which were coming to be recognized as requiring a certain administrative approach, as for example in assisting the Chan­ cellor to keep the archives, in the composition of state documents, or in ambassadorial negotiations. Sometimes they served con­ currently in more than one princely court. At this time the concept of a distinct state organization was emerging out of the private estate of the prince. Bavaria in particular was in the fore­ front in developing a centralized administration. With the expansion of public business, well-informed and learned members of the bourgeoisie came to be preferred as recruits to the noble appointee to whom such posts had hitherto gone as a matter of course. In particular, skills in reading, writing, arithmetic and law became essential in the new financial and judicial posts, though in defence and police the warlike noble still had his place. Apart from the evils of sale of office and the alienation of jurisdiction which were rife at the time, there was another weakness, affecting particularly Brandenburg and Saxony owing to the existence of many large estates whose owners acted as royal officers and who were paid in kind out of the produce of the royal domains. These estate-owning officials inevitably allowed their own economic interests to interfere with their responsibilities for the royal estate-management and it became necessary to separate the two activities. Changes in the nature of the princes’ function meant the gradual evolution of the personal estate official into public servant, and in the seventeenth century the need for a regularized civil service became apparent. Apart from the extension of financial administration under the exchequer of the state, the Reformation brought further responsi-

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bilities in education and poor relief over from the dissolved monasteries to the State. The real advance took place in Prussia, up to then backward among German states. The Thirty Years War, which terminated with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, had created an urgent need for reconstruction and it was the Great Elector, Frederick William of Brandenburg (a.d . 1640-88) who showed the way. In the words of Hans Rosenberg:34 This Dutch-trained, impetuous climber was a highly talented and imaginative political entrepreneur who developed into an importer of novel instruments of domination, and a daring improviser of institutional reforms. Unlike his Junker antagonists, he was unencumbered by antiquated attitudes and old-fashioned concep­ tions of political morality. His accomplishments were extraordinary. By catching up with Western models of absolutist statecraft, Frederick William converted the disjointed depressed area which had come to him into a centrally directed though as yet only super­ ficially united state. Although he continued to regard this state as a collection of huge private estates, “Prussia”, by the end of his reign, was the largest German polity next to “the lands of the House of Halsburg” and a power to be reckoned with in Europe.’

Frederick William worked through his Privy Council, which reached decisions collectively and acted with him as a unifying and supreme authority. Beginning as a strictly advisory body, it acquired definite executive powers. The administration became specialized into departments, some of whose heads were appointed to the Council, where their specialized knowledge could bear upon the discussions. Subsequently the Council’s functions as high court of appeal were concentrated in a separate division. Specialization continued to increase, supplemented by the appointment of officials in the localities. First among the latter was the statthalter, a local regent — though not a native of the same province — appointed by the prince with concurrent membership of the Privy Council, an arrangement that went far to knot together the two spheres and to universalize the resolu­ tions reached in Council. Their duties covered economic, fiscal and social matters. They were later to be replaced by administra­ tive councils manned by centrally appointed officials who, if they were still only partly professionalized, had the essential loyalty to the central authority which distinguished the true civil servant. The ingrained paternalism of the Prussian State was to maintain itself for a time against the growing powers of centralization and militarism but it was waging a losing battle. The latter were

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destined to predominate and the new bureaucracy to take over.35 During the seventeenth century, in order to maintain control over the mercenary captains, who undertook the management of a campaign on a profit-making basis the prince appointed a War Commissar to each regiment, to administer the oath to the captain, to look to the adequacy of recruitment, equipment and supplies, to protect the citizens against excesses of the soldiery, and to report back to him. For the army as a whole, a chief War Commissar was appointed for a few months or for a campaign. These War Commissars acted as sole intermediaries between the armies and the several public authorities. When Prussia created a national standing army in the mid­ seventeenth century the War Commissars became permanent state administrative officials and overtopped the statthalters. Prussian society was on the way to excessive militarization, taking a pride in being called ‘the Sparta of the North’. To run the military machine the localities, in addition to taxes, had to pro­ vide billets and stabling, food for both men and horses, arms and clothing, requirements that involved excessive interference with civic affairs. As a matter of course the War Commissars became interested in questions of productivity and police, and to achieve their own aims had to operate in these spheres of government. Power concentrated in the Generalkriegs kommissariat (Central Directory of War), which had split off from the Privy Council. It also operated on a collegiate basis and acted in all spheres of administration, one division being devoted to taxes and excise, another to military affairs, and a third to administration and administrative jurisdiction. ‘Prussia was then not a land with an army, but an army with a land.’36 This inversion of the natural order was to have serious historical consequences. As a result power was concentrated at the centre in a number of organized departments. From 1680 Tax Commissioners brought under central supervision the municipal excise officials, and came to control the towns as a whole. The Tax Commissioner was a member of the War Commissariat and had under his control a host of inspectors and technical officials, police, bailiffs, statis­ ticians and clerks not only to cope with tax collection but also to control the life of the municipality in its many phases. The result was not sheer oppression, for there was the positive advantage that the Tax Commissioner combated local simony and nepotism, even though he personalized the police state imposed bureaucratically from above, if with paternalistic intention. His experience become so purposeful and was so highly esteemed in other fields that his profession became the training ground for

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the best Prussian officials of the eighteenth century. To quote Herman Finer: \ . . they brought to their central departmental duties a fund of experience which explains why the Prussian state, incapable consti­ tutionally of being reformed from outside or “below”, could at decisive times be reformed from within or “above”.’37

Already under the Great Elector, there had been a great expansion of a public service which was large for the time, covering such branches as posts, forests, salt, mines, schools, which had already been nationalized in Prussia. The movement continued under Frederick I (1688-1713) almost by its own impulse, and was reinforced by the new creativeness of Frederick William I (1713-40), who was a dedicated man, aiming to re-energize and render more coherent the excellent system of administration that had been evolved by his predecessors. The principle of collective responsibility was reinforced by conciliar control of the central departments, designed to prevent the predominance of any one man as well as to secure the bene­ fits of collective wisdom and continuity of policy. The councils were responsible for accounts, and for the efficiency and probity of their junior officials. They endeavoured to keep close touch with activities at ground level by the use of ‘spies’, whose reports however they were expected to receive with circumspection. The King in his turn had his own information staff throughout the realm to watch and report upon the conduct of ministers and chief officials. Thus, when Moritz von Viebahn was made Minister of State in 1729, he was also given the post of special secret agent to the General Directory, which was a sort of cabinet of four supervisory ministers. His job was to submit to the King confi­ dential reports of any minister who deviated from instructions, was slack in his work, or engaged in intrigues and malicious gossip. Nor did Viebahn appear to regard his supplementary func­ tion as in any way out of the ordinary or distasteful. The system was rounded off by fiskale, ordinary state attorneys who also functioned as in-service spies throughout the central and pro­ vincial branches of the administration, within which they formed a miniature hierarchy of their own, acting both as a sort of administrative police and as public prosecutors under the Generalfiskal,38 It is possible only to assess the effects of such a system of internal espionage in relation to the types of adminis­ tration and society existing at the time. In any sort of free society the effect of such methods on the responses of the staff could hardly fail to be deplorable.

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On the other hand the new personnel administration had its good side. Exact rules were promulgated, covering the conduct of officials and the performance of their duties. Such matters as hours of work, daily procedures and official secrecy were laid down in detail. Outside employment was forbidden and all officials handling money had to provide guarantees. Politeness in dealing with members of the public was insisted upon; fines, even imprisonment being prescribed for insulting merchants. For breaches of regulations there was a schedule of fines, some very heavy. The Tax Commissioners were expected to keep detailed staff records and to furnish periodical reports. A strict spirit of subordination was insisted upon and the regulations were exactingly applied. The King himself set the example that all had to follow. The question of competence was taken up at the recruitment stage when candidates for higher positions in the judicial service were expected to have received a suitable training in law at the university. Written and oral examinations were prescribed, appointments being made from a list in which the candidates were arranged in order of merit. By 1700 such examinations had already been introduced for military judges and judicial coun­ cillors, and the pattern of recruitment had been laid down which was to rule in the German state almost continuously. The application of similar standards to the higher administra­ tive posts was a slower business. At first training on the job was considered sufficient but considerations of efficiency soon brought a demand for changes. Clever men with a wide knowledge of affairs, and especially those who had already proved themselves in administrative positions, were needed. The State took the initiative to ensure that suitable instruction was available at the universities. As early as 1727 Frederick William established a chair in Cameralism at Halle and Frankfurt to give instruction in ‘the principles of agriculture and police, also the institution of surveys of offices and estates, and also the efficient adminis­ tration and government of towns’.39 Successful candidates were expected to serve in the departments on an unpaid basis in order to acquire practical experience before receiving a definite appointment. Lest it be concluded that book-learning or a legalistic attitude were all that was required for these responsible posts it has to be emphasized that much attention was given to character and personal qualities. The young official was required to have an engaging nature, adaptability, independence of character, a lively spirit and intelligent brain — rather a tall order if taken at its

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face-value but a proper aspiration when choosing public officials. Those who, despite their academic success, were found to be deficient in the required qualities could expect to occupy only the relatively subordinate positions, but it would be interesting to know how such standards could be and indeed were, in prac­ tice, applied. Furthermore it has to be recognized that, as with the eminent competitions of China, the entrance system was not so devised as to exclude proteges of the influential. Kinsmen, clients, in-laws and the like were not excluded. The effect of loans, gratuities, recognition fees could not be discounted even when counter rules had been promulgated. When the personal interests of the powerful challenged their conception of the public weal, the former usually won. Patronage in all its forms was a long way from being a dirty word. Certainly Prussia has the distinction of being the first modern state to introduce and develop a system of entrance examinations for the public service in which both the central administration and the individual departments were involved, and which com­ prised both written and oral tests, in subjects of a practical as well as an academic nature. A new profession of state adminis­ trators was being shaped to serve a centralised government which was being called upon to exercise more widely-ranging functions than hitherto. Alongside the long-established military career the scions of the more esteemed families of the land were in future to vie for positions in public administration. The State continued to be paternalistic, and under Frederick the Great (1740-86) rose to a level of autocracy that in Germany had existed previously as little more than an aspiration in the minds of somewhat in­ competent princes whose resources in any case had usually been quite inadequate to achieve the ends they had in mind. Now the situation was quite different and new ways had to be devised to cope with new government responsibilities. As yet there was no civil service in the modern sense but the bureaucratic elite of Prussia represented an important step in this direction. There were less desirable trends however. Under Frederick William I and Frederick the Great the policy was followed — which was to rise to a flood during the eighteenth century — of recruiting professional soldiers and ex-soldiers to the civil branches, an economical use of military manpower which had the advantage of bringing into administration persons conditioned to quick obedience and expeditious action, even though they suffered inevitably with weaknesses of inflexibility which an administration can well do without. Petty officials from the ad­ ministrative side were also promoted to the higher posts and

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these too were types from whom obedience could be easily exacted. Rosenberg cites40 the interesting case of the War and Domains Board of Brandenburg, of whose twenty-three Council­ lors in 1767, five had previously served as auditeure, or military judicial officials, one had been a sergeant-major and five others had risen from the lower grades of the regular administrative ranks. Despite his great personal authority Frederick came to fear the power of the royal servants and began to favour a system of decentralization which would prevent policy-making from falling into the hands of a single group. Functions were shed to corporate self-governing agencies and the noble landowners were given back a limited measure of governmental power. Fur­ thermore, the provincial squirearchy were able to exercise a certain power through the newly established landschaften, non­ governmental mortgage credit societies concerned with the im­ provement of estate management and farming methods, which, as centres of provincial opinion, were listened to and occasionally actively consulted by the central government. In other words they formed an influential pressure group. A consequence of this trend was a curtailment of the power and scope of the General Directory. It included the establishment of special departments for trade and industry, the army, mining and smelt­ ing, and forestry under ministers directly responsible to the King. Frederick also adopted the habit of sending instructions direct to local magnates or of appointing special commissars for par­ ticular tasks. The most startling innovation was probably the importation of French fiscal experts to manage the Regie, which had been set up in 1766 to take charge of the administration of the indirect taxes and customs, and, for a few years, the postal service. These experts formed a special category of royal servants under the Frenchman de la Haye de Launay, who for two decades was to be the most powerful man in the civil administration next to Frederick himself. In this way a rival power was set up against the traditional bureaucrats and the administration was split be­ tween hostile counterbalancing organizations. Immediately, under a ruler who felt himself both capable of ruling in accordance with his own autocratic policy and of con­ trolling its administration in detail, the new Prussian bureaucracy had received a setback, but in fact the monarchy was already going into decline and, in grappling with this new power-situation, the bureaucracy was destined to achieve its own supremacy. With the death of Frederick the Great, Prussian officials were released from the strains of intrigue and dishonest living into which they

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had been forced. Under his less opinionated and less presump­ tuous successors, with the powers of arbitrary punishment removed, the public service, in both its civil and its military branches, acceded to a new status. By 1807-8 an aristocratic regu­ lative bureaucracy had replaced the royal autocracy of king and council. The transformation of the Old Regime was to be described by Otto Camphausen in 1843 as: ‘a system of rulership by career bureaucrats peculiar to the Prussian state, in which the king appears to be the top functionary who invariably selects his aides from the intellectual elite of the nation, recognized as such by means of truly or allegedly rigorous examina­ tions. He allows them great independence, acknowledges thereby their co-rulership and, consequently, sanctions a sort of aristocracy of experts who purport to be the true representatives of the general interest.’41 LIONEL c r a n f i e l d : ADMINISTRATIVE CAREERIST

We now turn to England where radical administrative changes were to precede and to accompany political struggles of immense impact. Lionel Cranfield,42 born in 1575 and brought up in the great age of Elizabeth I, was a typical example of the ministerialofficial of the absolutist phase. His successful and varied career as a merchant in the City of London had placed the indelible stamp of the new commercial age upon him, a stamp that did not altogether endear him to his aristocratic contemporaries, whose ingrained prejudice against contamination by trade was to survive for many decades yet. We must not assume that Cranfield’s mercantilism had anything of the doctrinal stamp of, say, Colbert’s. It was hardly surprising that, the government of James I (reg. 1603-25) requiring the services of a man of business as governments have frequently done from time to time, Cran­ field’s particular experience and personal success should have led to his invitation by the Lord Privy Seal, the Earl of Northampton, to take office in 1613 at the age of 38.43 He became SurveyorGeneral of the Customs, the occasion for the move having been the crisis resulting from the embargo placed the previous year upon English textiles by the Spanish Netherlands. In the course of business normal to the times Cranfield had already been involved in state business as participator in the tax-farms by which tax-revenues were collected during that period. There were a number of small farms, covering specific taxes, which were granted to noblemen and courtiers whom the IIM

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King wished to favour. These were almost invariably sub-let to capitalist under-farmers who expected not only to be able to pay the rake-off demanded by patentees, but also to make a satis­ factory, sometimes inflated, profit after meeting the costs of col­ lection. There was also the Great Farm introduced in December 1604, which covered a wide range of taxes, comprising over half the receipts of the customs, and stood in a class by itself. This was launched in a much more formal way, involving a group of notabilities as controllers of the farm and maintenance of close relationships with the Government. Cranfield had taken a share in the Great Farm from its inception, and apart from this, in 1608 held shares in seven of the smaller collections namely cur­ rents, silk, wine licences, improved rates on silk, tobacco, dyewoods and starch,44 titles that are significant. Cranfield entered into another public relationship when, in April 1605, he purchased the Receivership of Crown revenues in Somerset and Dorset.45 This business, which he undertook for eight years, was not profitable in terms of the moneys handled and available as working capital during the time they were in his hands pending transfer to the Exchequer, but it provided him with an insight into the technicalities of the financial system that was to prove invaluable later. It happened that almost imme­ diately the Exchequer decided to turn numerous properties scattered widely — ‘the debris of the Reformation’, as Tawney dubs them — into cash, thus opening a favourable market to the land speculator, which Cranfield, with his inside knowledge, was able to turn to his advantage. An unholy scramble ensued. Cranfield’s post of Surveyor-General in the Customs was new one, replacing four separate surveyorships, suppressed in 1604 on the grounds that the new farms had abolished direct administration and had thus made them redundant. The new surveyorship placed Cranfield in a position of considerable power, which he aimed to use not merely to eradicate the administrative abuses that had become apparent since the inception of the Great Farm, but also to rationalize the tariff and to stop at least some of the leaks which the royal revenue was suffering. Within a couple of years he had managed to increase the income of the Crown by some £30,00 a year. Services rendered to Villiers, the royal favourite, made the latter Cranfield’s powerful patron. Cranfield’s rise was truly spectacular, as a mere list of the steps taken on the ministerial ladder and in the peerage is sufficient to demonstrate: in 1616, a Master of Requests; in 1618, Master of the Great Wardrobe; in 1619, Master of the Court of Wards and Liveries and Chief Commissioner of the Navy; in 1620, a

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Privy Councillor; in 1621, Baron Cranfield and Lord Treasurer; and in 1622, Earl of Middlesex. It has to be remembered that there was as yet no distinction between posts that were political and posts that were mainly administrative, between the judicial and the executive, or between executive and parliamentary — all were ingredients in an undifferentiated royal service. During the same period Cranfield officiated actively as member of a number of commissions and committees, as well as of the Commons for Hythe in 1614 and Arundel in 1621, when of course he was elevated to the Lords. He began as commercial expert but was to end up as financial reformer, creating inevitably many enemies in the process. It was not by his skill as an administrator but by the hazards of politics that his career was to be determined. It is a political rather than an administrative story, and not therefore to be dwelt upon at length here. The climax came with his accession to the Exchequer as Treasurer and his campaign to save that Department from imminent collapse. His first attack on the inordinate demands of the host of royal pensioners, whose unearned incomes had always exasperated him, and on the contraventions of a myriad of tax evaders inevitably raised a hornet’s nest. The rapid removal of such abuses and many others, the imposition of economies in all directions, resulted in a matter of months in a radical improve­ ment in the royal finances. King James was pleased and duly impressed. That Cranfield, as is often the way with such enthu­ siasts, was bearing too much of the burden of the work himself was indicated by his breakdown before the end of the year, but he persisted, attempting even to straighten out the tortuous finances of Ireland. Despite all these efforts the immediate results were insufficient to do more than put off the threatened bankruptcy which past extravagance had engendered. To help in coping with the troubles that he saw ahead Cranfield set out to collect from his officials information of comparative expenditures for the three recent years, statistics whose survival indicate the character and magni­ tude of the task before him. The figures demonstrated that it was not now solely royal extravagance that was causing the trouble but also the precarious state of the national economy brought about by the crisis in Europe. Yet in the long run it was the increasing extravagance of the royal pensions, annuities and fees that were to bring him down. The plunderers of the royal purse were to prove too many for him. Inevitably he found him­ self increasingly isolated. Not least among his opponents were those who feared that any financial success on his part would

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strengthen the King’s position and maintain his power to do what he liked: for example, in delaying the calling of Parliament. The stage was being prepared for the great struggle of the following reign. Cranfield’s immediate disaster was in losing the backing of his most influential patron, for in that age the success of a public official still depended more on the patronage system than on the results of personal efficiency. Of his two patrons, the King, now senile and virtually helpless, remained his friend, for what such friendship was worth, but in the case of the powerful, domineer­ ing and selfish favourite de Villiers, in whose hands the real power now lay and who had been created Duke of Buckingham, the position was different. Hitherto he had considered his client’s undoubted successes in maintaining the public finances as in his own interest. In fact, Buckingham had gone so far in backing his useful client’s interest as to bless the latter’s marriage to his kinswoman Anne Brett.46 But Cranfield handling the public moneys was a very different man from Cranfield the entrepreneur and tax-farmer. In defend­ ing the State’s fund against the inevitable extravagances of the favourite, however tactfully the consequent economies might be administered, Cranfield was found to fall foul of one who was quite incapable of distinguishing between the public interest and his own. The crisis came with the failure of a mission undertaken to Spain in 1623 by Buckingham with Charles, the heir apparent, in search of a bride for the latter. They returned to England intent upon war to avenge the affront, only to find the Treasurer consistently obstructive to all steps to provide the necessary funds. Not only had Cranfield now lost the favourite’s support, but he stood virtually alone against all the other wolves who for long had been looking for a means to destroy him. The coup de grace was achieved not by a frontal attack on the royal policy, but by questioning certain shadier aspects of Cranfield’s own financial manipulations. The attack was concentrated particularly on the alleged corruption connected with the surtax on wines which had been generally resented. A case was made against the now unpopular Treasurer in the House of Commons and, in accordance with the process of impeachment, then Parliament’s only real weapon against a ministerial servant of the King, the matter was submitted to the House of Lords. The hearings, which lasted six days, began on 7th May 1624, before Cranfield’s old enemy the Lord Keeper.47 It was a full-scale judicial trial at which Cranfield attended at the bar of the House to answer for himself. Inevitably Cranfield was found guilty, although on only

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three and part of another of the six charges laid against him. The sentence of detention in the Tower and of a fine of £50,000, although heavy, was not of vital importance to the prosecutors; rather the fact that Cranfield’s reputation was destroyed and his public career terminated. If we distinguish clearly between Cran­ field’s conduct as custodian of public moneys and his actions as commercial exploiter and financier — as in the light of the age we clearly should — then the trial in the Lords was undoubtedly a travesty of justice. Cranfield was both man of his age and pro­ genitor of a future that would call for more honest public man­ agement. His personal efforts in this direction, in a political and social environment that would have daunted the most dedicated reformer, merit the close attention that scholars have given to his career. As a footnote to this section, it is of interest that in the follow­ ing year, shortly after the accession of Charles I, Buckingham himself was the subject of impeachment, from which he was saved only by the King’s dissolution of Parliament. Following the famous Petition of Right, drawn up by Parliament in 1628, Buckingham was assassinated during a wave of public emotion, by John Felton, a naval lieutenant, who, strongly influenced by his own grievances of non-promotion and the refusal of Bucking­ ham to see that he received the pay due to him, saw in the Common’s remonstrance a duty to sacrifice his life to rid his country of the hated favourite.48

CIVIL

SAMUEL SERVANT

PEPYS: I N THE

MAKING

Between the fall of Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, and the advent to public office of Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) the most significant struggle in English history had taken place, between Charles I (reg. 1625-49) and Parliament, which had ended with the execution of the King and the rise of the legislature to supremacy in the state, though the finishing touches to this process had still to be applied later in the century. As Sir Arthur Bryant has emphasized in his remarkable recon­ struction of the life and times of Samuel Pepys,49 this great public servant is famed on three counts: (1) his notable Diary50 to which he confided, through a secret shorthand of his own devising, his most intimate thoughts and actions during a con­ centrated period of his life; (2) his innovating administration at the Admiralty; and (3) his contribution to the founding of the modern Civil Service in Britain. About him, because of his literary

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frankness in the Diary, we know many intimate things that most men manage to keep hidden. Samuel Pepys was indeed a man of parts, whose influence was to be felt in many fields, a man who in his full-bloodedness participated in many of the less amiable practices of a full-blooded age; but a true understanding of the age should surely have saved him from the ungenerous epithet ‘lecherous little man’ bestowed upon him by Sir John Craig,51 who otherwise, and with justice, hails him as ‘the greatest administrator of the century’. Samuel Pepys began in poverty, but he had excellent expecta­ tions in good family connections, which had already given him the inestimable advantage of completing his education at Trinity Hall and Magdalene College, Cambridge, and above all he had genius. Thus he began, in 1656, as personal servant to his cousin Edward Montagu who, three years earlier, had been called to the Council of State under the Protectorate,52 had also been made a Commissioner of the Treasury, and was now not only called to the Admiralty Commission, but appointed Joint Commander, with Robert Blake, of the English battle fleet. Pepys, working in the new admiral’s Whitehall lodgings, looking after his master’s finances, was already in his methodical ways, his habitual dispatch and his lucid penmanship, demonstrating his inborn skill as clerk and administrator, an activity from which he always derived real pleasure. The job itself, if modest in scale, had the virtue of enabling Pepys to meet well-placed people and to witness the un­ folding of important events. It was a good training position, of which he no doubt made very good use. A dangerous, but fortunately successful, operation for stone of the bladder early in 1658 caused a break in his work and led to his attachment to George Downing at the Court of Exchequer, who paid him £50 a year as his personal clerk. Under the existing conditions he was virtually civil servant at one remove. His new duties were not particularly arduous, but Downing was an unamiable pushful man, whom Pepys served in fear and trepidation. However, there was the advantage of serving with the other Exchequer clerks, by whom he was introduced to their life of entertainment and high living, which proved much to his taste. They sailed close to the margins of treason by drinking secretly to the absent King. His great opportunity came early in March 1660, with the return of Charles (son of Charles I) in prospect and an invitation from Montagu to the Navy Office to serve as his secretary, and to go to sea with him with the fleet to receive the homecoming prince. Pepys was soon initiated into the trade secrets of Whitehall

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which provided him with inside information which he found so advantageous later as manager of personnel. Thus, according to his Diary, on the afternoon of 8th March 1660, he repaired to the Dog Tavern, somewhere in Westminster, and there met Captain Philip Holland ‘with whom I advised how to make some advantage of my Lord’s going to sea, told me to have five or six servants entered on board as dead men, and I to give them what wages I pleased, and so their pay to be mine’.53 A fortnight later Pepys accompanied his Lord on the historic sea-mission, and in due course we find him composing a letter of welcome to Charles II,54 who came aboard on 23rd May, Pepys being foremost among those who knelt to kiss his hand. Two days later he is in conversation with the King’s brother James, Duke of York and Admiral of the Fleet, who, to quote Pepys, ‘upon my desire did promise me his future favour’.55 The Diary is so packed with startling and interesting detail that it may seem invidious to single out any item, yet before pursuing our subject’s career an entry of the 23rd June of the same year deserves quotation: T o my Lord’s lodgings, where Tom Guy come to me, and there staid to see the King touch people for the King’s evil. But he did not come at all, it rained so; and the poor people were forced to stand all the morning in the rain in the garden. Afterward he touched them in the Banquetting-house.’56

Here surely is an interesting incident in royal, and therefore in public, administration. The ceremony here mentioned was of great antiquity in England, having been traced back to the reign of Edward the Confessor (reg. 1042-66). It is recorded that, be­ tween 1660 and 1682, 92,107 persons were touched for the evil. Those who came to Court for the ceremony had to bring a certifi­ cate, signed by the parson and churchwardens of his parish, that he had not at any time previously been touched by His Majesty. The custom apparently outlived the Stuarts, for it is stated by Boswell that such a hard-headed person as Dr Samuel Johnson was among those who, at Lent, 1712, were touched by Queen Anne. Shortly afterwards Pepys was appointed to the Clerkship of the Acts, virtually the oldest administrative office in the Navy Office, which, under the Admiralty, was concerned with building, victualling and maintaining the Navy. A surviving list of the officers of the Admiralty on 31st May 1660 in Pepys own hand­ writing, reads as follows:57

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His Royal Highness James, Duke of York, Lord High Admiral. Sir George Carteret, Treasurer. Sir Robert Slingsby (soon after) Comptroller. Sir William Batten, Surveyor. Samuel Pepys, Esq., Clerk of the Acts. John, Lord Berkeley of Stratton. Sir William Penn. Commissioners. Peter Pett, Esq. In the manner of the age Pepys was to acquire other offices, for pluralism, or the holding of more than one office concurrently, was rife. First among these was a minor Clerkship of the Privy Seal, in which he acted as proxy for Montagu, now Earl of Sandwich. In February 1662 he relinquished this post as some­ thing of a nuisance, but was concurrently being sworn Younger Brother of Trinity House, and a Commissioner for Tangier, member of a board of eminent men set up to manage the affairs of Tangier, recently acquired as an English possession.58 Later Pepys was to become its Treasurer. In 1664 he became a member of a new Corporation to Regulate the Royal Fishery,59 and in October of the following year he was appointed Surveyor-General of Victualling, an office which was to be subjected to 1667 to the economy axe which Charles II’s extravagancies was to draw down upon the administration.60 Although in modern parlance Pepys was an administrator rather than a minister there was as yet no specific division between the two, or any separation of power between the main branches of government. His executive tasks were not therefore incompatible with his seat in the House of Commons, as member for Castle Rising in November 1673 and for both Sandwich and Harwich in 1685. His other activities were many-sided, as instanced particularly in his love for music and the theatre and his great interest in science and the developments that were then taking place. This led in December 1684 to his election as President of the Royal Society, which had originated in London in 1645, during the Civil War. In all these activities Pepys was the knowledgeable man of his times, but his first love was his administrative work at the Navy Office in which he was to make his outstanding contribution to the future. At the outset, his clerkship was ordinary enough: waiting upon his seniors while they paid off the ships and decided upon the sale of surplus vessels and stores, arranging victualling details and conducting correspondence with the Clerks of the Cheque, Storekeepers, Master Attendants and Shipwrights of the dock-

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yards who were involved. Sometimes the work went on urgently in a crisis, as when the ‘Assurance’ was lost in a terrific wind as she lay moored at Woolwich ready to sail.61 But it was not in Pepys nature to act the unenterprising clerk and to take things as they came. He sought always to improve his knowledge of his job, but had found it almost impossible to discover anything about the work of his predecessor, who apparently had been too old and infirm to come frequently to the office. It was charac­ teristic of Pepys that he should contact an old friend, Lieutenant Lambert of the ‘Naseby’, and get him to explain the various parts of a ship, and also to call upon Hayter, his own clerk, to teach him a few sea-terms. Naturally he took a particular interest in any information bearing upon the prerogatives of his own office. As so often happens, his own unplanned struggles towards professional competence were to germinate in his mind ideas on better ways of achieving this essential objective, ideas which he was to apply later to Navy training. Early in February 1662 the Navy Office received the formal instructions on the running of the Office, addressed, by the Duke of York as Lord High Admiral, to the Principal Officers and Commissioners. These instructions mainly confirmed those pre­ viously issued a generation earlier but their special emphasis on the need for economy, particularly in the purchase of naval stores and of obtaining weekly returns from the Customs Office on all consignments of such goods arriving by river, confirmed thoughts that already taken hold of Pepys — that by applying himself zealously to his duties and diminishing the expenses of the Office he would most effectively outdistance his colleagues. He would see that the rules were strictly followed and in return expect his own rights to be honoured. Henceforward his attendance at the Office became spartan, for he rose early and stayed late, expecting his subordinates to do likewise, much to their surprise and chagrin. He rearranged his office and set his clerks in a room apart. Later he writes: T o my office, where I fell upon boring holes for me to see from my closet into the great office, without going forth, wherein I please myself much.’62

Pursuing his search for information Pepys went round the yards at Deptford and Woolwich63 to see what was going on and to confirm his suspicions that all was not well with the victualling accounts. These incipient suspicions were later to be confirmed and to cause him to devise administrative counter-measures. As a very human person he found great satisfaction in his new

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status, and the reputation he acquired among the poor.64 On the other hand, though his activities may have commended him to the victims of officialdom, there were others who hated his officiousness. On the evidence of the Diary Pepys was well satisfied with the financial rewards of his efforts, not only in terms of the fees from his various posts, but also by way of ‘gifts’ which were not frowned upon at the time. These could be as varied as ‘a pair of white gloves’ or ‘forty pieces of gold hair’.65 His evident success did not cause him to relax in his search for improvements in Navy administration; by, for example, re­ organizing the archives or inventing a more effective scale for measuring timber.66 Nor did his natural temerity provide an excuse for deserting his post when the outbreak of plague in 1669 understandably sent most of his colleagues scuttling to the country. His zeal on this occasion led Charles II, on his own return to town, to tell him personally, ‘Mr. Pepys I do give you thanks for your good service all this year, and I assure I am very sensible of it’.67 The Diary begins the new year 1665-6 with the significant passage: ‘Called up at five o’clock by Mr Tooker, who wrote while I dictated to him, my business of the Pursers; and so, without eating or drinking, till three in the afternoon, to my great content, finished it.’68

The document survives in the British Museum, providing remarkable evidence of Pepys’s business habits. It consists of nineteen closely written folio pages entitled A Letter from Mr Pepys dated at Greenwich, 1st Ja n J1665-6, which he calls his New Year's Gift to his hon. friend, Sir Wm. Coventry, wherein he lays down a method of securing his Majesty in husbandry execution of the Victualling Part of the Naval Expence.69 To quote Sir Arthur Bryant’s illuminating analysis of the content: ‘. . . Clearly, and at great though never unnecessary length, he put before Coventry the reasons why it would be perilous in the middle of a war to inaugurate any entirely new system and discussed the respective merits and defects of the three methods hitherto employed in the Navy. That then used, by which every ship’s Purser was bound by bond, compelled to give security for his accountable­ ness and controlled by captains and muster-masters, he condemned without mercy, “in that it supposes a work to be done upon terms demonstrably to the prejudice of the doer”. Under such a system, he showed, the Purser could only make a livelihood by professed cheating, either by embezzling provisions and using “all the artifices

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he can . . . to find ways of charging the defects of provisions upon the King”, or by making a tacit agreement with the Captain to connive at his own fraudulent practices in return for the Cap­ tain’s allowing his. “Hence”, wrote the wise Surveyor-General, “comes an extra provision of great candles, white biscuit, Cheshire cheese (and it may be Parmesan), butter, strong beer, wine, poultry, fresh meat, and what not, for the Captain’s table . . . . Hence it is the Purser is obliged to concur with the Captain in the over-ratings of his servants, in his admission of unable persons to serve His Majesty upon terms of half pay. Hence it is so many super­ numeraries are crowded upon the ship; so many runaways continued upon the books”. He himself, though “no worshipper of the old say-saws of the Navy”, much preferred the ancient system which had been abandoned at the time of the Civil War, by which a Purser, though subject to check in respect of pay, was put under no other obligations in respect of victuals beyond that of maintaining the ship at its full complement of men during the time for which it was victualled; if the supplies gave out first, the cost of making good the deficiencies would then fall on his shoulders and not on the King’s; and, since anything that he could save would be to his own profit, he would have every incentive for making them last as long as possible. By this means, Pepys argued, the continuance of the ship abroad would become the Purser’s profit, and fleets would no longer prematurely return to harbour with the excuse that their victuals were exhausted. Nor would the Purser be any longer under a “servile necessity” to conspire with the ship’s commander to cheat the Crown, “for he will naturally reckon all unuseful men enter­ tained for the Captain’s profit burdensome to him in consuming his victuals, as much as they are to the King, in taking up wages”. In short as Pepys said “my work is likeliest to be best done by him whose profit is increased by the well doing of it without increase of charge to me that employs him”.’70

Thus Pepys soldiers on in a period of turmoil and financial decline. In 1667 the Fleet is reduced to impotence, half-starved seamen are dying for lack of food,71 and the Dutch fleet makes a successful foray into the Medway, capturing the ‘Royal Charles’ and firing many other men-of-war. This news, reaching London late that afternoon, filled Pepys with consternation lest some violence be done to the Navy Office in reprisal.72 Financial changes are inevitable. The axe falls upon the administration, involving inter alia the abolition of the Victualling Office. Although officialdom is in panic and every employee is turning against his fellow, Pepys, while maintaining a steady eye upon his own interests, stands out staunchly against the universal treachery, defending the Navy Office as well as himself against unjust charges. In particular he objected to laying the blame upon the clerks for the use of the ticket system, whereby dis-

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charged seamen were given negotiable tickets instead of money and were often compelled by circumstances to pass them on to tradesmen for little more than half their value. It was sheer lack of funds that left the clerks no alternative and the State’s poor credit that reduced so steeply the value of the credit notes. Interrogated bareheaded before a committee of Parliament, Pepys, supported by his reputation for efficiency and incorrupti­ bility, was able to turn the attack of his enemies and to maintain his official position unshaken.73 Great changes had been effected in the conduct of public business since the not so distant days of Cranfield, yet the attacks continued from many disgruntled quar­ ters and it is surely a tribute as much to Pepys’s statesmanlike strategy as to his administrative competence that, at the end of March 1669, he was the only survivor of the principal officers of the Navy Board of 1660.74 The famous Diary terminated on the last day of May 1669, Pepys complaining that his sight was no longer good enough for him to continue. Towards the end of the year, on his return from a recuperating holiday with his wife Elizabeth, that handsome, much-beloved, yet sorely tried woman went down with a fever and died, leaving Pepys alone, his greatest task still ahead of him, the task that these early struggles had surely prepared him for. Characteristically Pepys was able to overcome his personal difficulties, heroically indeed with regard to his defective eyesight, which he redressed by carefully using his clerks for both writing and reading, and at the expense of much pain when such duties could not be delegated. His efforts to build up the Navy adminis­ tration were inevitably dogged by shortage of money. A con­ tinuing battle went on between King and Parliament, which was still some way from consolidating its historic victory and even further from understanding the true needs of the administration that was emerging, through the wise manipulations of such as Pepys, upon the anvil of technical change which the contem­ porary world was experiencing. Despite his extravagance and volatility Charles II had the wisdom to retain and even to en­ courage Pepys’s services. The story, which is at the same time one of the most exciting, dogged and exasperating in the whole history of administrative development, is much too big and detailed to be adequately summarized here, but fortunately, apart from Pepys’s own per­ sonal account, this is one of the best documented of such develop­ ments and the abundant material is readily available to students of administration. In his new phase Pepys even attempted to

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continue his diary, through his clerks in long-hand and by appending notes of his own in short-hand in the margin when he wished to add details of a more private nature than was fit for their eyes. Although continued for only two months this is of great importance in containing notes on his defence, at the end of 1669, of the Navy Office before King and Council, against allegations in the report of a Commons Committee of Public Accounts, from which he was to emerge with the King’s appro­ bation.75 In consequence of the Test Act of 1672, which made it impos­ sible for a Roman Catholic to hold public office, the Duke of York was compelled to resign his office as Lord High Admiral. No successor was appointed. Instead it was decided to place the position in the hands of fifteen Commissioners, consisting of leading men of the realm, to whom Samuel Pepys Esq. was appointed Secretary. His post of Clerk of the Acts went jointly to his brother John and his old clerk, Tom Hayter. Samuel Pepys, at the age of forty, now held the key adminis­ trative position at the Admiralty, with greatly increased power and prestige, from which he was destined to forge a new instru­ ment of naval power or — as Bryant so rightly states: ‘ . . . to transform an inchoate and ill-directed service into the most enduring, exact and potent instrument of force seen on this dis­ orderly planet since the days of Imperial Rome.’76

An early reform that marked the quality of his innovations, was the establishment of a Mathematical School for forty picked boys, chosen for their wit and scholarship, from the general body of the old charitable foundation of Christ’s Hospital, to be in­ structed in arithmetic and mathematics and the science of navigation, until old enough to be apprenticed to the sea.77 Later, in 1676, when Pepys became a governor of the Hospital and member of the school’s committee he was to discover that things had not worked out as he intended. The boys’ instruction was insufficient to rate them higher than ordinary seamen, and this had not been the original aim. Pepys wanted them to have sufficient scholarship to act as clerks and pursers and even secre­ taries to admirals and thus to improve the ships’ administration. He now suggested a tightening up and subjection of the school to public visitation twice a year. Instruction in mathematics and Latin were to be improved and a sort of competitive examination was proposed ‘not only in the Latin, Writing and Arithemtic, but growth, health, age and morality.’78 A new teacher had to be found. Nevertheless, the school’s difficulties continued, for the

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new ideas took a long time to take root and, to show his dissatis­ faction with the progress achieved, during 1682 Pepys reluctantly decided to cease attending the committee.79 In the meantime Pepys had been pressing similar ideas in another direction by advocating the professionalization of Navy officers through the introduction of an ‘Establishment for ascer­ taining the Duties and Trust of a Lieutenant’.80 This prescribed that every candidate for this rank should in future first serve three years at sea and at least one as midshipman, produce a certificate of sobriety, diligence and obedience from his Captain and pass an examination at the Navy Office in navigation and seamanship. In future the well-born amateur was to be eliminated unless he was prepared to learn the seaman’s trade. His plan was adopted by the Admiralty Board in December 1677, and the establishment was put into operation the following month, with the acceptance of the first four candidates. In this instance Pepys had not merely inaugurated a scheme that was to serve the Royal Navy well in the future, but had also brought about the official endorsement of a principle that was to lead in due time to the introduction of a professional civil service. The basic idea was there, but in other fields had to await its application until the situation imperatively demanded it. It is not surprising that his innovation was to lose him the friendship of some whose protegees were unable to satisfy the conditions laid down. Pepys was well-equipped to keep an eye on the activities of the staff of the Navy Office, to ensure that proper routines were followed, periodical statistics were submitted and to intervene personally when necessary. He carried his reforms to the ships, discouraging from the outset the appointment of officers whose only commendation was their nobility, eliminating abuses of the existing regulations from the top downwards. Thus he insisted upon the presence of responsible officers at the periodical mus­ ters, as laid down in regulations. This had the effect, amongst other things, of preventing the use of the ships for the private carriage of bullion, which was both widespread and contrary to regulations. But all this was a thankless business, which stirred up a good deal of resentment among the highly placed, and only a man of Pepy’s dedication and dogged temperament could have persevered. Laxness and misconduct aboard ship were so wide­ spread that every effort to establish a proper discipline was met with almost universal opposition. In the late ’seventies the country was in turmoil over Popish plots, and Protestants everywhere were on the warpath. As is usual in such outbreaks, many innocent persons were victimized.

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Pepys’s name became involved with allegations about escaping Jesuits and his clerk, Samuel Atkins, was arrested and tried on trumped up charges. The interrogation failed either to shake Atkins’s protestantism or to incriminate his master, and the prosecution failed ignominiously. Pepys even had trouble with his Board, for they were not all his friends, and in Parliament the opposition renewed their attacks. In the midst of it all the government fell and King Charles II decided to pack his Council with strong opposition anti-Papists. A fresh Commission was appointed on 21st April 1679 for executing the office of Lord High Admiral, all but one being members of the opposition, including three of Pepys’s worst enemies. Yet the King, seeing the advantage of retaining the expert administration, continued Pepys in the secretaryship, thus endorsing the principle of permanency of the professional side, which was to prove to important in the more distant future, although at the time neither the opposition nor indeed Pepys himself from their opposing standpoints, understood it. A Parliamentary committee was set up to inquire into ‘Mis­ carriages of the Navy’, upon which Pepys’s greatest enemies were gathered. Pepys felt compelled to resign the secretaryship. He was accused inter alia of piracy, popery and treachery and defended himself before the House with his usual skill. But the majority were against him and not, in the circumstances of the hour, amenable to reason. He was committed to the Tower. His demand for discharge on habeas corpus was rejected. On 20th June, on the Attorney General declaring that he was not yet ready with evidence to undertake the prosecution, Pepys, together with Anthony Deane who was also involved, were discharged from the Tower and recommitted to the Marshalsea prison in Southwark. As it turned out sufficient evidence was still not forthcoming and, after much shilly-shallying, the two prisoners were discharged eight days after this committal. When the Lord Chief Justice had asked the Attorney General what he had to say on the prisoners’ motion, he had answered ‘Nothing’.81 Thus Pepys was again a free man after some fourteen months of persecution and suspense, his enemies, though so strategically placed, having completely failed to bring forward a shred of evidence for their unfounded accusations. Pepys’s absence from the Admiralty had soon been signalized by a general slackness and ignoring of the precedents that he had introduced to ensure effective administration. Pepys not only received reports of the new situation from his former clerks, but himself witnessed the shocking state of the yards when on 17th

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April 1683 he accompanied his previous assistants Deane and Hewer to Woolwich and Deptford to witness the launching of the ‘Neptune’.82 Later in the year he was once again called to take part in an official mission. Charles II, having decided that the maintenance of the colony at Tangier was proving much too expensive to him, ordered the fitting out of an expedition to liquidate the place. At two days’ notice Pepys went aboard the ‘Grafton’ at Spithead, where the fleet had assembled under Lord Dartmouth to under­ take the expedition. Pepys had been appointed Lord Dartmouth’s sole counsellor, a commission he had received with misgivings, since the political consequences of the liquidation, which was being kept secret, might prove dangerous. During the voyage Pepys had ample time to gather further information about the decline that was encompassing the Navy, nor was he to be much impressed by what he saw at Tangier, remarking ‘never surely was ever any town governed in all matters both public and private as this place has been’.83 During a brief holiday in Spain which Pepys was able to enjoy, following the successful conclusion of the mission, he visited, among other places, Seville where he enjoyed the hospi­ tality of the English merchants established in that city. While he was there he visited the Casa de Contratacion to discuss with Don Miguel Zuero, the Cosmografa Fabricador or mastermap-maker of Spain, the mysteries of his craft and to learn the story of its decay. At the Casa Pepys was also able to study the methods of training and examining the pilots who participated in the trade with the New World and to learn how the whole process, admirable as was the basic intention, was being stultified by the increasing formalism which had been for the past century paralysing the strength of Spain. He was not to be misled by the pompous pretences of Spanish life and, if he admired the justice of the system that had been set up to examine every office upon its expiration and to invite all persons to bring forward their complaints of any injustice done by the occupant, he was highly critical of the result which was to place in the hands of petty judges opportunities to extract unauthorized payment from the official into whose activities they were inquiring.84 Shortly after his return to England the King decided to cancel the existing Admiralty Commission, to resume nominal charge himself but to entrust the actual supervision to James, his brother, who as a Catholic, could not now, under the Test Act, resume his old title of Lord High Admiral. Pepys, by Letters Patent under the Great Seal, received virtual administrative

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control as Secretary for the Affairs of the Admiralty of England. The salary and prestige of office were of course highly acceptable to him, but not so much as the opportunity afforded of re-creating the life’s work that had been so drastically cut short by the political upheaval of 1679. Pepys’s greatest period of administrative endeavour had arrived. Not only was he to recover for the Admiralty and the Navy the efficiency that had been lost during his absence but to carry his administrative improvement much further into the new age. Unfortunately political vicissitudes were to make time short. In 1685 on the death of Charles II, his brother came to the throne as James II, a Catholic king, who brought with him a tendency to solemnity and respectability coupled with a singular lack of political acumen. There was to be neither Lord High Admiral nor Commission, and Pepys remained as unchallenged head of the first service of the State.85 Doubtless he could have ranked higher had he wished but his heart was set upon the particular task at hand. Not only was he laying the foundations of a Navy that was to achieve the greatest glory, but he was setting an example for a new kind of professional administration that had great promise for the future. As Bryant justly concludes: ‘He was at the very summit of his earthly power and glory. He stood at the King’s right hand, ruled the Navy and saw his ventures prosper. He was Secretary of the Admiralty, Master of Trinity House, and President of the Royal Society. His confidential clerk, Will Hewer, who had once slept in his attic and done his chaws, was now a man of vast wealth, a great financier and Master of the Clothworkers’ Company; his poor brother-in-law, Baity, a Special Commissioner of the Navy. His private house was the Admiralty of England. By the measure of the world Pepys had arrived.’86

But Pepys had sworn allegiance to the ill-starred James, who in 1688 was to be caught up by what is known as the Glorious Revo­ lution, under which William of Orange, as William III, and his wife Mary, who was James’s daughter, both Protestants, were to take the throne at the behest of Parliament. This bloodless revo­ lution was to inaugurate a more settled period of constitutional monarchy under which a new type of government was gradually to develop. Whatever his personal prospects might have been under the new regime, whose spirit surely would have suited him well, Pepys felt himself much too closely associated with the exiled King even to consider carrying on. A new Admiralty Commission was appointed whose Secretary, Phineas Bowles was purely an administrator, precursor of the modern Permanent Secretary, unlike Pepys who in his final stage could have borne IIN

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the title of ‘Secretary of State for Marine Affairs’ had such a post then existed. Only a man of his undoubted genius could have undertaken effectively an office that involved both functions. SALE

OF

OFFICES

The sale of public offices, which has often been mentioned in earlier chapters of this work, is a practice that has been common to many ages and climes, a symptom of the particular conditions of society at the time, but a symptom itself having serious con­ sequences in terms of efficiency and economy. It was not an invention of the West, for offices were sold in such far-flung societies as those of Babylon, China, India and Islam. Yet there are good reasons for considering the practice at this particular juncture, since it was during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that it had its widest currency and exerted its greatest impact in Europe. Really to thrive it requires a system in which the administrative sectors have expanded but not yet reached a high level of technical sophistication. It is not therefore a prac­ tice that finds suitable soil in underdeveloped communities, so that there were wide areas in Europe at the time that were not suitable for its operation. Elsewhere there were other reasons for its failure to spread, notably in Germany where the small-state absolutism did not need large bureaucracies. This was less true in Italy where small states were general, for two good reasons (1) the spread of the Castilian system to those parts occupied by Spain, and (2) the long tradition of such methods of filling official position which had continued without break since the Roman Empire, where it had been rife. The Popes had not hesitated to use it. Simony, the buying of ecclesiastical preferment, against which Luther directed his fiercest criticisms, included sale of office. It was common in England87 and the Netherlands88 but never to the extent of becoming a major evil. It was in Spain and France that it had its heyday. Sale of office, involving the purchase of an office by the wouldbe operator, either personally or by public auction, often accord­ ing to a generally recognized scale of charges, may be anything but a simple transaction. According to Aylmer’s analysis89 the sale of offices in the Royal service in England could involve as payee any of six categories ranging among (1) the sovereign himself, (2) a royal favourite or minister of state, (3) the executive head of the office, (4) the existing holder, or (5) his heirs or assigns, and (6) ‘any holder of a prior reversion who was being by-passed or was surrendering his claim’.

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In England the market for offices was never supported by a vigorous public demand, especially in the localities, where the offices were often compulsory and considered a burden. There was a strong inclination among those who could afford it to pay others compensation for shouldering the responsibility for such offices. Sales had been fairly common during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but there was legislation against the prac­ tice in 1388, although many offices were regarded as private property and therefore disposable legally. It was not usual for the practice to appeal to the King as an effective means of increasing revenue, but under the Stuarts, particularly James I (reg. 1603-25), the Court was highly venal. Parliament had always been antagonistic and at this time the practice was specifically condemned in the Grand Remonstrance made by the Commons to Charles I in 1641. During the ensuing civil war the King tried to enlarge his revenues by increasing such sales. The practice was abolished during the republican Protectorate (1649-60), but received a further boost during the Restoration (1660-88), as numerous references in Pepys’s Diary confirm. Reform was to come about gradually, but, apart from administrative offices, seats in the Commons, ecclesiastical offices and commissions in the Army continued to be sold well into the nineteenth century. In Spain the situation was very different. In Castile it had become the royal policy, against the will of the Cortes, or parlia­ ment, to sell municipal offices, while during the war with the Moors offices had been created and sold to fill the royal coffers. It was characteristic of Philip II that he systematized the sale of offices out of financial expediency, while at the same time con­ demning it on principle, and issuing measures against farm and sale by his subjects.90 The evils were aggravated during the reign of his successor, Philip III. Instead of using the money to improve the state finances and efficiency he squandered it upon favourites, who were also given offices in State, Church and Army which could be either sold or executed through deputies. Despite attempts by Cortes during the seventeenth century to stop the rot, in practice the kings found little difficulty in evading their restrictions. Philip TV (reg. 1621-65) found an economical way of rewarding deserving citizens by conferring upon them saleable offices. Swart quotes91 the case of the eminent painter Velasquez, who in this way received the office of alguacil mayor (sheriff) in the Court of Justice at Madrid, which he was able to dispose of to a third person at a good price, and later he was granted the office of escribano (clerk) in the Weight Office of the same city. Favourites like the Duke of Lerma and Gaspar de Olvares

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were literally showered with such gifts, so that one could almost look upon saleable offices as a sort of secondary currency. A national antipathy to participating in commerce and industry, or indeed to undertaking any activity involving manual labour, greatly increased the enthusiasm for place-hunting in Spain. In fact it became so great a craze as to amount to empleomania, as it was so picturesquely dubbed.92 An act of Cortes in 1669 abolish­ ing venality failed to have effect. It omitted to provide for com­ pensation and was met by a storm of protest from office-holders demanding indemnification. In the meantime a general rise in prices made the question of compensation more difficult; the proprietors wanted refundment at current values rather than at the original price, the ever-recurring problem of periods of infla­ tion. Outside Castile the sale of offices was less vigorously cultivated, but the direct power of Castile over Spain’s overseas territories meant that the system of sale was applied there without hindrance. Here Philip II’s administrative meticulousness led naturally to the systematic spread of sales in the New World and, in support of this policy, he alleged its necessity to support the Atlantic fleet, which was needed to defend the Christian faith in his empire.93 Whereas in Spain offices were alienated or sold by the King — classified as oficios enjenados (offices which were alienated) or oficios renunciables (offices which could be trans­ ferred) — this fiction was dropped overseas, where all offices were known as oficios vendibles (saleable offices) rules being laid down for a proportion of the sale price to be rendered to the treasury at each change of hands. Although, overseas even more than in Spain, there was an increasing need for administrative com­ petence to cope with the growing problems of settling and developing new lands, there could be no question of ensuring that officials appointed through purchase were capable. An outcome of the complete legality of the sale of office in the New World was that the Council of the Indies and other official bodies involved kept full records of their office-mongering activities.94 Viewed as an administrative drawback, which seems to be putting it mildly, the history of the practice in Spanish America demonstrates a steady deterioration. In the penultimate chapter of his detailed survey Parry classifies the stages of this decline in the following terms: T he history of the sale of colonial offices under the Habsburgs falls into three roughly defined periods. Under Charles V the Crown used fee-earning offices as rewards, and permitted their sale by private persons sometimes by court favourites on a large scale, but made no attempt to sell offices itself. Under Philip II and Philip III the Crown

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itself sold fee-earning and honorific offices, and permitted their sale or bequest by private persons, under strict conditions and upon specified payments to the Crown, but excluded from sale senior administrative and financial posts, and all judicial offices. Under Philip IV and Charles II the Crown sold almost any office for which a purchaser could be found, including many financial and admini­ strative posts, and a few purely judicial ones. The practice of the last two kings, in selling offices not legally saleable, was generally recognized, by those who thought and wrote about such matters, as an abuse.’95

Although in Spain venality of office never reached the heights that it did in France, a subject to which we must now turn our attention, its impact there was even greater when superimposed, as it was, upon social outlooks which discouraged competent participation in activities essential to the community’s prosperity and a financial situation of increasing difficulty. In France venalite des offices went back to the Middle Ages, to a time when there was still no legal distinction between personal property and public office. Laws had been enacted against it but usually these were ignored in the face of public demand and official recognition of its importance as a source of revenue. Francis I (reg. 1515-47) had even set up a special Bureau des Parties Casuelles to deal with such sales. New posts were created or existing ones shared between two or even more incumbents. If the new post had only nominal duties it did not much matter, and there was inevitable proliferation of active offices in the ranks of the inspectors and tax collectors to add to the people’s burden. Officials themselves could sell their own offices at a profit, subject to the payment of a settled percentage to the royal treasury. The King came to depend very much upon such revenues. In 1597 the laws against the sale of offices were virtually abolished and in 1610 the lawyer Charles Loyseau published for general guidance a detailed treatise of the practice. A decree of 1604, attributed to the financier Paulet, had enabled officials to render their offices hereditary on payment of an annual tax. This archomanie, as Loyseau called the state of mind behind place-hunting, rose to such heights as to be a scandal. People even sold their estates in order to become officials. There was another aspect to this besides the general preference shown by Frenchmen for an official career. Society was in flux, the nobility had lost their grip upon affairs and leaders were being sought from among the new bourgeoisie, who were in a position to pay. A new noblesse de robe was replacing the ancient nobless d'epee.

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Both the nobility and the clergy were against the new trend, advocating a return to the old ways in the name of merit and honour. But they were too late. Drifting without foresight, classes and groups have inevitably to surrender to the underlying tides of change, which have usually already been moulded by their own lack of comprehension. Unfortunately, the excesses of the system had ill-effects which made the cure often worse than the disease. The King in filling his coffers had restricted his scope to choose his servants, who inevitably became less efficient and less honest than formerly, in a developing situation that called for even higher standards than had sufficed in the past. Colbert, among others, saw the evils of the trend — after all he was the practical administrator responsible for getting results — but his efforts to restrict sales met with little success. The counter-pulls increased and after Colbert’s death the tide of sales rose higher and higher. Inevitably offices became less attractive and the seventeenth century proved to be the peak of the craze. Yet in France absolutism continued, accompanied by a venality of office that contributed powerfully in preventing the increased efficiency in the State administration that could well have saved it from its forceful destruction in the French Revolution. The outbreak was to be signalized on 14th July 1789 by the storming by the people of Paris, of the Bastille, the great fortress-prison which symbolized the arbitrary power of a monarch, who was still able to incarcerate there any citizen whom he chose to have named in a lettre de cachet which instructed the governor to imprison him sine die. Venality of office was abolished officially by this great upheaval, but despite the ruthless and indiscriminate surgery applied by the new forces, the ancien regime was to die hard and venality was to come back with the restoration of 1816, for a brief spell before the principles of civil service took control. Thus we see that sale of official positions has been widespread in the past, though certain conditions were necessary for it to thrive. There had to be sufficient desire for office and a capacity to pay the price demanded. The practice of remunerating officials by fees was a conditioning factor. Objections were widespread, not usually on moral or efficiency grounds, but from the parties who were not able to profit by the arrangements. The far-sighted recognized the value of official competence, but they were few and far between. Popular assemblies were usually against the practice, largely because such sales placed power in the hands of a particular class. The classes who had habitually received appointments because of their status were inevitably antagonistic. Political absolutism and financial weakness were conditions basic

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to its success. In the circumstances of Stuart England Aylmer suggests that sale of offices either facilitated the recruitment of totally unqualified parvenus, or ‘led to the infusion of successful self-made men into an otherwise dangerously static bureaucracy’.96 Swart considers that sale is a rational method where corruption is in any case unavoidable, for ‘It secured for the government part of the illegally gained profits and excluded favour in the appointments to office’.97 Montesquieu supported the idea because it eliminated the favouritism and intrigue of courtiers and ministers, as did even the hard-headed Bentham, who can nevertheless be claimed as one of the sponsors of the modern system of public administration. Under modern conditions none of these arguments is satis­ factory, but such practices must be assessed in the context of the age in which they operate. No doubt there are administrative practices, which are acceptable today as being quite reasonable, that a future age will assess very differently.

REFERENCES 1 See, for example, Max Beloff’s brief but informative T h e A g e o f A b s o lu tis m , 1660-1815 (Hutchinson, 1954), and Eli Heckscher’s massive and authoritative M e rc a n tilism (original Swedish edition, 1931; Allen & Unwin, 1935, in two volumes). 2 Orest A. Ranum, R ic h e lie u a n d th e C o u n cillo rs o f L o u is X I I I (Oxford, 1963), p. 26. 3 Ranum, o p. c it ., pp. 28-9. 4 Ranum, o p . c it., p. 33. 5 Ranum, op. c it., p. 49. 6 Ranum, o p . c it., p. 55. 7 Ranum, o p . c it., p. 76. 8 Ranum, op. c it., pp. 121-2. 9 Ranum, op. c it., p. 125. 10 Ranum, o p. c it., p. 126. 11 Ranum, o p . c it., p. 181. 12 James E. King, S c ie n c e a n d R a tio n a lis m in th e G o v e r n m e n t o f L o u is X I V , 1 661-1683 (John Hopkins, 1948), p. 89. 13 King, o p . c it., pp. 97-8. 14 King, o p . c it., p. 99. 15 King, o p . c it., p. 118. 16 King, o p . c it., pp. 119-20. 17 King, o p. c it., pp. 120-1. 18 King, o p. c it., pp. 122-3. 19 King, o p. c it., pp. 159-60. 20 King, o p . c it., p. 129. 21 King, o p. c it., p. 129. 22 King, o p . c it., p. 128. 23 King, o p . c it., p. 130.

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24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION King, o p . c it., p. 138. King, o p . c it., p. 149. King, o p . c it., pp. 161-2. King, op. c it., p. 170. King, o p . c it., p. 170. King, o p . c it., p. 214. King, o p. c it., p. 261. King, o p . c it., p. 184. King, o p . c it., p. 311. Herman Finer, T h e T h e o r y a n d P ra c tic e o f M o d e rn G o v e r n m e n t (Methuen, 1961), p. 725. Hans Rosenberg, B u r e a u c r a c y , A r is to c r a c y a n d A u to c r a c y : th e P ru ssia n E x p e rie n c e , 1660-1815 (Harvaitl, 1958), pp. 34-5. Finer, o p. c it., pp. 727-8. Finer, o p. c it., p. 729, quoting Ernst von Meier, H a n n o v e re sc h e , V e rfa ssu n g e u n d V e rw a ltu n g s g e s c h ic h te , 1680-1866 (1898-9). Finer, o p. c it., p. 730. Rosenberg, o p . c it., p. 99. Quoted by Finer, op . c it., p. 753. Rosenberg, o p . c it., p. 64. Rosenberg, op. c it., p. 208, quoting from R h e in isc h e B r ie fe u n d A k te n z u r G e s c h ic h te d e r p o litisc h e n B e w e g u n g , 1830-1850 (Essen, 1919). See R. H. Tawney, B u sin ess a n d P o litic s u n d e r J a m es I: L io n e l C ra n field a s M e r c h a n t & M in is te r (Cambridge, 1958). Tawney, o p . c it., p. 82. Tawney, op. c it., p. 108, footnote. Tawney, o p . c it., p. 109. Tawney, o p. c it., pp. 232-3. Tawney, o p . c it., pp. 245-63. Godfrey Davis, T h e E a r ly S tu a rts, 1603-1660 (Oxford, 1937), p. 41. Arthur Bryant, S a m u e l P e p y s — T h e M a n in th e M a k in g (Collins, 1933), p. xi. See the same author’s S a m u el P e p y s — T h e Y e a r o f P e r il (Collins, 1935), and S a m u el P e p y s — T h e S a v io u r o f th e N a v y (Collins, 1938). D ia r y o f S a m u el P e p y s , F .R .S . (Dent, Everyman edn., two vols., 1906). Sir John Craig, A H is to r y o f R e d T a p e (Macdonald & Evans, 1955), p. 118. Bryant, o p. cit. (M an in th e M a k in g ), pp. 31-44. Pepys, o p . c it., I, p. 31. Pepys, o p. c it., I, p. 51. Pepys, o p . c it., I, p. 65. Pepys, o p . c it., I, pp. 75-6. Pepys, o p. c it., I, p. 78, footnote quoting a paper in the Pepysian Library. Bryant, o p . cit. (M a n in th e M a k in g ), p. 179. Bryant, o p . c it., p. 222. Bryant, o p . c it., p. 341. Bryant, o p. c it., p. 131. Pepys, o p . c it., I, p. 261. Pepys, o p . c it., I, p. 288. Pepys, o p. c it., I, p. 289. Bryant, o p . c it., p. 220. Bryant, o p . c it., p. 201. Pepys, o p. c it., II, p. 8.

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69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

86 87

88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97

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Pepys, op. cit., II, p. 1. Pepys, op. cit., II, p. 1, footnote. Bryant, op. cit., pp. 286-7. Bryant, op. cit., p. 327. Pepys, op. cit., II, p. 255. Bryant, op. cit., pp. 344-5. Bryant, op. cit., p. 382. Bryant, op. cit. {The Years of Peril), pp. 19-20. Bryant, op. cit., p. 98. Bryant, op. cit., pp. 100-1. Bryant, op. cit., p. 177. Bryant, op. cit., pp. 364-5. Bryant, op. cit., p. 187. Bryant, op. cit., pp. 329-30. Bryant op. cit., pp. 392-3. Bryant, op. cit. {Saviour of the Navy), p. 7. Bryant, op. cit., p. 36. Bryant, op. cit., pp. 80-1. Bryant, op. cit., p. 125. K. W. Swart, Sale of Offices in the Seventeenth Century (Martinus Nijhoff, 1949), pp. 45-67. Swart, op. cit., pp. 68-81. G. E. Aylmer, The King's Servants: The Civil Service of Charles 1, 1625-42 (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), p. 227. Swart, op. cit., p. 25. Swart, op. cit., pp. 31-2. Swart, op. cit., p. 33. Swart, op. cit., p. 42. J. H. Parry, The Sale of Public Office in the Spanish Indies under the Hapsburgs (Cambridge and Univ. of California, 1953), p. 4. Parry, op. cit., p. 59. Aylmer, op. cit., p. 237. Swart, op. cit., o. 44.

CHAPTER 6

CHINA : SUNG AND AFTER The Chinese dynasty of Sung dominated the main Empire to the south from a . d . 960 to 1279. Peaceful relations were generally maintained with Laio in the north, but when the latter was super­ seded by the Chin in 1125 warfare between the two empires was continuous until the conquest of the latter by the Mongols, who established the Yuan dynasty in the north in 1206 and, for nearly a hundred years after 1279, combined both areas into the largest empire that China had yet seen. The Sung emperors maintained substantially the traditional Chinese system of gov­ ernment and administration. The Emperor, who was supreme, was advised and assisted by a Council of State, whose members, varying from five to nine, supervised individually the several organs of the Administration, which were grouped under (1) the Secretariat-Chancellery, (2) the Finance Commission, and (3) the Bureau of Military Affairs. There was also the characteristically Chinese institution of the Censorate, to which further reference will be made later. E M I N E N T SUNG A D M I N I S T R A T O R S : SU T UN GP O ( 1 0 3 6 - 1 1 0 1 ) A ND WANG ANSHIH (1021-1086)

The Sung period saw important intellectual developments, but, despite the attempt of Wang Anshih to introduce revolutionary changes through a system of state socialism, there was a serious decline in political effectiveness which was to continue until the twentieth century. The well-documented life of the poet-official Su Tungpo1 provides an excellent means of seeing how these official developments came about, with special reference to the celebrated examination system. Su Tungpo, destined to become one of China’s major poets and prose writers, was born in Meishan, on the Polikiang, or Glass River. This town was situated in the midst of an efficient water control and irrigation network that had flourished since its construction by the celebrated hydraulic engineer, Li Ping, in the third century b . c . Such was the deep-rooted historical setting

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in which Su was brought up, and studied with his mother a chapter in the ‘Later Han History’, which recounted the struggle of the scholar, Fan Pang, against the misrule of the eunuchs, and his condemnation to death in consequence. ‘Fan Pang,’ declared the young Su Tungpo, ‘shall be my model.’ There were other ways in which his home atmosphere was favourable. Su had access to a library stacked with books of all kinds; for the invention of printing about a hundred years earlier — attributed to the use of movable clay types by Pi Sheng2 — had spread the commercial production of books, which previously had had to be produced singly and laboriously by hand. His father, although himself a considerable scholar, had but recently failed in the examinations, but his father’s brother had qualified as Inspector in the Finance Ministry, and in consequence his grand­ father had received the honorary title of ‘Councellor’. Thus did the literary examinations place its seal on Chinese family life. Su Tungpo’s younger brother, Tseyu, who always remained close to him, was also a candidate. Studies could therefore be under­ taken on a truly co-operative basis. Su’s preparation for the official examinations began in the secondary school at the age of eleven. He had to read ancient classics, history, poetry and selected prose, and commit them to memory; for the tests were concerned not merely with content but also with language and phraseology. This meant hard and strenuous toil and the copying of all the works word by word. In this way not only were the works committed to memory but plenty of practice in calligraphy was ensured. The Su brothers married before they went up for their exami­ nations: Tungpo at eighteen marrying Wang Fu, a girl of fifteen, living at Chingshen some fifteen miles down the river. It was considered desirable to get this over before the examinations, so that there should be no emotional upsets. Moreover, on the announcement of examination results it was the custom of rich merchants in the capital with unmarried daughters to negotiate financial settlements on behalf of bachelor candidates, and it was often considered politic to anticipate this by making suitable arrangements with local families.3 Shortly after the younger son’s marriage the brothers and their father set out for the capital, which they reached in 1056. The father, who was now forty-seven and who had recently produced an important work on the principles of government, still hoped for preferment, although the offer of a teachership at the district college of Chengtu had not satisfied him. The two brothers passed the preliminary tests set by the Ministry of Education in

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the autumn which qualified them for the following spring examination at the palace. For these the Emperor Jentsung selected Ouyang Shiu as chief examiner, but maintained a personal interest, sending out the subjects for the papers by his own personal servants. As was the custom, extraordinary measures were adopted to secure complete secrecy and imparti­ ality. The candidates arrived at the palace at dawn, bringing cold food with them, for throughout the examination they were to be shut up in cubicles under the close supervision of the palace guards. The completed papers were copied by official clerks to ensure that the candidates* handwriting should not be recognized, and finally the judges were shut up within the palace, usually from January to March, while the papers were being marked and graded. The first paper was on history or principles of government, the second on the classics; and, after the candidates had been graded, there was a third, under the direct supervision of the Emperor, which covered lyrics, fu (descriptive poetry) and essays on politics. Both the brothers passed with honours. Su Tungpo came second on a list of 388 and thus achieved nation-wide fame as an outstanding scholar. One of his papers, which was greatly admired by ouyang shiu, dealt with the principle of simplicity and leniency in the administration of a country, a principle that was to be Su Tungpo’s basic philosophy of government. As he was about to embark upon his official career, Su Tungpo had to go into mourning retirement for twenty-seven months, according to custom, on account of his mother’s death. After this the family transferred to the capital. The brothers each passed two further examinations: one for ministry posts, the other to make frank criticism of the administration. The latter had been introduced by the Emperor to encourage the spirit of criticism. At long last, the father, now over fifty, obtained an appointment without examination as Examiner of Scripts in the Department of Archives, and was later given a post in a bureau to compile a history of the lives of the emperors of the dynasty. In this position he became involved in controversy because he insisted that his objective was the truth and not to gloss over the faults of ancestors.4 Su Tungpo’s brilliant record did not excuse him from starting at the bottom. His first appointment in 1061, with the rank of Councillor of Justice, was to the office of an Assistant Magistrate at Fengshiang, with the power of countersigning reports and official communications with the court.5 His duties, while not onerous, involved him in a good deal of travelling to settle out­ standing cases of crime. It proved less interesting than he had

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imagined and he missed the excitement of the capital.6 His moods were reflected in his poetry. One of his missions took him to the top of the Taipo Mountain to pray officially to the Dragon for the rain much needed by the farmers. His supplication to the God of Rain has been handed down to us. Unfortunately it did not produce results. The God was evidently unco-operative since a Sung Emperor had reduced his rank from duke to count. Official restitution had to be ceremoniously effected before the matter could be rectified.7 In 1064 Su Tungpo was relieved of the post, which had never really satisfied him. In accordance with official custom he now had to submit to the mokan (the Grind), or review of records to which a local official was subjected at the end of three years’ service. The new Emperor, Ingtsung, who had heard of Su Tungpo’s fame and wanted to use his abilities, was in favour of waiving the test and giving him a high assignment at court. But premier Han Chi felt that such outstanding favour at such an early stage would have an ill-effect on the young official. It is an interesting sidelight on the Chinese political system that he prevailed on all points. Su Tungpo passed his inquest and received a post in the Department of History. This delighted him, for the work gave him access to the magnificent collection of rare books, manuscripts and paintings of the Imperial library. In 1065 Su Tungpo’s wife died at the age of twenty-six. ‘On the anniversary of his wife’s death, Su wrote an exquisite poem revealing his sentiments about her, full of strange, ghostly beauty and a haunting music which unfortunately cannot be repro­ duced.’8 His father died the following year. Both the brothers immediately resigned and set off with the two coffins to their home a thousand miles away. When they returned to the capital in 1069, after the customary period of mourning, the situation had completely changed. Shentsung, the ‘Divine Emperor’, was now on the throne and China was about to embark upon her fourth unsuccessful experiment in totalitarianism, of which the extraordinary Wang Anshih was the instigator and driving force.9 The first and most successful of these totalitarian experiments had been undertaken, under the inspiration of the philosopher Shang Yang, by the first Chin Emperor and builder of the Great Wall in the third century b.c. The next two were attempted in the second century b .c. under the Han Emperor Wu and in the first century a.d . under Wang Mang: both failed. *

*

*

Wang Anshih,10 who was born in 1021, enjoyed the typical upbringing of the scholar-official, starting at the bottom and

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rising solely on the strength of his abilities, which must have been outstanding on any count. He was in some ways an eccentric, neglectful of his person, and must have been out of place in the punctilious atmosphere of Chinese officialdom, a fact that further emphasizes his outstanding quality. Lin Yutang, who had little sympathy with the policies he advocated, may well have been a little biased in referring to his ‘deplorable lack of tact and inability to get along with anyone but himself’, or in dubbing him ‘an unpractical idealist’.11 One thing is certain, if these strictures have any justification, Wang must have had very positive abilities to gain the Emperor’s support, as he did, and to obtain an oppor­ tunity to inaugurate a vast and revolutionary scheme of reform which inevitably drew down upon himself the vehement, and often vituperative, opposition of all office-holders whose positions were in the least threatened by the proposed reforms. As a matter of fact, despite his strong views, Wang Anshih had shown a strange disinclination to achieve power. For twentyfive years, following his examination success at twenty-one, he had been content to work in the provinces. As magistrate he had shown himself to be an accomplished practical administrator, building dams, reforming schools, establishing loans for farmers, and implementing some of his own social ideas. At the same time his fame as a scholar had steadily grown. It is said that the people liked him. Nevertheless he had consistently refused official advancement and evaded opportunities to transfer to the capital, where the strangeness of his self-denying ordinance had led to a widespread desire for his acquaintance. At last, in 1060, when Han Chi quitted the office of Chief Minister, Wang Anshih, whose voluminous diaries suggest that he had no great opinion of Han’s abilities, accepted a post on the Board of Finance. He lost little time in acquainting the Emperor Jentsung of his proposals for radical financial reform, which he embodied in a memorial of some ten thousand words. He advo­ cated ‘using the nation’s power to produce the nation’s wealth, and using the nation’s wealth to provide for the nation’s expenditure’.12 Nothing came of this and Wang returned to the provinces. The next Emperor, Ingstsung, reigned for four years and then his son, the Crown Prince, who had formed a high opinion of Wang Anshih, came to the throne as Emperor Shentsung at the age of twenty. Wang was immediately appointed Chief Magistrate of Nanking, and a little later given the rank of Hanlin scholar. He reached the capital in April 1068 and was called into imperial

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audience with special permission to ‘speak out of rank’, which he did to such good purpose that he obtained straight away the young Emperor’s support for his ideas. Early the following year, as the Su brothers arrived at the capital, Wang Anshih was appointed Vice-Premier. Despite almost universal opposition from the higher officials the way was now open for Wang’s reforms to be tried out. These reforms are ably summarized by Latourette13 under nine headings: ‘(1) The appointment of a commission to draft a budget for the state, a means of effecting a large annual saving in expenses; (2) A state monopoly of commerce, by which Wang would have the produce of each district used first for the payment of taxes and then for the needs of the district, the surplus to be purchased by the government and held either against future local needs, or to be transported elsewhere and sold, and depots to be set up for the exchange of goods and for advancing loans on merchandise and property (by this means Wang hoped to ensure to the cultivators a more certain market for their produce and increase the revenue of the government); (3) Loans by the state at two per cent, a month to farmers in the planting season on the security of growing crops, a device for promoting agriculture by enabling the farmer to plant and harvest his crop without falling into the clutches of the private money lender with him usurious rates of interest, but which incurred much criticism from the fact that, as they were administered by some officials, such loans were often compulsory on all, the rich as well as the poor; (4) The division of the land into equal sections and the annual reappraisal of it for purposes of taxation, thus to avoid the exemption of some of the cultivated soil from taxation and to ensure a more equitable distribution of the land tax; (5) The taxation of all a man’s property, both real estate and movables; (6) The abolition of the conscription of labour by the state (a longused form of taxation which probably bore very heavily on the poor and which, because it might be levied at times which most interfered with the peasant’s agricultural operations, was almost certainly a handicap to farming) and the substitution for it of a graduated tax based upon the division of property-holders into five groups according to their wealth; (7) Military reorganization, by which unnecessary troops were to be returned to civilian and productive life, and external defense and internal order were to be maintained by a system of compulsory military service, families being organized into groups of tens and fifties and each family with more than one male providing one for the frontier forces and for the local police; (8) A method of supporting the cavalry needed in the wars against

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the northern invaders by requiring each family in certain areas to keep a horse, which, with its food, was to be supplied by the state; and (9) Shifting the emphasis in the state examinations from literary style to the application of the principles of the Classics to current problems — a change designed to fit the successful competitors more directly for the fulfilment of official duties.5

It is hardly surprising that the implementation of such wide­ spread reforms should have proved beyond the capacity of its progenitors, particularly in face of the rabid opposition not only of the high officials, who were against radical change of any sort, but also of the vested interests affected by the reforms. Opposition also came from the very people who gained in one direction but had to pay in another: for example, those who welcomed the abolition of conscript labour but deprecated being taxed instead. Reformers are incorrigibly optimistic as to the amount of innova­ tion that can be made effective in a short time. They invariably try to do too much, too quickly and to reject any counsel for moderation as the voice of reaction. History shows that the rapid introduction of such changes involves the ruthless suppression of all opposition and the imposition of insupportable burdens on the shoulders of those who are expected to benefit in the long run — much too long for most of them. Within eight years the Emperor had had enough, as no doubt had Wang himself. It is an interesting sidelight on the tolerant outlook of the age that he was to live in retirement until his death in 1086. His reforms were not, however, completely abandoned, as many of his policies were implemented by subsequent administra­ tions during the Sung period. At the same time changes in the examinations, which substituted history, geography, economics, law and medicine for classics and poetry, gave them a more practicable slant than previously.14 *

*

*

Su Tungpo was among Wang Anshih’s most vehement critics. Although still holding a modest and strictly literary, nonadministrative post in the Department of History, he was so much against the policy of farmers’ loans that, both in 1070 and the following year, he wrote long outspoken letters to the Emperor on the subject, not hesitating to give his personal advice on what should be done.15 With even more justification Su sided with all officialdom on Wang’s treatment of the Censorate, which he purged and then attempted to pack with his own nominees. There can be little doubt that Wang was unwise in thus attempting to still criticism no

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from such an established body and that this lack of wisdom was greatly intensified when he appointed new members whose character did not fit them for such a responsible office. No repu­ table person would have thanked him for bringing this timehonoured institution into disrespect, whatever might be his views on the general reforms. The Censorate was peculier to the Chinese system, a longestablished institution to represent public opinion and act as frank critic of both Emperor and government. The Censorate could report to the Emperor upon the delinquencies of officials, criticize the acts of the Emperor himself, examine important state documents for mistakes, keep a watch on state property, investigate reports of financial corruption, ensure that public ceremonies were properly conducted: in fact act very much as a free press is supposed to act in modern democracies. Like the modern press the quality of their performance depended largely upon their competence and integrity in action. Their criticisms were made in the form of memorials to the throne. Although given complete freedom of speech, they had no protection from the law or the whim of the Emperor. The latter could punish them severely by demotion, dismissal, exile or death, and the effectiveness therefore of the Censorate as an institution varied from time to time with the devotion to truth of its members and the open-minded wisdom of the ruler. Under an evil despot the Censors could become time-servers, and the justification for their appointment would be diminished. In the main, however, the institution was held in great respect, appointment of its member­ ship was esteemed a great honour, and its censures were given due consideration. After all, it was a real aid to the efficient ruler to have such an institution available to provide an impartial searchlight on what was going on around him in his wide realm. Su Tungpo wrote a famous nine thousand word letter of pro­ test to the Emperor, reminding him that a short while before he had in audience invited straight criticism even of himself, and now he, Su, was taking him at his word. Su’s plea ranged widely over history, the principles of government and comparative government experience. The importance of free criticism was emphasized as a means of maintaining the support of the people. There is a modern ring in the following extract in Su Tungpo’s own words: ‘It appears to me that when the atmosphere for free criticism pre­ vails, even mediocre people will be encouraged to speak up, but when such freedom is destroyed, even the best people will be inclined to hold their tongues. I fear that from now on the pattern may be

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set and the censors will become no more than the flunkeys of the cabinet ministers, with the result that the Emperor will stand in complete isolation from his people. Once the system has been destroyed, anything may happen. . . . One cannot, furthermore, escape the conclusion that when there are no fearless critics of the government in times of peace, there will also be no national heroes willing to die for the country in times of trouble. If you do not permit your people even to put in a word of criticism, how do you expect them to die for the country when trouble comes?’16

Su Tungpo was well aware of the probable consequences of his outspokenness. The Emperor did nothing, but the govern­ ment itself had few inhibitions. Su Tungpo was cashiered, although attempts to obtain evidence against him of irregularities failed. He received the appointment of Deputy Magistrate of Hangchow and left the capital in 1071 to take up his new post. For the next three years he occupied himself in the uninspiring duties of junior magistrate, not neglecting any opportunity to criticize the regime in his poems. However, he rose to a Chief Magistracy at Michow in 1074 and at Suchow three years later. Wang Anshih had now gone from power and a new emperor sat on the throne. At Suchow threatening floods called for vigorous engineering and architectural activities which Su showed himself eminently capable of initiating. His magistracy there was a great success and he gained great popularity with the citizens. His next transfer was to Huchow early in 1079. But trouble was imminent. Su Tungpo’s views were becoming well known. The Emperor had remarked favourably on the con­ tents of his numerous letters, and the court bulletins, which were regularly published as a sort of official newspaper, were widely studied.17 The powers that be were apprehensive lest, with the disappearance from the scene of the supporters of the new economic policy, Su should be recalled to the capital. But he afforded them the opportunity for which they were looking when he directly critized them in his letter of thanks to the Emperor for his appointment. In June 1079 a Censor impeached him for casting a slur on the government and he was brought to trial in the capital. He was held in the censorate prison, known as the Black Terrace, during the trial, which lasted six or seven weeks, the story of which is recounted by the poet Lu Yu in his The Case of Poetry at the Black Terrace™ Severe penalties were demanded, but after some further delays, his enemies were disappointed when Su Tungpo received an order to proceed to Huangchow, near Hankow, with the low rank of Lieutenant in an army train­ ing corps, to be confined to the area and to have no right to sign

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official documents. He left the capital for his new post on the first day of 1080. To support his large family Su Tungpo was now compelled to take up farming. An example of his humanitarian outlook is to be found in his efforts at the time to stop the killing of infants, which, while illegal and punishable by two years hard labour, had become, owing to the prevalence of famine conditions, a widespread practice. Sun Tungpo established a Save-the-Child Association, with an honest neighbour named Ku, as president, and a monk at the Ankuo Temple, as treasurer in charge of records and accounts. Rich people were pressed to follow Su’s example in making a regular annual subscription. In truth Su enjoyed his confinement at Huangchow and was not at all pleased when the Emperor, still desirous of having his services, in 1084 instructed him to be confined near the capital. The poet had no real desire for office and power. After further vicissitudes, which included an attempt to retire and the death of the Emperor, he was recalled to office by the Empress Dowager and appointed Chief Magistrate of Tengchow, near Chefoo. He hated the change but naturally his family, who had seen difficult days, were delighted. He reached the capital towards the end of 1085. With the boy-Emperor Yuanyu on the throne and the Empress Dowager wielding the power, Su Tungpo experienced a dramatic change of fortune. Within eight months of his arrival he was promoted three times, rising from the seventh rank, through the sixth, jumping the fifth to the fourth, and then to the third as Hanlin Academician in Charge of the Drafting of Emperial Edicts. During this rapid progress up the line he had the satisfac­ tion of drafting the decree depriving Leeding — who had been foremost in his prosecution — of his office and compelling him to make up the three years of mourning for his mother which he had evaded, and drafting the edict conferring the posthumous title of Grand Imperial Tutor on Wang Anshih, who had just died. The latter assignment had tested to the uttermost Su Tungpo’s skill in damning a man with a left-handed compliment, which he did by referring to Wang’s originality when he obviously meant selfconceit.19 As Hanlin Academician in Charge of Imperial Edicts, Su Tungpo was now in line for the premiership, which was of the second rank, usually the highest, for first rank was rarely con­ ferred. His duties brought him in close contact with both the Emperor and the Empress Dowager, who is on record for having informed him on one occasion that his rapid rise had not been due to anyone living, but to the dying wish of Emperor Shentsung,

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who had regarded him as of rare genius.20 The Hanlin Office was close to the North Gate and reckoned as part of the palace. Su Tungpo’s duty was to prepare edicts under the royal instruc­ tion. This was done during the hours of darkness for issue the following day, and thus he was spoken of as being ‘locked up for the night’.21 Su found a house for his family handy in the Paichia Alley near the Eastern Palace Gate. This was the residential district popular with officials as Lin Yutang relates in The Gay Genius22 It was through this gate that the officials trooped at dawn to go into Imperial audience. Here were the luxury establishments, the medicine shops, often two or three storeys high. Here one could buy the most expensive goods, flowers and fruit that were out of season. Here were the employment bureaux for the hiring of servants. Here were the rich restaurants and wine shops, where prostitutes lined up for the service of customers at their tables. Contrary to normal experience, Su Tungpo invariably showed a greater aptitude for getting rid of power than in seeking it. With everything now in his favour, his own party in power, and working on intimate terms with the rulers, he found his contacts with the ‘village of scoundrels’, as he called the poli­ ticians, irksome. Under the system all power was concentrated in the hands of the Emperor (and Empress) and there was no question of a specific division of responsibilities or balance of power below them. The struggle for recognition went on con­ tinuously, the expert intriguer knowing when to praise, when to be silent, and how to choose the right word on the right occasion. Mediocrity held the best cards. Su Tungpo constantly broke all the rules. Indeed he would have liked to be left alone, but politics was for ever pursuing him. Very soon memorials against him were being sent to the throne in dozens. His brother, Tseyu, having been appointed High Censor in the Premier’s Office, had made matters worse, upsetting party leaders by replacing officials and politicians who had sup­ ported Wang Anshih. Su Tungpo was attacked for the wording of an examination question, which was cited as disrespectful to past emperors. The Empress refused to take notice of successive memorials. At first Su Tungpo tried to withdraw, begging to be sent away from the capital. Then he changed his mind and decided to fight the case to preserve the right to disagree — virtually a protest against ‘yesmanship’. The matter petered out when the Empress ordered Su Tungpo to resume his post, and the officials who had requested his trial were pardoned. His opponents had been defeated and had lost face. To show his

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gratitude to the Empress for her support he decided to be even more outspoken in the future. Su Tungpo undertook a one-man crusade against corruption. He attempted to improve the conduct of the examinations and to reduce the widespread nepotism, both at the court and in the provinces, which lowered the standards of recruitment and inflated the class of scholars who aspired to office but had little chance of preferment. Too many scholars chasing too few posts was always an evil of the Chinese examinations system. Secret reports were addressed to the Empress by Su Tungpo on the incompetence and shortcomings of officials, matters previ­ ously hidden from the court, which also gave her information about occasions where commissions of inquiry had whitewashed the shocking activities of officials in the provinces, one instance being the reduction of the toll of a widespread massacre to the mere killing of a dozen people. He lashed out unmercifully against leaders of the Wang Anshih party, who were staging a come­ back. His references to the great reformer seem so unbalanced that one may well wonder whether his well-justified indignation against the jobbery and corruption of the administration so filled his mind as to warp his judgement on other matters. The result of all this single-handed crusading was foregone. Su Tungpo added many powerful names to the ranks of his enemies: impeachments of his conduct showered upon the Empress, who still did her best to keep most of them even from Su himself. He made repeated attempts to resign. At least, early in 1089, his request was granted and he was appointed Military Governor of the provinces of West Chekiang and Commander of the military district of Huangchow, with very high official rank. He was sent off loaded with rich official gifts as a mark of his rank, and the eighty-three-year-old and still active minister, Wen Yenpo, counselled him to write no more poems, the main means of propagating his ideas. For the next eighteen months Su Tungpo laid aside the delights of scholarship and devoted himself to a thorough reform of his administration, taking advantage of the favour of the Empress to seek special grants of money to facilitate his activities. These included improvement of the public health and sanitation of the city, provision of a clean water system and a hospital, dredging the salt canals, reconstructing the West Lake, successfully stabi­ lizing the price of grain and working out a system of famine relief against the overwhelming apathy of officials both at court and locally.23 Among these reforms the founding of the hospital in Huang-

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chow is of special interest in these days of public health services. It was first sited at the Chungan Bridge in the heart of the city and is reputed to have been the first public hospital in China. Within three years it had taken care of a thousand patients and its fame had travelled far and wide. The priest in charge was rewarded with a purple gown and a gift from government funds. Later the establishment was moved to the lake shore where, under the new name of Antsifang, it continued to function into later years.24 Another important project, for which Su Tungpo obtained financial assistance from the Empress, was the clearing of the West Lake which was gradually silting up with weeds and mud and would within twenty years be completely choked. This was a simple undertaking, calling only for abundant labour forces, but one which previous administrators had completely ignored. The work was necessary to ensure the maintenance of adequate fresh water supplies for the city and the irrigation of the rice fields. First among the five important reasons given to the government for undertaking the work was the Buddhist one of saving the fish from suffering. With thousands of workmen and boatmen the job was completed in four months. Then the mud thrown up from the dredged area was made into an embankment and promenade, with bridges and pavilions, which considerably beautified the lake shore. One of the pavilions was subsequently dedicated to the worship of the poet and in commemoration of his great work. In order to ensure the future clearance of the weeds Su Tungpo farmed out sections of the lake surface for the cultivation of caltrop, a form of water chestnut, and he petitioned the Premier that the revenue thus obtained should be devoted to the upkeep of the embankment and lake. Later, the poet’s political enemies were to cite this against him as ‘wasting government money for serving the pleasure of tourists’.25 This criticism has a modern ring. Early in 1090, following previous crop failures, famine was threatening. The situation was aggravated by widespread floods. Su Tungpo’s inspectors reported on the seriousness of the situa­ tion at Soochow and Changchow. He sent numerous reports to the Empress on the subject of ‘national calamity’ and ‘flood relief’, but no notice was taken. The court was annoyed at his insistence. Had they not commissioners on the spot who were not reporting anything unusual? Only Su Tungpo seemed to be concerned over the situation. He read the complacent court bulletins with rage: for the local commissioners had reported the earlier promise of the spring crops, but said nothing about the disasters that followed. Su unsuccessfully pressed for an impartial

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inquiry. Further flood disasters followed and the situation became critical. He tried to organize the purchase and sale of grain by the government. The following postscript to one of his reports significantly pinpoints the evils of a bureaucracy that was quite unconcerned about the welfare of the people and concen­ trated only upon singing the tune that it conceived to be pleasing to the powers at the top: ‘This year’s calamity is in reality worse than that of last year, but officials high and low prefer to conceal the actual conditions. Recently over forty people were trampled to death in a riot because the magistrate of Kiashing refused to accept the people’s demand for relief. Most of the officials are like that. The case of Kiashing merely happened to become known because so many were trampled to death.’26

Early the following year in the midst of all this trouble Su Tungpo was called to the capital again as Hanlin scholar. He left advice to his successor Lin for dealing with the situation. The disaster continued to deepen. Su Tungpo’s opponents at court were now impelled to redouble their efforts. His brother had risen steadily to key positions, and had recently become Chancellor of the Executive Board which, with the Imperial Secretariat and the Premier’s Office, was one of the three top departments of the government. In June Tseyu became Chancellor of the Imperial Secretariat. The opposition feared that the next step would be to give Su the Premiership. But, although Su Tungpo had many supporters in high places, he happened to agree with his enemies in wanting to leave, with the result that within three months he was trans­ ferred to Yingchow, where he served for eight months and was then sent to Yangchow. Here he discovered that, despite the evils of the famine, the people were afraid lest good harvests might lead to renewed debt-collection by the clerks and soldiers sent to gather the returns due on capital loans, which had been part of the aftermath of the abandonment of the policy of state social­ ism. The government had confiscated more properties than it could handle. The courts were overworked, trade at a standstill and the corruption of the bureaucracy had reached depths that were hardly believable. Already in 1090 Su Tungpo had sub­ mitted a proposal to the court for the cancellation of all debts, but whatever the Empress’s intentions might have been, action was thwarted by the officials. In his own district Su adopted the policy of forgiveness which had been nominally at least agreed by the court, and in May 1092 he again took the matter up at the centre, supporting his memorandum with a private letter to the

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Empress, in which he even suggested the wording of the edict that should be issued. For once his policy was adopted and the edict duly appeared.27 Once again Su Tungpo returned to hold ministerial posts in the capital. But this phase was brief, for in the autumn of 1093 the Empress Dowager, who had been his guardian angel, died. The young Emperor had resented his mother’s policies: he was artistically inclined, rash in action and subject to fits of temper, yet weak in character and an easy prey to any intriguing poli­ tician. The downfall of Su Tungpo, and indeed of all who had risen to office during the regency of the wise old woman, followed automatically. Su Tungpo went into official exile, occupying a series of troublesome posts. Under the shocking reign of intimidation and terror to which members of the former administration were now subjected his rank and power rapidly diminished. Over sixty years of age, friendless and reduced to poverty, he was eventually posted to the aboriginal island of Hainan, which was considered beyond the pale of the civilized world, and it seemed that the last phase had come. But in January 1100 the young Emperor died and for a brief period, during the ascendancy of the new Empress Dowager, the exiled officials and scholars were pardoned and either promoted or at least given freedom of movement. While travelling back to the north Su fell ill and, towards the end of July 1101, one of China’s greatest poets and officials died, after a life of devoted service to his fellow men, for which few would consider that he had been justly rewarded. Here among all the bureaucrats of whose life we are adequately informed was surely a man of great honour. We justify this long, but in many ways still inadequate, section on the life and times of Su Tungpo for a number of reasons. Owing to the survival of copious public documents, as well as his own highly regarded poetic output, our official is among the best documented of public officials in all history. He is in many ways a model exponent of the ways and methods of his class and, despite the special aspects of his Chinese environment, it is interesting to note how much of his experience can be accepted as typical of officialdom in a much wider context. He is important too as an exponent of a truly public service philosophy in an essentially selfish autocratic system. Above all, Su Tungpo, despite his special virtues as an official, is still sufficiently typical of his kind to illustrate incomparably the nature of public administration in China at that time. We see in operation the unique Chinese contribution of recruitment by examination,

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tempered and often largely negatived by the immemorial activi­ ties of the privileged place-seeker. We see bad leaders swayed by worse assistants and good leaders making headway with great difficulty against the entrenched privileges of the bureaucracy. We see shocking political corruption and terrible oppression, tempered by the action of public servants attempting to maintain the traditions of enlightened service. We see literate non-specialist officials being moved frequently to reduce opportunities for corruption and given a wide range of functions which entitles them to the label of super-generalist among their kind. We sense in the background the struggle of the central power to exert itself by insisting upon authorization for specific actions in the locali­ ties and carefully controlling the special financial resources at its disposal. Officials seem to be left with a wide discretionary sphere, which is tempered, however, by the counter powers of other magistracies and difficult to manipulate except by the most corrupt. Even when due allowance has been made for the con­ siderable frustration to which Su Tungpo was subjected in his efforts to aid the people, one cannot help feeling that the records may not have done full justice to the more favourable aspects of the administrative situation. Even in the days before the popular press the delinquencies of officials were more likely to inspire interest than the good work which was done as a matter of duty, and left at that. *

*

*

The Sung Empire was to continue for a further century and a half in an uneasy stalemate with the Chin Empire in the north, which they both made ineffective efforts to break. The most disastrous of these attempts took place in 1135, when the Chin raiders captured the Sung Emperor and most of his officials, an incident which led to the transfer of the capital to Huangchow and the inauguration of the Southern Sung Dynasty. In the long run the weaknesses already manifested during the lifetime of Su Tungpo were to prove too much, despite attempts to strengthen the administration and especially to improve communications. Away in the centre of Asia the Mongols were already rapidly rising to power. By 1206 the ferocious Jenghiz Khan was being acclaimed ‘Universal Emperor’ of the Turko-Mongol people. From its Asiatic focus a vast Mongol Empire was literally exploding in all directions, threatening both the Chinese East and the more distant Ayran West. The Sung foolishly allied themselves with the Mongols against their old enemies the Chin, whose dynasty in the north came to an end in 1234. The victors

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fell out over the division of spoils, or rather the all-conquering Mongols grasped the ready-made excuse to chastise their erst­ while allies. Yet even now the Sung were not easily beaten and it was not before 1279 that they were finally overwhelmed, the commander of the defeated Sung fleet off Kwantung leaping, with the young Emperor on his back, from the ship to drown. Kubilai Khan, in the line of the great Jenghiz, became the first foreign ruler of China as a whole, founding the Yuan Dynasty which was to rule for the best part of a century. ADMINISTRATION c h ’i n g

UNDER

THE

MING

AND

d y n a s t i e s

After the period of Mongol rule from a . d . 1280 to 1367 the Chinese again took control of their own destinies. Chu Yuanchang (usually known as Hung Wu) founded the dynasty of Ming, that is to say ‘the brilliant’ or ‘the glorious’. This was a period of military competence and of efficient practical government although the boundaries of the Empire were never extended to those of the Han and T’ang eras, and the new rulers were generally content to continue the institutions of the past. In fact the restoration of traditional Chinese civilization was the regime’s original objective, one which it was to achieve admirably. Under Yung-Lo (1403-24) the Ming dynasty rose to the apex of its power.28 He improved communications and internal trans­ portation — in particular by reconstructing the Grand Canal — and gave special favour to the Hanlin Academy, encouraging the study of the Confucian classics and maintaining the Civil Service examinations, although this was offset by a considerable expansion in the employment of eunuchs in the higher ranks of the administration. By his orders the compilation was put in hand of the Yung-Lo Ta Tien, a collection of excerpts and entire works covering the whole mass of Chinese literature, whose printing at the time was deemed so costly by the Imperial Treasury that the work was left in manuscript. [Unfortunately the main collection perished in the Boxer Rebellion of 1901.]29 In its final phase under incompetent and weak rulers and the misrule of the eunuchs — and against the counter efforts of the scholar-statesmen, who often spoke with their lives at stake — the Ming Empire fell into anarchy and became an easy prey to the barbarians on its borders. The successful invaders who were to take over the entire realm were the Manchus, who assumed the title of Ch’ing for their dynasty, which was to endure from its inception in 1644 to the

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Revolution in 1910. The Manchus to the end maintained their identity as rulers within the Ch’ing realm, but were assiduous in adopting Chinese institutions. They planted Manchu garrisons at various strategic points. Manchus were appointed to sit side by side with native Chinese on the several administrative Boards and were admitted to the Civil Service examinations, but here the old forms were maintained and as a consequence the Civil Service remained predominantly Chinese. The Ch’ing regime was fortunate in beginning its dynasty with two outstanding rulers: Emperor K’ang Hsi (reg. 1661-1722) and Ch’ien Lung (reg. 1736-96). Under the former centralization was strengthened by the abolition of the semi-autonomous feudatories, by requiring officials to report to Peking at periodical intervals, and by so allocating functions to the senior provincial officials as to set them to watch each other. *

*

*

Under the Ming the Emperor’s position was substantially main­ tained, while his government now consisted of the Grand Sec­ retariat (Nei-ko) with a membership of between three and six Grand Secretaries, who assisted him in supervising and co-ordi­ nating the work of the six Boards, or Departments, among which the administration was now distributed. These were: (1) the Board of Civil Office (Li Pu), divided into separate offices dealing with (i) appointments, (ii) honours, (iii) records of service, and (iv) evaluation of performance; (2) the Board of Revenue (Hu Pu), divided into (i) to (xiii) thirteen offices with individual responsibility for one of the thirteen provinces, and four specialist sections — (xiv) population and census, (xv) general accounts, (xvi) special accounts, and (xvii) granaries; (3) the Board of Rites (Li Pu),30 divided into four offices responsible for (i) ceremonies, (ii) sacrifices, (iii) reception of visitors, and (iv) provisions, as well as certain responsibilities in connection wth the Buddhist and Taoist priesthood; (4) the Board of War (Ping Pu), consisting of four offices dealing with (i) appointment, etc., of officers, (ii) supervision of operations, (iii) equipment, and (iv) supplies; (5) the Board of Punishments (Hsing Pu), organized in thirteen provincial offices; and (6) the Board of Works (Rung Pu), which dealt with schemes of construction, conscription of manpower for state service, manufacture of equipment, land and water communications, standardization of weights and measures, con­ trol of certain forms of produce, was divided into four offices and controlled various warehouses, factories and other establishments. The Censorate continued, renamed from 1380 the Tu-Ch’a-Yuan, operating under two Censors-in-Chief, a number of deputies and

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with four subordinate offices to handle their correspondence and administrative business. It had 110 investigating officers, stationed in all parts of the Empire to bring to light cases of inefficiency, malpractices and corruption. The Censorate had powers to criti­ cize the actions of senior state officials and even the Emperor himself. Its members were held in high esteem, but had to be courageous men to carry out their duties conscientiously, for they had no special immunity. During the latter part of the Ming period they adopted the practice of reaching unanimous decisions for which they would assume collective responsibility, so that if a member was victimized, or even put to death as was possible, another could step into his place and repeat the attack.31 The Manchus continued this system of government practically unchanged. The Six Boards continued as before, though some­ times expanded to a system of Nine Chief Ministries, which included the Censorate and also a Court of Revision (Ta Li Ssu), which was concerned with the criminal law, and the Office of Transmission (T ’ung Cheng Ssu), through which memorials addressed to the Emperor were transmitted. There were other bodies with various scholarly duties — the Imperial Academy {Kuo Tzu Chien) and the College of Literature {Han Lin Yuan) — whose duties included the preparation and custody of histori­ cal archives and compilation of official biographies of eminent public servants. Apart from a number of lesser bureaux there was the important Li Fan Yuan which was responsible for the control of tributary and subject peoples beyond the borders of China proper.32 In China the vast extent of the empire, and great difficulties of communication and travel gave added importance to the development of an effective system of local administration. Under the several regimes from the Han to the Sung, the basic areas, hsien (county or district) were grouped into large prefectoral areas (known as chun by the Han and chou later) and numbering between one hundred and three hundred prefectures. The Ming introduced a system of larger provinces {sheng) with intermediate areas known as fu, thus increasing the number of tiers from two to three or four, and rendering the centre much more remote. This pattern continued under the Ch’ing, except that the number of provinces was raised from thirteen to eighteen, and the inter­ mediate fu or chou, of which there were four hundred in all, formed a complex structure not easy to summarize. The basic hsien maintained its general pattern throughout China’s long history.33 Each provincial capital {sheng chfeng) had a government of

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a similar form. It was controlled by a Tsung-tu (GovernorGeneral) or Hsiin-fu (Governor) or perhaps both, appointed by the central government, and included four other important officials, namely: Treasurer and Head of the Provincial Civil Service (Pu cheng shih ssu), Provincial Judicial Commissioner (An ch’a shih ssu), Salt Comptroller (Yen yiin shih ssu) and Grain Intendant (Liang Too).34 The first two, known jointly as Fan Nieh Liang Ssu, or the Two Chief Commissioners, predomi­ nated over the others. They were appointed by the Emperor whom they were entitled to memorialize directly. The first was responsible to the Board of Revenue, the other to the Board of Punishments. Called personally to the capital on the conclusion of his three-year term of office, each of these Chief Commis­ sioners was expected to report upon the affairs of the provinces and upon his erstwhile colleagues. This arrangement provided a check upon the Provincial Governor and was characteristic of the Chinese system of administration. Stationed at the provincial capital was the Literary Chancellor (Hsiieh Cheng), a member of the central administration who was responsible for presiding over the examinations held in fu cities for the hsiu ts’ai degree, which qualified candidates for admission to the triennial exami­ nations at the provincial capital. These in their turn were presided over by appointees from the centre. The Literary Chancellor also had jurisdiction over titled scholars living in the province, who, unless deprived by him of their rank, could not be tried by the ordinary local magistrates.35 The provincial administration had its subordinate staff of assistants, secretaries, archivists, treasurers and more menial workers. Below the provincial administration there was a complex hierarchy of offices, between each of which, the province, and the capital there was a constant two-way flow of returns, reports, memorials, replies, decisions, submissions, new regulations and the like in a regular administrative spate, but it was the fu, chou and hsien magistrates who formed the general administrative body of the provincial civil service. Their powers were both executive and judicial. They dealt with the maintenance of order, the collection of taxes, primary dispensation of justice, conduct of literary examinations and of the governmental postal service. They were the official maids-of-all-work, known as Fu Mu Kuan, or the ‘father and mother’ of the people. All this was accom­ plished across the magistrate’s table or yaman. It was at the yaman of the District Magistrate (usually the hsien but sometimes one of the other magistrates) — the point furthest from the centre — that most official business was

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transacted and the people formed their primary and lasting impressions of officialdom. To them the hsien magistrate was the government, and to him their taxes had to be paid and their labour services rendered. He kept a register of their families, and of changes in land ownership, punished their delinquencies or decided their lawsuits. He acted as agent for the higher authorities in other matters, such as education and flood relief. His personal allowance was insufficient to support both his family and his official establishment. Consequently, the custom was to add a percentage to the taxes at the time of collection to repay his efforts, equivalent to the fee in our own system. But if he tried to raise too much — and it would be too much to expect that this did not sometimes happen — he could run into trouble with the people, even though he had the right and the police power on his side. Public relations, even if not recognized as such, was an essential professional skill of the public servant. Taken as a whole such a system was hardy conducive to radical change. The area of the hsien varied. Some were quite large, and in this case the organization of the yaman could be quite complex. A normal pattern in the large yamans was to have six divisions, parallel with the Six Boards at the centre. A complete staff might include a mu yu, or personal assistants of the magistrate. The most important members of the staff would be the Hsing ming shih yeh, or law secretary, and the Chien ku shih yeht or revenue secretary, to each of whom would be attached pupils or articled clerks, who would become eligible for employment by other magistrates. Most of these secretaries came from the Chekiang province, which had in the course of time acquired a monopoly of these posts. The magistrate on first appointment was very dependent upon them for his legal and financial information. Apart from the strictly public administration side of the work of the yaman of the hsien, there was a sphere of natural selfgovernment in the village which remained literally in private hands, in the shape of community affairs cared for by family heads, village leaders, guild officials and organizers of ad hoc associations. In this sphere the government was concerned only to ensure that certain minimum official requirements were being complied with, a standard beyond which they were not concerned to interfere. To maintain liaison in this matter the magistrate recognized one person in the village as his agent. He was known as ti pao or pao chang and acted as intermediary on all govern­ mental matters. Here again the hierarchic pattern had taken shape, with the ti pao at the head and the households associated

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in groups of ten under him, a system that was reorganized by edict in 1708 and further endorsed by an edict of 1757 which re-emphasized the collective responsibility of the communities for the maintenance of law and order in accordance with ageold Chinese custom; although in fact the system was not to recover its former efficiency as a police power. The ti pao was not remunerated officially, but here again he was able to cover himself for the risks and pains of his office, by extorting fees for the services he performed. Although it carried a certain prestige and power this was not among the more important of the local positions.36 CIVIL

SERVICE

UNDER

THE

CHTNG

DYNASTY

The Emperor of China from time immemorial had been responsible to heaven for maintaining within his dominion the harmonious order that existed naturally in accordance with heavenly decree throughout the universe. Ultimate responsibility for everything that happened anywhere in the Empire rested with the Emperor, who delegated a measure of that responsibility to his immediate subordinates, who in their turn delegated strands of their responsibilities throughout the ranks of officialdom. The chain of delegation reached down to the heads of households. There was no over-riding law. Chinese public administration differed from other systems in intermingling ethics with admini­ stration. The official’s duty was to set a good example and to help in creating conditions in which people could live without disturbing the natural harmony. The mere existence of disturb­ ance or disorder was a sign of inadequate government, not even excluding natural disasters, which were held to be the conse­ quence of human disorder, thus justifying the punishment of wrongdoers. The administrator could not disown responsibility. All this was in accordance with the Confucian philosophy, in the belief of which the ruling classes were brought up. But the Chinese peasants, though blessed with abundant common sense were not sufficiently educated to comprehend such theoretical justifications. They judged the government by results, upon their being left to enjoy the fruits of their labour in accordance with past custom, particularly upon the proper maintenance of the public irrigation system. Otherwise they wanted the minimum of official interference calculated to ensure these ends and would not have been much enamoured by modern ideas of the welfare state. Yet the functions of government were still pretty extensive.

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In achieving the natural harmony inherent in the universe the Emperor felt bound to carry out certain propitiatory rites, and his government was involved in a round of ceremonials, closely associated with agriculture and calling for considerable official interest in the calendar. Interpretation of heavenly phenomena was obviously of first importance. In order to encourage virtue, industry and learning among his subjects, and the maintaining of established practices of filial piety through the veneration of ancestors and the observance of mourning, exhortations to virtue were issued from time to time. Official support was given to the provision of public schools. Governmental responsibilities for the construction and maintenance of canals and irrigation works had been accepted from early times. The expenses of the Imperial family, the army and the bureaucracy were heavy and a compli­ cated system of taxation had been evolved. There were licensing systems for government monopolies, such as salt and wine, and tribute was levied upon grain and certain local products. For the purposes of the labour service population registers had to be kept and land registration was a public responsibility. The transmission of revenue, both in the form of money and in kind, principally in grain which was bulky, presented a big task for the administration, which also had to organize a network of posts for the transmission of official correspondence.The conduct of relations with foreign powers had such special characteristics as to call for a separate section of the present chapter. In the performance of the varied tasks required for the fulfil­ ment of these public functions a large body of officials operated at all levels throughout the Empire, from the Imperial Councils and Boards down to the hsien magistrates in the localities. As we have seen the pattern of their education, selection, conduct and training had already been largely determined under the Han. The public examinations, based upon the classics and the histories, were traditionalist and continued to determine the nature and objectives of Chinese education right down to the beginning of the twentieth century. These examinations were conducted with great solemnity and worthy publicity, and the prestige derived from attaining the highest degree was sufficient to justify the great effort required of the student even if public service was not his personal objective. The degrees conferred the right to wear a specific dress and headwear and exempted the holder from corporal punishment, but imposed definite obligations to observe certain principles of conduct, involving loyalty to the government and respect for learning.37 Neither age nor previous failure were a bar to further participation and some scholars np

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literally spent their lives as candidates. As in all such systems of recruitment based upon scholarship everything depended upon the candidate’s access to the right type of education. Competition may have been open when all the rules were observed, but strict impartiality was not achieved, as we have already seen. There were certain privileges for certain categories, such as the relations of serving officials, and the examiners were not always without prejudice. Nor did success necessarily ensure appointment, which for various reasons might be delayed, per­ haps indefinitely. It was always desirable to have a friend at court. In normal circumstances the tests were of great value both to the candidate and to the government, but they measured purely literary capacities, and although administrative questions were often posed based on classical experience they could not certify the candidate’s suitability as an administrator. In this respect it should be added that they were no worse, and often very much better, than most other tests of this kind. Imperial officials were graded in a hierarchy of nine ranks, each divided into an upper and a lower grade and distinguished by a distinctive dress. Posts were similarly graded and could be held only by an official of the equivalent grade. Regular reports on each official were made by his superiors to the Board of Civil Office and promotion — or sometimes demo­ tion — was made from time to time on the basis of these records. Officials were adjudged on such matters as their capacity to avoid trouble, a common bureaucratic negative-quality which often meant satisfying the superior or inspector rather than doing justice to the citizen. It is never easy to serve two masters. The system was so shaped as to ensure a uniformity of outlook, and this was supported by standardization of procedures, which meant that officials worked strictly to rule. Such rules were contained in the administrative statutes Ta Ch'ing Hui Tien and the Penal Code, Ta Ch'ing Lii L i, both of which had been handed down from previous dynasties and modified from time to time. During the Manchu period the Ta Ch'ing Hui Tien was published five times — in 1690, 1732, 1764, 1818 and 1899 — providing a remarkable demonstration of the system’s stability and at the same time recording the modifications that were made from time to time.38 The Ta Ch'ing Hui Tien set out in detail the establishment and responsibilities of the several departments and offices and their duties towards the people. All parts of the governmental machine — Imperial Court, Councils, Boards, lesser divisions and outlying stations — were clearly designated under the several sub-headings:

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organization, establishment, functions, duties. In addition each of the Six Boards had its own regulations, Tse Li, covering internal organization and various technical matters. The Ta Ch’ing Lii Li, or Penal Code, was divided into seven main sections, with two later additions devoted to the Emperor’s Manchu subjects. The first section dealt with general considera­ tions and standard punishment, with rules as to their application to the several categories of persons concerned, while the six following sections dealt respectively with the Six Boards and with irregularities arising in the conduct of their business, whether attributable to officials and others. Together the two sets of rules provided the Chinese official with a complete Administrative Code of what was required both from him and from the people within his jurisdiction. That such a code was essential to ensure some degree of certainty and uni­ formity in administering such a vast and varied land as China is hardly open to challenge, though to prescribe in so much detail the precise manner in which officials were to proceed in specific cases was surely to expect too much. With the impact of the West placing increasing burdens upon the Chinese bureaucracy the strain on such a system was bound sooner or later to prove too heavy. Yet it is quite possible that the very efficiency of Chinese officialdom was to aid in postponing essential reform much too long. CHI NA

AND

THE

WEST

From early times the Chinese have regarded all those who dwelt beyond her wide borders as barbarians, naturally inferior to the sons of the Son of Heaven, and it was government policy to hold all those who approached from afar as tributaries or the representatives of inferior rulers from whom tribute was due and — it should be added — except by the comers with fire and sword, who were many, it was usually paid. Two incidents as far apart as the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries are mentioned here to illustrate some of the administrative consequences of this attitude to the foreigner: first the mission of Matteo Ricci who sought to convert the Son of Heaven to Christianity,39 second the reception of the emissaries of the West following the Opium War of 1840-2.40 Ricci’s mission was a distinguished one and at the same time an adventure of truly romantic proportions. Studious and devout Matteo, much against his father’s wishes, had been received into the Order of Jesus and had early decided that his life would be

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best fulfilled if he could devote his energies to spreading the Word among the infidel. He volunteered for foreign missions and, towards the end of 1576, his high scholarship and reputation for devotion to his vocation enabled him to follow his bent. He was assigned to the Indian circuit, faced a journey of high adventure with all the forces of Islam between himself and his goal, and on 13th September 1578 reached Goa, which had been captured by the Portuguese in 1510 and had become the Indian base from which missionaries were dispatched to various Asiatic lands. China was still a long way off, and in any case its penetration by missionaries was considered impracticable because of the isolation­ ist policy of the Chinese government. However, there was a backdoor, on the frontier at Macau where the Portuguese had established themselves as tributaries and traders in 1557 and for which Ricci at last set sail in April 1582, there to be affectionately welcomed by Michael Ruggieri, another devoted missionary whose endeavours had been fated to fall far short of his desires. Ruggieri quickly realized that Ricci had the very qualities that he himself lacked and which were absolutely essential if China were to be penetrated. Not least among these was a remarkable memory that enabled Ricci in three months to read Chinese at least as well as Ruggieri could after endless striving. Any project of the type they had in mind was discouraged at this very juncture by the issue by the new viceroy of Kwantung and Kwangsi provinces, and most important mandarin of southern China, of a decree threatening dire penalties against anyone helping foreigners to enter the country.41 The situation was quite hopeless, or so in their wisdom experienced members of the mission felt. But the unexpected happened. One day in the middle of 1583 a soldier arrived at the Jesuit headquarters with an official invita­ tion from Wang P’an, Governor of Shiuhing, who had heard of Ricci’s skill as a mathematician, as well as of the maps, spheres and clocks that he could make, and wished to appease his curi­ osity. It was of course natural that a mandarin should be intrigued above all else by the prospect of contact with an intellect of such a high order. Ricci and Ruggieri, disguised as Buddhist bonzes and accompanied by their interpreter Philip, set out by junk to Canton. The journey was from the outset fraught with difficulties and unexpected obstructions, among which was the need to have passports scrutinized and counter­ signed at every stage, and the missionaries became conscious of a new exasperatingly slow rhythm of a world of officials, seals and counter-seals.42 They reached the walled city of Shiuhing

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a week after leaving Macao. There they were received by the Governor, who was dressed in a black silk gown and winged hat and girdle with embroidered wild goose and gold clasp denoting that he ranked fourth in the nine grades of Chinese officials. ‘Huge parasols behind him were bespangled with gold. On his desk, its damask covering fastened at the corners with buttons and loops, lay brushes on a grooved rest, an inkstand, one side black, one red, with two partitions for water, besides which the inevitable fan lay folded.’43 The missionaries were received with due ceremony. Their petition was read out in Chinese and received by the Governor who told them to choose a suitable piece of land to build a house. When the petition was translated to Ricci he evinced surprise that it contained no reference to their intention to preach Christianity, but was informed that this would have been a fatal indiscretion, since the Chinese, believing themselves to possess a monopoly of the world’s wisdom, would have taken such a proposal as an unpardonable insult. In this new environment Ricci was immediately struck by the general sense of public order and decorum, the signs of religion and a sense of music, all so different from the uncouth manners of the West. He realized at once that conversion could operate in both directions. He came to understand the importance and influence of the graduates of Shiuhing, among whom only the masters and doctors were eligible to hold official posts, and their antagonism to all strangers, especially those aggressive barbarians suspected as spies.44 This was vigorously manifested through their opposition to the chosen site, which was too close to a pleasure garden they were shaping together with the construction of a tower. A characteristic objection was that, according to the principles of geometry the Jesuit’s building would deflect auspicious currents of cosmic influence from the tower, thus endangering its main purpose — the retention of good fortune. However, they were sensible men and a compromise was reached whereby the mission house was moved to a neighbouring site. On its completion the Governor sent them a ‘proclamation of protection’, to be exhibited outside the door. This explained the presence of the bonzes from a distant kingdom and forbad any interference with the inmates, under pain of severe punishment. The scroll was duly affixed to the door-post, causing a great deal of excitement. The mere written word of the mandarin exerted an uncanny power — though few could understand it — and had the force of law, so that the house was approached with a new respect in future. Documents in formal manuscript were

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given by Wang P’an, authenticated by his distinctive red seal — a treasured gift from the Emperor — confirming the donation of the piece of land and granting permission to travel to Canton and Macao. Wang P’an, doctor of letters, poet and expert calligraphist, reputed for his incorruptible justice, gradually became a close personal friend of Ricci, a friendship that stood as a dyke against the hostility of the graduates and the people’s irrational fear of the foreigner.45 The Governor’s power to administer punishment was brought home to Ricci when a citizen, for bearing false witness against him in court, was mercilessly beaten with a flimsy bamboo strip, five feet long, three inches broad and an inch thick, which was capable of inflicting serious wounds. He noted how most of the others present took the punishment as a matter of course, con­ tinuing their conversations unconcernedly. But when Ricci inter­ vened in the man’s favour Wang P’an merely answered that the crime deserved no mercy, since the accused had had the audacity to accuse an innocent man.46 Every three years influential officials were moved round to prevent undue power accumulating in their hands, while Censors came to the provinces to investigate the conduct of the local administration. Wang P’an, his three-year term completed, left to pay homage to the Emperor and to undergo his periodical career scrutiny. His departure was signalized by the people of the town building a pagoda in his memory. The new governor, Liu Chieh-chai, who had a reputation for cruelty, ambition and greed was antagonistic to the missionaries. He wanted the site of the mission house, and Ricci, his protest having been unavailing, had to leave. After encountering many difficulties he settled in Shiuchow. An opportunity arose for Ricci, travelling as a graduate, to visit Nanking, one of China’s two capitals, where he was able to see mandarins who had held posts in or visited Shiuhing and to obtain a closer knowledge of the organization of the departments and the working of the civil service. Despite his passport authorized by a minister, Ricci again ran into trouble because of the veto on foreigners and, in his absence, his lodgings were turned upside down by agents of the bureaucracy. In order to save his landlord from further molestation he felt compelled to withdraw to the smaller and less important town, and chose Nanchang, where he was to meet certain princes of the royal house who were impressed at a dinner by a demonstration of his remarkable memory. It was the custom for the sons of past emperors to be given the hereditary title of Wang, or ‘prince’,

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and a large income from public funds, which permitted them to live a life of luxury but with less jurisdiction than a mandarin of the lowest rank.47 They were bound to live away from Peking and were excluded from every office. Ricci’s demonstration spread his fame in the town and he made many friends. He decided that, to achieve his mission, he needed to travel to Peking to obtain the Emperor’s authority, and after some trouble he managed to persuade a former acquaintance, passing through Nanchung, to allow him to accompany him to Nanking as his guest. Finding that city in chaos he further arranged to continue by boat, along the five hundred mile long Imperial Canal to Peking, a longer route that was used for official journeys in preference to the sea route which was infested by pirates and typhoons. He was impressed by the great bustle, along the waterway, of mandarins travelling in barges in procession to the capital, accompanied by other barges laden with tribute in kind and silver for the court and government. The boats were usually hauled by coolies, while more than a million men were continually employed in dredging and repairing the canal. Arriving at last under the walls of Peking, Ricci now encountered another formidable barrier between him and the palace, namely, the army of eunuchs — said to have numbered ten thousand48 — who, as well as looking after the palace ladies, literally surrounded the Emperor. Castration had originally constituted the penalty for certain crimes, but service in the imperial palace brought power to these eunuchs and parents were known to have their sons castrated as a certain way to influence and wealth. Eunuchs usually came from the lowest class and were uneducated, resentful and greedy for power. They stood between the Emperor and the mandarins in control of the departments and in their case Ricci’s graduate status was no recommendation. Consequently his contacts with the palace eunuchs proved fruitless. He was forced again to withdraw and reached Tanyang so ill that for some time his life was in balance. Back in Nanking at the beginning of February 1599 Ricci found the atmosphere completely changed and much more relaxed. He became acquainted with such important mandarins as the Minister of Finance, the President of the Academy of Nobles and the Censor. Impressed by his scholarship, they insisted that he should stay. In this volte-face Ricci discerned the hand of God.49 Ever interested in the advance of knowledge, Ricci was sur­ prised to learn that astronomical observations had been carried to an advanced stage, not however to discover how things moved

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but to enable the astrologers to forecast the future. Attached to courts at both Nanking and Peking was a college of mathema­ ticians at which a group of twenty to thirty eunuchs continually watched the stars in their courses. Like the rest of their kind they were ignorant and of low social standing. Under direction their observations were usually sufficiently accurate, although, for example, forecasts of eclipses frequently proved wrong and explanations were discovered not in their basic inaccuracies but in the failure of the Son of Heaven to do what was required of him. A passionate belief in astrology and widespread superstition as to the powers of evil meant that such nonsense could have a quite disproportionate influence upon imperial policy. Once again arrangements were made for Ricci to travel to Peking, so that he might be able to present gifts of European inventions to the Emperor. Once again he set out along the fivehundred-mile canal, but now openly, seeing many important officials on the way. These included, at Tsining in Shantung province, the Commissioner of Rice Transport, an important mandarin whom he had known in Nanking, who gave him letters of recommendation and the draft of a memorial which he had drawn up for the Emperor.50 At Lintsing Ricci fell under the control of Ma T’ang, a powerful eunuch of evil reputation, who sought to detain him and appropriate gifts he was carrying to the Emperor. Charges were made against the foreigners, who were detained for six months and were in grave danger of beheading. Fortuitously, the Emperor, who had been informed of a striking clock which Ricci was bringing, asked one of his aides why it had not been given him, setting in train a series of commands that compelled Ma T’ang to facilitate the travellers’ departure. The matter had now been transferred to the jurisdic­ tion of the hated but nevertheless all-powerful mandarin body, the Board of Rites. When at last Ricci reached Peking he learned that foreigners could not enter the imperial presence and that the gifts would have to be submitted through the Director of the Office for Transmitting Letters.51 Some time had to be expended in passing over full details of the gifts, totalling sixteen in all, to the eunuch mathematicians who had difficulty in mastering the clocks. The Emperor, he was told, was exceedingly cruel, often ordering a servant to be beaten for the smallest omission or inaccuracy, hence the meticulousness with which all such contacts were handled. One day Ricci and his companion were arrested by an officer with a warrant under the seal of Ts’ai Hsii-t’ai, Director of

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Foreign Embassies to the Middle Kingdom, a division of the Board of Rites52; who claimed that all foreigners came under his jurisdiction. Ricci’s apparent sympathy with the eunuchs, whom the mandarins hated, was satisfactorily explained and he was told by Ts’ai that he and his party would be lodged in the Castle of Barbarians where they would be guests of the government. Only in this way could they come under the Board’s jurisdiction. The Castle was crowded with a motley of uncouth persons from all parts, who were the successors of those who had gathered there in accordance with a whim of the great Ming Emperor Yang Lo two hundred years before. He had sent out legates to all parts of Asia inviting foreigners to come to Peking to pay homage. In response merchants, in the guise of ambassa­ dors, had arrived in such large numbers that a fiction had been created to the effect that there were as many as one hundred and fifty kingdoms desirous of rendering such homage! In fact their tribute was of small value to the Emperor who, in accordance with the normal etiquette of princely munificence, had to spend much more in return. On the other hand the goods brought in by the merchants’ beasts of burden found a ready and remunera­ tive sale in Peking. Their journeys were protected, their food and lodging supplied. Of course the mandarins knew the real truth of the situation, which became only gradually clear to Ricci, but had their own good reasons for continuing the expensive farce. In any case it would have been dangerous to put obstacles in the way of an arrangement that flattered the Emperor’s vanity. Inside the Castle missionary work was impossible, but there was to be much intriguing before Ricci and his assistants received written permission to reside in the city. The Governor, the eunuchs and the ministers had all been at cross-purposes, and even the Emperor, although greatly impressed by the clocks presented to him, had not been able to intervene directly, for fear of breaking long-established precedents. It had certainly become evident to Ricci that his aim to convert the Emperor would prove impossible. But henceforth his mission was to have considerable successes with the Emperor’s subjects. Ricci was not destined to complete his mission. He died in China on 11th May 1610 and special authority was given for his interment in the suburbs of Peking. Much of the good work he had done was shortly to be destroyed by the inflexible attitudes of the Vatican, which inevitably brought down a complete veto upon the activities of foreign missionaries in China. In this selective sketch of the mission of this remarkable

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European much that is of vital interest has had to be omitted, but Ricci’s contacts with Chinese officialdom and, at a distance in accordance with protocol, with the Emperor, provide an illuminating glimpse into the tortuous procedures of Ming bureaucracy during the sixteenth century, and shows clearly the long-standing attitude of the Chinese to all barbarians, their customary title for any peoples who dwelt in lands that were not China. *

*

*

This attitude to foreigners, and the Chinese expectation of receiving tribute from all foreign states, continued right into the nineteenth century when, following the Arrow War of 1857-60, the Tsungli Yamen, or Office for General Administration of Foreign Relations, was set up in Peking.53 This was an important step towards bringing China in line with the West in its handling of matters of diplomacy. Up to the Opium War of 1840-2 China had refused to recognize any other state as her own equal. Except for the Russians, whose territories now bordered hers over wide areas and who by special arrangement had been permitted to set up in Peking the E-lo-ssu kuan, or Russian Hostel, for the convenience of a limited group of Russian Orthodox priests and for Russian merchants carrying on direct trading with Russia, there was still no arrangement for the residence of diplomatic representatives of the accepted pattern in the West. All such representatives were subjected to regulations governing tribute missions, as set out in the Ta-Ch’ing hui-tien, or Collected Statutes, which prescribed in detail the ritual to cover an embassy from beginning to end.54 This procedure included the presentation, by the representa­ tive on his arrival at the capital, of a piao, or memorial, through the Board of Rites, accompanied by the performance of san-kuie chiu-k’ou-li, or full kow-tow of three kneelings and nine knockings of the head, a humiliating performance that was completely distasteful in Western eyes and had become a major issue of foreign diplomacy, especially with Britain as an important mili­ tary and trading power. The modifications introduced by the treaties which followed the Opium War had included the appoint­ ment of an Imperial Commissioner at Canton as sole conductor of foreign affairs but the new arrangements had made little impression either upon the principles of the Collected Statutes or upon the antagonistic attitudes of officials and literati through­ out the Chinese Empire. The arrangements had also included the designation of five Chinese places as Treaty Ports with special trading rights and the leasing of the island of Hong-Kong to

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Britain. Pressures from the West continued for full representa­ tion and the setting up of permanent diplomatic establishments. With rebellion raging with the T’ai-p’ings in the Yangtse Valley and European troops invading the land, and following hard negotiations and tortuous intrigues between the different groups around the throne which culminated in the occupation of Peking and the destruction of the Summer Palace in 1860, the Chinese at last agreed to establish a Foreign Office. This was proposed in a memorial of 13th January 1861 by Prince Kung, foremost in the negotiations with the British, supported by Kueiliang and Wen-hsiang, both high officials, in the form of tsung-li ko-kuo shih-wu ya-men, or ‘office for the general admini­ stration of the affairs of the different nations’, which was to be solely responsible for the management of foreign affairs.55 Couched in the dignified conventional style of such documents to the Emperor and supported by the usual quotations from philosophy and history the memorialists stated as their basic reasons for making the proposal their conviction from recent events that the barbarians — which meant the ferocious British, unfathomable Russians and colluding French and Americans — had no territorial ambitions, and, that the government’s internal difficulties presented a greater threat at the moment than the foreigners who were already withdrawing their forces. For, apart from the Taiping rebellion in the south, there was grave trouble with the Nien bandits in the north. Once these internal enemies had been dealt with control of the foreigners could be more effectively reimposed. This line of argument was calculated to obtain the acquiescence of the war party which had been strongly against giving in throughout the campaign. There were constitutional difficulties in fitting the new office into the existing structure. The Grand Secretariat, which in 1860 was still the highest statutory government organ under the Emperor, had gradually lost its precedence to the Grand Council, established by the Ch’ing in 1729. Acting as a sort of privy coun­ cil, with some of its members holding executive posts, it actually defined overall policy and made important decisions. General administration continued in the hands of the traditional Six Boards and certain special agencies all immediately under the Emperor and operating together with the Grand Council as equals. The major provincial offices enjoyed a similar relation­ ship with both the Emperor and the several headquarters orga­ nizations, so that the latter could not issue instructions direct to, say, a provincial Governor-General or Governor. They would first have to memorialize the Emperor, who would issue an edict,

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although usually the Grand Council’s advice would be decisive. The conduct of foreign affairs, as far as it was tolerated, was divided between the Board of Rites and — for the so-called tributary states — the Court of Dependencies which dealt with Russia, classified with the frontier tribes in the north and west, although in practice foreign relations of importance were decided in the Grand Council. An issue therefore rose between the Emperor and Prince Kung as to the position of the proposed Tsungli Yamen.56 An initial plan whereby the new office was to be so organized as to constitute a thinly disguised branch of the Grand Council was watered down in the first edict upon its working, which designated three men to take charge of the Tsungli Yamen, among whom the only grand councillor was Wen-hsiang. The original proposal had prescribed a board consisting solely of princes and high officials, including all the existing grand coun­ cillors. This and other modifications were sternly challenged by Prince Kung and his associates, with the result that further changes were agreed. As it was eventually established the Tsungli Yamen was similar to the other boards which made up the Chinese central admini­ stration. Its controlling board, which was to act collectively, was given an Imperial prince as senior member. Like the Grand Council its numbers were fixed: unlike the Six Boards it did not have to consist of equal numbers of Manchus and Chinese. The top officials included the members of the board and sixteen secretaries, equally divided between the two peoples, and selected from the Grand Secretariat, the Boards of Revenue, Rites and War, and the Court of Dependencies. Of these, four ranked as secretaries-general and two others were assistant secretaries-general. The sixteen secretaries, who continued to act concurrently in their original posts, were divided into two groups to be on duty at the Tsungli-Yamen for five-day periods. In addi­ tion, eight of the Grand Council’s secretaries served the new office as supernumerary secretaries. Most of the secretaries were new to the work, but they included Yen-ju, Manchu assistant director of the Board of Rites, who had been engaged in Prince Kung’s office throughout the negotiations while Ch’eng-lin, Secretary of the Gendarmerie, and Hsiu-wen, Official Writer of the Gendarmerie, both of whom had recently served in the same office, were added to supplement the inexperienced. As will be evident from these details the normal hierarchical structure of the Peking service was being applied, ranging from the several grades of kuan (officials) already discussed, down through the

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shu-li, hsu-li or li (yamen clerks) to the i (or servants). The sixteen clerks, classified as kung-shih in the Yamen as in the Grand Secretariat and certain other offices, were drafted from the State Historiographer’s Office and the Military Archives Office, and were specially selected for this assignment on the basis of their reputation for being free from the corrupt practices preva­ lent elsewhere. All had recently worked for Prince Kung. Con­ trary to general practice all documents were drafted by the Secretaries, the clerks working solely as copyists. In addition twelve servants (graded as su-la) were selected from the Imperial Household to serve the Tsungli Yamen, and eight banner soldiers were chosen as messengers, but the latter soon proving insufficient for the work involved, eight more were added. Two existing offices of the Tsimg-shui-wu-ssu (Inspectorate General of Customs) and the T ’ung wen kuan (College of Foreign Languages) were attached to the new office. In order to extend uniformly the foreign inspectorate already in operation in Shang­ hai since 1854, its first Inspector General, the Englishman H. N. Lay, was also attached to the Tsungli Yamen. It was officially inaugurated on 11th March 1861, by the formal handing over of its new seal which had been created by the Board of Rites. The new department provided a means to modify the age-old attitudes of the Chinese to the rest of humanity, though perhaps little more than the unavoidable minimum needed to permit trade to be conducted between the two worlds. If its effectiveness was not to be as high as the British, at least, had hoped there is little doubt that in the early years and under its first leaders, especially that of Wen-Hsiang, a Manchu who had many of the virtues of the traditional scholar-official as well as a certain political skill, international trade was encouraged and a good deal of excellent work performed. However, with the suppression of the Taiping Rebellion in 1864 the government at Peking began to recover its sense of independence, while the old regionalism regained its momentum, with the result that the conduct of foreign affairs again tended to become dispersed. With the death of Wen-Hsiang in 1876, the Tsungli Yamen lost the mainstay of its influence and its already apparent decline could no longer be denied.57 THE

CHINESE CIVIL SERVICE: GENERAL R E V I E W

Although lacking certain of the characteristics essential to the modern concept of civil service — such as a strict separation

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from active political participation in government — Chinese officialdom, as a highly organized public service open to the talents, if not to all the talents, has a historical claim to primacy among civil services. This goes back at least to the introduction of merit entry and employment of examinations as part of the selection process under the Han Dynasty in the two centuries immediately before and the two centuries immediately following the beginning of the Christian era. It was to take the West the best part of two millenia to come into step, and indeed to surpass this system, virtually at one fell swoop. The high prestige of these examinations is widely attested by history and the considerable efforts and erudition required for their successful accomplishment have been touched upon in our brief account of Su Tungpo’s varied career. They brought into Chinese bureaucracy talents that other systems inevitably missed and enabled it to achieve a level of competence which facilitated the existence of the Chinese power and cultural system for so long. It is well to remember, however, that these Chinese scholarofficials never became an autonomous status group like the Brahmans of India, ‘but rather a stratum of officials and aspirants to office’.58 Their aim was to train the mind, while conditioning it to the traditional culture, and not to inculcate the actual practices of public administration, although, as in the case of modern generalist civil services, the officials’ educational experi­ ence had an impressive influence in shaping their administrative approach and methods. The continuing acceptance of Confucianism, which assumed the active participation in government of the scholar-official of integrity and wisdom steeped in the classical literature and capable of affording to the rulers the moral advice essential to their achievement of just and effective rule, was to ensure a high degree of continuity in government even if the detailed applica­ tion of the rules was subject to wide modification; for example, during the periods of foreign overlordship when, despite the superior intellectual successes of the native Chinese, Mongols and Manchus occupied a higher proportion of the senior posi­ tions than their competence justified. Family connections and wealth affected the opportunity to obtain the education essential to success in the examinations. For similar reasons there was a wide discrepancy between country dwellers and town dwellers among the competitors, with the advantage on the side of the latter. Different appointing bodies applied different conditions, the favour of chief ministers being of considerable importance. Officials had their opponents among the great families, especially

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during the feudal period, and at times when the harem gained the ear of the Emperor the eunuchs rose to great power and occupied the key positions in the administration. There were times when the government actually sold degrees or offices to fill the Imperial coffers. Sons and brothers of high officials were assigned a separate quota in the examinations, their entries being marked ‘official examination papers’ which could then receive favoured treatment, although this had not been the original intention.59 While the tests were concerned with character and integrity as well as classical learning there is little evidence that the Chinese, any more than other systems, evolved methods which were effective in assessing at the recruitment stage the practical capacities of the candidate to function as an official. The measur­ ing of literary ability — including a grasp of the content and problems of administration with which the official histories were replete often down to the merest detail — on the very testing basis provided by the examinations was always much easier and more reliable, and went a good way to balancing the adverse factors such as those that have been mentioned. The Chinese bureaucracy certainly both generated and suffered from those numerous administrative ills to which the term ‘bureaucracy’ is usually applied, and was at times viciously corrupt.60 Yet such corruption was a common concomitant of social activities in most societies, and public corruption elsewhere was rarely accompanied by the efficiency that the Chinese scholarofficials had at their finger-tips. When all is said and done this institution was the one steadying factor that contributed more than anything else to the remarkable staying power of the Chinese civilization. It is doubtful whether, even under the disintegrating impact of the alien philosophies of Karl Marx, so unwisely copied from the West, that China today has completely discarded this legacy of the ages. The Shakespearian dictum that ‘the evil that men do lives after them, the good is often interred with their bones’61 may or may not be true, but it certainly works in reverse when applied to institutions, otherwise civilizations could never have survived even to this early stage.

REFERENCES 1 2 3 4

Our main source is Lin Yutang’s The Gay Genius (Heinemann, 1947). Lin Yutang, op. cit.t p. 24. Lin Yutang, op. cit.t p. 31. Lin Yutang, op. cit.t p. 48.

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5 Lin Yutang, op. cit., p. 53. 6 Lin Yutang, op. cit., p. 55. 7 Lin Yutang, op. cit., pp. 56-7. 8 Lin Yutang, op. cit., p. 65. 9 Lin Yutang, op. cit., p. 68. 10 John Meskill, Wang An-Shih: Practical Reformer? in ‘Problems in Asian Civilizations series’ (Heath, Boston, 1963). 11 Lin Yutang, op. cit., p. 69. 12 Lin Yutang, op. cit., p. 73. 13 K. S. Latourette, The Chinese: Their History and Culture (Macmillan, N.Y., one volume edn., 1934), I, pp. 254-5. 14 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 1, ‘Introductory Orientations’ (Cambridge, 1954), p. 139. 15 Lin Yutang, op. cit., pp. 97-9. 16 Lin Yutang, op. cit., p. 106. 17 Lin Yutang, op. cit., p. 166. 18 Lin Yutang, op. cit., p. 171. 19 Lin Yutang, op. cit., p. 228. 20 Lin Yutang, op. cit., p. 229. 21 Lin Yutang, op. cit., p. 228. 22 Lin Yutang, op. cit., pp. 232-3. 23 Lin Yutang, op. cit., p. 263. 24 Lin Yutang, op. cit., p. 266. 25 Lin Yutang, op. cit., p. 270. 26 Lin Yutang, op. cit., pp. 274-5. 27 Lin Yutang, op. cit., pp. 280-3. 28 Latourette, op. cit., I, pp. 303-5. 29 Needham, op. cit., I, p. 145. 30 Latourette, op. cit., II, p. 30. It should be noted that Li in (1) and (3) represents different Chinese characters. 31 Needham, op. cit., I, pp. 144-5. 32 Sybille van de Sprenkel, Legal Institutions in Manchu China (London Univ., 1962), p. 38. 33 Michael Loewe, Imperial China (Allen & Unwin, 1966), pp. 174-5. 34 Sprenkel, op. cit., p. 39. 35 Sprenkel, op. cit., p. 40. 36 Sprenkel, op. cit., pp. 42-9. 37 Sprenkel, op. cit., p. 51. 38 Sprenkel, op. cit., pp. 57-8. 39 Vincent Cronin, The Wise Man from the West (Hart-Davis and Union, 1956). 40 Masataka Banno, China and the West, 1858-1861 (Harvard, 1964). 41 Cronin, op. p. 27. 42 Cronin, op. p. 33. 43 Cronin, op. t., p. 34. 44 Cronin, op. t., p. 43. 45 Cronin, op. pp. 45-6. 46 Cronin, op. t., pp. 57-8. 47 Cronin, op. pp. 112-13. 48 Cronin, op. p. 121. 49 Cronin, op. p. 125. 50 Cronin, op. p. 140. 51 Cronin, op. pp. 152-3. 52 Cronin, op. p. 167.

CHINA: SUNG AND AFTER 53 54 55 56 57 58

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Banno, op. cit., pp. 213 et seq. Banno, op. cit., pp. 3-4. Banno, op. cit., pp. 219-20. Banno, op. cit., pp. 224-5. Banno, op. cit., pp. 244-6. Max Weber on ‘The Chinese Literati’ in H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber (Kegan Paul, 1947), pp. 428-9. 59 Chang Chung-li on ‘Merit and Money* in The Chinese Civil Service (edited by Johanna M. Menzel, Heath, U.S.), pp. 22-3. 60 For example, Etienne Balazs, Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy (edited by A. F. Wright, Yale Univ., U.S., 1964), pp. 16 et seq. 61 Julius Caesar, Act III, scene 2.

IIQ

CHAPTER 7

INDIAN STATECRAFT: 1556 to 1853 Between the great administrative age of the Mauryan Dynasty, founded by the celebrated Chandragupta in 322 b .c. which was briefly touched upon in our first volume, and the rise of the Mughal Empire under Akbar the Great (reg. 1556-1605) the peoples of the Indian sub-continent experienced many vicissi­ tudes. Over the centuries there arose a number of empires, mostly short-lived, and a multitude of states. Invasions from outside were frequent, especially from the mountainous lands to the west and north-west, and internal conflict, in which Brahamanism and Buddhism figured prominently, was continuous. Governments changed overnight, and the political patterns were kaleidoscopic. Indian scholars are busily delving into surviving records to discover and clarify the varied administrative patterns and prac­ tices that existed at different places and different times.1 That these investigations will prove well worthwhile can hardly be doubted, yet the overall evidence is overwhelming that change came too frequently to permit a settled pattern of administration to emerge, capable in due time of providing a stabilizing factor for future generations. The menace of Islam began to exert itself from the west in the eighth century, but it was not until some three hundred years later that the armies of Mahmud of Ghazni, in 1001, flooded into the Punjab in search of booty and tribute. The impact of the two very different religions of Buddha and Mohammed, one essen­ tially tolerant and peaceful the other basically intolerant and activist, was terrible. India more than ever before became a land of turmoil and oppression. During the twelfth century the real Islamic conquest began, with the followers of Mohammed installed as a ruling race over the rest. The two religions were too diverse spiritually to permit a coalescence of Hindu and Mohammedan. Although the Sultanate was established during the following century, true unity was not easily achieved and the country remained divided into a number of separate states whose boundaries were more or less determined by the military power that each of them wielded at the particular time. As a new threat was emerging from the more distant west,

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with the Portuguese, in the person of Vasco da Gama, landing at Calicut on the Malabar coast, Babar, a conqueror of mixed Mongol and Turkish blood, arrived upon the scene. Originally the ruler of a small principality in Samarkand, Babar had managed to secure the rulership of Afghanistan. Called in to aid the governor of the Punjab, who was in revolt against the ruling dynasty, he decided to stay in this more flourishing land and at Panipat in 1526, with his compact well-disciplined army, scat­ tered the huge forces of the Emperor. Babar ruled his new realm for only four years before his death. Initially his son Humayun failed to maintain the power and he died during a further attempt, leaving it to his son Akbar to triumph over his opponents at a second battle of Panipat and to establish the Mughal Empire that heralded a great new era for India. A real attempt was to be made to secure the co-operation of both Hindu and Moham­ medan and to introduce a system of government that would have permanence, with a well-devised system of administration, which was to repeat for a new Hindustan the successes in this sphere of the ancient Mauryan dynasty. Akbar (reg. 1556-1605), who was contemporary with Elizabeth the Great of England, extended his empire continuously by force of arms, less from personal choice than in response to the dynamics of the situation, for his real interest was in statecraft, not war. His Mohammedan lieutenants, mostly of Afghan or Turkish origin, occupied dominent positions, but the majority of his subjects were Hindus, and Akbar, aiming to consolidate India under his rule, restored the privileges of the Hindu princes and so devised his system of government as to enable the two peoples to work side by side, a policy that was not to the liking of the more devout among his Mohammedan followers. But his greatness as a leader was to prove sufficient to override all oppo­ sition and his Empire at its height was a truly splendid creation, fit to compare with the greatest throughout the ages. MUGHAL

ADMINISTRATION

The Hindu and the Mohammedan states were both based upon the monarch, who ruled by divine right and headed all branches of government. It had been the practice of Mohammedan leaders to participate in the minutiae of administration and we are fortu­ nate in having a detailed contemporary record of how Akbar carried on this tradition in his expanding realm. This is embodied in the two works of the chronicler Abul Fazl in the Akbar Nama, supplemented by the A ’in-i-Akbar.2

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Confronted by such an overwhelming task, Akbar — who from the first made it abundantly clear to all around him that he meant business and expected their full co-operation — began by laying down a routine for himself that was to be followed with such regularity as to constitute a tradition for the dynasty.3 He established a daily time-table which involved his personal appear­ ance three times for the conduct of public business. His example was substantially followed by his immediate successors Jahangir (reg. 1605-27) and Shah Jahan (reg. 1627-58). Akbar instituted the Jharoka-i-Darsham, a daily meeting in the courtyard at which all citizens, Hindu or Mohammedan, of all ranks — soldiers, traders, merchants, artisans and peasants — assembled early in the day to receive the royal blessing, and for the needy and the oppressed to obtain redress without formality or hindrance.4 Justice was administered by the king on the spot. During the afternoon a full darbar was held with magnificent show and ceremony at which serious public business was conducted: such as inspection of the State elephants and fixing the price of new animals; inspection by the king of the products of the karkhanas, or government factories. Matters of personnel, including the making of appointments or the granting of incre­ ments, were settled: provincial and military officers were inter­ viewed before departing to take up duties away from the capital. At the darbar special honour was done to a prince or other officer singled out by the King, and distinguished visitors were received with ceremony; occasionally prisoners of war were stigmatized with ignominy. A day was set apart for judicial cases. Finally, there were private audiences during the evening. It is not until the reign of Shah Jahan that we have details of the actual routine and transaction of business at the darbar but there is little doubt that these go back to the early days of the regime. The secretaries of the several departments stood by the Jharoka, or raised balcony where the King sat, to report on various matters and to receive their orders. At the same time reports were made on decisions reached at the preceding darbar.5 In introducing these new routines Akbar had devised a means of filling a gap in the state system, which had lacked any permanent body to control the administrative machinery, a weakness that had been made manifest by the breakdown of rule under earlier regimes. Yet it was an arrangement whereby the efficiency of the administration depended excessively upon the will and health of the ruler, whose lot was by no means an easy one. An interesting development of the Grand Vizirship was the institution of the Vakil under Akbar and his immediate succes-

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sors. Traditionally the Vizir was the only powerful minister whose post was not duplicated or divided, except under conditions where the extent of his control, perhaps for geographical reasons, was too great for any one man. The Mughal monarchs preferred to avoid placing so much power in the hands of one person, by appointing several leading ministers, and to allow the Vakil to retain only his special dignity and prestige, or even to leave the post unfilled. Thus, during the period of ninety-seven years covered by the first three emperors (1560-1657) ten Vakils were appointed and officiated for about thirty-nine years in all.6 The basic reason for this policy can be found in the vigorous intention of the ruler to keep his hands on the reins of govern­ ment and to immerse himself constantly in the details of admini­ stration. Following Mohammedan tradition Akbar shared the responsibilities of the state among four ministers besides the Vakil who, as we have seen, became very much of a supernumary. The four branches or departments were headed respectively: (1) Revenue and Finance by the Divan or Divan-i-kul (Chief Divan); (2) Military by the Mir Bakhshi (Chief Bakhshi); (3) Factories and Stores by the Mir Saman (Chief Executive Officer); and (4) Ecclesiastical and Judicial by the Sadr. Of these the Divan occupied the position normally held by the Vizir. He was higher in status than his three colleagues but exercised no super­ vision over them or their departments. Each was individually responsible for his own department, yet Akbar ensured, by his habit of consultation that they maintained constant contact with each other on matters of policy and in fact each was made fully aware of important matters being handled in all departments. He did all he could to ensure that his own capacity to see things as a whole was cultivated by his lieutenants, without diminishing their individual responsibilities. The pattern just summarized developed in stages and was to be subject to modification under Akbar’s successors. Akbar had some difficulty in finding the right men for his new system. The first Divan, Muzzaffar Khan, who took up the office in the ninth year of the reign, had had a wide experience in revenue administration and was also acquainted with the central administrative machinery. A career that had brought him up from the bottom commended him to the Emperor, as having given him a sound working knowledge down into the very roots, which those coming suddenly to power did not usually possess. Muzzaffar’s selection, without high connections or recommenda­ tions, is sufficient to attest his high ability.7 Under him the Divan was established in a leading position among the departments. Yet

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in the nineteenth year of the reign Muzzaffar was removed from his office for bad behaviour towards, the ruler. This step was obviously taken to set an example, but a sentence of banishment to the Hejaz was rescinded and, after a spell in a lesser post, Muzzaffar was again made Divan and also given the honour of the Vikalat, although he was to resign shortly afterwards on a question of military ranking. He came again to court and the Vikalat in the twenty-second year and, with the other two ministers, accompanied Akbar on a tour of the Punjab. On his return Muzzaffar shared in an inspection of the Treasury of the capital and in the twenty-fourth year he was appointed Governor of Bengal. This posting was regarded as an anti-climax, which brought him a sense of failure and led to his early death.8 Outstanding matters dealt with during the royal tour just mentioned are of interest. They included the reassignment of responsibility for certain mints, the issue of an order for the minting of square rupees, and dispersal to different provinces of a group of Afghans accused of oppression and delaying the administration of justice in certain villages. Muzzaffar and another minister were sent to Jalundah to inquire into the condition of the needy and to report deserving cases to the King. The Governor of the Punjab was removed for maladministration and replaced, and the case of the amal juzar (collector) of Delhi, against whom the public had complained, was looked into. During a later tour of this type, undertaken by Akbar in his thirty-fourth year, all the ministers again accompanied him, and it happened that in Kashmir Mir Fatahualla Shirazi, who was divan at the time, died. Akbar’s comment on receiving the news indicates Mir Fatahualla’s great merit, which was generally acclaimed. He said ‘Mir was my Vakil, philosopher, physician and astronomer. Who can understand my grief for him? Had he fallen into the hands of the Firangian (Franks) and they had demanded all my treasurers (sic) in exchange for him, I should gladly have entered upon such a profitable traffic and have bought that precious jewel cheap’.9 Apart from the Divan, the Finance Department was divided into four branches under the Divan-i-khalsa (for lands), the Divan-i-tan (for salaries), the Mushrif (chief accountant) and the Mustaufi (auditor), each of which was further divided into several sections, according to the needs and nature of the work. Each of the chief officials had a personal assistant and several superintendents of offices. The branches were staffed by clerks specially skilled in the techniques of the particular office. The Divan had three-fold responsibilities which kept him in touch

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with all three departments of the central government besides his own, as well as with the Amirs and nobles and with every part of the provincial administration. Thus: (1) as head of the revenue department he had his eye on every officer who received a salary from the state; (2) as chief executive officer he had control over provincial officials, from Governor downwards; and (3) as financial minister he had a finger in every pie that involved the royal treasury in any way. It was decidedly the Divan's exercise of this general supervision that accounted for his ascendency among the ministers. Thus, the Moghuls seem to have had an extensive experience of the ramifications of what today we know as ‘treasury control’.10 The office of the Mir Bakhshi had its beginnings in earlier Mohammedan regimes, but it was Balban, who, as a safeguard against the Vizir placed the military department under separate control.11 Apart from his specific duties the Mir Bakhshi derived special distinction from his nearness to the King at the darbar. He accompanied the King into the private chamber and attended him throughout the meeting, and in this way kept in touch with all the important affairs of the empire. In addition he accompa­ nied his sovereign on all tours, pleasure trips and hunting expeditions. His duties included presentation before the King of all candidates for the military services, all soldiers and horses of the mansabdars at the time of appointment, and all permanent officers at regular intervals. He also presented all high officials coming from and going to the provinces, as well as embassies and other distinguished visitors. Another interesting duty was the receipt of all reports from the several provinces and their presen­ tation to the King. Thus, apart from military leader, he was also head of the diplomatic and the public relations services, in so far as they had yet been developed, and it seems that Moghul practice in these fields was well advanced for the times. Nor did the Mir Bakhshis qualifications end here. His department had a good deal of office work, which included the issue of various certificates, the handling of correspondence and the keeping of numerous records. Thus, while he needed to have had a distinguished military career, he was also an administrator, while for his ceremonial duties at the darbar literary qualifications were an asset. The Mir Saman, as controller of the factories and stores, main­ tained by the central government for state purposes, dealt with a wide range of articles from precious stones to pieces of artillery. He was responsible for military equipment and provisions and for travel arrangements connected with royal visits and hunts.

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Particularly important were his responsibilities in connection with the karkhanas, or royal factories. When one takes full account of the great riches and architectural magnificence of Akbar’s Empire it is evident that the Mir Saman ranked high among the King’s ministers. He was assisted by the Divan-iBuyutat, responsible for the financial side, who was originally co-manager rather than subordinate, although the Mir Saman became relatively more important; the Mushrif-i-Kul, the depart­ ment’s head accountant who had a mushrif in each branch; the Mustaufi, who was responsible for general supervision of the karkhanas; and the Darogha-i-Kachehri, who was responsible for general supervision of the establishment of the office, including the proper movement and custody of papers, the proper behaviour of persons towards the clerks and servants, and the security of the office. There was also a darogha in each branch or karkhana, who was a sort of general manager, and also a tahvildar, who had charge of the cash and material handled by the unit. It is of special significance that the King himself was personally con­ cerned with the factories at all stages. He approved the finance, inspected the karkhanas, and examined the products at the darbar.12 In the thirty-fourth year of Akbar’s reign the new post of Nazir was introduced, ranking next to the Divan-i-Buyutat. His appoint­ ment seems to have been due to the great increase in the depart­ ment’s work. The new official was concerned solely with the Divan, and, while below the Divan in rank and status, was responsible for revising the work done in order to guarantee greater efficiency and accuracy, and adding his seal. He was without specific powers and duties and his work was largely co-ordinative, a step obviously to cope with problems arising from expanding administration. The position of the remaining minister, the Sadr, was peculiar to the Islamic system. His duties were threefold: (1) as the most distinguished Islamic scholar and religious head, he in a way censored the education, ideas and morals of the people; (2) since Islamic law was the very basis of the governmental system, he was head of the judicial department and responsible for the appointment and oversight of the various magistrates; and (3) as link between King and people, he was responsible to the former for recommending suitable stipends for ulama and scholars devoted to the service of religion, in order to save them from the anxieties of earning a living, as well as bringing to the king’s notice other deserving cases for royal assistance.13 Charity was an essential religious duty which the King, above

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all, owed to his subjects. Relief was given irrespective of caste and creed. With the growth of the empire the informal methods of the camp had long been found wanting and it is significant that in his twenty-third year Akbar set out to regulate charity by ordering the erection of permanent poor houses and serais, to ensure that the needy should have a home. In this case separate arrangements were provided for Hindus and Mohammedans. Provision was also made for the poor traveller. No doubt the practices of Byzantium had some influence here. Under Akbar’s successors arrangements were made in times of famine for the distribution of cooked provisions, though such state intervention could not have gone very deep in coping with the grave threat of starvation by which India has been periodically faced. In the main, state charity was highly selective and occasional. The problem was too vast to be dealt with adequately by the admini­ strative arrangements then available. Akbar had a genius for organization, which certainly did not stop with the rationalization and improvement of the ministerial system, comprised in the moderation of the normal all-powerful vizirship of oriental systems and the substitution of a scheme of checks and balances in the ministry. Individual administrative responsibilities were from time to time given to suitable persons attached to the Court who did not hold positions in any of the central departments, and outsiders were called to membership of the councils which were held to discuss in the presence of the King a wide range of state business. Everyone spoke in turn, in accordance with rank and position. Opinions were freely expressed and then the King decided. An active participator in every sphere of activity, Akbar was the key co-ordinator, in fact in many ways the sole co-ordinator, in the system. He set an example that only an outstanding successor could hope to follow, and only one as energetic and fit could bear the strain, providing he also had the will. The personnel system had its special virtues. Officers could rise from the lowest ranks, without reference to class, caste or creed, influence or recommendation, solely by virtue of capacity and loyalty, and many did so. The ministers themselves enjoyed security during good behaviour and efficiency, and were not subject to the usual dangers and threats of absolutist systems of royal whim and court intrigue. Only one minister was charged with high treason under Akbar: namely, Shah Mansur, who was tried in a regular court and quickly executed. Akbar was filled with grief.14 The administration was subjected to a code of regulations

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239

which ensured that every official knew just what the rules were. Under this code a junior official could stop a senior from exceed­ ing his authorized powers. The King, although himself above these rules and regulations, set a good example by making a practice of following them. It will be interesting to look at the Empire’s provincial govern­ ment, as it was organized in the twenty-fourth year of Akbar’s reign. Instead of following the normal practice in the East of parcelling out the country into military fiefs, Akbar organized it in provinces, whose institutions were under the direct control of the capital.15 Subject directly to the King — and the Vakil where his post was filled — each province was under the direction of a Sipahsalar, upon whose competence the effectiveness of its government largely depended. He held office at the pleasure of the ruler and by custom his tour was usually short. He was expected to dispense impartial justice, not to interfere in religious matters, and to act generously towards the people. He was commander-in-chief of the provincial army, had special responsi­ bility for maintaining safety on the roads, was expected to ensure proper collection of taxes, and enjoined to look after other public matters as representative of the King. He maintained a body of spies — or were they more akin to inspectors? — to ensure proper intelligence of what was going on. Each province was divided into Sarkars, under a Faujdar, who was appointed by the King and acted both as assistant to the Sipahsalar, to ensure proper government in his area, and also as direct agent of the Court. In the larger towns the Faujdar was assisted by the Kotwal who exercised special police powers. It was his duty to preserve order and also to act for the government in matters of special interest to it. He was to some extent a censor of public morals, even to ensuring that women did not ride on horseback,16 or were not burnt against their inclination. At the Sarkar headquarters would also be stationed the Qazis, or magistrates, with their executive assistants, the Mir Adis, who acted independently from the executive side. Each Sarkar was further divided into Parganas, and the Parganas into villages, each with its own officials. Collection of taxes in the areas was in the hands of the A mil, who was also directly linked with the central government. He too had his assistants as collectors, such as the Karkun (registrar of collections), the Mukaddam (chief village revenue officer) and the Patwari (land steward). It was his duty to prevent petty tyranny in the villages, especially by the headman. He needed a

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large subordinate staff, among whom the Bitikchi, or scribe, was important. Something like a registrar, the Bitikchi maintained records of relevant information about the village. There were also Fotahdars (treasurers) who were responsible for the safe keeping of and accounting for public moneys. Thus the local administration was highly specialized with a well-conceived finance sector. In this essentially autocratic system of local government, the degree of autonomy and delegation was strictly limited and there was a definite division of control from the centre. While the Sipahsalar was responsible for general supervision within his area, most administrative matters were directly supervised by the specialist ministers at the centre. This did not apply to admini­ stration of the law, since there was no hierarchy of courts and the provinces were self-sufficient in this respect. In this sphere the Kotwal was subject to the Sipahsalar and not linked in any way with the central secretariat. The Sipahsalar acted for the King in appeals against the judgment of the Qazis and Sadars. The Sipahsalar was thus freed largely from the detail of admini­ stration but was responsible for co-ordination of the government and good order of the provinces in every way. His position reflected that of the King at the centre, and his power depended upon his personal energies and leadership qualities, the social and economic situation in the area, and the state of communications with the capital. Obviously in an age when travel was still difficult, an area far from the capital could only be effectively governed by a leader who was competent and prepared to take on-the-spot decisions in case of emergency, and the officials at the centre would be wise not to attempt to administer by remote control and attempt to ensure that every local activity was carried out strictly according to the book. It seems to have been the situation at least under Akbar that Indian administration, while guided by strict principles, was operated with a flexibility that the Emperor in his wisdom himself practiced. Here was a case of a great ruler being also a great administrator. Yet the writing was already on the wall: for this was a geniussystem. What, may we ask, were the weaknesses that were to cause Akbar’s realm to enter so soon into decline? First and foremost was the high degree of centralization and the system’s dependence upon one man. Not that there was any real alternative under the conditions that existed. There was no legal constitution in the modern sense to guarantee the continu­ ance of institutions, no group in the country coherent and powerful enough to take up the reins of government should the

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leadership falter. The King had to be sufficiently powerful to protect his subjects not only from enemies from outside, but also from the internal misuse of power against the weak by his own agents and the local chiefs. In sum, the Moghul Empire was largely the brainchild of Akbar the Conqueror whose all-round successes were not to be easily emulated by his successors. Furthermore there was the absence among the people of any national spirit, despite Akbar’s efforts to build one. All attempts to unite Hindu, Mohammedan, Sikh, Rajput, Saiyid, Sheikh, Afghan, Idani and Turani and to dam back the forces of dis­ integration were successful only during the reigns of the first three emperors. The decline can be assigned to the return, by Aurungzebe, son of Shah Jehan who had been deposed in 1658, to the old policy of maintaining the fanatical leadership of the Mohammedans and repressing the Hindu majority. During his reign the Empire in fact continued to expand almost by its own volition, so that by the time of his death in 1707, the whole structure had become overextended and flabby, with the forces of disruption ready to take over. The Persians from without and the Marathas from within were ready to grasp the power, while the several European nations — Dutch, Portuguese, French and British — stood on the sidelines, adventurers dithering between honest trade and dishonest loot, but awaiting history’s cue to determine their role on India’s stage.17 EAST I NDI A COMPANY: COMMERCI AL PHASE, 1600-1

83 3

Even while Akbar was on the throne and the Mughal Empire was at its height, a new counter-power was being almost surrep­ titiously born on the other side of the world, by the incorporation of a band of adventurers and traders, none of whom could have had the slightest inkling of the peaks to which their relatively insignificant movement would lead. On the last day of December 1600, in the realm of Elizabeth the Great of England, a charter had been granted, as a concession for fifteen years, to the Earl of Cumberland and 215 knights, aldermen and merchants of London for the discovery of trade with the East Indies. Early in April of the following year five ships — the ‘Red Dragon’, the ‘Ascension’, the ‘Hector’, the ‘Susan’, and the ‘Guest’ set sail from Torbay for the spice isles of Indonesia. Thus was the East India Company born, and what was to prove an amazing chapter in English expansion overseas begun. Other nations were already interested in the prospects of trade with the East and several

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European countries followed suit by establishing trading compa­ nies: the Dutch in 1602, the French in 1664 and the Danes in 1729. The Portuguese had been in the area for many decades, but their energies had been mainly involved in opening up the sea routes. The new Company was authorized to establish three trading stations, or factories, and these were actually set up, during the reigns of Jahangir and Shah Jahan, at Surat, Fort St. George (to become Madras) and on the Hooghli just above Calcutta (whither it later removed). In 1661 Bombay was given to the Company by Charles II who had received it from the Portuguese. The Company was to have trouble with other English traders, who poached upon its territories and in fact, towards the end of the seventeenth century, a rival company was actually sanctioned, but in 1701 the two were amalgamated as the Honourable East India Company. Following the weakening of the Moghul realm, accentuated by the destructive policies of Auruangzeb, the companies, con­ cerned to ensure conditions favourable to peaceful trading in their own areas, were pulled increasingly into political affairs. The national rivalry between England and France found a new and fruitful field of operations in India and this struggle came to a head when the Marquis Joseph-Francois Dupleix (1697-1763) was made governor of the French company and decided, with the aid of the local princes to oust the British from Bengal. Only after a bitter struggle were his plans decisively frustrated by Robert Clive (1725-74) and finally ended with the surrender in January 1761 of Pondichery by the French commander, Lally Tollendal, an Irishman who, perhaps not very justly, was to be beheaded in Paris five years later for betraying the settlement. The early servants of the East India Company were merchants, inspired with a strong desire for gain and adventure and little idea of becoming governors. Money was their aim, money and riches in abundance, and, knowing that in the climatic and sanitary conditions of the day that time would probably be short, they were often ruthless exploiters in their pursuit of gain. Yet the increasingly unsettled state of the lands in which they operated forced them, much against their will, to take over responsibilities which were certainly not their business. They were sent out as Factors, or commercial agents, and their stations were known as Factories, which meant the head­ quarters of factors and not of manufacturing. In 1675 the Company made a notable establishments advance by introducing a regular gradation of posts. The first stage was a seven-year

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apprenticeship, during which £5 a year was paid for the first five years and £10 a year for the last two. These apprentices were now eligible for appointment as Writers, subject to their giving sufficient security, a normal commercial practice at the time. The last of these apprentices were sent out in 1694. The term ‘Writer’ had come into use as far back as 1645. After serving a covenanted term of five years and proving his ability a Writer could be appointed Factor, depending upon the existence of a vacancy, and from this position he could advance to Merchant and Senior Merchant. Factors responsible for large ‘factories’ were styled Agents. Unit ‘factories’ were grouped under ‘chief factories’, whose Factor was known as President, and was assisted by a Council of Senior Merchants. This hierarchic structure had been copied from the Dutch and foreshadows the typical civil service structure of the future.18 The Company’s servants were ill-paid and subject to many hardships: their mortality rate was high. Poor salaries stimulated their mercantile propensities and spurred them to pursue profit­ able business on their own account. Inconsistently the Company had aimed to prevent this, as against its own interests, but a proclamation to this effect issued by Charles I in 1628, had been ignored and little could be done about it.19 On the other hand, in the context of the times their lives were not without compensations and the normal routines of the future colonial bureaucrat were already in their formulative stage, as the following quotation suggests: ‘The day of a Company’s servant began with prayers at 6 a.m. The morning was spent in business; dinner followed at noon, fol­ lowed by a period of rest — which after fifteen courses, was doubt­ less needed. In the afternoon only the juniors returned to office. The seniors took their ease in some garden, assisted by a jug of wine or a bowl of punch. The evening was the time for paying calls and social meetings. Supper and prayers followed at 8 p.m. and the gates where shut at 10 or 11 p.m. For the wealthier members of the community some forms of sport were available — bowls, shooting, riding, coursing, driving and picknicking, a favourite diversion: for the poorer, there was little to do but to loaf, gossip, gamble, or play billiards and backgammon in a tavern.’20

Power and rulership came to the Company not by design — through some deep laid policy of colonialism — but under the compulsion of the events. The Company made no territorial acquisitions before 1760, when they acquired control of Burdwan, Midnapore and Chittagong from the Mir Kasim Ali Khan in order that their revenues might meet the cost of the defence of

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Bengal by the Company’s troops, levies locally recruited for its own protection. In the absence of Clive, who was on leave at this time, these new responsibilities and opportunities went to the heads of the Company’s servants, who set out to make hay while the sun shone. The rapacity of these agents was contagious and spread rapidly in all directions. So shocking was the situation that Clive returned in May 1765 to reassume the governorship, at the head of a Select Committee, which included four members besides himself, resolved to cleanse the Augean stables.21 The Directors of the Company had laid down stringent regu­ lations on the taking of presents, an immemorial Indian custom that had accompanied every transaction and one that resulted in an inconceivable variety of abuse against justice to the interests of both the individual and the Company. Except by a few senior men of inflexible integrity, the Directors’ instructions condemning these practices were being widely evaded. Clive made examples by widespread dismissals and replacement by men of higher moral calibre. At least one official committed suicide. Men were brought in from the country, where they could not be supervised, and the whole organization on the ground was reshaped. Clive went some way to relieving the meagre salaries of the Company staffs, which contributed so much to the money-grasping proclivities of its servants, by reserving for them the profit on the inland trade in salt, betel and tobacco after the Company’s duty of 35 per cent ad valorem had been taken. But this continued only to 1768, since the Directors’ agreement had not been forthcoming. The most radical change was inaugurated by the granting to Clive, by the Emperor, of the Divan (Diwani) of Bengal, which meant that the Company took over the revenue administration for the area, while the ruler himself continued to run the rest of the civil administration. Only two British high officials were needed for this task, as the revenue administration remained in the hands of the Indian staff, which in fact consisted mainly of Persians drawn into India in search of fortune, and was quite indifferent to the interests of the local population.22 This system of dual administration soon proved ineffective, since all interference with Indian administration was strictly vetoed, while supervision of the Indian and Persian collectors for the Divan was ineffective in preventing the worst defalcations. The people were plundered mercilessly. Under the guidance of the Select Committee chosen English officials were now appointed as supervisors (later renamed Collectors) in the revenue admini­ stration, but their ignorance of language and custom forced them to rely too much upon their subordinates, with the result that

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the native Banyans in the lower positions were able to carry on very much as before. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, the root cause of the continuance of these troubles was the ill-advised refusal of the governing authority to pay its servants adequate salaries. The French did the same in Canada, the Dutch in South Africa,23 with similar results. Sir Charles Lucas wrote: ‘It seems transparently obvious that if employers are to be honestly served, they must pay good wages; yet the history of colonial administration abundantly shows that no lesson has been so imperfectly learnt and so consistently forgotten. Have few officers, work them hard, pay them well, hold them responsible, and trust them — this is the only way to secure capable and honest admini­ strators. In the latter part of the seventeenth and throughout the eighteenth century no government acted on these lines, and compa­ nies could hardly be expected to do so. Their business was not to train just and wise rulers, but to buy the services of their staff as cheaply as possible. They paid salaries on which men could hardly live, and the subject races had to make good the deficiency.’24 *

*

*

*

In these early years of British rule there had been certain fluctuations in Company policy towards Indian institutions; although, from the outset and particularly under Warren Hastings, who assumed the governorship of Bengal in 1772, emphasis was laid upon maintaining the social and legal customs of both the Hindu and the Islamic communities, while the execu­ tive system already described followed closely upon the pattern operated by the Moghuls. Warren Hastings stated that ‘his object was to establish a system which would possess an authority founded on the ancient laws of India, and which would enable the people to be ruled with ease and moderation according to their own ideas, manners and prejudices’.25 This policy was formally approved by resolution of the Commons in 1793 and endorsed by Lord William Bentinck in 1804 when he laid it down as the bounden duty of the Legislature to promote by all just and prudent means the interests and happiness of the British Dominions in India. True there was an Anglicanizing phase under Cornwallis, but this was checked by a Parliamentary Com­ mittee of 1833, which held that the laws of India ought to be adapted to the feelings and habits of Indians rather than those of Europeans. Basically, the existing village system was maintained and where it was in decline, as it was in the Punjab, efforts were made to restore it and give it new life.26 The policy of maintaining conIIR

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tinuity was followed even in religion, this policy being quite the opposite to that adopted by the Portuguese in their dependencies. All cults were officially honoured and the Company even took over liabilities created or recognized by its predecessors with regard to religious endowments and establishments. Thus in 1833, the Government of Madras was responsible for the administration of over 7,500 Hindu shrines, which involved matters of detailed management, such as the regulation of funds, appointment of Hindu officials, repair of buildings, and the keeping of temple cars in good order, including the levying of labour to drag them at ceremonies.27 But when this became known opinion in England could not stand such religious liberalism. There was an outcry against the Company associating with Hinduism and the policy of close religious co-operation was gradually discarded. This changed attitude ran contrary to Indian sentiment, as the administrators on the spot well understood, since the concept of a purely secular state was then quite unacceptable, and this repudiation by the Company was regarded as an abdication of one of the essential responsibilities of government. With the best of motives citizens at home thus completely misconstrued the immediate administra­ tive needs of distant realms for which they had accepted responsibility. Much influenced by the laissez faire doctrines which had come to be widely accepted in Britain, administrators in India, during the first half of the nineteenth century, were decidedly conserva­ tive and inclined to let things go on as they were. As Lord Falk­ land, a contemporary statesman remarked ‘When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change’.28 Existing institutions were maintained as a matter of basic policy. But this policy did not draw forth from the people that degree of active co-operation which the new administration absolutely required. With the assumption of governmental control by the Crown in 1853 a new period of state intervention was inevitably born.

BIRTH

E A S T I N D I A COMP ANY* . OF A C I V I L S E R V I C E , 1 7 7 3 - 1 8 5 3

It was Warren Hastings’s29 destiny to lay the foundations in India of a Civil Service in the modern sense. He reorganized the revenue administration, remodelled the judicial system and freed trade from its existing abuses. In 1772 the Directors in London decided to take over management of the revenue system by employing the Company’s own servants, though the changes

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were to take some time and were to lead, as a matter of course, to the Company assuming responsibility for the entire admini­ stration of Bengal, a task for which they had not been equipped and to which their agents on the spot had hardly aspired. There was certainly an active reform movement in Britain and the politics of India had become very much the concern of Parlia­ ment at Westminster.30 The work of reform was assisted by the Regulating Act of 1773, which forbade Collectors and other persons occupied either in the collection of revenue or in the administration of justice from taking part in trade and forbade persons in military or civil offices from accepting presents. It was not until 1780-1 that the revenue and judicial administration in the districts was entrusted to British officials and a proper civil service system was inaugu­ rated, with the development of systematization and specialization. The salaries offered remained too low, although some improve­ ments were conceded. Lord Cornwallis, who took over the post of Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief in 1786, found plenty of evidence of continuing fraud. Thus the Resident of Bernares was making from irregular emoluments an additional sum of nearly 400,000 rupees a year, as well as exercising a monopoly of the trade of the district.31 Lord North’s Regulating Act of 1773 had established a Governor-General in Council in Bengal and a Supreme Court in Calcutta, independent of the Company’s executive, and had thus brought a vital new factor into the local situation. Although the Company’s servants were making big fortunes the Company’s own finances were sinking and a loan from home was absolutely necessary to avoid bankruptcy. This was provided for in another Act of 1773, to the tune of £1,400,000, subject to conditions and submission of the Company’s accounts to H.M. Treasury. Thus Treasury control came into the picture. Under the Regulating Act the Directors were required to lay before the Treasury all correspondence relating to revenue matters which they received from their servants in India. When the Charter came to be renewed for ten years in 1781 the same requirement was now added for the Directors’ orders to the Indian authorities, while at the same time three-quarters of any excess over a dividend of 8 per cent had in future to be paid over to the Treasury. The bonds were tightening. Under Pitt’s Government of India Act, 1784, a Board of Com­ missioners for the Affairs of India, usually known as the Board of Control, was set up at home. This new body was destined to operate as a government department till Britain took over com-

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plete responsibility for the Government of India in 1858. The Board of Control, which originally consisted of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a Secretary of State and four other Privy Councillors, changed with each change of ministry. In practice its powers came to be exercised by its President, although the signature of two members was required for formal orders. Hence­ forth the Company’s activities were subject to the supervision and review of the Board of Control, and the result was that, while the Company continued to look after its commercial affairs, all questions of high policy on the political side were determined by the President of the Board. The Directors had a right of appeal to the King in Council against decisions of the Board, but in view of the identification of the Board with the Cabinet, in practice this meant little. Apart from this governmental reconstruction at the top the affairs of Britain and India were brought closer together in other ways. The original city merchant flavour of the Company’s Directorate was radically modified by the election to it of ex-servants, who on retirement had become proprietors of stock, and thus local knowledge was brought to the Company’s manage­ ment. On the political side the pressures and influences of Lord Clive and other ‘nabobs’ at home and the scandalous impeach­ ment of Warren Hastings threw the public limelight on to the affairs of the Company and made it impossible for the Home Government to relegate them, as matters of secondary importance. The periodical renewal of the Charter in any case brought Indian affairs into the forefront of parliamentary interest. In India the administration on the ground was being consoli­ dated through the development of the district officer. After 1786 the offices of judge and magistrate, but excluding control of policy, were added to that of Collector, a denial of the general principle of separation of executive and judicial functions. The Directors preferred the arrangements as reflecting local practice acceptable to the Indian people and as a simple and economical one from their own point of view. In fact the Collector gave primacy to his revenue duties and the Revenue Courts came to be preferred to the Civil Courts for the trial of cases. Judicial powers were therefore withdrawn from the Col­ lector in 1793 and transferred to the Civil Courts. Henceforth there was to be in each district a Collector and a Civil JudgeMagistrate, who also had control of the police, and the judgeships were given priority of importance. Formerly criminal jurisdiction had been left with the Nawab under Mohammedan law, but the punishments were inhuman and

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the administration corrupt, and in 1790 Cornwallis had decided to transfer criminal justice to the Magistrates, although the general principles of Mohammedan law were to be maintained, subject to their gradual modification in the direction of humanity. So successful did the new system prove that in 1802 Sir Henry Strachey declared ‘that the poor looked to the laws and not to the patronage of the powerful for protection’. The rule of law was beginning to operate.32 Under Cornwallis the formation of a civil service continued. By the Charter Act of 1793 all vacancies, other than those in the Council, were to be filled by promotion of officials belonging to the Presidency in which they occurred, and minimum service in India was prescribed for certain posts. Thus the scope for patronage was limited, and Cornwallis stood firmly against its continuance. Proper salaries were introduced and perquisites abolished. Entrants signed an agreement or covenant that they would not participate in trade. These higher civil servants, receiving salaries of over £500 a year, came to form the ‘Covenanted Civil Service of India’ as distinct from the Uncovenanted Service of subordinate officials which consisted almost entirely of Indians recruited locally. Nevertheless the separate titles of ‘Bengal Civil Service’, ‘Bombay Civil Service’ and ‘Madras Civil Service’ were applied to its members in the respective Presidencies, which maintained their own pension funds. Other safeguards included the appointment of a civil auditor to make a regular check of all civil expenditure and the subjection of all officials to the ordinary courts for acts done in their official capacities.33 During these years there was a remarkable improvement in the quality of the administration and it was soon to be claimed that under the Company there were now as few peculations as anywhere in the world. Integrity and assiduity had become the hallmark of the new bureaucrat, who worked officially from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. but often had official work to do at other times. A Collector could face dismissal for delay in submitting his monthly accounts and, although this drastic penalty was shortly to be modified, the fines that were imposed would be considered disproportionate by modern standards, although the inherent difficulties of adequate supervision in a service so widely scat­ tered no doubt justified such measures at the time. It was about this period that Sir J. W. Kaye remarked: ‘that there was gradually springing up a race of trained admini­ strators around whom the old commercial traditions did not cling, who had not graduated in chicanery, or grown grey in fraud and

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corruption, and who brought to their work not only a sounder intelligence but purer moral perceptions and a higher sense of what they owed to the people of the soil.’34 The new officials rapidly earned a new respect from the Indians whom it was their inmost duty to serve. The actual invention of the term ‘civil service’ dates back to this period. The unavoidable expansion of the Company’s administrative activities after 1793 rendered it necessary to divide the Service into separate branches to deal respectively with judicial, political (or diplomatic), revenue and mercantile business, but the latter function was considerably narrowed after 1813 when the Company’s trading monopoly was restricted to British trade with China, up to 1833 when the new Charter Act stripped it of its remaining commercial functions. In 1831 the magisterial func­ tions of the Judge were transferred to the Collector, thus dividing the work into two, between a District Judge, as chief judicial official, and District Magistrate and Collector, as chief executive officer in each district. This was the pattern for the so-called Regulation Provinces, namely those areas that were subject to the Charter Acts. Other areas controlled by the Company, which for one reason or another were not considered advanced enough for the operation of the formalities laid down in the Acts, were known as Non-Regulation Provinces. Here executive and diplo­ matic posts were given to military men, who became known as Military Civilians,35 and were not subject to the same conditions as the Civil Service. Many of them were well equipped to make good officials, but others were not. Patronage was thus afforded further openings and there was naturally objection from the civil appointees, who often saw important posts blocked by military civilians who had proceeded up the line to positions for which they had not the competence. The Charter Act of 1833 projected a system of competitive examinations for selection of the Company’s civil servants, who were in future to be concerned only with matters of government administration. Under this arrangement the Directors were to nominate three times as many candidates as there were vacancies, and of these one-third were to be selected by examination, a proposal that had been sponsored by Lord Macaulay, the distinguished historian who had had some administrative experi­ ence, had been elected to the House of Commons and, as one of the members of the Supreme Council of India to be set up under the Act, was to serve for a short time in India. He worked out a scheme designed to make the new system of examinations effective, but the Directors were not prepared to give up their

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patronage without a fight. They were successful in getting a Bill passed in Parliament which deferred this provision, and the first competitive examinations were not to be held till 1854, following the passing of a new Charter Act the previous year. The earlier Act also declared that no native of India should by reason of religion, place of birth, descent or colour be rendered ineligible from holding any place, office or employment under the Government of India; but it was to be some time before the normal obstacles that determine a person’s availability and competence were to be overcome. Only rich men could afford to send their sons to England to attend the only institutions where the necessary education could be acquired, and caste restrictions prevented orthodox Hindus from crossing the ‘black water’.36 Vested interests, both at home and even in India, held up the process of Indianization. While such leaders as Elphinstone, Malcolm and Munro, who had been governors in India, were strongly in favour, prominent persons at home were antagonistic, most influential among whom was James Mill, who held the important post of Chief Examiner at India House, the Company’s London headquarters. With the metamorphosis of the East India Company into a solely governmental agency the way was clear to the completion of the Civil Service edifice introduced by Warren Hastings and Lord Cornwallis. In fact, as we have already seen, three separate civil services were being built up for Bengal, Bombay and Madras to a general pattern. The District Officer, now combining the functions of Magistrate and Collector became the key figure, the local executive authority to whom the Indian looked for impartial guidance and just administration. Assisted by his staff, it was his job to co-ordinate governmental activities in his area. His office was destined to provide the prototype for many other units of the British Empire during the ensuing century. The District Officer regarded it as his duty to preserve local law and custom — except where these were clearly inhuman, as, for example, the Hindu custom of suttee involving the burning of widows, which the West could never condone — and to care for the welfare of the people. A civil service code was developed under which officials received reasonable if not lavish pay and conditions of service. The important question of promotion was regularized in accord­ ance with the rule of seniority as laid down in the Charter Act of 1793. It was regarded as a safeguard against favouritism and unfairness, evils not easily eliminated under the existing circum­ stances. Progress to the District Officership was from the basic

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post of Assistant Magistrate, through that of Joint Magistrate and Deputy Collector. There was a growing need for clerical and other subordinate staffs, all of whom were appointed locally. The problem was to find Indians with the minimum essential education, but as this was gradually extended there was to be little difficulty in recruiting persons of the requisite skills. In the early days the Company’s servants had been required to have only a rudimentary commercial training, but with the Company’s expanding responsibilities the need for a much wider and more advanced type of education became increasingly felt. As early as 1800 Lord Wellesley, the Governor-General, proposed the founding of an establishment in Calcutta to provide the Company’s servants with the qualifications they needed, to which junior officials could be attached for a period upon their arrival from Britain. The curriculum was to include (1) a broad educa­ tion which comprised the general principles of ethics, civil jurisprudence, international law and general history, and (2) a specialized education which was to cover the languages and history of India, the customs and manners of the people, the Hindu and Mohammedan codes of law and religion, the principles on which the regulations of British India was based, and the political and commercial interests and relations of Great Britain in Asia.37 Wellesley was so sure of the rightness of his ideas that he went ahead and founded the college of Fort William before even obtaining the Directors’ approval. He was ahead of his time. The Directors refused their sanction to his excellent scheme, which they considered both grandiose and too costly. In any cast they preferred that new recruits should receive their pre­ liminary course in England. The college of Fort William was actually maintained for the study of Oriental languages, which at that time was best undertaken on the spot, and although subsequently outdated the college was not finally closed until 1854.38 After a year or two the Directors followed up Wellesley’s proposals, which so obviously interpreted an essential need of the developing situation, and founded the Company’s own college at Haileybury in Hertfordshire. The urgency was acknowledged by taking over Hertford College as ‘The East India College, Herts.’ in 1806, pending construction of the new establishment. Its object was ‘To provide a supply of persons duly qualified to discharge the various and important duties required from the Civil Servants of the Company administering the government of India’. Students were to receive instruction between the ages of

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fifteen and eighteen in the following subjects: (1) Oriental litera­ ture with practical instruction in the rudiments of Oriental languages, especially Arabic and Persian; (2) mathematics and natural philosophy; (3) classical and general literature; and (4) law, history and political economy. The charge was fifty guineas for each of the two annual terms. By Act of Parliament in 1823 nomination or appointment as Writer in India was reserved for those who had spent at least four terms at the College, but between 1826 and 1832, owing to a shortage of satis­ factory candidates to fill the vacancies, the Directors were given discretionary powers to make appointments from young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, subject to their passing a qualifying examination. Haileybury was to continue in operation until the end of 1857 and many distinguished Indian administrators were to study within its walls. This admirable scheme of pre-entry education was obviously only a beginning. The new recruit still had much to learn on the spot and for some time was to be kept under close observation by his superiors. His duties were far from sedentary. Thus in the state of communications at the time horsemanship was among the essential accomplishments. During this seminal period the East India Company was building up for India an effective public service with many of the characteristics of the civil service in its modern form. But in certain respects it was peculiar to its particular environment. It was a small elite performing judicial and policy-making func­ tions, as well as the advisory and executive functions of a normal civil service, and on the other hand it excluded the numerous middle and subordinate classes which make up the bulk of civil services everywhere. It was an elite not only in its selection and leadership characteristics, but also vocationally as a body of public officials dedicating their lives to the community in which they worked, and not just for the pay they received, which in any case had fallen away from its original level, or for the country of their birth whose Parliament had long accepted the primacy of the welfare of the Indian civilian as the basic justification for imperial rule. Yet it seems true to claim that the Government of India, of which the Indian Civil Service was the dominant part, at this time and subsequently had the characteristics of a bureaucracy in its non-derogatory meaning of a government of officials. Control from Westminster was distant and intermittent, while control by the people was non-existent. It was not a bureaucracy of the inefficient red-tape variety so universally caricatured in the press,

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but a benevolent bureaucracy that devoted itself to the good of those whom it served. In its high efficiency and sympathetic treatment of the people and their interests, it built up standards that many modern services could do worse than to copy, as the Indians themselves have acknowledged, but it suffered from the great defect of educational elites of not being able to see things from the viewpoint of those whom they administered. The gap between rulers and ruled needed to be closed and this could be best effected by the policy of Indianization, advocated at an early stage by administrators of such eminence as Warren Hastings, and endorsed as official British policy by the Act of 1833, but delayed too long by the obstruction of interested critics and the inevitable inertias of the situation.

REFERENCES 1 See, for example, H. M. Sinha, T h e D e v e lo p m e n t o f In d ia n P o lic y (Asia Publishing House, 1963). 2 Ibn Hasan, T h e C e n tra l S tru c tu re o f th e M u g h a l E m p ir e (Oxford, 1936), pp. 7-10. 3 Ibn Hasan, o p . c it., p. 66. 4 Ibn Hasan, o p . c it., p. 68. 5 Ibn Hasan, o p. c it., pp. 74-5. 6 Ibn Hasan, o p. c it ., p. 140. 7 Ibn Hasan, o p. c it., p. 150. 8 Ibn Hasan, op. c it., p. 155. 9 Ibn Hasan, o p. c it., p. 164. 10 Ibn Hasan, op. c it., pp. 204-6. 11 Ibn Hasan, op. c it., pp. 210-11. 12 Ibn Hasan, op. c it., pp. 238-50. 13 Ibn Hasan, o p . c it., p. 258. 14 Ibn Hasan, op. c it., p. 352. 15 Sinha, o p. c it., also depends upon the A in -i-A k b a ri. 16 Sinha, o p. c it., p. 500. 17 Ibn Hasan, op. c it., pp. 347-60. 18 L. S. S. O’Malley, T h e In d ia n C iv il S e rv ic e , 1601-1930 (John Murray, 1931), pp. 2-3. 19 O’Malley, o p . c it., p. 9. 20 Sir Edward Blunt, T h e In dian C iv il S e rv ic e (Faber, 1937), p. 19. 21 O’Malley, o p . c it., p. 13. 22 O’Malley, o p . c it., pp. 16-18. 23 O’Malley, o p . c it., p. 20. 24 O’Malley, o p. c it., pp. 20-1, quoting Sir Charles Lucas, H is to r ic a l G e o g r a p h y o f th e B ritis h C o lo n ies (South Africa, Part 1, 1913), pp. 74-5. 25 O’Malley, ‘General Survey’ in M o d e r n In d ia a n d th e W e s t (Oxford for Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1941), pp. 587-8.

INDIAN STATECRAFT: 1556-1853 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

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O’Malley, op. c it., p. 590. O’Malley, op. c it., p. 591. O’Malley, o p . c it., p. 593. Penderel Moon, W a rre n H a stin g s a n d B ritis h In d ia (Hodder & Stoughton/English Universities, 1947). Lucy S. Sutherland, T h e E a s t In d ia C o m p a n y in E ig h te e th C e n tu r y P o litic s (Oxford, 1952). O’Malley, T h e In d ia n C iv il S e rv ic e , 1601-1930, p. 34. O’Malley, o p. c it., pp. 39-40, quoting J. W. Kaye, T h e A d m in is tr a tio n o f th e E a s t In d ia n C o m p a n y (1853), p. 343. O’Malley, op. c it., pp. 40-1. O’Malley, o p. c it., p. 43, quoting Kaye, as above, p. 88. O’Malley, op. c it., p. 50. Blunt, o p . c it., p. 50. O’Malley, op. c it., p. 231. O’Malley, op. c it., pp. 231-2.

CHAPTER 8

AGE OF REVOLUTIONS : 1649 to 1815 The subject matter of this chapter is delimited by the English Revolution of 1688-9, which may be said to have been initiated by the beheading of Charles I in 1649, continues through the American Revolution of 1776, and the French Revolution of 1789, and extends to the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815. Dynastic revolutions have been common enough in history and these were by no means unique during the period here reviewed, but they have continued to have world-wide significance in their philosophical, social and political repercussions, while their manifest interlinkings render even a brief examination of their administrative substructures of special interest to us. Far into the future the next similar upheaval of equivalent impact was to be the Russian Revolution of 1917. Its roots are also dealt with in the present chapter. In Europe the last bonds of feudalism were being dissolved, and a new urban civilization was emerging with the expanding commercialism by which the older system had been replaced. Vigorous use of the seaways was carrying the new spirit of enter­ prise into Asia, Africa and America, where previous great civilizations had lost their initiative, while the power struggle between the leading realms of the West — England, France, Holland, Portugal and Spain — conducted on the old dynastic lines, produced an almost continuous state of warfare. These manifestations were usually accompanied by internal religious struggles well calculated to confuse the issue, whatever that might appear to the protagonists. In particular, at sea the struggle for power was acute. Science and invention were moulding suitable conditions for the Industrial Revolution, which was to manifest itself first in England, and was to flourish henceforth at the cost of much immediate human suffering yet bringing the promise of a better life to ordinary people who hitherto, even under the best of regimes, had rarely lived far outside the threat of starva­ tion. In the sphere of the spirit new liberal philosophies were influencing statesmen, defining the shape of political institutions, and giving new purpose to the aspirations of the common man. Basically, and with a minimum of forethought in the govern-

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mental sphere, existing administrative organizations were being used unaltered or modified empirically to serve the new institu­ tions brought into being to meet revolutionary needs, but radical changes in society were beginning to intimate that a policy of leaving administrative matters to chance would no longer suffice. An age of administrative introspection was being ushered in. ENGLAND A CH I E V E S C ON S T I T U T I O N A L MONARCHY

Following the republican interlude of the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell and his son Richard (1649-60), the Restoration of the monarchy under Charles II (reg. 1660-85) registered the supremacy of Parliament and the inauguration of constitutional monarchy. Both sides of the new compact wished to be co-operative but neither understood the requirements essential to making the new relationship work. As wielder of the executive power the King was still a primary factor in govern­ ment, with considerable scope for patronage, decision on admini­ strative matters, and control of expenditure within the Royal Prerogative. With the abolition of the former Royal Courts, as exemplified by Star Chamber and the Council of the North, judicial power was to be confined to the ordinary courts, while legislation rested with the two-chambered Parliament. Arbitrary rule by the Crown was ended and a real separation of powers was in prospect. The King retained a large measure of control over the central administration, but through individual ministers rather than through the Privy Council which had grown too large to act as a whole, although by the use of committees it was still able to operate effectively in some spheres. More authority rested with the departmental ministers and a pattern of Central Departments was beginning to emerge. The experience of the French monarchy in its employment of a ministerial system was well known and had an important influence at the time.1 The ministers mainly concerned were (1) the Secretary of State, whose business was divided between two incumbents in Northern and Southern Departments not distributed altogether logically according to the two titles; (2) the Lord Treasurer (or a Commission) in charge of the Treasury; (3) the Lord High Admiral in charge of the Navy and assisted by the Navy Board, with which Samuel Pepys was associated throughout the period; and (4) the Secretary at War who, together with the Commanderin-Chief, and several other bodies, including the Board of Ordinance, controlled the Army.

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The problem of establishing a working liaison between the legislature and the executive was still to be solved. As yet there was no way for Parliament to control ministers, except through the drastic method of impeachment. The King continued to have difficulty in makings ends meet and, while the importance of the Treasury was being gradually recognized, here too relations with Parliament, which wielded the financial power were still tenuous. It is significant that Charles II chose Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby, as chief minister, no doubt on account of his financial experience, and gave him the post of Lord Treasurer, thus presaging the future close relationship between the premiership and the Treasury.2 In the counties the administration had been weakened by the abolition of the Royal Courts and the decline in power of the Privy Council, which had been supreme in Tudor times, leaving the local magistrate-administrator, the ubiquitous Justice of the Peace, without central control. There new forms of administra­ tion had to be gradually reimposed. Attempts to organize the several ministers as a council were not a success. Embryonic parties were beginning to take shape, an essential ingredient in the new form of responsible government, but the time was not yet. Charles II was certainly a man of ideas and good intellect who wanted to make the new system work, but with the advent of his brother, James, a man of considerable administrative experience as former Lord High Admiral but of restricted vision, the degree of royal co-operation diminished. His policy of favouring Roman Catholics and of placing them in office, against the provisions of the Test Act of 1673 — which imposed upon holders of office under the Crown, the triple duty of taking oaths of supremacy and allegiance and receiving com­ munion under the Anglican rite — soon led to a break with Parliament and an invitation from them to his nephew and sonin-law, William of Orange, to take the throne in conjunction with his wife, James’s daughter Mary, who were both Protestants. They were to reign jointly, until the latter’s death, as William III {reg. 1689-1702) and Mary II {reg. 1689-94). ♦

*

*

While bloody battle had been waged between Parliamentary Roundheads and Royalist Cavaliers and the former’s victory had been consummated with the execution of Charles I — a wrong­ headed but not an essentially evil man, who had to suffer pour encourager les autres — William III and his wife replaced James II without bloodshed. In this sense the Glorious Revolution

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of 1688-9 differed radically from the later political upheavals with which we shall have to deal. Parliament, in the celebrated Bill of Rights, which became law in December 1689, as ‘An Act declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and settling the Succession of the Crown’, laid down the conditions on which William and Mary succeeded to the throne of England. It con­ firmed in general existing rights and duties of Crown and people, but the King’s power to raise a standing army in peace-time was vetoed and frequent meetings of Parliament were insisted upon. In fact annual meetings had already become customary. Subsequent legislation provided for the annual fixing of the military establishment and of triennial parliaments, but the threeyear term was later to be increased to seven. A vital constitutional point here was that Parliament had asserted its right to determine the succession to the throne. Considerable executive powers still remained with the Crown, even if in future it had to operate in accordance with Act of Parliament rather than under the Royal Prerogative, which was considerably restricted, although not abolished. The monarch remained the executive and a vital branch of government. The real innovations, as a measure of administrative tidying up rather than through deep political design, took place in the realms of finance. The Crown’s civil expenses were to be covered by an annual income of £1,200,000 and in all other matters Parliament held the purse strings, but a modus operandi had still to be worked out. In the absence of any means for seeing the over-all picture the situation was chaotic. Thus some steps had been taken to strengthen Parliamentary control of the state’s finance, but without the assistance of the Treasury, which was to come later. Consequently in 1691 the Commons found itself compelled to appoint a group of its members as Commissioners of Public Accounts, to examine estimates and supply it with the information needed for the proper fulfilment of its new responsibilities. Tentatively moneys were appropriated for the first time to specific services. Government borrowing became important and it was largely to regularize the process in time of war that the Bank of England was founded, in 1694, as a private joint stock company and, in return for a loan to the government of £1,200,000 at 8 per cent interest, was allowed to discount bills, to issue notes and conduct general banking business. It had to face grave difficulties, but was able gradually to extend its services, until, in 1709, it received the sole right of issuing notes in England and became the regular banker of the government. By the Act of Settlement of 1700, fixing the succession to the

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throne in Princess Anne and the Hanoverian line, holders of offices of profit under the Crown would have been excluded from Parliament, but William had already learned the necessity to have friends or spokesmen in the legislature, where the purse strings were now so securely held and such exclusion would have rendered impossible close co-operation between the two branches of government. With the Regency Act of 1705 this particular requirement was modified to apply only to new offices unless specifically excluded by Parliament. This meant that holders of old offices in existence before the passing of the Act could sit in Parliament and the way was open to the emergence of a group of Ministers appointed by the King but also qualified members of Parliament, to which they would owe responsibility. The develop­ ment of such a Cabinet council was still slow and the very use of the term remained unpopular, certainly during the reign of Queen Anne (reg. 1702-14). The formation of definite parties to formulate policies and lead public opinion was still at an early stage. The Whigs and Tories were undisciplined groups and members of both were included in the several ministries, although, as early as 1694 the Tories had gone into opposition, while an all-Tory ministry had emerged in 1710. Of course the King had his chief minister, usually appointed as Lord Treasurer, but the position was not generally recognized. The title of Premier or Prime Minister had come to be used, but it was unpopular and widely resented. Legally the King’s councillors were members of the Privy Council and of equal status. An important development took place in 1707 when the Act of Union between England and Scotland, already inaugurated a century earlier by the combination of the two Crowns under a Scottish king, brought the United Kingdom into existence. The weak reaction in favour of the Stuarts, which came to a head in the much romanticized Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745, lacked support in either kingdom and failure was inevitable. Scotland retained her own system of law, which differs from English Common Law, and continues her own legal institutions, supported by the necessary administrative arrangements, but the two systems of government were already sufficiently close for union not to cause any real problems in that sphere. It was under George I (reg. 1714-27) that the Premiership and Cabinet received their definitive forms. The King still had a deep personal interest in Hanover, of which he remained the ruler, while the ways and language of his new realm were strange to him. It was natural therefore that he should leave the discussion of policy and decision on administration to his ministers under IIS

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the chairmanship of his chief minister, to whom the title ‘Prime Minister’ became appropriate. The first Prime Minister in the modern sense was Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745) who took charge of the government in 1721. An unimaginative but efficient man, he insisted upon joint responsibility among the ministers, and their dependence upon Parliament rather than the Crown, by whom nevertheless they were appointed and to whom they owed personal allegiance. Few steps had yet been taken to remould the administration to the needs of the age, for the emphasis had been upon politics rather than management, the underlying theory being that the less the state had to do with the ordinary affairs of people the better. But the failure of public administration in one particular sector of the Crown’s dominions was to be so shattering in its effects that a digression to the distant lands of America is here justified. A D M I N I S T R A T I O N OF T HE COLONIES

AMERICAN

The great era of English colonization of America was the period from 1607 to 1682.3 The colonies began as a series of plantations or settlements, many of them as centres of trade founded for the purpose of profit. In fact considerable fortunes were sunk in more or less profitless expeditions by English noble­ men and merchants. But in many cases these adventurers were followed by emigrants from Britain in search of more liberal conditions than existed at the time at home, especially in matters of religion and conscience. The habit of establishing private companies with trade monopolies in certain areas of the world — exemplified by the East India Company already considered — was extended to the American arena. Notable among early American ventures of this type were the two Virginia companies formed under charter granted by James I in 1606, comprising a Northern company, based upon London, and a Southern company based upon Plymouth. The London company sent out its first expedition in 1607 and established the first English settlement at Jamestown in Virginia. Initially, the Plymouth company was compelled to confine its activities to trading voyages, until 1620, when it was remodelled as the New England Corporation. In some cases lands were granted to the settlers by the Crown, and were developed by English and Scot­ tish lords as separate domains.4 Some were governed from England, although it soon became usual for elected councils to

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be set up locally. The notable case was of course that of the Pilgrims who travelled from Plymouth in the Mayflower to New England in 1620, operating at the outset as an incorporated company. After seven years of failure control was taken over by the settlers, who assumed the responsibilities of government and continued as a free settlement until eventually integrated as part of the neighbouring Commonwealth of Massachusetts.5 There existed in fact a great variety of government in these new lands, which eventually stretched from Canada in the north to the Caribbean in the south, numbering as many as thirty settlements from Hudson’s Bay to British Guiana on the South American mainland. Among them were governments that per­ sisted in their original form till long after independence, namely Connecticut until 1818 and Rhode Island until 1845.6 All these developments took place despite the counter activi­ ties of Portugal, France, Holland and Spain, who disputed owner­ ship of the new lands but were eventually overwhelmed by the supremacy of the Royal Navy, now entering its phase of greatest effectiveness. Among the colonies New York was taken from the Dutch in 1664, while the two Floridas, held between 1763-83, were returned to Spain and were not taken over by the United States until 1810 and 1819. The period of colonization by private enterprise, or for religious freedom, came more or less to an end in 1640, by which time Virginia, Bermuda, Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Barbados and Maryland were well established. Henceforth more attention was to be given by the home govern­ ment to extending the nation’s trade and in this policy the American colonies, especially the West Indies for sugar, and Virginia for tobacco, were to figure prominently. Colonists were to be attracted by more liberal concessions. Attempts were made to standardize the form of royal government throughout the colonies, but from the outset the active colonists were not of the type to take kindly to attempts to impose regulations by a distant king. Among the early pioneers in this field was the eminent political philosopher, John Locke, who had devised a constitution for the new settlements, a document embodying elaborate rules based on land-holding according to feudal law and even providing for a hereditary nobility of landgraves and casiques.7 Locke worked closely with the Earl of Shaftesbury, who became president of the newly-appointed Council of Trade and Plantations, of which Locke became secretary. Formed by the combination of two councils in 1672 the new organization had as its objects the

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settlement and stocking of the colonies, and their provision with a suitable form of government, as well as the establishment of an efficient system of colonial administration in England; but these early efforts were doomed to failure. By the accession of the Hanoverians in 1714, the government of Britain had in a modest degree become ministerial and departmental, though the administrative pattern was still pretty sketchy. There was little special provision for the American colonies, which were dealt with in the course of normal business by the existing Departments. By the end of the previous century the Royal Navy had become important to the protection of colonial trade, although this function was always regarded as secondary to its use as an instrument of war. The Admiralty therefore figured prominently among the specially interested Departments, in virtue of its responsibility for supplying and con­ trolling the fleets which were vital in keeping open the long and difficult communications between the two continents. It consisted of a number of poorly co-ordinated units, comprising a series of boards of Admiralty, Navy, Victualling, Sick and Wounded, and Transport, as well as the Marine Office, Greenwich Hospital, and a Treasurer. The Privy Council, which had fallen into the background as an instrument of government, continued to wield extensive regu­ latory powers in connection with the colonies, though its executive capabilities were weak. The Secretary of State for the Southern Department was also concerned with colonial business, but he had many nearer-at-hand matters to absorb his attention. The Treasurer (later Treasury Board) was involved in financial policy overseas, its activities in this sphere being supplemented by the Exchequer and the recently founded Bank of England. The Treasury was assisted by a number of executive boards, similarly involved: Commissioners of Customs, Victualling Board, Auditor General of Plantation Revenues, Register of Emigrants to the Plantations, as well as the General Post Office and temporary commissions, such as those authorized to inquire into the claims of American Loyalists and of East Florida after 1783.8 Apart from the one or two minor ad hoc bodies this machinery was again mainly concerned with home business. The War Department had a Secretary at War, whose executive powers were restricted. The office had been of little importance before the introduction of a standing army in 1689 and was to play but a small part in the colonies before the middle of the eighteenth century. Its scope was limited, for it had nothing to do with the militia, guards, ordnance, transport and supply, but

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in the colonies after 1756 it was concerned with the welfare of the army there, carrying on correspondence with officials in America on this subject, as well as with the Board of Ordnance, which was concerned with the artillery and engineering corps, the equipment of barracks, fortification and works, and with the Commissary General, who was responsible for supplies. The most notable, though far from powerful, of the offices concerned with the colonies was the Board of Trade and Plan­ tations established in 1696, successor to a series of Privy Council committees set up for similar purposes, dating back to the beginning of the century.9 Expanding trade was henceforth greatly to widen the scope of the Board’s activities. It remained an advisory, not an executive, department, whose main function was to correspond with the colonies and to provide information to the Privy Council, Parliament and the several other depart­ ments responsible for taking the necessary action. Whatever policies it might evolve on the basis of its first-hand knowledge it was dependent upon others for their fulfilment. Usually these were but little interested or had ideas of their own to pursue. Little wonder that the administrative needs of the settlers so far away were given scant attention. This was in a sense tragic, but hardly surprising when we look at the chaotic state of the administration at home and the little thought habitually given to its organization and development. The several departments were divided up into a number of offices which were widely scattered and very poorly co-ordinated within themselves. All would have been in existence had there been no colonies at all — except perhaps the Board of Trade — and had to turn aside from their normal business to deal with colonial affairs. The general level of efficiency was low. Appointments were conditioned by patronage and there was a good deal of graft among the higher ranks. The financial arrangements were haphazard: some jobs were grossly overpaid, while the majority were way down on the poverty line. The English administrative machine, as it existed at the time, was a poor example to export overseas to settlers whose last inclination in any circumstance would have been to undertake administrative work. The Board of Trade and Plantations tried to devise a long-term policy for the colonies but did not control the means to see to its implementation. If this body, which had access to the right information and could have achieved a much closer liaison with the colonies, had also had effective executive powers, there would certainly have been better prospects for both sides in the years ahead, although this was rather too much to have expected, given

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the political attitudes of the day. It is always easy to be wise after the event. In truth there was a complete lack of understanding of condi­ tions in the colonies on the part of both Government and Parlia­ ment, while the colonies themselves had little interest in the mother country and were often actively antagonistic to one another. Fortunately, communications between them were sufficiently difficult to enable them to get along without too much friction. The several colonies were never regarded as part of Britain and no attempt was made to assimilate them. Not that the sea gap would have permitted this in the existing conditions, despite Spain’s apparent successes in this direction. Britain aimed at achieving the maximum trading advantages from the colonies and legislated to this end, but otherwise the colonists were encouraged to look after themselves. As Andrews sums up: ‘The British government made use of old machinery, constructed for a different purpose, to meet a situation that it only partly under­ stood. The system was planned for no higher purpose than the furtherance of trade and commerce, it was quite incompetent to hold in control a growing people capable of independent life and restless under the bonds of a colonial policy that checked at critical points their freedom of action’.10

As it was, there were many officials, from Governor downwards, who were appointed by the Crown, some direct from England, but the majority by royal officials on the spot. Customs officers operated in most colonies. Deputy auditors and receivers-general were appointed to act as treasurers, particularly to receive the quit-rents which were later to lead to much trouble. The habits, mostly bad, of the home bureaucracy, spread overseas, deterior­ ating even further in the process. Patronage was rife, appoint­ ments being made by several authorities, other than the Board of Trade which might have added some element of reality to the process. The practice of holding plural offices was widely adopted, so that the principal responsible for the office remained in England, where he had another appointment, and attempted to carry out his American responsibilities from afar through a deputy who had made a successful bid for the privilege. Acceptance of this method was facilitated by the practice of remuneration by fees, which was also preferred by the colonial government thus relieved of the salary burden. But it had the dual disadvantage of throwing undue burdens upon the people and adding to the unpopularity of the Crown. Salaries were usually in arrear; fees were fixed by the local assemblies; there was therefore plenty of encouragement on the spot for royal officials to connive in illegal

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practices. Smuggling was rife, though it never reached the depths of pitched warfare with bloodshed and atrocities as it did at that time along the coasts of England and Scotland. Attempts to raise taxes in the colonies, albeit for defence purposes, were regarded as an attack upon their liberties. Even if it be conceded that the reasons for the forthcoming upheaval were much deeper rooted and more broadly based than can be accounted for by the sorry administration of the two protagonists, it must be abundantly clear from a consideration of the haphazard and unimaginative state of the administrative linking of the two spheres, added to an excessive wrongheaded­ ness in the holders of key positions on both sides, that bad admini­ stration went far to exacerbate changes that could have been handled much more wisely. Some historians think that the margin for compromise was much broader than the reported facts appear to indicate. It would be futile to suggest that administration can ever be the primary factor in human develop­ ment, but it is the one essential factor whose level of effectiveness can make the vital difference in the sort of situation that subsisted between Britain and America in the eighteenth century. BURKE

AND

'ECONOMICAL*

REFORM

Dissatisfaction with the way things were being managed in England was rising fast, and among the advocates of drastic reform none figured more prominently than Edmund Burke (1729-97), who was in a position to make a considerable impact from his seat in the Commons. Burke was a Dubliner, one of the many Irishmen who have made a notable contribution to British statesmanship. It is said that he was not an inspiring speaker, but none could fault the content of his discourses, and it is through his sonorous prose that his ideas live. He was a practical politician in an age when the politician had to take administration in his stride. In his more constructive phase he had a good deal to do with Indian affairs and was prominent in the attack upon Warren Hastings. He took a liberal view of the American question, condemning the government for their taxation policy as inexpedient and bound to lead to disaster. Burke even offici­ ated for a short period from 1771, as agent for the province of New York, for £500 a year. In his later years, however, more conventional attitudes predominated and his attack upon the excesses of the French Revolution, launched in his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), earned him world-wide fame, and marked him as an unrepentant Conservative.

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Our chief interest in Burke rests in his plea for financial reform heralded in the House of Commons, on 15th December 1779, when the American War of Independence had almost run its course, in a speech which began: ‘A general sense prevails of the profusion with which all our affairs are carried on, and with it a general wish for a sort of reformation.’ All this he attributes to ‘the fatal and overgrown influence of the Crown; and that in­ fluence itself to our enormous prodigality’. But he has ‘a plan that . . . will serve for a basis (it is no more) for public economy and reduction of influence . . .’.n This notable plan was to be explained to the House in detail and to be debated on 11th February 1780. It is a hard-hitting, trenchant statement which included some admirable proposals, but was not free from the negative attitude to finance and public service — looked upon as profligacy and bureaucracy and treated with parsimony — that has often since been common in Britain. At that juncture certainly a major operation was called for, and it needed someone with the outspokenness of Burke to set some of the right wheels in motion. Burke’s proposals were embodied in ‘A Bill for the better Regulation of His Majesty’s Establishments, and of certain Public Offices’, but it was not before 2nd July 1782 that they were finally approved by the House of Commons in a modified form. This was a brilliant performance on Burke’s part, yet the immediate results of the new legislation were disappointing to its sponsors. The chief aim of the reforms was to diminish the extent of royal influence in Parliament but overspending on the Civil List was to continue, and the political changes, especially in the franchise, which were needed to strengthen the legislature against the executive were to be delayed by the impact of the French revolutionary wars. Judged on their general tenor Burke’s strictures were a classic example of the parsimonious attitude to the administrative activities of government that was to reign in Britain throughout the following century. Economy rather than efficiency was the commodity that the state would ever be prepared to purchase, economy almost at any price, proving the inherent conservatism of its great exponent. He looked upon the American colonies, whose struggle for independence had been completely won by the time his bill was accepted, as an unnecessary expense to be liquidated, and he failed to see that money spent on such appoint­ ments as the Board of Trade and the third Secretaryship of State was wasted, not because they were unnecessary but because they

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had failed to achieve their true administrative potential. Burke was right in holding that inefficient administration is dear at any price and best done without, but time was quickly to prove that some of the bodies he wanted abolished were needed to fulfil public responsibilities that were taking shape before his eyes. The offices of the Secretaryship of State, reorganized to deal with home and colonial affairs and foreign affairs respectively, were again increased to three after the outbreak of the war with France in 1794, by the addition of a Secretary of State for War, and a time was to come when the three posts would be con­ siderably extended to cover other functions. The Board of Trade was restored as soon as 1786, at first as an advisory body, but later to become one of the important central executive depart­ ments, dealing with a multitude of responsibilities, internal and external, thrown upon the government by the state’s expanding concern with matters of commerce and industry. It came to be generally realized that the state’s financial arrangements were too primitive to cope adequately with expenditure of the magnitude demanded by the new industrial society which was seen to be emerging, with the break away from the domestic type of manufacture, into the capitalist system postulated by the Industrial Revolution. This phenomenon was itself both effect and cause of the many inventions being made at the time, especially in Britain, where the extending range of her overseas responsibilities, despite the American setback, added a further dimension to the great economic upheaval. In 1780, under Lord North’s Administration, a body of Com­ missioners had been appointed to examine the public accounts, and their reports provided Parliament for the first time with a detailed summary of the subject and led to a number of reforms, for the detail of which the next Prime Minister, William Pitt, was to be mainly responsible. Thus in 1785 the reforms previously applied to the Paymaster of the Forces were extended to the Treasurer of the Navy, while the Exchequer was reformed by the abolition of the useless office of Auditor of the Imprests and the appointment of paid Commissioners to audit the public accounts. The following year H.M. Stationery Office was established under the 1782 Statute, and also Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt were appointed under special legislation. But possibly the most far-reaching and logical development was the bringing together in 1787 of all the separate funds receiving public moneys into one Consolidated Fund, into whose account at the Bank of England all public receipts must in future be paid and out of which payments were to be made only under due

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authority. This centralization of funds greatly strengthened parliamentary oversight and Treasury control over current transactions. THE

AMERICAN

REVOLUTION

The American colonists had declared their independence on 4th July 1776, and the fighting was virtually over when Edmund Burke unfolded to the House of Commons his plan for econo­ mical reform, referred to in the preceding section. At first the thirteen colonies had formed ‘a firm league of friendship’ under ‘Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union’, which left to each community its sovereignty, freedom and independence, as well as every power, jurisdiction and right not delegated to the ‘United States’ in Congress assembled. The consequent organiza­ tion had been a league rather than a national government, whose members had been drawn together by their antagonisms to somewhat incoherent attempts at control from London, rather than by any strong mutual attractions. It soon became clear to the leaders of the emergent nation that a more centralized concen­ tration of power and administration was essential if the union was to hold together.12 Fortunately the launching of this remarkable political experi­ ment, which seemed to have arrived fully fledged upon history’s stage, was extremely well-documented. The tide of events had been greatly influenced by the liberal ideas set down in detail by recent and contemporary philosophers, including John Locke’s Two Treatises on Civil Government, published in 1690 in defence of the Glorious Revolution, and especially Montesquieu’s Esprit des Lois (1748), in which he advocated the principle of separa­ tion of powers that the new system of government was so decisively to enshrine. There were also Burke’s several Commons speeches in support of the colonists, even though he subsequently retracted in connection with the French Revolution, and Tom Paine’s Rights of Man (1791) which was addressed by its author to George Washington, first President of the United States. Another important influence was Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-9), 2,500 copies of which reached America just before the Revolution. It should be here remarked that, with the exception of South Carolina, English law was never formally introduced into the colonies, although Common Law came to be dispensed by the American courts as a matter of course.13 But, when all has been said, undoubtedly the most illuminating text of all was The Federalist, a series of essays on

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the new constitution contributed during 1787-8, mainly by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, although a few were written by John Jay.14 The new system of government had to leave to the individual States a maximum degree of their existing powers, while at the same time endowing the new centralized government with enough authority to provide sufficient cohesion and adequate direction, and yet be immune from what had been considered the dicta­ torial element of the kingship which the States had recently discarded. The first objective was achieved by the establishment of a new type of federal arrangement in which there was a definite division of sovereignty between states and centre, and a substantial sphere in which the latter had no power to interfere with the former. The general division of function between the two spheres was based upon the principle, adopted for the previous Confederation, that the Federal Government should exercise only those powers specifically assigned to it (with a few that were to be exercised concurrently) and to leave everything not thus designated completely to the individual States. The second condition was achieved by vesting the executive power in a President, with a fixed term of four years, selected by an electoral college chosen by the States, but without substantial power to interfere either with the legislature (known as Con­ gress) or with the judiciary, each of which was to function independently in accordance with the doctrine of separation of powers. The functions assigned to the new Federal Government, briefly summarized, were taxation and borrowing to pay debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States, regulation of commerce with foreign nations and, between the States themselves, naturalization and bankruptcy, coinage and weights and measures, post offices and post roads, copyright and patents, establishment of tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court (provided for in the Constitution), international law, war and peace and defence on land and sea, including organization and arming of the militia, administration of territory set aside for the seat of government, and the making of laws necessary for fulfilling these functions. Congress was divided into two chambers: a House of Repre­ sentatives directly elected by the people according to population, and a Senate in which each State, irrespective of size and popu­ lation, was to have two members selected by that State. This inclusion of a second chamber representing the States on an equal basis went a good way to commending the new system to

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the thirteen original colonies, which were extremely jealous of their equal status as sovereign communities. The constituent States continued as separate political entities, exercising the substantial residuary functions not assigned by the Constitution to the Union. Each State had its own written constitution, usually embodying the colonial system of govern­ ment. There was always a Governor as chief executive, usually elected by the State Legislature for a fixed term. At the outset the Governor often had an Executive Council to assist him, but this was a dwindling institution for which there was little use under the separation of powers, which was applied to the States as well as the Union. The Governor, whose main function was to see that the laws were carried out, had little need for executive assistants. In any case, in most States officers were, in the name of democracy, elected by the people. Popular election of officials in this way was often balanced by provision for recall in the same way, consequent upon popular dissatisfaction with their performance. Such action was more likely to be taken for politi­ cal than for administrative reasons, and therefore to militate against the attainment of efficiency. Direct participation in law­ making was achieved by the inclusion of the referendum, whereby legislatory projects could be initiated by, or submitted to, popular vote. Each State had a legislature of two chambers, a separate system of courts of justice concerned with the State’s own law, and a pattern of local government authorities, varying from state to state. The superior State judges were appointed either by the Governor or by the Legislature, but in this sphere also democratic ideas were to lead to the introduction of direct election.15 The United States were fortunate indeed in their first Presi­ dent, George Washington (1732-99), who had commanded the American troops in the War of Independence and who was to have the distinction of proving himself equally competent as an administrator. He was destined to serve for two terms of four years and thus to initiate the convention that this was the limit to the term of any subsequent President, now actually embodied in the Constitution, in Article XXII, ratified in March 1951. In his new office he had to begin practically from scratch. The Government of the Confederation had steadily run down until its movements had almost ceased. . . . There was, indeed, a foreign office with John Jay and a couple of clerks to deal with correspon­ dence from John Adams in London and Thomas Jefferson in Paris; there was a Treasury Board with an empty treasury; there was a “Secretary at War” with an authorized army of 840 men; there

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were a dozen clerks whose pay was in arrears, an unknown but fearful burden of debt, almost no revenue, and a prostrate credit.’16 Although he held himself above the party battle, Washington’s policy followed generally that of the Federalists, who favoured a well-developed national system of administration, as against the Republicans under Jefferson who desired a minimal national administration. The Federalist doctrine, while strongly antimonarchial, was not enthusiastically democratic, advocating government for the people rather than government by the people.17 The available administrative skills seemed to be adequate at the time, but Washington was to discover increasingly that this was not so. The task of building up an administration from next to nothing was not made easier by the lack of thought that had so far been given to the administrative art. It was easy enough to copy and to duplicate the faults of existing systems, without perhaps at the same time understanding and taking full advantage of their virtues, but the new situation called for a step forward into the future, and this was not easy to visualize or to inaugurate. Yet such progress was made that by the end of his first term of office in 1794 there was a successful Treasury Department and a Post Office in the capable hands of Timothy Pickering, while the supply services of the War Department, broken down and transferred to the Treasury Department in 1791, were apparently working satisfactorily, though this was later to prove wrong. In 1790 Washington had declared:18 ‘I always believed that an unequivocably free and equal Representation of the People in the Legislature, together with an efficient and responsible Executive, were the great Pillars on which the preservation of American Freedom must depend.’ It was his primary task to establish the strong executive thus postulated, which had been accepted by the Constitution builders only after hard fighting. In the light of arguments that have been latterly put forward in favour of administrative troikas it is of special interest that Edmund Randolph had advocated an executive of three repre­ sentatives of the three main geographical areas into which the territories of the thirteen States could be divided, in order, as he advocated, to put the more remote parts on an equal footing with the centre.19 A plural executive of this sort could not possibly have provided the decisive institution that the American situation demanded. The real aim had been set down by Hamilton in his The Federalist statement that ‘the true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration’.20 But it has to be remembered that the American Constitution

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is embodied in a succinct document which, while defining the important institutions and power points in the new system, left many gaps to be filled in course of practical development. To have provided the detail at the initial stage would have called for a degree of political foresight and administrative insight for which there was little precedent. The new American Executive was not to have anything in the nature of the Royal Prerogative of the British system. It was to be strictly bound by law and the making of new law was placed firmly in the hands of Congress (subject, it is true, to Presidential veto, which could be over­ ridden by a two-thirds majority in both Houses, and also modified by constitutional amendments). On the other hand the Senate was given authority to participate with the President in making appointments in the Army, Foreign Service, Civil Service and the Judiciary. The Senate could delegate full powers to make lesser appointments to the President, or Courts of Law, or heads of Departments. The President’s power to remove, without Senate approval, persons whose appointment the Senate had originally agreed, was subject to doubts, which were settled by a vote in the President’s favour by the Senate in 1789. Without this power the President’s scope for control would have been considerably restricted. Washington had little to go upon with regard to the form of the executive. There was to be a Vice-President, who was to stand in for or to replace the President only in the case of his absolute removal or inability to discharge the duties of his office, i.e. not in merely normal absences. A specific departmental organization was not provided for in the Constitution. Such Departments as might be required had to be authorized by law, and as administra­ tion was for some time to be uncomplicated, expansion was to be slow. Congress immediately legalized the existing State, Treasury and War Departments and the Office of Attorney General, while in 1798 the Navy Department was similarly authorized. A regular postal system had been established as early as 1692 and the appointment of a Postmaster General was authorized in 1792, but he was to occupy a subordinate position for the time being. From the outset Washington regarded the heads of departments, usually known as Secretaries, as his assistants and not having independent authority as the King’s Ministers in Britain. In other words they were neither rivals nor substitutes. This solution had been foreshadowed by Hamilton in The Federalist, which also includes a notable definition of public administration that deserves quotation: The administration of government, in its largest sense, compre-

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hends all the operations of the body politic, whether legislative, or judiciary; but in its most usual and perhaps in its most precise signifi­ cation, it is limited to executive details, and falls peculiarly within the province of the executive department. The actual conduct of foreign negotiations, the preparatory plans of finance, the application and disbursement of the public money in conformity to the general appropriations of the legislature, the arrangement of the army and navy, the direction of the operations of war — these, and other matters of a like nature, constitute what seems to be most properly understood by the administration of government. The persons, therefore, to whose immediate management these different matters are committed, ought to be considered as the assistants or deputies of the chief magistrate, and on this account they ought to derive their offices from his appointment, at least from his nomination, and ought to be subject to his superintendence.’21

Support for the system was as yet only marginal and Washing­ ton was faced by some hostility and a good deal of lukewarmness. The States were at loggerheads, and in any case had plenty to do in putting their own affairs in order. Yet by the end of the first presidential term all thirteen of them had organized stable govern­ ment under written constitutions, which had guaranteed the people peace and order. Administrative demands upon the President were modest enough, though great changes were taking place in the world at large, especially in the sphere of transportation, that would soon greatly change the situation. In the meantime the quill pen was the normal tool of the writer, while the provision of legible copies remained too tedious to encourage their proliferation. Yet by the end of four years an accepted system of public management had already been shaped to meet the normal day-to-day needs of the new government, involving inter alia simple clerical processes, such as letter-writing and copying, keeping records and accounts, filing papers, archive care, publication of official papers, as well as activities incidental to the collection of revenue, supply of stores and equipment, and the organization of posts. The unit processes were simple enough and were so to remain for another century or more. It was their deployment and co-ordination to cope with expanding needs that was to prove so testing, especially to those men of action who had no earthly conception of administration as an essential activity. While the President left the executive business of the Depart­ ments to the Secretaries, including the appointment of clerks and minor officials, much departmental business rose as a matter of course from the very subordinate levels to his desk.22 Yet despite the mass of business which their relations with their

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departmental heads brought to their desks, both Washington and his successor, John Adams, struggled to obtain the ‘exercise on horseback’, which was characteristic of their age and station and by which they endeavoured to maintain their health and energy.23 Washington is known to have invited his senior advisers — Jefferson, Hamilton and others — to breakfast. Sometimes he went to consult the Secretaries in their own offices: at others he sent back relevant files with a request for them to come along themselves with them the next day. These informal meetings were the beginnings of the Presidential council which developed later as the growth of business called for rationalization of procedures, but this council when it did emerge was not to be equated with the full-blown parliamentary cabinet. Another aspect of these office relationships was the personal involvement of the Secretaries in normal routine processes. Washington’s own diary indicates that they did some of his writing for him, and often toiled for long hours on these compara­ tively menial tasks. Timothy Pickering, who was a long-serving addict of public office, beginning in modest positions and eventually serving the President as Postmaster General, Secretary of War and Secretary of State, was a voluminous letter writer and his biographer describes how he made a first draft, amended it by interlineation and erasures, made a fair copy in his own hand, and finally had a press copy made before dispatch. A further general process was to have the letters copied by hand in bound letterbooks in chronological order. It is fortunate that many of these letterbooks survive in the American State archives, although incoming correspondence did not receive similar treat­ ment and has therefore generally disappeared.24 Thomas Jefferson’s description of the administrative practices of the early U.S. administrations is illuminating: ‘Having been a member of the first administration under Gen. Washington, I can state with exactness what our course then was. Letters of business came addressed sometimes to the President, but most frequently to the heads of departments. If addressed to himself, he referred them to the proper department to be acted o n : if to one of the secretaries, the letter, if it required no answer, was communi­ cated to the President, simply for his information. If an answer was requisite, the secretary of the department communicated the letter & his proposed answer to the President. Generally they were simply sent back after perusal, which signified his approbation. Sometimes he returned them with an informal note, suggesting an alteration or a query. If a doubt of any importance arose, he reserved it for conference. By this means, he was always in accurate possession of

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all facts and proceedings in every part of the Union, and to what­ soever department they related; he formed a central point for the different branches; preserved an unity of object and action among them; exercised that participation in the suggestion of affairs which his office made incumbent on him; and met himself the due responsi­ bility for whatsoever was done. During Mr Adams’ administration, his long and habitual absences from the seat of government, rendered this kind of communication impracticable, removed him from any share in the transaction of affairs, and parcelled out the government, in fact, among four independent heads, drawing sometimes in opposite directions. That the former is preferable to the latter course, cannot be doubted. It gave, indeed, to the heads of depart­ ments the trouble of making up, once a day, a packet of all their communications for perusal of the President; it commonly also retarded one day of their despatches by mail. But in pressing cases, this injury was prevented by presenting that case singly for immedi­ ate attention; and it produced us in return the benefit of his sanction for every act we did. Whether any change of circumstances may render a change in this procedure necessary, a little experience will show us. But I cannot withhold recommending to heads of depart­ ments, that we should adopt this course for the present, leaving any necessary modifications of it to time and trial. . . ,’25

The Federal public services in the capital remained a compact body, but there was a need for Federal agents throughout the States to carry out the central government’s functions there, involving the establishment of a series of separate field services whose members, though subordinate to the central departments had to be given substantial powers of discretion in an environ­ ment in which communications were still difficult. Such appoint­ ments were made locally and soon came to outnumber those at the centre. Between 1789 and 1800 twelve separate field services had been organized throughout the Union: namely, Customs, Lighthouses, U.S. Attorneys, Marshals, Post Offices, Revenue Cutters, Indian Superintendents, Commissioners of Loans, Internal Revenue, Surveyor General, Land Tax, and Land Offices.26 Of the three thousand Federal employees in 1801 only about 150 were employed at the centre. Agents with such varied functions called for different types of supervision from the centre and each department worked out methods suitable to its own administrative needs. The very variety of these services was to provide considerable scope for experiment in the future, added to the State services which gradually expanded to the present fifty. Washington’s standards of selection were high, well above that of contemporary Britain and France, and very much higher than his successors were to maintain. He insisted upon fitness for m

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office, such fitness being assessed in terms of character and not mere technical competence. He reacted firmly against any tendencies towards nepotism, but regarded the securing of a favourable geographical distribution of appointments as an essen­ tial condition. To him family relationships, indolence and drink were all fatal bars to appointment. The standards achieved were high for the times, but much depended upon the will and perspicacity of the leader. His sub­ ordinates could not always be depended upon to live up to his example. And even where there was the will often the standards set did not work out in practice. Moreover, even at this early stage, the requirement of political conformity in high office was beginning to be favoured, even if strict Federalist conformity was not insisted upon. There was also the habitual attitude of parsi­ moniousness of the public towards officials’ salaries. The high standards required by the President had to be provided at the comparatively poor salaries that public opinion and the Republicans were prepared to endorse. Despite the good start he had given it, Washington’s system was essentially a genius system which was bound to encounter almost insoluble problems as soon as it fell into less competent hands. THE

FRENCH

REVOLUTION

The causes of the French Revolution were many and have been subject to endless debate over the years. It is clear that at that period of crisis and rapid change French institutions had reached a stage when the necessary adjustments were not achievable through gradualist means. There were plenty of reasons for radical alterations: too much power at the centre coupled with a chronic lack of understanding on the part of those responsible: too great a diffusion of responsibilities in the provinces where ancient institutions continued to tick over long after their original functions had ceased to contribute: too many privileges in the hands of a non-productive nobility and a backward-looking clergy: too restricted a scope for the growing bourgeoisie, and an excessively large poverty-stricken peasantry, as yet too inarticulate to rationalize its own real needs: and above all an obvious need for administrative reform, though possibly more in the qualitative accomplishment of the administrators than in the actual structure of the Ancien Regime, which was long to continue to maintain its age-old impress on the French State. Internally, France was facing national bankruptcy, while from outside she was bearing the impact of ideas manifested in a

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shattering dialogue going on throughout Europe and across the seas, and particularly in the United States, in whose revolution French active participation, largely as an anti-British measure, had brought upon her just those additional burdens that were sufficing to break her back. At the same time, by supporting abroad, in the name of expediency, doctrines bound to have a decisive impact upon the minds of her own citizens — who could hardly fail, in viewing their own discontents, to ask themselves politically why the sauce for the American goose was not equally good for the French gander — she further heaped coals of fire on her own head. Yet the whole business began quite rationally. The Revolution, which had already begun with the controver­ sies that had been taking place throughout the land, was focused at Versailles on 5th May 1789 when Louis XVI (1754-93, reg. 1774-92) called together, for the first time since 1614, the Etats Generaux (States General), representing the separate estates or orders. At the outset a system of constitutional monarchy was visualized, embodying inter alia principles advocated by the eminent contemporary philosopher, the Abbe Sieyes (1748-1836), who participated personally both in the States General and in the Convention subsequently set up to work out the new system of government. The Nation, now embodied in the People, or Third Estate, which included the King, was to retain sovereignty but to employ the State as its instrument. The volonte generale (general will) rested in the majority, sovereignty being exercised direct by the representatives of the Nation. The Constitution would enshrine the basic rules imposed by the Nation upon the exercise of power by the Government. So much for theory. On 17th June the States General resolved itself into a constituent Assembly. The Revolution manifested itself actively on 14th July in the storming by the people of Paris of the hated Bastille, the massive state prison, and in the utter destruction of this awful symbol of the despotic power of the Ancien Regime. This was followed on 20th August by the Decla­ ration of the Rights of Man in the Assembly. Unfortunately its high-sounding philosophies of right and justice, while providing antidotes to the known tyrannies of the monarchy — with back­ ward glances of what had happened in England a century before and side glances at what was happening in America at the time — could not provide adequate safeguards against those other tyran­ nies endemic in all human societies, the tyrannies of selfish ignorance, bureaucratic inconsequence and self-assumed power. In the meantime the Assembly, defining its own powers, main-

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tained Louis as King of the French, reigning according to the law, while they exercised constituent, legislative, policy-making and executive powers. Everything connected with the feudal system was declared abolished, even though proper measures had not been thought out to fill the gaps. In the localities the immediate consequences of the Revoultion had been a spontaneous taking over of power and a rapid supersession of the royal Intendants. The Municipalities and other authorities assumed ‘local’ administration in the name of the Nation. Inter-linkings began to develop between neighbouring authorities, often taking the form of federations. A National Federation was to be formed on 14th July 1790.27 For the moment the system was almost completely decentralized, since the Assembly had few means for acting locally. The Assembly’s first task was to rationalize and simplify the administration of the provinces by destroying the Ancien Regime and introducing a hierarchic pattern of areas. By the reorganiza­ tion, authorized on 9th December 1789, the country was divided into eighty-three more or less equal Departments, each admini­ stered by a general council of thirty-six members, elected on a restricted frachise, which designated a Directorate of eight to act for it between sessions and to constitute its executive agent. These Councils were responsible for all the departmental functions, including the issue of regulations, administration of finance, and inter alia the taking over of the archives of the Intendants and Sub-delegates. They were overburdened but worked reasonably well under the general directions from the centre. The Depart­ ments were divided into Districts, and the Districts into Cantons, but these areas were given only minor responsibilities. After some controversy the Municipalities were maintained but were reorganized, as were the large parishes, as Communes, each under a general council which designated a municipal body under an elected Mayor, to carry out day-to-day administration. Their functions were partly allocated to them by law, partly delegated to them by superior authorities. Later they were to be made respon­ sible for the maintenance of public order. The larger Communes had considerable powers and tended towards independence, but in the rural areas their members were often too ignorant to act with competence and responsibility. The Federations, as the culmination of a spontaneous demo­ cratic movement, presented a challenge to the Constituent Assembly, which largely represented the bourgeoisie. This was especially the case in Paris where the Municipality became the Commune, took over the administration of the capital and

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virtually constituted a state within the state. It established its own machinery of government, created a civic militia — fore­ runner of the National Guard — and in fact compelled the Assembly to reassert its own authority by imposing, in May 1790, a new structure of administration for Paris. The existing sixty districts were replaced by forty-eight sections each administered by sixteen Commissaires. For the city as a whole there was a Mayor, an Office of sixteen administrators, thirty-two Municipal Councillors to supervise the working of the Office and ninety-six Notabilities who, together with the Office and the Councillors, formed a General Council to deal with important matters. The reorganized Commune was destined to continue exercising a disproportional political power until a more authoritarian national regime emerged. Unfortunately the sudden enervation of existing institutions or their replacement, and even the social changes consciously introduced, such as the more just distribution of the land, left serious gaps in the social structure and increased the incidence of poverty. To grapple with this grave problem the Constituent Assembly, in 1790, established a Comite de Mendacite (Council of Vagrancy) — later to be replaced by a Comite de Secours Publics (Council of Public Assistance — whose first task was to review the position, rather than to organize and administer relief. Its general conclusion was that every citizen had a right to sub­ sistence, that the people’s misery could be attributed to the actions of the government, whose duty is was to take the matter in hand. The state of the poor was categorized severally as accidental, habitual or culpable, each calling for different remedies, a classification that was to have important future repercussions. While the nation was responsible, the actual relief work was left to the local authorities. Inevitably the results varied, particularly with regard to the hospitals, which were the responsi­ bility of various bodies, whose funds had been denuded by the government’s general policies. The Assembly had hastened to destroy the old before constructing the new. The suppression of the religious establishments in particular had proved the last straw, and the victims of want had to suffer further from the reformers’ lack of perspicacity. For their relief, as well as for other purposes, special taxes had to be imposed. The new Constitution did not emerge until 14th September 1791, and, unlike its American prototype, it was to be many times revised or superseded. Once again the ideas of Montesquieu, in his Esprit des Lois (1748) and other writings, were to be accepted in principle. The new system was liberal in intention,

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retaining the King as executive but placing sovereignty in an Assembly, for the election of which only the active citizens had the right to vote. To achieve this questionable purpose the elec­ tions were organized in two stages. The Assembly was to initiate legislation, but the King retained a veto, a power that was soon to lead him into trouble. He was left with substantial executive responsibilities under the law, was to be assisted by Ministers of his own choosing and dismissal, and to have a civil list (liste civile) to cover his expenses. The Ministers, of whom there were six, did not constitute a council. They could not be members or ex-members of the Assembly, but had the privilege of being heard there. Each had his own functional sphere in which the King’s orders had to bear his counter-signature. The King’s control over his administration was only partial. He had direct responsibility in foreign affairs and controlled the ambassadors. Internally, however, the administrators were elected, although he did nominate officials concerned with indirect taxes and customs. He could annul an administrative decision with which he disagreed, and suspend an official who disobeyed his orders, but even here the Assembly had the final word. He could not dissolve the Assembly or bring troops within a radius of 30 kilometres of it. Such a patchwork of checks and balances had built-in tendencies towards breakdown. Within the year conflicts between Executive and Assembly brought this about. The liberal phase of the Revolution ended on 10th August 1792 with the sack of the Tuileries and the suspension of the King. Terror swept through the land. The Assembly designated an executive of six Ministers who were individually assigned to Justice, Marine, Foreign Affairs, Interior, War and Finance. Each Minister was to act as President in turn and the Council was to assume the existing powers of the Executive, except the veto. The upheaval had been greatly influenced by the clubs and popular societies, especially in Paris where a revolutionary Com­ mune was set up and constituted as the Municipality with special powers. A new Convention was called to revise the constitution. During its life the state of the country was chaotic and it was compelled to assume authoritarian powers. There was widespread civil unrest within and patriotic war on the frontiers. The execution of Louis XVI by guillotine on 21st January 1793 triggered off civil war in the Vendee. Inflation and debasement of the currency tended to bring trade to a standstill. High unemployment ensued, despite the military call up. Political liberty was sacrificed to equality, and this could be maintained only by force. The reign of terror intensified.

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The first act of the new Convention was to declare a Republic, to introduce a new calendar, to appoint six ministers in accord­ ance with existing arrangements and give them its orders. The new governmental structure was not to be created at one blow but to emerge painfully in response to the developing situation. A first step was the creation of a Comite de Surete Generate (Council of General Security) to control the police, for which purpose the country was divided into four regions, each under the direct supervision of members of the Council. Paris formed a separate region for this purpose. The powers of this ‘Ministry of Police’ were destined to extend to great lengths. It was concerned in rooting out all aspects of royalism, plotting and treason and other activities against the state. To strengthen the Executive in face of national defeat the Convention appointed a Comite de Defense Generate (Council of General Defence), with powers to collaborate with the several Ministers and to propose all new laws for the defence of the Republic. It literally took over an important part of the executive power. In April 1793 this Council was replaced by an even stronger Comite de Salut Public, consisting of nine to twelve members, chosen by the Convention, initially to supervise the work of the Council of Ministers but increasingly to take over complete executive responsibilities, except those of finance, with the Ministers acting as its agents. The Comite de Salut Public was nominated for one month and had to make a monthly report to the Convention, but its continuance became automatic. It sat in secret and became more and more powerful. The new Council gradually acquired the police function of the Comite de Surete Generate, and assumed direct access to the various local authori­ ties without following the normal hierarchical channels. The members of the Council shared out the work on a functional basis, with the Ministers reduced to the position of agents. On 1st April 1794, the latter were replaced by a dozen Commissions, covering severally administration, public instruction, agriculture, commerce, public works, assistance, transport, revenue, army, navy, arms and external affairs. Each Commission consisted of two Commissioners, charged with ensuring the execution of the law and the duty of submitting their edicts for the decision of the Comite de Salut Public, to whom they rendered daily account of their actions. They did not act in concert and were in essence officials rather than politicians.28 A characteristic of the Convention’s practice at this stage was the sending of its own representatives (repr£sentants en mission) to direct the armies and other authorities on its behalf. These

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agents were introduced in the face of defeat to take energetic action on the spot: to receive first-hand accounts from responsible officials, to restore order, to organize subsistence in the towns, to organize levees en masse, and the like. They were empowered to clean up the administration and the armies, but, to achieve maximum effectiveness, were expected to act with moderation. They could delegate powers to agents and were bound to report back to the Comite every ten days.29 The Convention had from the outset been faced with the problem of drawing the people away from royalism, which still had widespread support, and the need for purposeful propaganda had been recognized. This re-orientation of public opinion had been given to various grass-roots organizations, such as the popular societies, as well as to new associations specially estab­ lished for the purpose, and to the representants en mission. At the summit there emerged a veritable ministry of propaganda, in the shape of the Bureau d*Esprit Public, set up in August 1792 as a branch of the Ministry of the Interior. To combat counter-revolutionary ideas all existing media of communication were employed — the press, tracts, illustrated notices and, to use a modern term, public relations agents. Party journals were subsidized, while the Comite de Salut Public founded a special journal, La Feuille de Salut Public. The schools were used, and even the theatre, to transmit revolutionary ideas and suppress anything with a contrary theme. In the process the grand universal ideas of liberalism were transmuted into a new creed of nationalism, dressed up as the purest democracy.30 With such a chaos of authorities and practices and so many changes it was a miracle that any sort of public service could be achieved. The whole complex of bodies was further complicated by the existence of numerous illegal or semi-legal revolutionary organizations working alongside, or substituting, the normal institutions, all of which was much too complicated and inconse­ quential to be clearly conveyed in a brief summary. In fact so much remains obscure, and probably was never placed upon record, to be seen with any degree of completeness. Undoubtedly performance varied considerably. Some bodies operated assidu­ ously, some existed only on paper, some tried to be strictly legal and just, while others exceeded their legal powers and behaved abominably. The machine was rapidly clogging when, with the fall of Robes­ pierre on 27th July 1794, the Reign of Terror began to subside and the Thermidorian reaction set in. The masses had exercised power ruthlessly but with little comprehension and had failed to

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provide efficient administration. Their impulse now weakened and the bourgeois began to rise to the ascendancy, while the army, with renewed successes, rose in esteem and influence. A renewed Convention assumed the task of reconstruction. The Convention’s immediate concern was to prevent the return of dictatorship. It was decided that the central government should be broken down into functional sections, each acting as a check upon the others. While the twelve existing executive Com­ missions continued to function their supervision was placed in the hands of sixteen Councils, which were appointed by lot, 25 per cent of their memberships being replaced each month. They had authority over both administrative and judicial bodies within their functional spheres, and could dismiss officials. The Comite de Salut Public, with its membership completely renewed, became just one of the sixteen Councils with responsibility for war and foreign affairs. Certain of its powers, namely interior and justice, control of representants en mission, and nomination of officials went to the Comite de Legislation. The Comite de Surete Generate retained control of the police, including responsi­ bility for routing out the Robespierrites, but its powers were greatly reduced. During 1795 the Comite de Salut Public again rose to prominence, but without regaining its exclusive power, while the older Commissions also tended to increase in importance and to approximate to real ministries. Power was devolved from the centre out to the provincial Departments, whose general councils were not however restored. Their Directorates were nominated by the Convention and not elected. They were expected to report to the Comite de Legisla­ tion at ten-day intervals. Their supervision extended to the districts, which were diminished in importance and lost their national officers. The municipalities remained much as before, but here the national agents were replaced by the restoration of the ancient syndics. It was in Paris that the greatest alterations were made. The Commune was suppressed and the Municipality was taken over by police administrators, who were directly super­ vised by the Comite de Salut Public and Comite de Surete Generate. Further modifications came with the promulgation of the new Constitution in August 1795 which rejected the principle of separation of powers. There was to be a Corps Legislatif, consist­ ing of two chambers, which was to nominate a Directory of five members, to act as the executive. Nominees had to be at least forty years of age. One was to be replaced annually, and each was to preside in turn for a period of three months. The Directory

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was to appoint six ministers to execute its decisions, acting individually as its agents and not as a council. Finances were to be controlled by five Commissioners of the general Treasury, nominated by the Legislature. Over them the Directory was to have no control. Nor was the Legislature to have any control over the Directory, although the latter was to act responsibly to the former. A closer control was to be exercised by the centre over the localities. This new system lacked sufficient power and the active support of the people, but it was able to restore some order out of chaos and to get things running again. It managed to survive until 1799, though not without depending upon the army to impose its will and ensure its stability. *

*

*

This brief summary of the government and administration of France during the Revolution has been inevitably piecemeal, but so numerous and varied were the factors and changes at the time that only a very detailed account could hope to do justice to the actual situation. The instability of the government was due not only to the chronic instability of the political situation but also to the varied viewpoints of the constitution-makers who were trying to grapple with it, while the instability of the admini­ stration derived not only from the instability of the governmental context but from the lack of any real inspiration in its own sphere. It had to operate despite the increasing anarchy in society and the inconsequence of the directing minds at the top: it had to operate despite a real shortage of administrative expertness at vital points in the system, a situation that was continually aggravated by the bringing in, to direct operations at the several levels, of persons who were completely lacking in administrative talent and insight. It is true that the amount of suffering was colossal and would have been quite beyond the scope of the best administration to eliminate, though much more could have been done. It was fortunate that complete breakdown was avoided and this can be attributed to many factors, among which one should not overlook the traditional self-sufficiency of the French peasant and the effective police and military networks which, if they were not well conceived to provide the social aid that was needed because of the suppression of former institutions, did provide channels for the transmission of power and aid on an emergency basis. Undoubtedly the administrative framework of the Ancien

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Regime, though outdated and legally discarded, was to some extent still there, despite the many changes, to fill some of the lacunae created by the Revolution. The Directory fell under the coup d'etat of 18 Brumaire (9th November) 1799 and a Consulate of three was inaugurated, in which Napoleon Bonaparte, with the laurels of military victory on his brow, was the dynamic participant. ♦

*

*

*

The nation now demanded decisive leadership and Napoleon Bonaparte, the successful general with widespread popular sup­ port, was at hand to provide it. Fortunately he was a man of parts, no figurehead rising upon the tide of events. The three Consuls originally comprised Bonaparte, Sieyes and Roger Duclos, the two latter having been members of the defunct Directory. Duclos’ importance soon diminished, leaving Bona­ parte and Sieyes to struggle for power. The Consuls were autho­ rized to restore internal order, procure an honourable peace and reorganize the existing system in all its sectors. The Corps Legis­ late was adjourned but its members were made available to assist in other capacities, and thus any inclination on their part to stand against the revisions was undermined from the outset. Two Commissions, each of twenty-five members made up respectively from the former legislative Councils of the Ancients and the Five Hundred, were nominated to assist in carrying on the government and to delegate to sections of their membership the redrawing of the constitution. First the struggle between Bonaparte and Sieyes had to be brought to an issue, but the former, sure of himself and of his support, was in no hurry. So long as the situation seemed to be moving in the direction he wanted he was prepared to let it determine his action. Against such purposeful empiricism the highly theoretical ideas of Sieyes31 hardly stood a chance, particularly his attempts to incorporate in the new system safe­ guards against the return of dictatorship. For example, his plan included placing at the summit a somewhat vague figurehead in the shape of a Grand Electeur, who would nominate the Consuls. He was to be chosen on a national basis by a new College des Conservateurs, a corps of one hundred, who were to be persons of wealth and stability, with the responsibility of defending the constitution. Sieyes, greatly influenced by what had been happen­ ing, was now advocating a modified view of the sovereignty of the people: while confidence had to emanate from below, authority must operate from above. At the several levels one in

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ten of the citizens, comprising the best instructed among them, would be embodied in listes de confiance to act as electors. Both of these concepts were somewhat vague, but while the idea of a Grand Electeur was quite unacceptable to Bonaparte the listes de confiance looked as though they might have some use, and were embodied in the new arrangements which were virtually drawn up in Bonaparte’s salon. This new Constitution of l’An VIII came into operation on 25th December 1799. It had been achieved quite illegally without any initiative from the people, by whom, however, it was to be approved through a somewhat phoney plebiscite. Now France had a real master and the beginnings of a system of government very different from that visualized by the revolutionaries. In the new scheme of things the functions of Sieyes’s Grand Electeur went to the Senate, which aiso took the place of the proposed College des Conservateurs. The three Consuls were retained but the First Consul was paramount and had complete power of appointment. Sieyes and Duclos, neither of whom was prepared to continue in an inferior position, went to the Senate and were replaced by Cambaceres and Lebrun. The Senate itself came under the leadership of Sieyes. The Corps Legislatif, selected by the Senate, had no representa­ tive power, no real initiative, not even the right to discuss. It was the organ of decision after everything had already been settled elsewhere. Apart from the normal group of functional Ministers the First Consul was assisted by a new organ, the Conseil d ’Etat, a body of thirty to forty members, later raised to fifty, which was divided into five specialist sections, each consisting of a President and six to eight members, dealing respectively with legislation, finance, war, marine and interior. Its main task was to prepare new law and regulations on projects presented by the Ministers, but it was also used by Bonaparte to study and advise him on administrative matters of all sorts. There were also specially appointed Administrative Councils, specializing in different branches to consider matters of import­ ance. Their membership comprised the responsible Ministers, their service chiefs, representatives from the Ministry of Finance and such Counsellors of State as Bonaparte considered competent and suitable. Another important new organ was the Tribunat, with a member­ ship of one hundred, selected by the Senate. Projects elaborated by the Consuls, Ministers and Conseil d’Etat were discussed and voted upon by them, but they had no final word. They could provide an opposition when projects went to the Corps Legislatif,

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refer questions of uneonstitutionality to the Senate, give their views on new laws, and suggest improvements in all administra­ tive bodies. They could even on occasion speak for public opinion, but had no power to take action. Judicial powers were assigned to a series of Tribunals, with varying jurisdiction and varying ways of appointment. Judges were usually appointed by the First Consul or the Senate for life but the Justices of the Peace were elected for terms of three years by the people, the only instance of popular election retained in the system. Here was a fine, if somewhat confused, pattern of interlinking institutions each with its peculiar part to play in the system of government, but none in fact in a position to wield substantial power against the leader, who held the initiative. They were organs of appearance rather than of real authority. Often old labels and forms were retained for institutions which had very different purposes from those suggested by their titles. The system was quite exceptional in the number of collaborators it made available to assist the leader in reaching his decisions. The First Consul was indubitable head of the government. At the outset Bonaparte chose seven Ministers — for Foreign Affairs, Police, War, Marine, Finance, Interior and Justice — who acted as individuals and not in council. With such a comprehensive system of governmental organs at his beck and call, Bonaparte soon showed that he had the abun­ dant energy and drive which are essential to the statesmanadministrator who aims to lead, to decide and to run the show in all its detail. Of course it cannot be done, but a man like Napoleon Bonaparte came as near to doing it as one man could. His day began regularly at 7.30 a.m. and often went on deep into the night, for it was not usually until after the evening meal had been cleared away that he entered into consultation with the members of the Administrative Councils, mentioned above. Assisted by a number of aides and secretaries, some of whom served him for long periods, he sat down with them to discuss the day’s business in detail, even to requesting their views on matters for which he was solely responsible. He expected relevant sup­ porting information to be at hand when he needed it, and thus kept his assistants on their toes. After thus covering his personal work he took lunch and then went into conference first with the Ministers and then with the Cornell d’Etat. As Deslandres pertinently asks, ‘Can one measure the energy and capacity for work of such a prodigious man, who first alone, then successively with the Consuls, the Ministers, the Cornell dfElat, and finally

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with the Conseils d*Administration studied each day an interminable series of matters concerned with all branches of administration?532 As his power grew, the range of his ambitions expanded. While he thought primarily of the interests of France, he remembered his family, which was basically Italian and not French. On 6th May 1802 the Senate re-elected the First Consul for ten years, but this did not satisfy Napoleon who wanted the consulship for life. This was now proposed by the Conseil d ’Etat and put to the people, who voted 3,568,885 in favour and only 8,374 against. His sovereignship was recognized. The Constitution that was supposed to guard against such usurpations was now changed to conform with the actual position, through a masterly manipula­ tion of the several governmental bodies, which were rearranged in a new hierarchic pattern.33 Two years later, on 18th May 1804, Napoleon’s phenomenal rise from mediocrity to noble power was completed, when he was accepted as Emperor of the French. The separation of powers advocated by the political philosophers had been completely discarded. The trappings of monarchy were brought back with enthusiasm. A group of high dignitaries was created, with the titles of Grand Electeur, a sort of chancellor; Archichancelier d’Empire, con­ cerned with justice; Archichancelier d'Etat, concerned with foreign affairs; Architresorier, for finance; Grand Connetable and Grand Amiral,ZA They received the status and honour of princes of the realm and constituted the Grand Conseil d’Empire. The Legion d'Honneur was also created with its several ranks, a means of flattering the bourgeois.35 Napoleon assumed all the trappings of imperial glory. The royal thrones of Europe were open to his family, whose members obtained fine positions, in which few of them were to show even a shadow of the capacity of their great relative. However, Napoleon’s phenomenal political and military successes and the inevitable tragedy of his disasters have been too comprehensively discussed to keep us further. But, despite the abundance of scholarship that has been devoted to this one man’s impact upon France and the world, there would seem still to be scope for a perceptive study, in the light of modern knowledge, of the administrative factors involved in this remarkable career which obviously depended as much upon an ingrained administrative skill of a high order as upon brilliant military leadership. The new Constitution having determined the general form of the government it was now Napoleon’s object to modify the relationships between the various institutions to serve his own

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purposes. If the several corps were reduced to next to nothing, this was not the case of the Executive, which, under the new regime, had the power to act decisively. At the leader’s side were the Ministers, who were increased from the original seven to eight in 1799 by the addition of a Secretary of State. In 1801 and 1802 the posts for Finance and War were doubled, while in 1804 a Minister was added for Religion. Finally, as a clear demonstra­ tion of the State’s expanding interest in production a Minister for Manufacture and Commerce was added, raising the total to eleven.36 This expansion indicated both the scope and the prodigality of Napoleon’s administrative activities and that he meant to get things done. Changes among holders of ministerial posts were frequent, but this mattered less than it would have done under a democratic system, since Napoleon himself provided the essential ingredient of continuity. Certainly there were some who served for longer spells and were able to acquire a detailed knowledge of the working of their particular offices, and some important individuals, like Cambaceres, Talleyrand and Fouche, figured among his aides, but none presumed to shine in the shadow of such a colossus. By and large the system must have achieved a high level of competence and acquired a con­ siderable momentum, a characteristic so frequently missing from more constitutional arrangements, and to such a degree that the administration was able to tick over during the leader’s frequent absences on the frontiers of the Empire and beyond. It has to be remembered that, despite his great prowess on the battlefield, Napoleon’s peaceful achievements were to be more enduring for France and for Europe and would have been sufficient to ensure his fame as governor and administrator had he never donned a military uniform. Napoleon built a rational and coherent administration for an authoritarian state and produced an effective instrument of centralization. It was to be served by a corps of fonctionnaires, or officials, who were the agents of the executive and not of the assemblies or the judges. Hitherto the term had included repre­ sentatives as well as officials but now it acquired a more professional intention. After sending out twenty-five inspectors to size up the situation in the provinces Napoleon re-established the local departmental system at three levels — department, arrondissement and com­ mune. The earlier framework was restored but authority became concentrated in the hands of the Prefects, who were nominated and dismissed by the Emperor. Chosen from a wide range of talent from different sectors of society, often for their proved

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technical or administrative capacities, the Prefects were both agents of the central government and miniature emperors of their Departments, with control over all branches except finance. The Prefect nominated the lesser administrators and exercised over­ sight over the communes. Among his duties was the making of an annual tour of his Department and submitting a detailed report to the Minister of the Interior upon its political situation, administration and the state of public opinion. The Prefect was advised by a Prefectoral Council and a General Council, which were respectively an administrative tribunal and a financial body, but neither participated in actual administration. Under the Constitution each Department was divided into four or five Arrondissements, a new administrative area under a SousPrefect, who was also nominated and discharged by the Head of State. He too was assisted by a council. The Canton continued as an electoral and judicial area. At the base were the Communes, many of the smaller having been abolished and others regrouped. Communes of at least 5,000 inhabitants became municipalities each with its Mayor and Municipal Council. The new system for Paris was on similar lines but more complex. In this system, which gave the Mayor important regulatory powers under pre­ fectoral direction, the administrative line was strong while the representative councils were in a subsidiary position. A favoured means to stabilize society was the codification of the law which Napoleon initiated without delay. First to emerge, as the outcome of an intensive effort by a four-man commission, was the celebrated Code Civil des Frangais, completed and given the title of Code Napoleon in 1807. It replaced all previous civil laws and was essentially anti-revolutionary in spirit. Opposition, which came to a head in the Tribunat after acceptance by the Conseil d ’Etat, was overcome by a reform of the Tribunat. The Code superseded the institutions of the Ancien Regime, abandoned the theories of the Revolution, and was essentially bourgeois in form, but its clarity and logical arrangement was to commend it to other nations and other generations. Separate codes on similar lines followed for other branches of law, includ­ ing criminal, commercial, penal and civil procedure, which have however, by common consent, been adjudged somewhat inferior and less well conceived than the Code Napoleon. In this connection the views of F. de Bourrienne, who had been Napoleon’s personal secretary, writing in 1836, are of special interest. He felt strongly that the Code was aiming to do too much, to be too universal. He questioned whether such a code could possibly meet the needs of the ‘crafty Genoese’ or

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the ‘frank and simple-hearted Hamburger’, and expressed sur­ prise at having received immediate orders to see to its establish­ ment in the Hanse Towns. His conversations with contemporary lawyers convinced him of the Code's weaknesses, especially with regard to the heavy punishments which were so resented by the people, that the juries, introduced under the Code, were extremely loath to declare defendants guilty, save when it was self-evident. Quoting a somewhat ridiculous case, where a man who had stolen a coat had pleaded intoxication and had been found not guilty, Bourienne wisely remarks that ‘the best and most solemn insti­ tutions may become objects of ridicule, when all at once intro­ duced into a country whose habits are not prepared to receive them’.37 Like most dictators, and so many reformers in a hurry, Napoleon was prone to leave out of account the human element upon which the long-term success of such inventions inevitably rests. Napoleon placed great store on the police, and police admini­ stration was raised to a high level of effectiveness. The term ‘police’ was used in a much wider sense than today, to cover all types of security. There was a Ministry of General Police, which was organized in four divisions: (1) commerce, health and high­ ways; (2) surveillance and security, to which the secret police were attached; (3) custom and opinion, also concerned with immigrants; and (4) a secretariat responible for the opening of all dispatches and their transmission to the bureaux, and for reports to the Minister on matters specially reserved for him. The concentration of all police matters in this Ministry gave it powers transcending those of the other Ministries. The compre­ hensive police administration extended throughout the Empire, which for this purpose was divided into four Arrondissements de Police, each responsible for collating the reports of the Commissaires Generaux in his area. These Commissaires Generaux, who numbered thirty at the beginning of the Empire, rose to about 130 by 1811. Stationed in the larger towns they were the agents of the Minister and were concerned with control of foreigners, vagabonds, prisons, public buildings and other insti­ tutions, matters of religion, security, communications, public health, lighting and cleansing, in fact with all the regulatory functions of the police state in its older sense. The network was completed by the stationing of a Commissaire de Police in towns of over 5,000 inhabitants, and of Directeurs Generaux de Police in Rome and Amsterdam in daily contact with the Ministry. There were also specialist Commissaires and a separate police organization for Paris.38 nu

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For the maintenance of order the Commissaires Generaux had control of army detachments and the gendarmerie, which had been transferred from the War Ministry. These forces were deployed in mobile columns to suppress disorder, including strikes and the like. This vast and extremely up-to-date police organization, which converted France into the first of the police states of the modern type, was primarily concerned with political matters — the elimination of opponents of the regime — and only secondarily with normal criminal matters, although it was efficient in this department too. Napoleon placed great store upon the efficiency of his police network and insisted upon having daily reports upon its activities presented to him personally by the Minister of Police. This bulletin included extracts from the press, details of any interesting police actions, an assessment of the state of public morale, views on foreign courts and matters of espionage, and a resume of interrogations of suspects. The Emperor then gave his personal orders to the police for the following day. This meticulous oversight exemplified Napoleon’s characteristic approach, of combining rulership with administra­ tion, and his capacity for keeping a finger on the pulse of affairs. Thus in his military organization and police system the Empire had a complete power transmission network, through which a person of Napoleon’s prestige and dynamism could activate and control the whole vast imperial machine. In other spheres reorganization was also the order of the day, invariably orientated in the direction of comprehensiveness, hierarchy and authority. The national finances had got into a shocking state, but the new system was a direct development of the old, with the administration rationalized, the taxation system extended and the state’s credit restored. This included the estab­ lishment of the Banque de France in 1800. The Minister of Finance was reinforced by the appointment of a Minister of Public Treasury, with special responsibility for expenditure. Each financial service — property, customs, debt, etc. — was placed under a Director General. An annual budget, fixing receipts and expenditure, was prescribed, each service being bound in future to submit exact accounts of its expenses, A central corps of specialist officials (inspecteurs and controleurs) was created and steps were taken to speed up the work. Specialist collectors (percepteurs) were appointed in the districts, remunerated by a percentage of the amounts collected. These percepteurs passed their receipts to a receveur particulier d'arrondissement who passed the moneys on to the Receveur General of the Depart­ ment. The receveurs had to deposit, as guarantee, a sum equiva-

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lent to one-twentieth of the annual receipt, which meant that only persons of wealth could take on this responsibility. The system of personal guarantee proved so effective in ensuring the integrity of these officials that it was gradually extended to all others concerned with the handling of money. Control was placed in the hands of a Court of Accounts (Cour des Comptes), modelled on the Chambres des Comptes of the Ancien Regime. Its job was to verify the accuracy of all accounts, without reference to actual legality. It was concerned with accuracy, correct procedure, discovery of faults and it had power to fine responsible persons found to be at fault. The Court could also make recommendations to the government for the improve­ ment of the system.39 It still constitutes an important ingredient in the French system of public finance. Among all these developments and reforms the Judiciary was not overlooked. Characteristically, the revised system was highly centralized and not independent. The ancient office of Chancellor was reconstituted under the title Grand Judge, with powers of supervision over all courts, the presidency of the chief civil court — Cour de Cassation — and the right to censure and discipline the judges. At the base of the system was the justice of the peace, with simple police jurisdiction, who was the only elected judge, all the others being nominated by the Senate for the approval of the Head of State. There was separate criminal jurisdiction. Increases in vagabondage, violence and seditious meetings led to the creation of Tribunaux d ’ Exception to replace the ordinary courts and deal summarily with such cases. They were empowered to pronounce the death penalty. There were other special courts, like the Tribunaux de Prud’hommes — made up of employers and workers, the former being in the majority — established in 1806 to decide disputes between employers and workers and matters of industrial law, and the Tribunaux de Commerce — made up of established traders — established in 1807, to deal with commercial disputes. Special attention had to be given to public assistance. With the reduced wealth and status of the Church, relief of the desti­ tute could no longer be left to Christian charity, as under the Ancien Regime, nor was it regarded as the duty of society to man, as under the Convention. Definite responsibility for relief was now placed squarely upon public administration. The bourgeois attitude of the Napoleonic regime recognized the need to help the poor in order to maintain public order. Assistance of the destitute was provided locally through Bureaux de Bienfaisance (Charity Offices) organized by the

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justices of the peace. In each arrondissement there was set up a Commission Centrale de Bienfaisance composed of members nominated by the Minister of the Interior and presided over by the Sous-prefect. These offices commanded few resources and were not very effective. Their main efforts were directed to the provision of soup kitchens and the allocation of beggars to the care of wealthy families. The beggars were numerous and caused trouble. Penal measures had to be taken by the Prefects to establish workhouses where employment could be found. In 1808 mendicancy was made illegal and workhouses were ordered to be set up in each Department. But these efforts still proved largely ineffective and the state had to depend upon private aid. Hospitals were needed to shelter the indigent sick, the aged and the abandoned children. In this sphere special efforts were directed to restoring the system that had existed before the Revolution, because in practice the new institutions had proved less effective. The new arrangements were centrally controlled by the Prefect. Each Commune had a Hospital Commission under the general supervision of the Sous-prefect. The membership, consisting mainly of wealthy proprietors and capitalists, were nominated by the Minister. These bodies were responsible for the direct administration of the hospitals but the Minister and Pre­ fects exercised a close budgetary supervision with a view to economy and increased efficiency. Although the relief system never had access to sufficient resources to render it really effective — for the problem had been allowed to get too great — there can be little doubt that the Napoleonic regime built up a social security system that was well in advance of the age. Finally, there was another sphere in which the regime was, characteristically, almost modern in its approach, namely the sphere of state propaganda, or public relations, to use a more complimentary but less exact term for the particular case. The system was both intense and unilateral. Napoleon aimed at a strict control of public opinion and used every means available to achieve this end. He used the media already deployed by his revolutionary predecessors — press, public notices, speeches, schools, ceremonies — and added to these the time-honoured trappings of monarchy — luxuries of the court, magnificence in public architecture, conferring of honours. He employed psycho­ logical methods, so far as they were understood at the time. All criticism and opposition was stigmatized as unpatriotic and treacherous. Everything was directed to the creation of the image of the charismatic leader, the great man with exceptional quali-

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ties, the idea of individual communion with the Leader, the Man of Destiny, and of his identity with the masses, or of theirs with him. The press in particular was built up and closely con­ trolled. A strict censorship was introduced, though a special feature was to allow a good deal of non-political criticism so as to create the impression of non-interference with cultural matters, and journalists were encouraged to regard themselves as servants of the state. Education was centrally organized to the same end. All primary and secondary schools were under the general supervision of the Direction of Public Instruction in the Ministry of the Interior. In 1806 an Imperial University was established with a strictly hierarchic organization, but the state’s general monopoly of education was relaxed and private establishments were permitted, subject to the payment of heavy taxes. Little attention was in fact given to primary education, since Napoleon felt that the people were best left in ignorance. Most efforts were concentrated upon developing secondary education in the Lycees introduced in 1802. These establishments, intended for the bourgeois and not the poor, were subject to a military type of regime with the object of producing a conforming elite, and in particular to produce good administrators for the state. The over-riding consideration was faithfulness to the Emperor, obedience to the laws. The higher education of the university was intended to add the finishing touches to the system. It was left to the Facultes de Droit to supply just the sort of administrators that the Empire needed.40 Napoleon’s object of shaping a highly authoritarian system and of furnishing it with an efficient administration was a remarkable achievement considering the magnitude of the task and the short time he had at his disposal. By a judicious selection of ancient institutions, modified to the purposes of the world he was moulding right across Europe, he brought order out of chaos and achieved a level of administrative efficiency far above that of the preceding era, a system that was to provide plenty of examples for later authoritarian systems both of the right and of the left. But it had the defects of all systems that depend ultimately upon the selective favouritism of the leader and upon decisions from above that cannot be modified except through the initiative of the leader himself. It was bound to founder as soon as the dynamic inspiration of the dictator was withdrawn, though there was enough sound construction for subsequent regimes to return again and again to the pattern which Napoleon had forged out of the past. Despite a number of temporary successes it was never

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to cope effectively with the spirit of libertarian democracy to which the Revolution had given birth. Ru s s i a ,

1462-1730

This section can be little more than a footnote to the present chapter, for Russia had little to contribute in the sphere of public administration since she was during this period what today would be called a developing country, actively seeking instruction and example from beyond her borders, and still a long way back from the fourth of our seminal revolutions in which she was destined, in 1917, to add another important page to the history of the West. Russia’s story goes back to the establishment of the Slavonic States of Kiev and Novgorod by adventurers from eastern Scan­ dinavia in the ninth century.41 Towards the end of the next century treaty relations were established between Kiev and Byzantium, and Christianity came to Russia, accompanied by the influences of Byzantine art and literature, which were to persist despite the invasion and conquests of the Tartar horde from 1238 onwards. The real founder of modern Russia and the Tsardom was Ivan III (reg. 1462-1505), known as ‘The Great’, who drove back the invaders, absorbed the Republics of Novgorod and Pskoff and the more remote and less important Viatka, and, by shifting the political centre of gravity from Kiev to Moscow, determined Russia’s subsequent concern with expansion towards the east. Ivan — ruthless, unscrupulous and cruel in the manner of his kind — was astute in consolidating his realm and establishing a powerful kingship. The elimination of the republics eliminated the veche, or popular assembly, through which the merchants and people of these places had managed their affairs. The Tartars had already begun the process in other parts of Russia by suppressing the power of the veche to elect the prince. There had also existed a Duma of Boyars or nobility, a body of councillors who held high posts in the army and public administration. These men of service were entitled, on appointment to a post, to a contract which gave them the right to leave the ruler’s service at any time and to seek that of another ruler, but the gradual absorption of the surrounding principalities greatly restricted the value of the privilege. This council had little restraining power, since the Tsar had complete initiative as to whom and when he should call for advice. It is difficult to exaggerate the effect of the peculiar admini-

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strative custom of miestnichestvo, or right of precedence, as a brake upon any movement, even by the Tsar, to introduce radical changes. This custom asserted the rights of each member of the nobility and all men of service to a place in the public service, which was assigned according to two principles: (1) that no man should be appointed to a position inferior to that which his ancestors had held, and (2) that no man could be asked to accept a post of lower rank than that of a man who had a shorter ancestral line than himself. These privileges, which constituted a regular guarantee of administrative incompetence, were rigidly decided in accordance with the Razriadnyia Knigi, or Books of Rank, which were kept by a special Office of Precedence. They led to disputes among the Boyars which were particularly dangererous in the army, but the system continued until the end of the seventeenth century in the reign of Theodore, son of Alexis, when it was abolished and the Books of Rank were burned, one of the few historic occasions when the burning of the books was justified.42 Ivan III adopted the policy of transporting groups of citizens to distant territories to establish Muscovite colonies amidst the non-Russian peoples, a practice that later governments were to follow. He also entered into embassies with other European courts and invited foreigners, especially Italians, into his service, among whom was the able architect and engineer Fioravanti degli Alberti of Bologna, and the architect Pietro Antonio Solari of Milan. The prospects of these technical experts were not always secure, for we learn that a Jewish physician was beheaded for failing to cure Ivan’s son. Following a period of great unrest and anarchy Ivan IV (reg. 1547-84), known as ‘The Terrible’, through ruthless methods was able to consolidate his power and have himself proclaimed Tsar in 1547. He was completely without scruple, his actions a mixture of depravity and exaggerated religiosity, his vices and atrocities writ large in history, yet as a ruler he was able and original, one of the real builders of his country. Ruthlessly he attacked and destroyed the power of the Boyars, causing many of them to flee to Poland. Then he introduced a peculiar idea of dual administration that was all his own, the somewhat mysterious Oprichnina, or Separate Establishment, from which the Boyars were excluded. This involved the division of the Empire into two parts with an Oprichnina court separate from the court at Moscow. The rest of the Empire remained under the Council of Boyars and was known as the Zemshchina. The territories of the Oprichnina interlaced with the old and those who served it — the

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Oprichniki — served under the Tsar. In the areas so designated the nobles were ruthlessly dispossessed, except those few who were able to convince Ivan of their harmlessness and their willingness to become Oprichniki. The whole operation was so shrouded in confusion and violence as to mask the fact that Ivan was adopting an ingenious administrative diarchy in order to break once and for all the power of the Boyars. He did not aim at a complete separation, and officials of both administrations served in the central offices, which were not divided. In fact the dual system was only a temporary expedient and the word Oprichnina ceased to have currency as Ivan achieved his objectives. The absence of specific official edicts has left the institution in obscurity. Thus, the objectives of the Oprichnina had been achieved when a national Sobor met in Moscow in January 1613 to elect a new Tsar, and Michael Romanoff, first of a new line, came to the throne. The middle classes had profited at the expense of the Boyars, on the one hand, and of the peasants, whose revolt against serfdom had been crushed, on the other. The way was open to the formation of a bureaucracy recruited without regard to birth.43 For a time public opinion continued to influence the activities of the Tsars through such Soborst which were purely consultative, bringing together in council the nobles, higher clergy and representatives of the other classes. This institution helped the Romanoffs to retain the support of the classes that had raised them to power, without having their own powers restricted. The last Sobor was consulted in 1653 on the question of war with Poland. Despite its restricted scope it had proved at times a promising institution and its disuse was to be regretted. It seems that it had insufficient impact to resist the influence of the arrogant Patriarch Nikon, to whose positive antagonism its discontinuance had been attributed. *

*

*

In the meantime Russia’s contacts with the West had been increasing. An expedition of three ships was dispatched from London in 1553, of which the ‘Edward Bonaventure’ under Richard Chancellor made a surprise landing in Russia at the mouth of the river Dwina. The promise of trade led to the founding by the Merchant Adventurers of the Muscovy Com­ pany, whose first governor was Sebastian Cabot (1474-1557), the celebrated Anglo-Venetian navigator. The Company’s object was to explore the possibilities of the Russian market. Under the protection of Ivan the Terrible it received exclusive rights in the

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northern regions of his empire, and factories were set up at a number of places. But exclusive monopoly was prevented by the intervention of other English adventurers, the Russians’ resent­ ment at what they considered to be the high prices charged, and competition from the Dutch. The Company’s operations were hazardous and expensive and, among other factors, the unethical practices of its own agents were crippling. Nevertheless, for a time advantages accrued to England from the import of hides and raw materials, many of which were vital to her shipbuilding.44 The tyrannical methods adopted by the Russian state to raise revenue, if immediately successful, were calculated very quickly to defeat their own objectives. Thus agents from the centre went out to the production areas to purchase crops and stocks at their own prices and to sell them at excessive profits, with the inevitable effect of restricting future production. The ruler even acted as publican, thus encouraging drunkenness in an environment where little such encouragement was needed. Giles Fletcher, Queen Elizabeth’s ambassador, reported, ‘In every great town of his realm the Emperor hath a cabak or drinking-house, where it sold aquavitae, meed, beer, etc. Out of these he receiveth rent that amounteth to a great sum of money’.45 Byzantine influences are apparent in the cruel criminal code of Ivan the Great, and such influences upon contemporary institu­ tions can be traced to the Domo-stroi, a book of household management, written partly by Silvester, Ivan’s religious but ruthless councillor. There may be similar connections in the central administration system of Prikazy, or bureaux, already in existence by the sixteenth century. There were forty of them in all, operating more like domestic offices than state departments. There was, for example, a Prikaz for embassies which dealt with foreign relations, but it was not before the reign of Alexis (164576) that it became at all important. The age of reform was then dawning, to be carried dynamically forward by Alexis’s younger son, the able, but cruel and ruthless, Peter the Great (reg. 16891725). Although uncouth and addicted to cruel sports, with strong practical sense and little comprehension of the intellectual, Peter realized that Russian institutions were all inadequate to take her into the new world as it already existed in Scandinavia and the West. In working out his reforms, therefore, he made wide use of foreign experience and took special steps to encourage the immigration of specialists from abroad. Approaching the prob­ lem of reform empirically, and not with some grand plan in his mind, he set out, between 1718 and 1722, to introduce a series of

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changes in central and local government institutions and the church that were to have a considerable impact upon the future. In 1711 a Senate of nine had been introduced to act as chief executive in place of the Council of Magnates, already in an advanced state of decay. But the new body was overburdened, quarrelsome, worked together with difficulty and was very inefficient in the financial sphere. A new Privy Chancellery had been set up mainly to control the funds. The Prikazy, which had become ineffective, were replaced by a system of Colleges, each under a board, consisting of a presi­ dent and ten others, modelled upon the type of pluralistic organization that had become popular in the West, especially in Sweden. These collegial boards, which were new to Russia, were recommended to Peter by the philosopher Liebnitz, who held, ‘There cannot be good administration except with colleges: their mechanism is like that of watches, whose wheels mutually keep each other in movement’,46 a statement that hardly raises one’s respect for Peter’s choice of an adviser on administration. Some of the advantages claimed for these boards — for example, that they worked more expeditiously — was probably true only in relation to the exceptional inefficiency of existing institutions. In any case it seems in practice that, although the colleges were an improvement on the old departmental system, they soon took on some of the characteristics of their predecessors. Certainly the boards soon tended to function very much as the mere aides of their presidents, a tendency of such bodies that can be widely observed today. There were originally nine colleges, distributed on the basis of one each for foreign affairs, war and admiralty, three for finance, two for economic affairs and the ninth for justice, which also performed the function of a department of the interior. They took over most of the administrative work of the Senate, except its appellate jurisdiction, and enabled it to concen­ trate upon general policy and the preparation of legislation. The colleges were subject to the general control of the Senate, which therefore remained the chief instrument of executive power. That the burning of the Books of Rank during the preceding century had not solved all problems of precedence and status was demonstrated in 1722 with the drawing up of the Table of Ranks, in which the officers of the armed forces were arranged in four­ teen distinct grades, in parallel with the gradings of the civilian bureaucracy. All the ranks of the armed forces and the eight highest ones of the civil administration conferred upon their holders and their descendents privileges of the landowning class. The aim was to remould the Russian nobility into a hereditary

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bureaucracy of officers and officials. Steps were even taken to ensure that members of the class did pay attention to their duties, even to the extent of decreeing that young members should not marry until they had passed an examination in ‘ciphers’ and geometry.47 This reform surely reflects the influence of Prussian bureaucratic principles upon established Russian institutions. Peter had already taken steps to grapple with the habitual corruption of officialdom by introducing a new order of officials — Pribuilschchiki (Inspectors) — to improve the tenor of public life and look after the interests of the government. Outstanding among them was Alexis Kurbatoff, expert in commerce and finance, whom Peter appointed as his confidential adviser.48 The evils were too deep-seated, however, to be eliminated by such appointments, however effective some of the inspectors may have proved. By his ukase of August 1713 Peter invited informers to report all defalcations direct to him, offering as reward the rank and property of the persons denounced. A later ukase even encouraged officials to report their own superiors. Such methods, often favoured by authoritarian regimes, inevitably weaken the morale of both the administrator and the administered and defeat the ends they have in view. A new Privy Chancellery was set up, mainly to control finance, and a corps of five hundred revenue officers, known as ‘fiscals’ under a Chief Fiscal, whose job was to unearth tax evasions and maladministration of officials, which made them the most hated men in the realm. The Chancellery was also to prove helpful in elaborating Peter’s other reforms. His most powerful introduction in the administrative field was the office of Procurator-General, first established in 1722.49 Although not a regular member of the Senate, he became its President when Peter was not present, as he rarely was. This official watched over the working of the Colleges through his own Procurators, one of whom was attached to each of them. He also took over the whole staff of fiscals, and had certain powers to initiate legislation. The first holder of this important office was Menshikov, whose undoubted energy, decisiveness and loyalty, against a background of previous experience and success in handling a variety of diplomatic and other business, strongly recommended him to Peter, and he had also been one of the ruler’s close companions. Yet, despite all these advantages, his ruthless and grasping nature made him the last man to achieve success in such a post on the lines Peter himself had laid down in detail.

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Further changes in the organization of local government were inaugurated in 1719 when the ten recently formed provincial governments were replaced by fifty provinces, divided into districts, with an elaborate system of administrative offices, largely upon the Swedish pattern, which was to prove much too sophisticated, ill-adapted to Russian ways of life, and too expensive in men and money,50 to prove effective. Attempts, based upon similar experience, to separate justice and administra­ tion, which was also outside the Russian habit of mind were equally doomed to failure. The system was further complicated by the division of the country into regimental regions for con­ scription and poll-tax purposes. Peter’s system of local government had to be scrapped soon after his death, and it remained for Catherine the Great (reg. 1762-96) to achieve an effective reconstruction. Yet the outcome of her interesting experiment in administrative reorganization was disappointing, despite the preliminary study and thought given to it by Catherine herself, as set down in her Instructions of 30th July 1767.51 Apart from clear improvements in structure and administrative effectiveness, all attempts to obtain the neces­ sary citizen participation were to prove abortive. The truth was that the social and political environments were not yet geared to the farsighted changes that were visualized. A general lack of understanding, and difficulties in preventing existing interests, particularly the officials already in office, from controlling the new machinery to their own advantage tended to depreciate it from the very outset. Certainly the new machinery worked better than the old, which is not perhaps saying much, and it did provide a structure capable of future development. Catherine herself, who had put much thought into the changes, had meant well and was perhaps a better ruler than the country was yet capable of deserving. To return to Peter the Great: the latter part of his reign was marked by an administrative development that had a significance all its own. Dissatisfied with the control achievable through his new institutions, not excluding even the Procurator-General, Peter fell into the habit of using his trusted guards officers as agents, on the lines of the medieval missi dominici, to undertake commissions which over-rode the normal governmental machinery. Recruited from the landowning families, these guards had been brought up at court and employed on a permanent basis, forming a sort of Janissary force under the ruler’s direct control and completely loyal to him. Their official title of ‘compellers’ is significant. Originally they had been used to

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compel other troops to discipline, but Peter came to use them to do the same to the various governmental institutions. In this sphere their activities were inevitably highly selective and not always effective. They could hardly substitute the entire admini­ stration, and could do little more than deal with incompetence and other failings that might come to light. But the institution was to commend itself to Peter’s successors, to whom it became a sort of Praetorian Guard, even to deciding upon the succession to the throne.52 In their sum total Peter’s reforms, which ramified far beyond the spheres of government and administration, placed an emphasis on justice and police, and were in essence converting Russia into a police state, in the pattern of German cameralism, which Peter had learned about from the German scholars who had frequented his court. However, this police state — better described as a regulatory state — was something much more constructive than is nowadays meant by the term. The basic idea of the law-regulated community commended itself to Peter, who regarded non-observance of the law as Russia’s prime evil. The inculcation of fear and use of summary punishment were very much in tune with his own ruthless outlook and impetuous temper. He was physically strong and had never hesitated to administer punishment on the spot to his assistants with his own hands. Thus, while he had genuine yearnings to induce a new spirit in Russia, he was himself too closely moulded by the society in which he had been brought up to succeed in his aim. Administratively his reign was an extremely fruitful one but in the circumstances of the age administration was far from enough.

REFERENCES 1 D. L. Keir, T h e C o n s titu tio n a l H is to r y o f M o d e rn B r ita in , 1485-1937 (A. & C. Black, 1938), p. 245. 2 Keir, o p. c it.t p. 254. 3 C. M. Andrews, T h e C o lo n ia l P e r io d (Williams & Norgate, 1912), p. 19. 4 Andrews, op. c it .r p. 30. 5 Andrews, op. c it .t p. 25. 6 Andrews, o p. c it .y p. 29. 7 Andrews, op. c it., p. 52. 8 Andrews, op. c it .t pp. 131-2. 9 Sir Hubert Llewellyn Smith, T h e B o a rd o f T ra d e (Putnam, 1928), pp. 1-14. 10 Andrews, op. c it .t p. 154. 11 Edmund Burke, T h e S p e e ch es o f th e R ig h t H o n o u ra b le E d m u n d B u r k e

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four volumes (London, 1816), II, pp. 1-7. 12 James Bryce, T h e A m e r ic a n C o n s titu tio n (1888). 13 Andrews, op. c it., pp. 182-4. 14 T h e F e d e r a list o r th e N e w C o n s titu tio n (Dent’s Everyman edn., 1911). 15 Bryce, op. c it., pp. 483-4. 16 Leonard D. White, in the first of his four remarkable studies of United States admnistrative history, T h e F e d era lists (Macmillan, N.Y., 1948), p. 1. 17 White, op. c it., p. 508. 18 White, op. c it., p. 13, quoting from a letter to Catherine Macaulay Graham, 9th January 1790, W r itin g s xxx, p. 496. 19 White, op. c it., p. 14. 20 T h e F e d e r a list , LXVIII, p. 349. 21 T h e F e d e r a list , LXXII, p. 368. 22 White, o p . c it., p. 31. 23 White, op. c it., p. 32. 24 White, op. c it., p. 497. 25 White, op. c it., p. 35, quoting Jefferson, 6th November 1801, W o r k s (Federal edn.), IX, pp. 310-12. 26 White, op. c it., p. 201. 27 Jacques Ellul, H is to ir e d es In stitu tio n s , II (Presses Universitaires de France, 1955), pp. 565-70. 28 Ellul, o p . c it., pp. 635-6. 29 Ellul, op. c it., pp. 636-7. 30 Ellul, op. c it., pp. 645-6. 31 Maurice Deslandres, H is to ire C o n s titu tio n e lle d e F ra n ce d e 1789 d 1870 (Paris, 1932), I. pp. 426-42. 32 Deslandres, op. c it., pp. 463-7. 33 Deslandres, op. c it., p. 531. 34 Deslandres, op. c it., p. 566. 35 Ellul, op. c it., pp. 729-30. 36 Deslandres, op. c it., pp. 612-17. 37 F. de Bourienne, M e m o ir s o f N a p o le o n B o n a p a r te (Hutchinsons Library of Standard Lives — one volume edition), pp. 344-5. 38 Ellul, op. c it., pp. 708-10. 39 Ellul, op. c it., pp. 722-3. 40 Ellul, o p . c it., pp. 712-13. 41 J. B. Berry on ‘Russia (1462-1682)* in T h e C a m b rid g e M o d e r n H is to r y , Vol. V (Cambridge, 1934 edn.), pp. 477-517. 42 Berry, op. c it., pp. 485-6. 43 Berry, op. c it., p. 502. 44 J. B. Black, T h e R e ig n o f E liz a b e th , 1558-1803 (Oxford, 1936), pp. 197-201. 45 Berry, op. c it., p. 514. 46 B. H. Sumner, P e te r th e G r e a t a n d th e E m e r g e n c e o f R u s sia (English Universities, 1950), p. 126. 47 M. S. Anderson, P e te r th e G r e a t (Historical Association, 1969), p. 29. 48 Berry, op. c it., p. 526. 49 Sumner, op. c it., p. 128. 50 Sumner, op. c it., p. 128. 51 Gladyn Scott Thomson, C a th e rin e th e G r e a t a n d th e E x p a n sio n o f R u s sia (English Universities, 1947), pp. 96-108. 52 Sumner, op. c it., pp. 136-7.

CHAPTER 9

DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN SYSTEMS OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION : 1815 to 1971 By the nineteenth century, with the Industrial Revolution in full swing in Britain and overflowing rapidly into Europe and North America, specialization through the division of labour was even invading and gaining momentum inside the public offices. Everywhere the switch of workers from the fields and rapidly increasing urbanization were generating problems whose solution called for new social attitudes. The shaping of new means and inventions in both the industrial and the social fields presupposed a Scientific Revolution, itself destined to have unprecedented consequences. The whole complex of changes was accompanied, step by step, both as cause and effect, by the most massive Communications Revolution since the invention of the wheel way back in the mists of time. To sustain and facilitate so many concurrent changes a veritable Administrative Revo­ lution was called for, whose impact upon the government was to lead to a separation of administration from politics. This was part of a movement in which the modern professions were taking shape and developing in many spheres to cope with the new needs of society. It was logical, therefore, that the practice of the new public administration should settle in the hands of persons capable of specializing in the conduct of public business. So vast is this subject that our outline of the key-developments of public administration, which is rapidly permeating the whole of world society, must be confined to four contrasting spheres, namely to Anglo-Saxon, Colonial, Russian and International administration. D E V E L O P M E N T OF C I V I L S E R V I C E S I N U N I T E D S T A T E S AND B R I T A I N

THE

The mere fact that in the United States the Founding Fathers had had to think out afresh the basis and shape of their political institutions — so admirably exemplified by the discussions of The Federalist — meant that there had also to be definite thinking about the goals and content of public administration.

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It has already been seen that Hamilton and Washington, among others, had made important pronouncements on the subject. The advent, as third President in 1801, of Thomas Jefferson, leader (in opposition to the Federalists) of the party to be known as Republican, inaugurated a sort of bridging period until the election of Andrew Jackson in 1829. The principles laid down by Washington were to continue to operate while fundamental changes were gradually taking place in both nation and govern­ ment. In other words, Jefferson and his immediate successors, whose primary interest was in democracy — the capacity of the people for self-government — were nevertheless to maintain the efficient oligarchy introduced by the Founding Fathers. Jefferson saw no special problem in administration, only difficulties which common sense and honest intentions would usually be able to remove. In practice successive Presidents maintained close personal control over departmental correspondence, as Washing­ ton had done. Nevertheless, Jefferson had to meet the demands for office of his republican followers, whose opinion, that they had a right to appointments hitherto held by Federalists, was supported by the accepted doctrine that administration was an activity that any reasonably equipped citizen should be able to perform quite adequately. In practice the President was able to meet such demands, not by dismissing present holders of office, but by ensuring that vacancies as they occurred should normally go to his own supporters. The War of 1812 with Great Britain disclosed weaknesses in the administration, as wars so often do, and further changes were called for, but as it happened, the decline of the Federalists was to put off the patronage issue till 1829. Congress was showing increased interest in the administration. It had already, as an obvious consequence of the separation of powers, adopted the practice of setting up investigating committees to look into cases of suspected incompetence, illegality and scandal,1 and this practice was to expand after 1815. In the making of appointments party affiliations figured, with respectability, as of first importance. The preference for gentle­ men was supported by present holders who had in mind the interests of their sons, as suitably conditioned candidates. Veterans were often given office where pensions were not adequate, but compensation by pension rather than office was considered preferable. Basically, local residence had come to be accepted as desirable in field appointments, and the rule was followed by Jefferson. There was no central appointment office, or any question of examinations, though such were introduced

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for entry to the famous military academy at West Point and to the Navy.2 Jefferson did not in fact believe in spoils and was revolted by the passing of the Tenure of Office Act in 1820, which was the chief development during the period. Ostensibly the Act was passed to improve accountability of officials handling moneys, which had been the subject of prolonged discussion in Congress, though the actual motives of its chief sponsor — William H. Crawford — have been in question. It limited to four years the term of the principal officers concerned with the collection and disbursement of money, including such officials as district attorneys, customs collectors and other customs workers, pay­ masters in the army, and so on. Although of limited operation, the Act endorsed a principle that was to gain increasing support thenceforward. Its full acceptance came with the advent of Andrew Jackson to the presidency in 1829, marking the change­ over from a basically aristocratic to a fully democratic policy. The new phase, which was to last till 1861, was shaped by counteracting trends. On the one hand the extension of the franchise and the growth of political parties heightened the desire of the ordinary citizen to hold office and converted the transferable office into a currency suitable for meeting obliga­ tions due to party supporters for their election efforts, thus providing valuable spoils for the victorious party. On the other hand great advances in the national economy and extensions in the size of the Union, by the addition of new territories and states, involved a natural increase in the complexity of govern­ ment administration which rendered it more and more difficult to achieve efficient administration without the deployment of qualities and experience not normally forthcoming through the indiscriminate exercise of party patronage. It was hardly a matter for surprise that the high standards of the early admini­ strations fell away steeply. Despite Jackson’s general reputation for moodiness and displays of high temper, we have it on the evidence of Martin van Buren, his successor, that his administrative approach was correct in every way. He writes, ‘Although firm to the last degree in the execution of his resolution when once formed, I never knew a man more free from conceit, or one to whom it was a greater extent a pleasure, as well as a recog­ nized duty, to listen patiently to what might be said to him upon any subject under consideration until the time for action had arrived. Akin to his disposition in this regard was his readiness to acknowledge error whenever an occasion to do so was presented and a willingness nx

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to give full credit to his co-actors on important occasions without ever pausing to consider how much of the merit he awarded was at the expense of that due to himself. 3

But Jackson had been a soldier, used to command, and in his new high office his tastes and interests were political rather than administrative. Like his predecessors he set himself to bear with conscientious fortitude the administrative burden of the presi­ dency, which was now greater than ever before, but unlike the more outstanding among his predecessors, he had no urge to look at his administering objectively, with a view to streamlining the process and thus reducing the personal efforts he was called upon to contribute. Jackson thought in terms of individuals and his writings rarely even suggest that he regarded administration as a process describable in general terms. While he supported the doctrine of rotation in office he did not encourage the spoils element, which seemed destined to extend by the mere dynamics of the democratic community into which the United States was being inevitably shaped. Although the policy of rotation did not prevent the retention of some officials in some branches for long periods, the general effect was to reduce the overall efficiency of the several services and to fill the offices with incompetent and lazy clerks, to create and encourage the continuance of posts with little work attached, and even to find niches for illiterates. But it was a popular device to a democratic populace who had little ability to assess its actual results, and it helped considerably to build the strength of the local party organizations, which would hardly have got off the ground without it. An illuminating beam is thrown upon the nature and content of the President’s office at the time by the fact that there was no one else to act as the government’s chief personnel officer, and that personnel business as a whole took up much of his time. Appointments could be distributed among four headings: (1) Those requiring Senatorial confirmation and with which, consequently, the President was personally concerned, such as heads of departments, chief accounting officers, territorial gover­ nors, ministers and consuls, judges of the Federal Courts, and such lesser officials as postmasters in the larger cities, collectors of customs, district attorneys and land agents, totalling in 1849 nearly a thousand. (2) Those within the competence of heads of departments, which included chief clerks, clerks and messengers, subordinate fiscal officers and numerous field agents. Even here the President

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was often consulted for the more senior appointments, but in the main it was better to leave full responsibility to the head. (3) Subordinate field officials appointed by the senior in charge, such as minor customs officers by the collector, although there was in this case usually prior consultation with the Treasury. Even here political issues might bring the chief executive into the picture. It is known, for example, that President Fillmore (1850-3) made it a practice not to interfere with departmental heads in such matters. (4) Rank and file employees in the field, who were hired and fired by the man on the spot. Numerous personnel matters reached the President’s desk but there was an obvious limit to the scale of his participation in such matters and his positive delegation could be extended by the departmental head’s active policy of preventing such business from passing beyond his own office. With the increasing work­ load the chief executive’s wisdom was thus manifested both in his business practices and in his selection of the right type of lieutenant. By the ’fifties the question of extending examinations to test the competence of civil servants was being explored. As early as 7th March 1851 the Senate passed a resolution that Heads of Departments should classify their clerks in salary grades according to qualification and arrange for their promotion from one grade to another. The resultant plan was authorized by law in 1853, which covered organization of government officials into four classes and the application of examinations to serving officials, most of whom qualified. The new arrangements were to apply to future nominees. The actual results seem to have satisfied the authorities at the time, though they have not been greatly praised by historians, due no doubt to the overwhelming influences on the system of political spoils. Civil service reform in the United States had to wait another thirty years, for the Pendleton Act of 1883, by which time it had become a public issue of major importance. The introduction of a limited scheme of pass examinations in the United States coincided with a similar development in Britain, where there was growing dissatisfaction with the practice of appointment by patronage, under which vacancies in the central offices were filled at the behest of the ministerial head, but as a personal perquisite and not normally as a reward for political service. Nor were such appointments associated with rotation in office, since in Britain they were permanent, and officials were removable only for crass incompetence. The absence of a proper

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pensions system meant that elderly officials were often kept on much too long, for charitable reasons. The system was failing woefully to meet the comparatively modest clerical requirements of a central administration which was being called upon to grapple with extending responsibilities. In 1853 the Prime Minister, Lord Aberdeen, called upon Sir Stafford Northcote, a politician, and Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan, senior permanent official at H.M. Treasury (whose career will be briefly outlined in the following section) to formu­ late a scheme for the reorganization of the Civil Service. This was completed by the end of the year and embodied in an important state document4 that was to have a revolutionary influence upon the British Civil Service and through it upon many other public services throughout the world. It recommended the abolition of patronage and the substitution of recruitment by open competitive examinations under the supervision of a central examining board, the reorganization of the office staffs of the central departments in two broad classes to deal with intellectual and mechanical work respectively, and the filling of higher posts by promotion from inside on the basis of merit rather than seniority. The Report led to a good deal of controversy, in which the patronage-mongers fought a fierce rearguard action both inside Parliament and throughout the country. It has sometimes been asserted that the main opposition to the proposals came from inside the public service, but this at best was no more than a half-truth. In fact the chief support for the changes came from responsible senior administrators, who knew that the old ways were already completely inadequate to fulfil the responsibilities which Parliament and government were placing upon them. Their offices needed to attain a degree of efficiency which they knew was ruled out by patronage methods. There was of course opposition from inside from incompetent and lazy juniors, natural products of the system, who feared for their own positions, or from highly placed fathers who felt that it was a time-honoured right that sons brought up in the atmo­ sphere of the right sort of home should be able to follow the footsteps of their parents in office. But the main opposition came from Members of Parliament and the public in general who, not realizing the actual needs of the situation, saw in the reformers’ proposals another of those new-fangled schemes that were threatening the very roots of the society in which they lived and with which they were well-content. It was not without a sound knowledge of the prejudices of the man-in-the-street that

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some speakers in the Commons ridiculed the idea that modern progressive Britain should have anything to learn from the administrative practices of a China that was so backward and, as they erroneously thought, primitive. The actual acceptance of open competition was to be delayed until 1870. In 1855, however, a Civil Service Commission of three was appointed by the Crown to ensure the competence of all appointees, who were to continue to be nominated by heads of departments, but had to submit themselves to a pass examina­ tion. Some Departments actually introduced open competition on their own account. The results of this modest reform were soon apparent, and the advocates of open competition were to receive constant reinforcement. The outbreak at this time of the war in the Crimea disclosed serious shortcomings in the organiza­ tion and methods of the several War Departments and helped to swell the movement for reform, even to the extent of inspiring, in May 1855, the Administrative Reform Association, a some­ what amateurish impulse that soon petered out, but deserves to be remembered as the only organized attempt in Britain to launch a civil service reform movement of this type. In the United States opposition to reform continued from all quarters — from party organizers who could not bear the thought of losing valuable spoils, from genuine believers in democracy which rotation in office exemplified, and from the many who benefited from the maintenance of the status quo, or thought they did. Patronage and rotation, with their capacity to pay for political services rendered, greatly increased the power of the local party organizations, compelling them to concentrate more upon the manipulation of offices than upon the development and furtherance of the policies for the propagation of which they had been founded. Inside the administration there was a steep decline in efficiency through the injection of semi-literates and the creation of useless offices. Lazy clerks were in excess, while the few energetic ones — which the indiscriminateness of spoils did not keep out — often found it difficult to discover anything useful to do. Officials were often compelled, in return for their good fortune, to contribute to party funds, a practice which was not against the law until after the Civil War (1861-5). As White points out, the decline in morale was not confined to the public service, for the times were characterized by a general decline in business morality.5 A direct consequence of rotation had been to render public office less attractive to the leisured class type of entrant that earlier administrations had encouraged, for such persons

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were not much interested in short-term assignments. There were instances of a practice that often occurs in administration not subject to strict standards of employment, namely of collecting illegal personal fees for official services rendered. Many such cases were reported in the New York Customs and the practice became so widespread as to be accepted by the public as a matter of course.6 The country as a whole was hardly aware of the expense of such a system, for such were the growing productivity and prosperity of the expanding nation that even to this day the United States has been able to bear a burden of bureaucratic incompetence that would have literally sunk a less flourishing community. For this reason, if for no other, her system has not been a good example to others. But there were those from very early days who felt that there was a limit to the licence that could be given to the politicians. The struggle for Civil Service reform was to begin in earnest following the Civil War in the mid-’sixties. A notable pioneer was Congressman Thomas Allen Jenckes, a patent lawyer and active figure in Rhode Island politics, elected to Congress in 1862. Although Jenckes’s attempts to obtain legislative authoriza­ tion for such reform were all rejected, his agitation had a considerable impact upon public opinion and resulted in the gathering of a good deal of up-to-date information on the sub­ ject, including accounts of the Chinese, Prussian, French and British Civil Services,7 made available in reports issued by a Joint Select Committee on Retrenchment. Jenckes’s campaign was to receive its first real justification under the presidency of General Ulysses Grant (1869-77) when, on 3rd March 1871, Congress approved the following provision in the sundry civil appropriation bill. ‘That the President of the United States be, and he is hereby, authorized to prescribe such rules and regulations for the admission of persons into the civil service of the United States as will best promote the efficiency thereof, and ascertian the fitness of each candidate in respect to age, health, character, knowledge, and ability for the branch of the service into which he seeks to enter; and for this purpose the President is authorized to employ suitable persons to conduct said enquiries, to prescribe their duties, and to establish regulations for the conduct of persons who may receive appoint­ ments in the civil service.’8

Grant appointed, under the chairmanship of George William Curtis, leader of the reform movement, an advisory body which soon became known as the ‘Civil Service Commission’. They were

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first called upon to draw up rules for competitive examinations, and then to become the agency for putting the new regulations into effect. The first competitive examinations under their auspices were held on 5th June 1872. Each Department had been authorized to set up its own board of examiners to conduct agency examinations under the commission’s general supervision. Applicants had to be citizens of the United States, to provide satisfactory evidence in regard to character, health and age, and to pass a satisfactory examination in speaking, reading and writing the English language. Appointment was to be the lowest clerical rank, subsequent promotion also being by examination from the lower ranks. All this looked very promising to the reformers, but general support was still lacking and the spoilsmen were up in arms, with all the usual arguments calculated to stir the emotions and mislead the uninformed. The new rules were stigmatized as unconstitutional, silly, cumbrous and visionary, and the com­ mission itself was dubbed a board of broken-down schoolmasters. Congressional support, such as it was, steadily dwindled. In 1874 a Senate proposal to appropriate $15,000 for the continuance of the work was left without House of Representatives approval. Grant was compelled to abolish the examining boards and to revert, early in 1875, to the former system of pass examinations. At least one conclusion received unanimous support, namely that competitive examinations were not suitable for deciding pro­ motions,9 but there was substantial support for competitive examinations for initial appointments. In the meantime Dorman B. Eaton, one of Grant’s unofficial commissioners, had been sent by the Department of State to England ‘to investigate and make a report to him [the President] concerning the action of the English Government in relation to its Civil Service, and the effects of such action since 1850’.10 Eaton sets out the results of his mission in his Civil Service in Great Britain, published in New York in 1880. This book is notable on a number of points: (1) as a contribution to the history of the English Civil Service, an inadequately served subject, to which the book’s first 180 pages are devoted, (2) as a perceptive report upon the reforms being currently undertaken in Britain, and (3) as an officially inspired enquiry by one country into the institutions of another country which provides an instruc­ tive example of the way matters administrative transcend political frontiers. There is much in Eaton’s book that deserves quotation, but space should at least be found for the ‘principles and conclusions’ he drew from Britain’s experience following the reforms:

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‘1. Public office creates a relation of trust and duty of a kind which requires all authority and influence pertaining to it to be exercised with the same absolute conformity to moral standards, to the spirit of the constitution and the laws, and to the common interests of the people, which may be insisted upon in the use of public money or any other common property of the people; and, therefore, whatever difficulty may attend the practical application of the rule of duty, it is identically the same whether it be applied to property or to official discretion. There can in principle be no official discretion to disregard common interests or to grant official favors to persons or to parties. 2. So far as any right is involved, in filling offices, it is the right of the people to have the worthiest citizen in the public service for the general welfare; and the privilege of sharing the honors and profits of holding office appertains equally to every citizen, in proportion to his measure of character and capacity which qualify him for such service. 4.11 The ability, attainments, and character requisite for the fit discharge of offical duties of any kind, — in other words, the personal merits of the candidate — are in themselves the highest claim upon an office. 5. Party government and the salutary activity of parties are not superseded, but they are made purer and more efficient, by the merit system of office, which brings larger capacity and higher character to their support. 6. Government by parties is enfeebled and debased by reliance upon a partisan system of appointments and removals; and, for its most vigorous life and salutary influence, it is only needful for the party majority to select, as the representative of its views and the executors of its policy, the few high officers with whom rests the power to direct the national affairs, and to instruct and keep in the line of their duty the whole body of their subordinates, through whose administrative work that policy is to be carried into effect. 7. Patronage in the hands of members of the legislature, which originated in a usurpation of executive functions, increases the expenses of administration, is degrading and demoralizing to those who possess it, is disastrous to legislation, tends to impair the counterpoise and stability of the government; and it cannot with­ stand the criticism of an intelligent people when they fairly compre­ hend its character and consequences. 8. Examinations (in connection with investigations of character) may be so conducted as to ascertain, with far greater certainty than by any other means, the persons who are most fit for the public service; and the worthiest thus disclosed may be selected for the public service by a just and non-partisan method, which the most enlightened public opinion will heartily approve. 9. Open competition presents at once the most just and practicable means of supplying fit persons for appointment. It is proved to have

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given the best public servants: it makes an end of patronage; and, besides being based on equal rights and common justice, it has been found to be the surest safeguard against both partisan coercion and official favoritism. 10. Such methods, which leave to parties and party government their true functions in unimpaired vigor, tend to reduce manipula­ tion, intrigue, and every form of corruption in politics to their smallest proportions. They also reward learning, give more importance to character and principles and make political life more attractive to all worthy citizens. 11. Regarded as a whole, the new system has raised the ambition and advanced both the self-respect and the popular estimation of those in the public service, while it has encouraged general education, arrested demoralizing solicitation for office, and promoted economy, efficiency and fidelity in public affairs. 12. A system is entirely practicable under which official salaries shall increase during the more active years of life, and through which a retiring allowance is retained to be paid upon the officer leaving the public service; and such a system appears to contribute to economy and fidelity in administration. 13. Open competition is as fatal to all the conditions of a beaurocracy, (sic) as it is to patronage, nepotism and every form of favoritism, in the public service. 14. The merit system, by raising the character and capacity of the subordinate service, and by accustoming the people to consider personal worth and sound principles, rather than selfish interest and adroit management, as the controlling elements of success in politics, has also invigorated national patriotism, raised the standard of statesmanship, and caused political leaders to look more to the better sentiments and the higher intelligence for support.’12

In America stalemate supervened, against a widespread feeling that patronage was a necessity of democracy, since it was essential to the health of the political parties on which such democracy was though necessarily to be based. A good example of the better motives of citizens in support of the spoils system was offered by William Martin Dickson, writing in the North American Review in 1882: ‘With a resonable rotation every citizen of political aspirations and experience who reaches middle life and conducts himself well may hope to crown his family with the reflected honor which office confers. This prospect is a motive to good work. This is the peerage which the republic offers, not to a particular class, but to every one who serves her.’13

How could such worthy sentiments ever be challenged were it not known that, except in the case of a few noble-hearted individuals, the wicked world does not work in this way.

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But the real fight for Civil Service reform — with more than a glance or two to what had been hapenning in Britain — was embodied in the drive to increase efficiency and economy in the public service and to effect a regeneration of public life. By the ’eighties great headway had been made and it only required a dramatically tragic incident, like the murder of another President, to effect a transformation. James Garfield had only just taken over the post of Chief Executive in 1881 when he was shot by a disappointed office-seeker and died after weeks of suffering. The universal indignation sparked off by this shocking event, added momentum to the movement for reform and led Congress in 1883 to pass the Civil Service Act, usually known as the Pendle­ ton Act, from the name of the Senator who introduced it. This Act established a bipartisan Civil Service Commission of three, to be appointed by the President with the Senate’s advice and consent.14 It also covered the following arrangements: (1) the holding of competitive examinations, practical in character, for all applicants to the classified service; (2) the making of appointments to the classified service from those graded highest in the examinations; (3) the interposition of an effective pro­ bationary period before absolute appointment, and (4) the apportionment of appointments at Washington according to the population of the several states and other major areas. To meet the last requirement applicants had to provide a statement of residence under oath. Penalties of fine and imprisonment were provided for violation of the examining processes. Other pro­ visions preserved existing veteran preference. Appointment of more than two members of a family to the classified service was forbidden, and there were rules against political interference. The classification was based upon the grading of clerks into four classes, which had already been laid down in the Salary Act of 1853, but to these were now to be assimilated the higher-grade employees or clerks in post offices and customs districts with fifty or more employees. The first examinations under the new legisla­ tion were held on 12th July 1883 and the following month vacan­ cies began to be filled from the success lists. During the first six months 489 appointments were made under the Civil Service Rules. A great opening battle for the construction of a real merit system had been won but the campaign was to continue right up to the present day. Although the reformers were to suffer further setbacks the classified service gradually expanded, but it remained possible for Congress to evade the rules by establishing agencies which were outside the scope of the classification. In the United

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Stales a small but persistent band, who regard the public service as a natural perquisite of political intrigue, was greatly expanded at all times by that amorphous section of the public that has an ingrained dislike of public officialdom and is prepared to oppose it lock, stock and barrel, even when it is the only instrument by which its own democratic desires can be fulfilled. All of which is aided by a quite natural and in many ways worthy reaction to the spoon-feeding of officialdom which can only be neutralized by a better understanding, a desirable consummation that officials themselves so often, by their own clumsy actions, badly frustrate.

SIR

EMINENT CIVIL SERVANT: CHARLES EDWARD T RE VEL YAN

In the ’thirties Charles Trevelyan (1807-86) was still serving the East India Company in the Bengal Service, which he had entered as a Writer in 1826, at the age of nineteen. His ability in oriental languages had singled him out for this service and his rise to posts of responsibility had been rapid. He became a close friend of Lord Macaulay, whose sister, Hannah Moore, he married, and whose views on civil service reform clearly influ­ enced his later activities in the public service. During his thirteen years service in India the young Trevelyan acquired a wide practical experience of the multifarious problems of government administration, successively, as assistant to Sir Charles Metcalfe, Commissioner at Delhi; as guardian of the youthful Rajah of Bhurtpore; as participator in projects to improve the conditions of the Indian population; and also in the service of the Political Department at Calcutta. He took a special interest in the cause of education, the government’s efforts in which he described in his book On the Education of the People of India, published in 1838, and during the latter part of the his first period of service in India he was Secretary to the Sudder Board of Revenue. This wide experience of public administration, albeit in an alien land, provided excellent training for the post to which he was called in 1840, when he became Assistant Secretary to Her Majesty’s Treasury, the senior permanent official at the time, a position that he was to occupy with eminence for nineteen vital years. The esteem in which his services were soon to be held was indicated by the conferment of a knighthood in 1848, when he was only forty-one, although this was closely associated with his work in connection with the organization of relief to cope with the terrible potato famine in Ireland, which rose to a peak in

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1845-7, and was a responsibility of the Treasury. Trevelyan, with his staff in Whitehall and his agents in the Commissariat and the Board of Works in Ireland, worked indefatigably to overcome the shocking disaster, but he has been criticized for the laissez faire principles, which he was bound to apply,15 in accordance with government policy. Not that he was in fact personally at variance with a policy that was widely held and in fact constituted an important motive force in Victorian society. The potato famine was due to virulent attack by a blight, whose cause and nature were as yet not understood and in face of which the authorities were literally helpless. The prevailing idea that modest relief works would suffice to meet immediate needs and that natural economic forces could be left to redistribute the labour force and inject money into the economy woefully miscalculated the magnitude of the disaster. To expect the worst-hit districts to meet their own relief expenses by rate levies or subsidies from the landlords was completely to mis­ understand the nature of the problem.16 Criticism must first be directed upon the national philosophy of free enterprise in a situation calling for a major relief operation, generously financed by the Exchequer, and the absence on the spot of a properly integrated administration with an intimate knowledge of what was actually happening, access to sufficient resources and the capacity to act expeditiously. All the good will of the Treasury and the devoted hard work of its agents could not outweigh the emasculated picture of what was really taking place, that existing communications, distorted by long-standing misconceptions, permitted to register in London. This was a task for a Welfare State that had yet to emerge. At the Treasury Trevelyan’s energies were soon directed towards the reform of the public personnel system, which his experience convinced him was quite inadequate to the tasks confronting it. Apart from the evils of patronage, Trevelyan found in Britain little realization of the need for an efficient administrative service in place of the nondescript and incoherent collection of departmental groupings that existed. He realized that central advice and direction would continue to be stultified if the autonomy of the individual ministers was left unco-ordi­ nated, and that the nation’s general policies could not continue to be effectively administered by the existing machinery in a society which was piling new duties on the shoulders of the Executive. There is undoubtedly some significance in the fact that the first practical steps were taken in 1848, when for a brief spell the

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states of the Continent were in the grip of revolutionary move­ ments. In giving evidence later to the Playfair ‘Commission’ of 1874-5 Trevelyan himself admitted that ‘the revolutionary period of 1848 gave us a shake, and one of the consequences was a remarkable series of investigations into public offices, which lasted for five years, culminating in the Organization Report’.17 No doubt these European events had an important influence upon public opinion, which was made more responsive to proposals designed to put our own house in order so as to avoid similar happenings. Any such influences are always welcome in support of administrative reform, which is too technical a matter usually to inspire public enthusiasm or even interest. At the same time one must guard against giving too much credit to events which in retrospect may appear in a changed light. More important was the underlying political, social and economic situation of the nation, which impersonally postulated the need for a reorganized system of public administration; the existence in many responsible posts of administrators who knew their staff resources to be inadequate to the demands placed upon them; above all to the presence at the Treasury of a man of vigour, integrity and vision, who had already in India proved himself capable of dealing with corruption even in the highest places. For, very early in his career, Trevelyan had publicly accused Sir Edward Colebrook, a powerful and popular official, of taking bribes from Indians and had borne the consequent ostracism invariably directed against those who speak out of turn and presume to criticize high authority. He had vindicated himself before the committee of inquiry that led to Sir Edward’s dis­ missal and disgrace. A man capable of such a crusade, now occupying a key post in the central administration and with his wide knowledge of what goes on inside government offices, was ideally equipped to be the knight-errant of the new administra­ tive order. The history of the next two decades in Britain was to show that there were still a number of Bureaucratic Dragons to be slain. On the principle that it is as well first to put one’s own house in order, a Treasury Minute of 3rd November 1848, authorized an enquiry into that Department. The three investigators were Mr. Gibson Craig, a Junior Lord of the Treasury; Mr. Parker, one of the Joint Secretaries; and Sir Charles Trevelyan himself. Their Report18 recommended a number of important changes and was substantially accepted by Treasury Minute of 27th March 1849. The whole operation represented a very expeditious piece of work. This was but the first of a series of such investigations into

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the various Departments, in most of which Trevelyan participated personally and the effect of which was to place at the govern­ ment’s disposal a detailed picture of the virtues and vices of the existing administration. Such an examination of the facts — providing an early example of the sort of approach that was later to be known under the label ‘Organization and Methods’ — was essential if reform was to be undertaken in a logical and satesmanlike manner. These inquiries were still in progress when the joint report by Trevelyan and Northcote on The Organization of the Permanent Civil Service was signed by them on 23rd November 1853. It is no exaggeration to single out this document from among a notable series of government reports as one of the most important and perspicacious state papers of the modern epoch. Its contents and fate have already been briefly touched upon. During his fruitful labours at the Treasury Trevelyan had not found himself so overwhelmed as to lose touch with Indian affairs. He had grasped the truth that administration was a universal element in human society and that it was the function of the high practitioner to see it and set it clearly in its universal setting. Having been instrumental in applying the lessons of a great oriental experiment to the administrative requirements of the home country Trevelyan was prepared to return to his first love. The specific career of Anthony Trollope’s ‘Sir Gregory Hardlines’19 was approaching its close. And so, in 1859, he left H.M. Treasury in London to take up the important post of Governor of the Presidency of Madras. Very quickly Trevelyan inaugurated reform which gained wide­ spread support from the people, but this popularity did not save him from the consequences of an error of judgment that allowed publicity to an expression of views critical of a scheme of financial retrenchment proposed by the Council of India. Trevel­ yan was recalled in 1860. There was much discussion throughout the land. Lord Palmerston, then Prime Minister, defending his action before Parliament, said, ‘Undoubtedly it conveys a strong censure on one act of Sir Charles Trevelyan’s public conduct, yet Sir Charles Trevelyan has merits too inherent in his character to be clouded and overshadowed by this simple act, and I trust in his future career he may be useful ot the public service and do honour to himself’. In the same strain Sir Charles Wood, President of the Board of Control, said ‘A more honest, zealous, upright and independent servant could not be. He was a loss to India, but there would be danger if he were allowed to remain, after having adopted a course to subversive to all authority, so

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fearfully tending to provoke the people to insurrection against the central and responsible authority’.20 As it was to turn out, Trevelyan’s disgrace was but temporary. As soon as the home government had been vindicated plans were made for his return to the field of his great endeavours. He went back to India in 1862 as Finance Minister, the choice of this particular post presenting an emphatic justification of his previous policy. His most extensive contribution during the three follow­ ing years was in the development of public works as a method of expanding the resources of India. After his final return to England in 1865 he interested himself in many projects of social reform, but above all he threw himself with particular enthusiasm into the controversy on army purchase, whereby army commis­ sions were bought and sold as private property, a system that was abolished in 1871. Sir Charles Trevelyan’s career epitomized the development of imperial public administration at a vital stage in Britain’s colonial saga. Quite apart from his seminal contribution to Civil Service reform, he has good claim to figure among Britain’s greatest public administrators. It is symptomatic of the restricted import­ ance habitually assigned to this line of activity that, outside the caricaturizing pages of Anthony Trollope and perhaps inci­ dentally in G. O. Trevelyan’s Life and Letters of Macaulay (1876), his career has received little attention from the literary biographers. PUBLIC

SERVICE

IN

COLONIAL

TERRITORIES

As our brief incursions into the administrative experience of Spain in Central and South America, and of Britain in India, will have indicated, the problems of colonial administration were already well understood in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and this can be further demonstrated by the even earlier experience of the Portuguese, French and Dutch in many parts of the world which has not been covered. During the nine­ teenth century, however, with the great scramble for colonies, especially in Africa, the problem of achieving effective admini­ stration of overseas territories was greatly extended. The areas occupied by the Europeans had their established forms of govern­ ment, which were usually retained. A new element in the situa­ tion may already have been introduced by the impact of explorer, missionary, trader, more or less as a free-lance pursuing his own line of activity. In some cases an interim system of foreign administration had been introduced by a trading company, as

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had happened in India, eventually to be superseded by more settled colonial government when the tasks of political super­ vision had passed beyond the capacity of a purely trading body. In Africa, most of which was colonialized, the administrative experience was particularly varied. The main colonizing powers — Britain, France, Portugal and Belgium — had differing approaches,21 and there was also the contemporary experience of the shorter-lived German and Italian episodes. The British policy was to treat each area independently according to the needs of the situation, while the French were more inclined to operate a centralized policy direct from Paris. One outcome of the French approach was to give opportunities of French educa­ tion and citizenship to members of the local community rather sooner than such developments had been visualized in Britain, where policies of integration were never popular. It was preferred there to leave local administration to such native institutions as were competent to fill the role, perhaps with a little guidance. The Portuguese acted on the assumption of common citizenship between the home and overseas territories, a principle applied to some extent by the French. The Belgians organized their single vast Congo territory largely from Brussels, including the detail of the colony’s budget, through a Governor-General appointed by the King on ministerial advice. With them, administrative policy was largely shaped in the Belgian Ministry of the Colonies. With the dissolution of the colonial empires early in the second half of the twentieth century — except that of the Portuguese which at the time of writing (1971) still remains largely intact — comparison of the different administrations has lost much of its urgency, although no doubt future historians will have many interesting lessons to draw from this field. It is proposed to concentrate here mainly upon British experience. This is amply justified by the great variety of areas, cultures and institutions that made up the Empire and Commonwealth at its height, from the massive Indian Empire, extensive white Dominions, impressive Asiatic and African Colonies and Protec­ torates and numerous ports, coaling stations and islands scattered throughout the globe, surely one of the most promising human experiments in political and administrative co-ordination to be broken on the wheel of false ideology and poverty-stricken expediency. As the large white colonies became self-governing and, eventually, independent Dominions, they took control of their administrations, usually with locally recruited civil services patterned largely on the Whitehall model, except that — for

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example in the Australian colonies and later Commonwealth and state governments — the idea of the administrative elite was, for sound democratic reasons, discarded in favour of filling the higher posts usually from inside on the basis of professional competence. The administrative structure of the remaining terri­ tories was very different. From the fall of the First British Empire in the eighteenth century at least three administrative lessons were indicated, if not immediately learned, for application to the Second British Empire, which was already emerging. These were the need: (1) to co-ordinate supervision of overseas affairs through a central office in the metropolitan capital, (2) to assign specific authority to a representative of the Crown on the spot and to provide him with adequate administrative assistance, and (3) to encourage the participation of the inhabitants to the greatest practicable extent. The first was inaugurated when responsibility for colonial affairs was dissociated from home affairs and attached in 1801 to the newly appointed third participant in the Secretaryship of State, specifically responsible for War and Colonies.22 The Colonial Office became a distinct Central Department with the separation of War and Colonial business in 1854, as a consequence of the gross mismanagement of the Crimean War. The second was achieved by placing the individual colonies under a Governor, appointed by the Crown, and gradually evolving a corps of administrators for service in the several territories, and the third was met by the encouragement of representative institutions, although the speed with which these were introduced depended largely upon the capacity of the indigenous populations to take responsibility for the management of affairs. While a new approach to the problem of governing overseas territories was accepted as essential and was adopted as far as the existing conditions rendered practicable, there was no decisive break between the old and the new. Thus the experience of India in dealing with peoples of different racial backgrounds was to be influential in future developments. In the major white colonies the movement towards autonomy, as a stage in the attainment of independence, was rapid* accompanied where appropriate, as in Canada and Australia, by federal integration, followed later by the granting to them and New Zealand of dominion status, and something short of this in one or two others. The case of South Africa, where the whites were a minority, was not altogether happy, for in this instance the decidedly liberal policies of the home government and the early granting of dominion status led to the predominance of the Afrikaans group, which had IlY

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an almost religious antagonism to the granting of equality, even to the other white groups, and when the opportunity came took away from the coloured peoples even those initial gains in increased political participation which had been made in the South African as in other Crown Colonies. General responsibility in London for the affairs of the selfgoverning territories was transferred to a separate Dominions Office in 1925,23 under a Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, later to retitled ‘Commonwealth Relations Office’ in 1947. The Colonial Office continued to be responsible for colonial territories until 1st August 1966 when it was absorbed into the Common­ wealth Relations Office, then renamed ‘Commonwealth Office’, a short-lived change which was to be terminated by the latter’s combination with the Foreign Office during 1968, as the Depart­ ment of Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. Certain points need to be emphasized about control from Whitehall. General policies determined by the Cabinet on the advice of and implemented by the Colonial Secretary, in the great variety of conditions that distinguished the several terri­ tories, needed to be flexibly applied on the spot and a good deal of initiative had to be left to the Governors and their staffs. Overseas matters of legislative interest were for a long time given scant attention by Parliament as falling within the scope of the Royal Prerogative, but even when more democratic attitudes became the fashion Parliament found it difficult to call the Home Government to account on matters about which it had little direct information. This continued, despite the stream of admirable reports and white papers from the Colonial Office, which were often of necessity getting out of date by the time they were printed and taken notice of. On these matters, too, the British electorate showed much less interest than one would have expected from a truly imperialist power. Until responsible legis­ latures appeared on the spot it can be justly concluded that the Colonial governments were highly bureaucratic, even if they acted in what they honestly considered to be the interests of their wards — one of the few examples of bureaucratic governments in a practical sense, and without pejorative implications. The Governor was appointed by the Crown, born of similar parentage to the old Colonial Governor and the President of the United States.24 Unlike the President, he was not democratically selected, but unlike his royal model in modern Britain he exer­ cised both ceremonial majesty and executive authority, with the support of a group of subservient officials rather than politically responsible ministers. He was supreme guardian of native

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interests. His supremacy was not confined to the civil sphere, for he was also commander of the local forces. He exercised the prerogative of mercy on his personal responsibility, though he had to ask the advice of his Executive Council. He could be selected from outside the public service, and national notabilities were acceptable, but the suitability of their career experience always rendered the seniors of the Colonial Service particularly eligible, and many crowned their careers in this way, perhaps finally to settle down in the homeland as respected members of the House of Lords, where their advice could prove of outstanding value. The senior members of the Governor’s administration were recruited in Britain to ‘His (Her) Majesty’s Colonial Service’ an expression first used in Colonial Regulations issued on 30th March 1937,25 although it was to be some time before the phrase represented a co-ordinated reality. From the outset the Indian Civil Service was influential, both by precept and example. The public services of the other Asiatic territories — Ceylon, Straits Settlements and Hong Kong — were shaped on the Indian model, examinations for the three services being established in 1869 and a combined Eastern Service being introduced in 1882, thus per­ mitting successful candidates to have a choice of territory. In 1896 the examination was combined with that of the Home and Indian Civil Services, which placed the Eastern Service ahead of the rest of the Colonial Service in this respect.26 Complete interchangeability was to be prevented for some time because of the varying health hazards which rendered voluntary choice of territory essential. In this field in particular unification was to wait upon the march of science! While the Colonial Service was always an elite group and most of the middle grade and subordinate duties were carried out by local institutions or locally recruited staff, its duties were multi­ farious, covering the whole range of governmental activities as were needed in the several territories, and not merely the admini­ strative and regulatory functions of government. Thus in all steps towards integration the emergence of specialist services was favoured. The principle of unification was officially favoured in 1930,27 and put into practice two years later when a unified Colonial Administrative Service was created, members of which were available for administrative posts in the various colonies. This facilitated a much more effective deployment of staff and improved the promotion prospects of individual officials, who now had the whole dependent Empire as their career field. The Colonial Legal Service followed in 1933; the Colonial Medical

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Service in 1934; separate Colonial Forest, Agricultural and Veterinary Services in 1937, and so on until, after the Second World War, as many as twenty specialist services had been established. As an example of how one of these specialist services was built up the Colonial Medical Service may serve very well. Originally a Colony’s Medical Department was concerned mainly with the medical needs of the official staffs, namely an establishments function. It only gradually assumed the external duties of a public health service, but such were the demands made by the fight against tropical diseases and bad sanitation that by the late ’twenties most territories had their own well-organized medical staffs. In some instances, notably in West Africa, East Africa and Malaya, these had been made into regional services each covering a group of territories in the respective areas. In other words, officers were interchangeable within each group, but the groups continued to be closed from one another. To establish a Colonial Medical Service the groups and other scattered staffs had to be consolidated into one system. A first step was to list the posts to be assigned to the new service and to enrol holders of these ‘scheduled posts’ as ‘foundation members’ of the Service. It was then necessary to define the standard of eligibility for membership of the Colonial Medical Service, for example, the holding of a registrable medical qualification, to lay down the rules for appointment, promotion and retirement of members of the Service, and to declare that holders of scheduled posts could be transferred by the Secretary of State to other scheduled posts, provided the conditions were not inferior to those under which they were already serving. In view of the varying salaries and conditions hitherto attached to the individual posts by the several colonies this consolidation into one service left a member knotty problems to be hammered out at the Colonial Office. It should be added that in those colonies where posts were held by fully qualified natives, it was assumed that the present holder of the post would not wish to become transferable and his post was not therefore scheduled.28 The Colonial Secretary always exercised a wide patronage and a comprehensive scheme of competitve examinations was not built up, although services in certain colonies continued to be subject to examinations controlled by the Civil Service Com­ mission. There were also a number of technical appointments made on a contractual basis by an autonomous organization, known as the Crown Agents for Overseas Governments and Administrations (first appointed as long ago as 1833 by the

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Colonial Secretary under the title ‘Crown Agents for the Colonies’) to act as business and financial agents in the home country for the individual governments of the various territories. Latterly general recruitment was effected, on behalf of the Secretary of State, by competitive interview conducted by the Colonial Service Appointments Board, on which the Civil Service Commissioners were represented. The Board advised the Secretary of State in accordance with well-defined regulations, and legally he still had the right to waive any of the rules if he thought fit. Actual appointments still rested with the Governor on the spot. Candidates were adjudged on the basis of character, personality and potential suitability for the Colonial Service. The tests applied were subjective rather than objective, and the disadvantages of patronage and the influence of ‘the old school tie’ were never absent, however fairly the rules were applied. The result was to obtain recruits of a certain pattern, though it was a pattern stored subconsciously in the minds of the selectors. Certainly the natural leader was looked for, but not the creative type, the man with ideas, who might become a nuisance in a large-scale organization. Yet the selectors were bound to be careful, since every officer was to become an ambassador of Britain in the eyes of the inhabi­ tants of many foreign lands, while a capacity to put his hand to almost anything could hardly be overstressed. Certainly, despite its manifest attractions, the hardships of such service in under­ developed countries, sometimes with very uncomfortable climates, were hardly likely to commend it to seekers after cushy jobs. Before going abroad the approved candidate had to undergo a period of initial training in background subjects such as Colonial law, history, economics and politics, followed by six months study of appropriate languages and social subjects, lasting about fifteen months in all. After a satisfactory period of proba­ tion in the chosen country the young officer was given a follow-up course on more advanced subjects in Britain, lasting for six months, but this training was suitably modified for specialists. There was no colour bar, but, as in the case of the Indian Civil Service, the real obstacle to the entry of native candidates was the difficulty of obtaining the required education. This, of course, also operated among citizens in Britain, as entry to Oxford and Cambridge, whose scholars invariably did better in all these top examinations, was restricted at the school-leaving stage. Britain may well have suffered for not ensuring that more sons of the working class took part in imperial administration. In ensuring law and order and administering territories with

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substantial populations the logical recourse for a small European corps was to make use of existing institutions, normally through the chief or headman, according to local conditions. In Africa, in particular, a system of indirect rule came to be adopted as a matter of expediency, and it was only later that the respective merits of direct and indirect rule came to be advocated or rejected on grounds of principle.29 It is not to be wondered that the British, in developing the new colonial administration, should have adopted as the key official a type based upon the District Officer of the Indian Civil Service, the all-rounder on the spot in whose hands were concentrated both executive and judicial authority. He had to get things done and the main difference between the Indian and the African environment was that in the latter he would more often find himself doing them personally, for, however co-operative and loyal the natives under his control, their grasp of the basic requirements of the job were often minimal. An entirely new network had to be evolved to bring to the people services they had not hitherto enjoyed and which they often had to be first persuaded that they needed. Some of these officials worked at headquarter offices where matters of protocol were more important, but many took charge of posts out in the field where they depended a good deal on their own ingenuity and resource, performing clerical and magisterial work at their own miniature headquarters or undertaking tours of duty in the field.30 To be successful in such a job these men had to be dedicated, and prepared to do without many of the amenities of civilization to make a success of it. In the current wave of anti-imperialist resentment, the substantial constructive contribution made by these dedicated officials has been hidden from the light of day, but surely history will have a different tale to relate. They had many hardships to face and their monetary rewards would be laughed at in the more materialistic phase that followed, but the truth was that the best of them enjoyed the life in the African bush, an environment that often exerted an almost magic spell upon even the more sophisticated who happened to pass that way, and they were spurred forward by a conviction, not only that the Africans needed them, but that the work they were doing and the foundations they were laying would one day bring a new pros­ perity to the lives of those whom they served. There is space only briefly to touch upon their rapid displacement following the Second World War. *

*

*

The post-war dissolution of the sea-linked empires was the

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outcome of an historical process, speeded up, and to some extent deflected, by the war. An immediate philosophical impulse was given by the drawing up of the eight-point Atlantic Charter, by President Roosevelt of the United States and Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Britain, in the West Atlantic on 14th August 1941, the third of whose eight clauses asserted the ‘Right of all peoples to choose their own form of government’. After the war there was a wave of anti-imperialism, which arose from a complex of causes whose relative contributions are not easily assessed. War-weariness on the part of the major contestants had a lot to do with it, fortified no doubt by the increase in political conscious­ ness in the colonial territories, encouraging the growth of political parties who took a leaf out of their masters’ book. The rapid decline in sea-power was of course decisive, as was the invention during the war of greatly improved small arms and other portable weapons which rendered police control of insurgency increasingly difficult and the maintenance of internal security too heavy a burden upon the civil administration. The most important change, however, was in the increased power of the geographically integrated super-powers: first the United States, then the U.S.S.R. and, potentially, China, present­ ing the astonishing spectacle of a new imperialism pretending to be anti-imperialist. All were anti-colonialist in principle and actively opposed to the continuance of the existing European overseas empires. The Americans misconstrued the present state of the world in terms of their own eighteenth century revolution; but theirs was mere acquiescence compared with the anti­ imperialism of the Russian Communists which was based upon the Marxist-Leninist philosophy by which they believed them­ selves to live. Lenin, who set out the doctrine in his Imperialism: The Highest State of Capitalism (1917), derived his basic thesis from the English liberal economist J. A. Hobson, whose book on Imperial­ ism had been published in 1902. Like so many theories of this type the basic idea was plausible and easily sold by the clever to the ignorant. In the face of British prosperity during the nine­ teenth century it was not difficult to make a case that the real root of it all was not the genius of the inventor and the entrepreneur, heavily supported by the hard work of the labourer, but imperialist exploitation, and to mask, by quoting partial and misleading statistics, two important factors, namely the extent of the benefit brought to the overseas lands by enterprising strangers, and the sacrifices made by persons in the home country who deferred present consumption on quite a large scale in order to

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send abroad goods to build up capital resources which the over­ seas countries sadly lacked. Marxists do not want to know any­ thing about the devoted services of foreign administrators in the new lands. But the root causes of the changed situation were economic and social, an idea that would have mightily pleased Karl Marx who, had his massive brain had access to the knowledge available today to any secondary schoolboy, would long ago have rejected out of hand the restricted views of his most devout followers. After the war the people of Britain as a whole wanted full employment and a Welfare State, and the politicians and their advisers, irrespective of party, knew that this would be very expensive and achievable only through a massive concentration of resources. The expenses of empire were bound to grow and, in the nature of things, the colonies would require considerably expanded social services, supported by a much more expensive administrative structure and establishment than had hitherto been developed. The position was not clearly seen at the outset, but the idea that the less fruitful parts of the Commonwealth should take over responsibility for their own advancement had sufficient attractions to crowd out former ‘imperialist’ doctrines so quickly that many Britons were still enthusing over the Commonwealth when it had already ceased to exist in any sub­ stantial sense. Britain of course continued to make her contribu­ tion, for few of the newly independent countries could manage without weighty external aid, especially at the level of expecta­ tions that the false prophets had planted in their minds. It was fortunate that the United Nations was able, through a number of well organized Specialized Agencies, to extend these resources in men, ‘know-how’ and materials, by the co-operative techniques of technical aid. There is certainly evidence that the sudden speeding up of decolonization, greatly aided by the trends just mentioned, has worked to the advantage of the colonizing powers rather than to that of the new states, and that a less critical attitude to imperialism would have meant a slowing down of the process, which in the long run could have brought consider­ able advantages to civilization as a whole. In most territories education had not expanded quickly enough, while the training of experts, including administrators and even clerks, had lagged behind. The new states were faced with the very problem that had faced the expanding nations of Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century, when industrialization had reached a stage which created an urgent need for middleclass professionals who did not yet exist; but while the new states

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had the advantage of this earlier experience, they were usually without the necessary understanding or adequate resources to profit from it. The problem was not merely administrative, though effective administration was a vital factor; nor was it confined to the new states. The speeding up of technological change was now confronting all countries with similar situations, merely at a somewhat later stage in community evolution, and in some cases in chronic form. *

*

*

Following the conclusion of the Second World War, the build up of the unified Specialist Colonial Services of the British Empire continued, and the radical developments that lay almost directly ahead were not foreseen, certainly not by the Colonial Office in London, whom we find in 1950 issuing, through His Majesty’s Stationery Office, an invitation to The Colonial Service as a Career, in an attractively illustrated and written pamphlet by Kenneth Bradley. Imminent advances towards self-government called for a new policy four years later when a scheme was devised to reorganize the several specialist services into a single ‘Her Majesty’s Overseas Civil Service’, aimed at improving continuity of service in a contracting corps by making members eligible for similar employment elsewhere should their own post be superseded.31 But the position continued to change so rapidly that appointments for limited terms on a contract basis became a more suitable way of filling vacancies, especially those of an expert nature. This was the normal method adopted by the Department of Technical Co-operation, established in July 1961 [from 1964 the ‘Ministry of Overseas Development’] which, among its responsibilities, took over the work of overseas recruitment hitherto undertaken by several government Depart­ ments in Britain. While efforts were made by heads of the new states to retain the services of former Colonial Service officials after indepen­ dence, there were many counter-influences operating to frustrate the success of such a policy. There was a great dearth of citizens sufficiently qualified for such positions as well as for other pro­ fessional and managerial posts, but the number of aspirants was legion, all feeling strongly that independence was meaningless if it did not mean that they would take over the posts of their former masters, nor were existing native holders of higher and middle-grade posts willing to continue under the tutelage of white seniors for a day longer than was necessary. Judgment of competence was completely subjective. Equally influential in speeding up the exodus was the admost instantaneous loss of

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confidence of serving Colonial Officials that their posts would continue for long, whatever the initial policy of the new govern­ ments. News from colleagues going home and securing good posts there disclosed the wisdom of getting in while the market was favourable. It was almost every man for himself, and only those who were most dedicated to their former service were inclined to hang on. The French overseas service seems to have been more fortunate in this respect, largely no doubt because a more integrated personnel system had been built up before indepen­ dence and officials of the two races had already got used to working together as colleagues. The attitudes of Britain’s elite die hard, even on the home ground, so that it was not likely that they would have been radically modified overseas. Here the United Nations were able to step in, mainly through their technical aid programmes, and their widely recruited group of specialists was able to accommodate many of the ex-Colonial officials, by means of short-term missions, and thus to make use of their invaluable experience. The magnitude of the change is succinctly stated by Mr. A. L. Adu, who was already a senior civil servant in Gold Coast before it achieved independence as Ghana in 1957, when he writes: ‘The role of the Civil Service since independence has undergone a fundamental change. Instead of being the Government the Civil Service has become the executive instrument of government.’32

In fact this distinction between political direction and admini­ stration had only developed in Western countries during the previous century, and not always very clearly there. It was hardly to be expected, therefore, that the distinction between politics and administering — an outcome of the development of division of labour in an increasingly complex society — would be immediately achievable in the new countries, particularly as the previous Colonial model had hardly emphasized the principle. In some senses the new nations may have been in too much of a hurry. Inadequately prepared by their teachers to differentiate between what was appropriate to their situation and what was not, and under powerful political and social pressures, also in the main acquired from the West, they were much too eager to take over from the contemporary world institutions and practices that were too complicated and burdensome for the results they were likely to bring at their particular stage of development. A too complex administrative machine and a too impressive trade union structure could well prove the new community’s old-man-of-thesea from whose weight they would never be free. Much more attention ought to have been given to the possible consequences

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of endowing simpler communities with ‘advantages’ low down in their scale of necessities by any reasonable standards. The persistence of older forms of administration, due perhaps to the absence of any better local substitute, is evidenced in a massive study undertaken on behalf of the Duke University Com­ monwealth Studies Centre,33 from which it is clear that, despite the rapid discarding of British personnel by the five countries examined — India, Pakistan, Burma, Ceylon and Malaya — the pattern and methods of the Indian Civil Service, on which the new administrations had been based, had so far been maintained. [Tibet is also included, but this is a special case, as it was not colonized.] Two decades of independence is historically too brief a period upon which to form any definite conclusion, especially in an Asian environment where new seminal movements have a massive cultural and historical background on which to build. Yet older political structures have a way of persisting, not necessarily to the advantage of the host society: as in the Central and Southern American states, which favour the presidential type without completely discaring the older colonial institutions, and particularly in the Republic of Liberia in West Africa, which retains the American pattern of government with which it was originally endowed by the American Colonization Society in the early part of the nineteenth century, preserving most of the disadvantages of presidential supremacy and spoils without obtaining the real advantages of Congressional democracy. In all these cases the future is filled with question-marks. THE R U S S I A N R E V O L U T I O N : B U R E A U C R A C Y OF T HE S I N G L E P A R T Y

STATE

The Russian Revolution in 1917 occurred in a vacuum created by the impact of the shocking losses of the Great War upon the longer term incompetence of the Tsarist regime. In a negative situation the soldiers’ desire for peace and the peasants’ desire for land ensured that the vacant power should go to the interest group shrewd enough to convince the people that this was just what it offered. The Bolsheviks had in Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin (1870-1924) an inspired and ruthless leader who correctly read the historical situation, and had the authority and will to imple­ ment the cure, as he conceived it, with conscienceless devotion, strengthened by a quasi-religious philosophy drawn from the essentially Western philosophy of Marxist communism, designed for a diametrically opposed situation, the further stage of capitalist industrialization that had not yet matured in Russia,

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and in a context of permanent world revolution, the conditions for which were only apparently existent in the war situation for the time being, it was nevertheless a philosophy capable of so many twists, misinterpretations and falsifications as to be eminently effective in confusing not only the ignorant but also the substantial educated group, present in all communities, that literally pleads to be mislead because the real truth, as they see it, is too frightening to contemplate. The democratic basis of the new system stemmed from the spontaneous soviets of workers’ deputies that had first taken shape during the abortive rising of 1905 and was exemplified in the committee organized by the Petersburg [subsequently ‘Petrograd’ and then ‘Leningrad’] Menshevik Group, which was widely copied in 1917, notably by the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, whose appointment had preceded by a couple of days the abdication of the Emperor Nicholas II (1868-1918) and the formation on 15th March 1917, by the moderate progressives of the Duma (or Parliament), of a Provisional Government. The strategy by which the Menshevicks and other opposition reformist groups were superseded by the Bolsheviks, who had not in fact been the initiators of the revolution, had been worked out by Lenin in his earlier political writings and campaigning. In a powerful essay What is to be Done?, issued in March 1902, Lenin had argued the case for a highly centralized and disciplined party of professional revolutionaries who would lead the workers’ movement and not merely act as its appointed representatives.34 This party was not to be merely the natural emanation of a developing proletariat, in the philosophic tradition of Karl Marx (1818-83) and Friedrich Engels (1820-95), but a new leadership elite imposed from outside the workers’ movement and permeat­ ing all levels in a truly classless way, with no nonsense about the necessity of employing democratic ways and means. From this strategy the Fascists too were to take their cue, although, looking back into history one can see that the idea was hardly a new one. The Marxist dictatorship of the proletariat was to be deferred into the distant future. Not that the master’s interpretation of this well-worn phrase was clear, nor was his view of the position of the communist leadership in the post-revolutionary situation. His notion of the administrative apparatus of communism was particularly unilluminating, largely because neither he nor his close adherents had thought much about a problem of whose practical importance they were as yet completely unaware. Much play has been made of the philosophic conceit that, with the replacement of capitalism by communism, administration of

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persons would give way to administration of things, a statement still sometimes heard that quite misconceives the real nature of administration and exemplifies the lack of realism that permeates Marxist thought. While the architects of the Revolution — especially Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin — were well aware of the importance of organization as an essential ingredient of effective administration, at the outset Lenin at least was inclined to under-rate the diffi­ culties of administering or failed to visualize its probable magni­ tude in an adequate system of government such as the vast complexity of the varied realm of Russia was bound to entail. He not only expected the people freely to participate in such administering, but thought that familiarity with the process would even condition them to do without key-administrators, much as communist orchestras were expected in the beginning to do without conductors. Yet it is certain that before he died concrete problems had served effectively to change his mind. Leon Trotsky (1877-1940), who demonstrated his organizational flair in his deployment of the victorious Red Army and his philosophic genius in his notable interpretation of the Russian Revolution,35 was nevertheless to be bypassed, exiled, and eventually elimi­ nated, by the Master Secretary who recognized efficient admini­ stration in the service of masterly intrigue, as the one sure means to his own supremacy. Trotsky, pursued by his enemies, was assassinated in Mexico in August 1940. Like Augustus Caesar, who eschewed the purple robe, masking his actions in republican forms, Joseph Vissarionovitch Stalin (1879-1953) climbed to the summit as the servant of a great power, itself the hidden impeller of a super-government whose inherent weaknesses he knew only too well how to manipulate. In the beginning the idea of freedom reigned for the many nationalities that Imperial Russia had absorbed, but the anti­ nationalist doctrines of Marxism and the practical drive of mili­ tary reconquest soon brought the old monolithic Russia back on the stage as the necessary basis of the new state, capable of standing against the rest of the world, particularly as the vision of world revolution had already waned. Size of population and geographical extent determined that the new system should be Federal in form, if not always in actual working. A number of autonomous Federal Republics therefore emerged, of which the Russian Soviet Federal Republic (R.S.F.S.R.) was the leading example, comprising the major part of Russian territories in Europe. Its constitution, adopted in July 1918, was to be the prototype of all the others. A Constitution for the new Union of

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Soviet Republics (S.S.R.) was adopted in January 1924 and later superseded by the Constitution of 1936, which defines the U.S.S.R. as ‘a Socialist State of workers and Peasants’, (Chap. 1, Art. I),36 revision of which is now reported to be well advanced. Soviet Russia thus came to be divided into fifteen Union Republics, of which, not surprisingly, the R.S.F.S.R. maintained its pre­ eminence, and there were also several Autonomous Republics and Autonomous Regions falling within the areas of one or other of these republics, but mostly within the R.S.F.S.R. Within all these major divisions, in addition to the Federal government, there were complete systems of local government, of regions, districts, towns and rural areas, forming a hierarchy of government institutions, deriving power from a parallel system of local soviets. While the Soviet scheme does not recognize a definite tri­ partite separation between executive, legislature and judiciary, the exigencies of government have determined the need for bodies more or less specializing in these well-defined activities. At the summit of the Federal system there is the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., which exercises both legislative and certain other state powers not specifically assigned to other branches. It is a two-chamber body consisting of a Council of Nationalities and a Council of the Union, both elected, the first on a nationalities basis and the second on a population basis (with obvious indebtedness to the United States Congress). But the Supreme Soviet, which meets only for short periods annually, to bridge the gap and act for it between sessions, elects in joint session a Praesidium, consisting of a Chairman, fifteen Deputy Chairman — one for each of the Union Republics — a Secretary and sixteen Members. The Chairman acts as ceremonial Head of State for the Union, while the Deputies fulfil similar functions in the Union Republics. As such they are even more of figure­ heads than some constitutional monarchs. The membership of the Praesidium includes leading members of the Communist Party, which is not provided for in the Constitution. The Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet is in effect the Govern­ ment of the U.S.S.R., with high political and diplomatic responsi­ bilities and numerous specific functions of a legislative and executive nature, including interpretation of existing laws. On the recommendation of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers it appoints the Ministers of the U.S.S.R. and other high Offices of State, subject to subsequent confirmation by the Supreme Soviet. Actual administration is placed in the hands of the Council of Ministers, which is described below. As Judiciary the U.S.S.R. and each Republic has its Supreme

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Court, with numerous other courts at several levels, down to the People’s Courts in towns and districts. The Judges are elected by the Soviets at the appropriate levels, except the People’s Courts, in the election of which the adult citizens also participate. The Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R. can, in certain circumstances, review decisions by other Supreme Courts, but not the validity of All-Union law. There is also a network of special security organs to which reference will be made later. As embodied in the 1936 Constitution and its amendments, this governmental structure is modelled on the normal constitutional machinery of the modern democratic state, including even the built-in safeguards of a bill of rights, but, in view of the special nature of the power system operating outside the formal political machinery, this carefully devised structure of institutions consti­ tutes a facade behind which the realities of Communist power are hidden. It was perhaps understandable that in the ’thirties, wellwishers like the Webbs should have reacted with enthusiastic joy when such a liberal constitution was introduced, but no reader today of their magnum opus37 on the subject, bearing in mind the ruthless spring-cleaning that Stalin was undertaking at the very time the Webbs were rejoicing, can but marvel at the gullibility of intellectuals whose minds have already been made up. While the Party exercises its appointed role, with the efficiency that one has grown to expect, it could well be suggested that the entire machinery of government of the U.S.S.R. was an ingenious, if highly effective, administrative network and nothing more. But even if this were so, the mere administration of such a vast and complex governmental and productive system is in every sense a major enterprise whose specifically administrative aspects deserve particular attention. ‘The highest executive and administrative organ of the state power of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is the Council of Ministers of the U.S.S.R.’ (Constitution, Chap. V, Art. 64).38 The membership of the Council includes not only the ministers but also the executive heads of numerous specialist State Boards, Committees and Administrations of various sorts. The make up varies from time to time, but in April 1963 the members were the Chairman — equivalent to Prime Minister — three First Deputy Chairmen, eight Deputy Chairmen, Chairmen of the fifteen Union Republics; Ministers of the three All-Union Minis­ tries (i.e. Foreign Trade, Merchant Marine and Railways); Ministers of the eight Union Republican Ministries (i.e. Agri­ culture, Communications, Culture, Defence, Finance, Foreign Affairs, Health, and Higher and Secondary Specialist Education)

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[The All-Union Ministries operated throughout the Union, the Union Republican Ministries shared responsibilities with similar Ministries in the Republics. There were also Republic Ministries which had no counterpart in Moscow.]; Chairmen of seven State Committees (i.e. Agricultural Procurement, Broadcasting and Television, Cinematography, Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, Foreign Economic Relations, Labour and Wages, and State Security); the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Council of National Economy (S.C.N.E.), together with the Chairmen of ten State Committees and three State Production Committees subordinate to S.C.N.E.; the Chairman and three Deputy Chairmen of the State Planning Committee (Gosplan), together with the Chairmen of the eleven State Committees subordinate to Gosplan; the Chairmen and four Deputy Chairmen of the Council of National Economy, U.S.S.R. (C.N.E.) together with the Chairmen of two State Committees subordinate to C.N.E.; the Chairman of the All-Union Association for the Sale of Agri­ cultural Machinery; the Chairman and three Deputy Chairmen of the State Committee for Construction Affairs (Gosstroi) together with the Chairmen of two State Committees and three State Production Committees subordinate to Gosstroi; the Chair­ man of the Board of the State Bank; the Head of the Central Statistical Administration; and the Chairman of the Board of the All-Union Bank for Financing Capital Investment.39 The mem­ bership of this large and unwieldy body, whose active direction inevitably falls into the hands of a more compact inner circle, or ‘cabinet’, thus consists not only of those Ministerial Heads of the usual functional departments with substantial political orientations, but also of the heads of the several economic plan­ ning and production organizations and committees that form an essential part of the government of a community that is largely, or as in the case of the U.S.S.R., almost totally, socialized. As the active executive of the U.S.S.R. it is responsible for the general administration of all sectors, not shared with or delegated to the unit republics, including the national budget and economic plan, maintenance of public order, call up of citizens for the armed forces, and foreign relations. The organs of state administration were democratically based, in accordance with the Leninist insistence that the masses of the working people should be drawn into public administration, which was fulfilled by placing such organs under the continuing super­ vision of the soviets at several levels. The principle of legality was important in the working of these public bodies which had to operate according to the law. Planning, as an essential feature

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of socialist production, aimed at the co-ordination and harmoni­ ous functioning of all state organs, which were subordinated both to general jurisdiction and to the oversight of the next higher public body in the same administrative hierarchy. The overall aim was to couple the best possible local contribution with that of the community as a whole. Taking into account the breadth and depth of U.S.S.R. public administration, operating at all governmental stages from AllUnion, through Union-Republican, and the several provincial, district and town levels already mentioned, it is evident that the administrative network was highly complex and all-pervasive and that without some well-knitted controlling initiative it would tend to become incoherent and directionless. This situation would be worsened by the constant need, in a rapidly changing situation, for the administrative patterning to be continually regeared, with all the problems of having to make a fresh start. Despite the obverse effect of the brake applied by the normal bureaucratic habits, of which Russia had had abundant experience from earlier regimes, to such an extent that they had become a part of the national outlook, these trends could have led to chronic instability and operational breakdown. *

*

*

In all systems of government there must be an organ which initiates — chief, king, emperor, dictator, aristocracy, bureau­ cracy, people’s council, cabinet, party and so forth — by which policy is shaped and execution directed. From being an interest group formed to influence governments and legislatures the political party has, in some modern systems, sought to be unique and to form the centre of power in its own right. Of such single­ party systems the Communist Government of the U.S.S.R., with its offshoots and duplicators, has proved the most effective. As early as 1918 the fusion of party with government mani­ fested itself through the handling of foreign affairs by the Central Committee of the Party rather than the People’s Com­ missariat for Foreign Affairs, which had been established for the purpose. It was to go over to the Politburo, when this emerged the following year.40 Steps were taken at an early stage to elimi­ nate opposition within the Party, but it is interesting to observe that most of the failings of which these critics had accused the Party — corruption, failure to win the confidence of the rank and file, bureaucratic indifference to the needs of the governed, pre­ occupation with their own interests, chronic inefficiency — had been turning over in Lenin’s mind as his untimely end was nz

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approaching. He had consoled himself for the general failure by admitting that as yet the new administration was the same bureaucratic apparatus of the old regime ‘only slightly repainted on the surface’, and suffering badly from the presence of numbers of old imperial officials who had been taken on because there was as yet no real alternative.41 The Bolsheviks had not yet had time to produce something more constructive in place of the legal order they had destroyed. Yet the rebuilding of the Party was already in hand. As early as 1919 membership had been registered and members considered unworthy removed. Recruitment policy had been gradually tightened up, the idea of ‘the purge’ was always in mind. The modest purge of August 1921 was entrusted to a central commis­ sion of five. With the best will in the world it was not possible to prevent such operations being used to victimize the unorthodox. New rules, adopted in 1922, set out the hierarchic structure into which the Party was organized, from the Central Committee at the peak, through regional (oblast') committees or committees of national parties, provincial (guberniia) committees, district (uezd) committees, rural (volost') committees, to industrial and Red Army cells or party cells in the individual institutions. The principle of hierarchic subordination was pressed to the extent of requiring each committee as elected to be confirmed by the next committee above.42 The same rule applied to the provincial secretaries, who formed a secretarial network under the control of the central organs of the Party. To strengthen control in the hands of a compact group Lenin had reintroduced the Politburo in 1919. This inner policy-making group was in fact intended to deal only with questions of real urgency and to report all matters to the Central Committee although it did not always operate that way. The real innovation at that time was the additional appointment of the Orgburo (Organizational Bureau) whose func­ tion, according to Lenin, was to allocate forces, while the Polit­ buro decided policy. The third sub-committee of the central body appeared, in the Secretariat, its original staff of one increasing to three in March 1920. These four interweaving bodies, literally controlling all the country’s vast activities, offered a great oppor­ tunity to the men who could manipulate them. It is significant that from 1922 onwards Stalin was the only Bolshevik leader who was a member of all four bodies. As his death approached Lenin, who had formerly paid little attention to the perfecting of the administrative machinery of either state or party, at last realized what was happening and that there was no one at hand likely to be able to stand up to

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Stalin at the game he was so obviously marshalling his resources to play. When Lenin propounded his remedies for obviating bureaucratic tendencies in the Party the course of events had already passed the point of no return. The Master Player was ready to take over the Bank, and the lives of the New Russia’s first founders and outstanding servants were at stake. This morethan-twice-told tale of a nation’s growing agony is not for retelling here, but it is as well to note the extent to which administrative knowledge and administrative manipulation played in the dark outcome of Stalin’s dictatorship. *

*

*

The relationship between party and state was not defined, probably not clearly thought out. The idea that administration was just an incidental activity had discounted in advance any such consideration. Up to the death, in March 1919, of Sverdlov, the only party secretary of genius until then, the organization had worked through the local soviets, but now the whole question of inter-relationships had to be looked into afresh. The party committees were still to guide and control but not to participate in the detailed work of administration. To achieve this the Party would have to be equipped with a large well-organized staff. The expansion that followed entailed the setting up of a number of functional departments. At the same time the party machine had to be invested with adequate powers to perform its control­ ling functions, and the local bodies had to be freed from their existing dependence upon their soviet opposite numbers and to be brought directly under the control of the Central Committee. By a series of co-ordinated changes a monolithic party machine was constructed.43 The structure and functions of the new administrative machinery are interesting. Nine departments were visualized at the time of the Eighth Congress in 1919, but of the five imme­ diately introduced the three most important were: Informotdel (Information and Statistics) whose job was to extract full infor­ mation from the local party committees, covering such details as their structure, methods and activities; Orgotdel (Organization and Instruction), responsible for devising and establishing insti­ tutional forms for supervising the working of the party apparatus; and Uchraspred (Records and Assignments), concerned with the collection of information about party members, to provide the basis for central appointments and staff allocations. There were a number of other specialist departments, as well as numerous

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bureaux and groups to carry out party work among the national minorities. An important addition in September 1920 was Agitprop (Agitation and Propaganda) which gradually extended its influence and absorbed the functions of other bodies, like the Press Sub-Department and the Rural Department.44 The party apparatus was dominated by Orgotdel and Uchraspred, the former being strengthened by the absorption, at the end of 1920, of lnformotdel. In 1921 Orgotdel acquired a staff of Central Committee Instructors to undertake the impor­ tant function of inspection, and gradually poached upon personal questions hitherto the responsibility of Uchraspred. The two Departments were amalgamated during 1923. Thus the Party was able to build up an effective administrative network over which information effectively flowed between the centre and the extremities, and power could be transmitted at the behest of the Central Committee whenever necessary. At an early stage the Party’s Secretariat had reached an advanced state of organizational sophistication, which was to be kept under constant review and to be reshaped from time to time to regear it to a social, economic and political system in a con­ tinuous state of evolution. An examination of the structure of the Secretariat at different periods will show how the several functions were given differing emphases at these points of time.45 Even now the structural picture is not complete. It was almost a national complex that party, public institutions and people in Russia should be subject to a control, or security system, of unexampled power and devious complexity. The Communist Party had something of the nature of a religious order, whose adherents were expected to believe and whose novitiates had to be indoc­ trinated with the overriding truths of the Marxist philosophy, henceforth to be known as Marxist-Leninism. At an early stage schools were set up for the training of local party secretaries, and security machinery was devised as an integral part of the PartyState complex. The notorious Vecheka, or All-Russia Extra­ ordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Sabo­ tage and Speculation — supported by numerous local Cheka, or sub-commissions — evolved out of an earlier Military Revolu­ tionary Committee in December 1917. Originally an investigating body, it soon acquired executive powers, including the capacity to inflict the death penalty. In the beginning the Vecheka was a law unto itself, a counterpart of the arbitrary tribunals of the French Revolution, but later an attempt was made to introduce a revolutionary consciousness of justice. The system was regu­ larized and replaced in February 1922 by the G.P.U., the State

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Political Administration. A month or two later party control of the ordinary courts was strengthened by Lenin’s reintroduction of the Procuracy, first employed by Peter the Great, to supervise the courts. Not that it was necessary to look back so far, since the recent Czars had had their own secret police organization, on whose activities Russian politicians, not excluding Lenin him­ self, had inside information. The new Procurators were to work in close co-operation with the top party organs, the Orgburo, Politburo and the Central Control Commission. Experiment and change continued to mould this state security machinery, which acquired increasing power of summary punish­ ment, even to banishment without trial to forced labour camps. In 1923 the G.P.U. gave way to an even more powerful O.G.P.U., or Unified State Political Administration, which in its turn, in 1934, was superseded by N.K.V.D., the State Political Directorate of the Commissarist of the Interior. After a number of further changes during the Second World War — and immediate post-war period the organization emerged in March 1954 as the K.G.B., or Committee of State Security, with extensive security functions at home and abroad. Under its new name the institution was organized on lines similar to a union-republic ministry with branches in each of the fifteen republics, except that central control was much stronger than was usual.

The staffing of so varied a network of governmental and party administrative units at the several levels of the Federal system and comprising, besides the public sectors of an advanced socialist state, also those areas of economic enterprise which are left in most states to a private sector, was of itself a major operation involving bureaucracy of a complexity that makes the public services of the West appear childishly simple. The Party itself, even at its most expansive, has always been a select body from which doubtful elements have been excluded. A similar situation was reflected in the Party bureaucracy whose faith had to be above suspicion. Certainly the state machinery included the Soviets at the many levels, through which, in theory, democracy was enabled to participate both in the making of government policy and in actual administering, but inevitably local party controls reduced outside participation to a minor role. The ubiquity of the official in the Soviet system is exemplified by the use of the general term ‘state employee’ for the entire range of government worker from the minister at the top to the

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humblest manual worker, but to the officials of the higher and middle ranges who are classified as civil servants elsewhere, the legal title ‘holder of office’ is applied. Endowed with certain administrative capacities these functionaries include not only the equivalents of the administrative and executive civil servants in Britain, but also managers of factories and enterprises, profes­ sional and technological experts, judges, procurators, accountants, senior local officials, and so forth. The idea of a separate corps of civil servants is alien both to the general concept of the communist society, to the service of which all human participants are dedicated without distinction, and also to the socialist idea that the state and industry are not separate spheres of operation. Moreover, in each field of activity the Minister, subject to party supervision, is completely responsible for all appointments, although these usually entail a series of consultations which are laid down in detail for specific posts. Despite the considerable favour shown to the collegium, or plural executive, which, as we have already seen, is deeply rooted in Russian history, the general trend has been towards the placing of responsibility in the hands of an individual chief executive, or manager, largely because it is important to be able to assign specifically such responsibility and in practice things work out best this way.46 Yet each ministry and other major organization still has its collegium, which is appointed by the minister, with the approval of the Council of Ministers. It usually includes the minister or chairman, his deputy and chief executives, with a few others. It advises but cannot bind the chief, although there is an appeal to the Council of Ministers. It may also initiate wider meetings and bring other experts and interested persons into the discussions. While there is a general personnel code to which ‘holders of office’ are subject, the emphasis is in many ways differently placed under the Russian system. For example, there is no uniform system of recruitment and in assessing suitability for a job political acceptability ranks before experience and profes­ sional qualifications. But there must be no discrimination on grounds of either origin or sex, and the employment of close family relations in the same department is usually prohibited. The higher officials enjoy a privileged position, which includes a better salary, but are subject to strict discipline and severe penal­ ties for default or failure. They are now personally subject to the supervision of the powerful Committee of Party and State Control, set up in accordance with a decision of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet

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Union in November 1962.47 This Committee has widespread powers to investigate the activities of Party and State organs and particularly of members of controlling and supervising sections of the Ministries, and inter alia wields extensive disciplinary powers over ‘holders of office’. The power-generating and supreme policy-deciding institution in the Soviet system — replacing king, dictator, oligarchy or popu­ lar legislature of other systems — is the Communist Party which subscribes to the doctrine of Marxist-Leninism, a philosophy that is sufficiently vague and difficult to comprehend to confuse all but the most perspicacious, who have usually already too deeply committed themselves by the time they recognize the slenderness of the basic assumptions, to be able to retract with safety. The Party’s main function is to preserve the orthodoxy of the mem­ bership, which is from time to time subjected to purges for its ultimate good, and to see to the continuing indoctrination not merely of the membership, which is kept sufficiently select to be coveted, but also of all those citizens whose support is essential to the achievement of the Party’s objectives. The membership has to be sufficiently large to ensure the exercise of power throughout a populous, variegated and extensive community, and this involves a highly bureaucratized series of cells, groups and offices which operate in parallel with an equally complex machinery of government, incorporating, as we have seen, all the usual ingredients of constitutional government. In a way it can be said that Party and government are separate bureaucratic systems so interlinked that the first, from behind the scenes, gives directions to the second. This means that the government, despite the appearance of division into separate powers is really the administrative arm of the Party. Links between the two Institutions are achieved and maintained by a carefully devised series of control organizations and by the concurrent member­ ship of key-individuals in both institutions. The main directing impulse derives from a collegium whose primary object is to ensure the operation of the state machinery in accordance with the general Party policy, as laid down in its current programme. Existing democratic processes are too innocuous to permit the penetration of opposing ideas, unless sponsored from within, and safeguards against the usurpation of power were insufficient to prevent Stalin, with his expert inside knowledge and remarkable bureaucratic acumen, from manipulating the system according to his own interpretation of the nation’s needs, as ruthlessly as any Ivan the Terrible or Peter the Great. If active, effective, but malevolent, Bureaucracy is not a common historical pheno-

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menon, scholars need not search further than the Stalin epoch in Russia of 1924-53 to find a perfect example of its kind. ALBERT T H O M A S : INTERNATIONAL STATESMAN

The International Labour Organization (I.L.O.), had already been designed and brought into being, largely by the efforts of the British representatives G. N. Barnes, H. B. Butler and Sir Malcolm Delevingne,48 before its outstanding official, Albert Thomas (1878-1932), came upon the scene at the beginning of 1920. As a first step the I.L.O.’s Conference, consisting of national delegations each made up on a tripartite basis of two government, one employers’ and one workers’ nominee, met at Washington with the primary task of appointing the Governing Body, or executive council. This Governing Body was then faced with the responsibility of appointing a Director to control the Secretariat, which was destined to serve the two occasional bodies — Conference and Governing Body — on a permanent basis. It was expected that the choice would fall between H. B. Butler and the eminent French administrator and permanent head of their Ministry of Labour, Monsieur Arthur Fontaine; and when the latter was elected Chairman of the Governing Body, Butler seemed the only candidate for the Directorship. However, the workings of international politics now brought into the arena a new figure whose selection for the post was un­ doubtedly to impress a quite special stamp on the form and future of the new international organization. This was Albert Thomas, whose contribution was to be of special interest in a number of ways. Firstly in the manner of his choice, which has been placed on record in Thomas’s own words: ‘The Washington Conference had been convened. It was at that moment that my friends, the French workers, came to me and asked me if I would be a candidate for the Directorship of the International Labour Office. They desired to seek support for my nomination among their comrades from other countries and even from employers and governments. They went to Washington with this intention and when . . . the Governing Body met they put forward my candi­ dature. . . . I was provisionally elected by eleven votes against nine. The eleven votes in my favour were the votes of six workers and five employers. . . . A telegram informed me of this result, and a telegram from the workers urged that nevertheless I should accept. I accepted . . . The Governing Body met in Paris in January 1920, and on this occasion the governments were pleased to ratify my appointment unanimously.49

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It was to prove fortunate that in this case political methods of choosing had brought Thomas into the running. His history as a workers’ representative in France had provided him with the appropriate background. It happened that for this very new type of work he had already acquired the right outlook. He had been elected as socialist deputy for Sceaux in 1910, with particu­ lar interest in mining, railway transport and finance, and he had been a disciple of Jaures who had been assassinated for his inter­ nationalist ideas on 31st July 1914, the very eve of the Great War (1914-18). For much of the war he had been France’s Minister of Munitions, and was still a deputy in the legislature when he resigned to become an international civil servant in 1920 — albeit an international civil servant with a difference. He conceived of his job as that of statesman rather than official, and in this he undoubtedly took the true measure of the situation. Albert Thomas realized at once that the directorship of an international body like the I.L.O. called for a different approach and much more initiative than was required of a senior civil servant carrying out the policies of a minister, who was always at hand. The Conference would meet only once a year and the Governing Body would not always be available to reach policy decisions and supervise his administrative activities. In addition to this the I.L.O. whose high policy-making body, the Conference, was so organized as to represent the three main interests involved in the labour field, was for this very reason bound to be involved in politics to a degree that was exceptional for an international institution in which normally only governments were involved. Furthermore he believed, with the deep conviction of a mis­ sionary, in the object of the new body to improve the welfare of the workers and the understanding between employer and worker everywhere, and above all to achieve social justice. It was hardly surprising therefore that his impact on the civil servants recruited to the new organization, mainly from Britain and France, and especially on those British officials who had had so much to do with its origination, was distinctly disconcerting. Among these officials E. J. Phelan was Thomas’s first permanent appointment, initially to deal with general matters of finance and staffing and the preparation of the next meeting of the Governing Body. In Phelan’s Yes and Albert Thomas we have a perceptive study of Albert Thomas’s administrative life and measures inside the Organization. The importance of such a study from the inside, touching upon the actual processes of administration, a type of document that is still in short supply despite the universality of the activity, is not easily exaggerated. Better than all the

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erudite and often brilliant theorizings of students, it shows some­ thing of the impact of human experience upon and personal grappling with administrative situations and problems, while still in process of formulation, through the interaction of human agents among themselves and with the changing environment with its social, political, economic, ethnic, geographic, historical and, maybe, a dozen other streams of impinging reality. Unlike many of his colleagues Thomas realized immediately that the I.L.O. was an international organization with a dif­ ference and that its uniqueness would mean that its Office or Secretariat would be something more than an ordinary govern­ ment department. As Director he had to serve not just a single policy-making politician but three disparate groupings, among whom he came to regard the Employers representatives as equivalent to His Majesty’s Opposition in the structure of His Majesty’s Government, and just as important.50 There was the further vital factor that in this organization the defeated powers would have to be represented from the outset, which meant grappling with a difficult problem long before the new institu­ tions had had time to settle down, a test from which the League itself was to be saved for the time being. Moreover, particularly close relations were to be maintained from the outset with the United States which, despite President Wilson’s great initiative in the birth of the League, had decided, disastrously for the world’s future, not to take part in the main venture. On all these points Thomas had to meet a good deal of initial opposition, but so sure was his touch that he had little difficulty in getting his own way. Having his own ideas about the proper position of the Director, he at first opposed the appointment of a Deputy, but as a result of compromises in the general arrangements and with a view to attracting the support of the British Government, which, as he well knew, was very suspicious of his particular approach, H. B. Butler was appointed. Characteristically, when confronted by an orthodox plan for the structure of the new Office, as an alterna­ tive he sketched out a pattern of three Divisions, with the respec­ tive titles of Political, Diplomatic and Research, which of them­ selves indicated the activist nature of his approach. He was certain that, matching the I.L.O. as a whole, the Office would have to go out and construct contacts with its constituents and others, to explain itself to them and to do everything possible to further the aims for which the Organization had been con­ ceived. With this end in view he undertook many long and arduous journeys abroad and indeed acted as a remarkably sue-

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cessful public relations agent. One organizational development that was both unusual at the time and significant for the future of international government was the setting up of a network of branch offices of the I.L.O. in a number of countries.51 Phelan, as a practising civil servant from Britain, was in a good position to experience and assess the impact of the French approach, not only through Thomas but also through other mem­ bers of a staff which was at first virtually shared among French and British nationals. He seems to report pretty fairly, admitting his appreciation of certain aspects of the French attitudes to administration, as he had got to understand them. He did not like at first Thomas’s custom of meeting the entire staff to discuss problems and developments, a practice that arose naturally from Thomas’s trade union experience. It was not a natural impulse on the part of the administrator in Britain to bring into such discussions mere subordinates52 (although it must be noted that Whitleyism was coming there to inculcate new attitudes). This was in fact to become an accepted tactic of good management. We are told that Thomas was confused by the British file and registry system, and demonstrated a quite natural reaction against allowing spare files, in which he still had an interest, from being deposited in the central registry where they would be available to all. Rightly, Phelan retained his enthusiasm for the central registry system, but he himself does not appear to have been aware that at the time there were many executive branches in the British Civil Service where the vital functions were not com­ patible with the central filing system and therefore the degree to which the local branch participated in the general registry system was limited.53 Thomas brought in the personal cabinet which was unknown to the British, but in this case, Phelan admits, any possibility of interference by the staff officers was nullified by the fact that Thomas kept his secretariat too busy to have the time for any­ thing else.54 In one instance at least the existence of this system led to a satisfactory compromise. Under British practice corres­ pondence came in at the bottom and then moved upwards to the point in the hierarchy where it could be cleared, while the French practice was to pass papers down from the top, where they can be scrutinized before they go to the appropriate level of the hierarchy. Accepting in general the British method, which avoids the top ranks being cluttered up with a good deal of paper in which they have no interest, Thomas, as a compromise, arranged for a member of his cabinet to be present at the post opening, so that he could bring away, after registering, any document he

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considered his chief would wish to see immediately. Like so many outstanding administrators Thomas was a man of great energies, who never seemed to tire. He often threw a great weight upon his own staff, especially when they were required to work all hours in emergency. Nevertheless his skillful leadership drew forth a high degree of enthusiasm and loyalty. He could issue orders when needed, but preferred to take the staff along with him, so that in fact a definite instruction was rarely necessary. Thomas had a remarkable memory and great forensic skill which, if not essential abilities of the administrator, were obviously of great assistance in his position of international statesman. His capacity in dictating notes and communications was of a high order and his practice of recording his wishes in type on small slips of paper an idiosyncracy that Phelan sympa­ thetically explains. Like many energetic, impatient men, he often bothered too much about detail, even troubling to issue instruc­ tions on such things as chairs, writing paper and blotters to be provided for a meeting.55 Indeed Albert Thomas was a dedicated administrator. His death came unexpectedly at the early age of fifty-four, following closely upon recovery from an earlier bout of influenza. He had burnt himself out, and the loss was humanity’s. INTERNATIONAL

ADMINISTRATION

The traditional way of extending services over a number of communities has been through imperialist expansion, whose ostensible object was the extension of power, although often there were underlying integrative needs that justified such enter­ prises. The conqueror was the instrument of necessities whose absence would be likely to render his achievements short-lived, as in the astonishing case of Alexander the Great. Yet there were also early examples of attempts at co-ordinative admini­ stration, as maybe when the religious corporations of Sumer first came together, and certainly in Greece much later where amphictyonic councils already existed in the seventh century b . c . to organize and protect worship at common shrines. Leagues and federations of all sorts were set up from time to time to extend the operation of certain governmental activities over a number of autonomous areas or states. It was not, however, until the great communications expansion which began with the opening of the seaways towards the end of the fifteenth century of our era, and subsequently exploded landwise with the development of road, canal and rail transport in

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eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe and America, that the great expansion in international co-operation created a demand for new types of extra-state administration. The older method of sharing such administration on a multi-national basis continued, though the resultant organizations often achieved a good deal of autonomy. An interesting example was the European Commission of the Danube, established in 1856 to facilitate the navigation of this important international river in the interests of the several riverine states. It was served by representatives and officials of the constituent states in a form which at the time earned it the label ‘river state’, A new development in this branch of public administration took place during the second half of the nineteenth century with the introduction of a number of ‘international unions’, which have been regarded as the direct predecessors of the international organizations of today.56 These unions had specific functions, usually of social significance and of a permanent nature. They were open to non-member states and could even extend to private membership, as in the case of the International Telecommunica­ tions Union established in 1865. They exercised no political powers, their activities being essentially administrative of a non­ executive type. In fact they worked indirectly, in parallel with the national administrations. Operating mainly in the several fields of transport and communications, culture, customs admini­ stration, public health, agriculture and protection of labour, as many as 222 of these international unions had been founded by 1919. They were staffed by national officials, who, nevertheless, gradually acquired a sense of belonging to the specific office and acting impartially in the interests of the particular international community. An interesting example of this type of international body was the Universal Postal Union, founded in accordance with the Universal Postal Convention drawn up at Berne in 1874, with the technical task of co-ordinating and standardizing postal services and charges throughout the world. The Union was pro­ vided with a Bureau at Berne ‘which served as a link between the postal administrations and as a centre of information, clearing operations, preparation of meetings and publications’.57 This Bureau was staffed by Swiss officials and generally supervised by the Swiss Federal Government. International status was not granted to the staff until 1947, but it had already developed its own sense of mission and taken steps to recruit competent persons from other administrations. The idea of establishing a league of nations had frequently

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appeared and been discussed in the past58 but its first substantial realization had to await the treaty-making at Versailles, following the First World War, and the League of Nations was born on 10th January, 1920. The new international body was not a super­ state nor even a federation, although it did have many of the characteristics of a confederation of states. Its basic aim was to ensure the preservation of peace among the nations and to provide the means for guaranteeing the security of the member states. The machinery of the League consisted of an Assembly, representing the member states, a Council dominated by the victorious powers, and a permanent Secretariat, to comprise ‘a Secretary-General and such secretaries and staff as may be required’. The initial membership and its close association with the Treaty of Versailles lent colour to allegations that the League was designed to impose a victor’s peace, but the principle of universal membership and the subsequent admission of former enemy states rectified this. The real, and finally fatal, weakness was the absence of the United States from the very outset. To deal with specialist matters of importance to the League, numerous Auxiliary Organizations (severally classified Technical Organizations, Permanent or Temporary Advisory Commissions and Administrative or Executive Organizations) and certain Special Organizations,59 were introduced and developed over the years, and by these much important intranational work was performed and valuable experience was accumulated. The League had a mission and acquired a distinct personality of its own, but its greatest contribution was to provide invaluable services for the community of nations as a whole. It provided a central agency and effective administrative machinery capable of dealing with any matter confided to it by its members, and was a potential nucleus for the development of world government, even though progress towards such a goal was to prove dis­ appointing, less because the machinery was inadequate than because the war had failed to eliminate the old attitudes of the participants, contrary to what had been widely hoped with the onset of peace. Besides the League itself, there was the closely associated International Labour Organization, a specialized agency with, as we have already seen, a unique tripartite member­ ship representing governments, employers and workers and the Permanent Court of International Justice, which had had its tentative beginnings in the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, arising out of The Hague Conference of 1899 and 1907. The League did a good deal of useful work, but lost any

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pretensions to a peace-keeping body with the resignation from its membership of Germany, Italy and Japan in the ’thirties. Yet it was to linger on, despite the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, until its supersession by the United Nations with the signing of its Charter at San Francisco on 26th June 1945. The founders of the United Nations had the invaluable experi­ ence of the League of Nations to help them to avoid its major weaknesses, while the new organization was much better equipped to represent the international community. Unfortunately human foresight was not capable of providing for the greatly changed world conditions that, within a couple of decades, the revised institution would have to meet. These obstacles in the way of fulfilment were many: the consequence of a world split into power blocks supporting diametrically opposed ideologies; the overwhelming predominance of the two super-powers; the diffi­ culties arising from the application of the principle of equal franchise to vastly different population complexes, with the tendency of weaker members to use the United Nations as a political platform; the difficulty, also arising from the basic imbalance, of ensuring the adequate financing of the organiza­ tion; the results of a mere doubling of the membership and the sheer extent of the problems — political, economic and social — with which the world body had to cope, which would in any case have called for a degree of flexibility and co-operativeness that too frequently were to be found lacking. The outcome was that on the political side action became predominantly partisan and ineffective, while the power and prestige of the United Nations diminished, although the relative success of the various Specialized Agencies once again proved that there was a vital need for international public services such as only a comprehen­ sive organization of this type could effectively provide. Briefly, the new world organization consisted of: (1) the General Assembly, in which the member nations, from which the only substantial but completely deplorable and unwise omission was mainland China, had equal representation; (2) the Security Council of limited membership, of which the United States, United Kingdom, U.S.S.R., France and China (which came to mean the small Formosan Republic) were permanent members, concerned mainly with the preservation of peace; (3) the Trustee­ ship Council, also of limited membership, concerned with the administration of the trust territories for which the U.N. had taken responsibility; (4) the Economic and Social Council, con­ cerned with matters of general welfare and the co-ordination of the various technical and specialist activities of the United

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Nations; (5) the International Court of Justice, a revised version of the older court; and (6) the Secretariat, under the SecretaryGeneral. The Economic and Social Council, selected by and reporting to the General Assembly, was assisted by a number of Functional Commissions and Subcommissions and Specialized Agencies, each dealing with specific matters of outstanding importance, and requiring extensive administering machinery, operating partly on its own account and partly in co-operation with the many national administrations, notably in the provision of technical advice and assistance to the economically less advanced coun­ tries. This service has constituted a really great development in international public administration; one that had originally germinated in the pre-League International Unions, had received its first substantial development under the League and has been even more effectively deployed and extended under the United Nations. All the participating governments, either as providers or as recipients, have organized agencies or branches for the conduct of such international business, and in some cases fullscale government agencies have been established, notably the Ministry of Overseas Development in the United Kingdom. Prominent among the Specialized Agencies of the United Nations are the International Labour Organization (I.L.O.), the Food and Agricultural Organization (F.A.O.), the United Nations Educa­ tional, Scientific and Cultural Organization (U.N.E.S.C.O.), the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (‘World Bank’ or I.B.R.A.) and the Universal Postal Union (U.P.U.). By its nature, under both the League and the United Nations, international public administration has been concurrent admini­ stration within the national field rather than a new level of administration servicing a supranational government of a world­ wide category. Such administration has remained substantially subject to the national centres of power. Its activities have been predominantly diplomatic with powerful political implications. It is particularly unfortunate that the emergence of the two super-powers has rendered a viable pooling of power in a world context virtually impossible. The dissolution of the overseas empires, at the very time when there was increasing need for cross-frontier co-operation, had the effect — despite the glee of the anti-imperialists, moved by ideological emotionalism rather than economic common sense — of extending the areas of high poverty and low power potential and thus of rendering more difficult the provision of effective administration. A new solution

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of this problem could emerge through the development, outside the heartlands of the super-powers, of larger regional groupings on the lines projected in the plans for European Unity. In this sphere the years 1948-9 were notable for the establish­ ment of the Brussels Treaty Organization, the Organization for European Economic Co-operation (O.E.E.C.), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (N.A.T.O.), with the United States and Canada as full members, and the Council for Europe, all with differing structures and differing objectives. [On 30th September 1961, O.E.E.C. extended its scope and became the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (O.E.C.D.), with the United States and Canada, hitherto associated with O.E.E.C., now full members.] To these European bodies should be added the Western European Union, established in 1954: but the really significant event has been the founding, early in 1957, of the European Economic Community (E.E.C. or Common Market) with the object of introducing a European common market. With the E.E.C. was associated the European Coal and Steel Community (E.C.S.C.), already set up in 1951, and the European Atomic Energy Community (Eurotom) established concurrently. Each of these three European Communities was confined to the six founder nations: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, who signed the Treaty of Rome on 25th March 1957. All three Communities shared a European Parliament, and a Court of Justice, but had separate executive organs. The E.E.C. had a Commission of nine members appointed by the member states, a Council of Ministers from the six national governments, and an Economic and Social Committee with an advisory role and representative of employers, trade unions, consumers, and so on. The E.C.S.C. similarly had a High Authority, a Council of Ministers and a Consultative Committee. Euratom had a High Authority, a Council of Ministers and a Consultative Committee. The special point about these Communi­ ties was the power of the executives, and particularly of the High Authority of E.C.S.C., to take what were virtually supra­ national decisions which, within the field laid down in the respective treaties, were superior to those of the constituent nations’ governments. In the case of E.C.S.C. finance was obtained from a levy on coal and steel production, virtually the first example of an international tax. A further important develop­ ment was visualized in October 1963, when it was decided by the six countries to merge the three Communities into one, although internal difficulties caused this achievement to be delayed till 1st July 1967. nAa

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The combined Commission60 has nine Members, who act individually as executive heads of the nine Departments, among which the work of the Commission has been divided on a functional basis, each with its civil service staff under a perma­ nent Director-General. In order to preserve the collegiate nature of the Commission each Commissioner, in reaching decisions on matters for which he has departmental responsibility, is associ­ ated with two other Commissioners, he himself acting as chair­ man. Each Commissioner has a small cabinet in the French style. The Commission’s task is to implement the wide range of provisions of the Treaty of Rome, and for this purpose draft proposals are submitted for the consideration of the Council of Ministers, which represents the six nations. Acceptance by the Council means that the proposal becomes Community law, but amendment can only be imposed by unanimous vote, in default of which it is the Commission’s task to prepare an amended proposal and to negotiate with member governments to achieve agreement before resubmitting it to the Council. The Commission has certain important functions of its own in connection with the working and preservation of the Treaty, and can if need be take member governments before the Court of Justice of the Com­ munity if it appears that they have failed to keep or have broken its terms. It may also receive delegated powers under European laws. The Commission is in some senses nearer to a national execu­ tive than the normal international secretariat, and it was expected that supranational features in E.E.C. would lead to the develop­ ment of Federal relationships, but the French Government, under the direction of General de Gaulle, tended to act as a brake upon such ideas. As a sort of counter-common market, albeit of a somewhat dispersed type, the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) was formed in November 1959 by the seven countries: Austria, Britain, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland. Its membership was subsequently extended to include Iceland as full member and Finland as associate. Britain’s agreement with ‘the Six’ in 1971 to join the European Economic Community — at present (1972) in course of imple­ mentation — will in due course substantially affect the scope and organization of the Community, which will have to be recast to accommodate an extending membership, since Britain’s entry is likely to be accompanied by that of certain members of EFTA.

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The new comprehensive international organizations, ushered in with the League of Nations, needed a new type of public official, among whose key tasks was the fashioning of a type of administration suitable for the new international environment. It would no longer be enough that such officials should continue as serving members of national civil services, seconded from their home services for a limited period, as had sufficed with the earlier international unions. As we have already seen in connection with the International Labour Office, they certainly had to begin in this way, since experience in the national civil services was invaluable at the initial stage. But the new officials needed to acquire new loyalties to the international bodies and for this reason alone permanency of tenure was essential. It would also be desirable that the new officials should be appointed and should operate under conditions that preclude political pressures being exerted by the constituent nations. They should in any case see themselves as administrators rather than politicians and recognize that the normal rules of civil service should apply. Yet in practice there were special reasons why their work was not just administrative in the purely secretarial sense. These international administrations had a good deal of specialized technical work to perform in both their advisory and their executive capacities and a high proportion of officials with differing technical qualifications were needed. Also the inter­ mittent nature of the political element, in contrast to the con­ tinuous ministerial presence of the national governments, meant that the officials at the top of the international agencies, between sessions and meeting times, had to take complete charge and be competent to fill in the detail of the agency’s general policy. As non-political statesmen they needed to be much more selfsufficient than their national counterparts are required to be. Significantly, Georges Langrod distinguishes the differences as a change in the nature of international action from the traditional political diplomacy to a new sort of diplomatic administration.61 Although the need for this new approach on the part of the international official was already evident in League days, in the special circumstances of the International Labour Organization, its wider necessity was not to become evident until the advent of the United Nations. In fact, it was undoubtedly a good thing that the League’s first Secretary-General, Sir Eric Drummond, had been brought up in the strictly non-political professional attitudes of the British Civil Service, of which he had been a distinguished member. It was also a good thing that he was there to set off on the right lines of impartial professionalism

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the band of officials brought together from many quarters to form the first international civil service of all time. The working out of an effective personnel system, with its code and standards of general applicability and desirably high morale, could then be undertaken with high prospects of success. Once a good start had been made it was then, with the extension of international government into new spheres, reasonably easy to equip new branches to grapple with problems normally outside the scope of the national civil services. It has already been seen, in connection with our brief survey of Albert Thomas’s contribution to this development, how the different French and British approaches interacted inside the I.L.O., and how, in this instance, the French pattern of the political official gained the ascendency. A later comparison by Arthur (later Lord) Salter, who was a member of the League’s staff from the beginning, is worth quoting, if only to suggest that the difference between Drummond and Thomas was not one of flexibility so much as approach, each appropriate to its own situation: ‘. . . He (Drummond) chose well and the Secretariat of the League in its early years was a great institution to which all its leading members will always be proud to have belonged. Its efficiency was increased by the relationship he established between himself and his principal colleagues. He allowed us to feel that we were personally responsible within our respective spheres, and that we were essen­ tially the servants of the League rather than personal subordinates of himself. He was always accessible for consultation, and welcomed it; he established the general political environment within which we would proceed with our tasks. He might intervene occasionally if what we were doing caused political difficulty. But otherwise he gave nothing like directions in current and technical work. This attitude, which was perhaps especially marked in the economic and financial questions with which I was specially concerned, greatly increased the efficiency of the organization as a whole, by bringing out all that was best in us; and his own pervasive influence was probably the greater for being exercised through consultations we had sought ourselves than if it had been exerted through more authoritarian methods. I always thought that Albert Thomas, though he had perhaps more personal genius and dynamic quality than anyone else then stationed in Geneva, failed through his more authoritarian attitude to make the most of his personnel as Drummond did.’62

With the appearance on the scene of the United Nations’ Secretary-Generals — Trygve Lie of Norway until 1953, Dag Hammerskjold of Sweden up to his unfortunate death while on duty in 1961, U Thant of Burma and now Dr. Kurt Waldheim of

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Austria — the later type of international statesman-official has been further developed. *

*

*

The new international civil servant had to be gradually evolved. Recruited inevitably as a citizen of one of the participating nations he could hardly be expected to discard his national identity, but in his official actions he needed to rise above it and to cultivate a truly international viewpoint. It was essential that he should be free from influences exerted by the home govern­ ment, but this was not always easy to achieve, especially where previous links with the home civil service were maintained. In this connection the French preference for roulement,63 or short­ term secondment, for serving-officials with the object of providing promising young officials with useful experience in international organizations, particularly in the European Common Market system, has had adverse effects upon the international body. Apart from political neutrality high standards of official con­ duct had to be prescribed for the new international public services and a comprehensive system of staff rules had to be built up, largely as an amalgam of the most suitable national personnel practices. It was fortunate that so much valuable experience was already available to the new staff managers. In total the condi­ tions of service of these new officials needed to be good enough to compete with the best of the home markets, if the right types were to be attracted and retained. This meant in many instances the conceding of even better conditions to compensate for certain disadvantages of living abroad and special expenses, such as the provision of suitable education for their children and adequate home leave at reasonable intervals. The high cost of living in such international centres as New York and Geneva and the salary scales of the most highly paid civil services, both in their different ways tended to heighten the overall cost of the new civil services. A system of staff gradings, with professional standards and a system of examinations for appointment and promotion was evolved on approved lines, but exceptional conditions continued to render the emergence of a true civil service difficult in this sphere. For example, the need to allocate individual posts, or to assign quotas, according to the national pattern of the member­ ship, so that candidates from one country should not take a disproportionate share of the vacancies, has had an effect upon the new international bodies in some respects similar to that of the old-fashioned patronage, for the elimination of which such

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strenuous efforts have been made in many lands. This practice sometimes means the duplication of senior posts in order not to disappoint particular interests, though fortunately a proposal to triplicate the Secretary-Generalship, and thus to restrict inevitably its capacity for initiative, has been resisted by the General Assembly. The reservation of certain posts for specialists, par­ ticularly in the European bodies where this is a feature of the organization, certainly works against the generalist nature of the standard pattern of civil service structure. At lower levels it is sometimes unavoidable that persons should be appointed from backward countries who are somewhat less capable than would normally be accepted. There is a tendency to accumulate officials of mediocre calibre, who are even more difficult to deploy than their equivalents in national services. This factor of satisfying national interests in appointments, added to the conditions imposed by the need to employ the four official languages — English, French, Spanish and Russian — in the appropriate situations, inevitably complicates the administrative structure and slows down the normal administrative processes. A further disadvantage of this allocation of posts by nationality is that administratively backward countries may lose at a vital hour, the services of an unduly high percentage of their few first-rate administrators, who are likely to be attracted by the superior prestige and prospects of posts under the United Nations. This outflow may be artificially strengthened where political conditions in the supplying country become unstable and make an international appointment even more attractive to the holder. Thus Ghana, during the regime of President Nkrumah, lost the services of a number of outstanding administrators on this account. The day when the international public bodies can recruit in the open market the qualified people they need, irrespective of nationality, will be the day that the new international public service really comes of age. Clearly that day is not yet. Nevertheless, despite existing drawbacks, both the League and the United Nations after it — taking full advantage of the experience afforded by the membership countries — have gone far to the building of an effective, well-ordered and progressive international public service, whose growing prestige should ensure its continuing reinforcement with administrators and technicians who have both the required competence and the type of voca­ tional devotion that such a service needs if the purposes of the emergent international order are to be effectively achieved. This very important aspect of public administration, which is the quintessential consummation at this point of time of all the

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administrative trends with which the present work has been concerned, will need to be given wider attention in the future.

REFERENCES 1 Leonard D. White, T h e J e ffe rso n ia n s, 1801-1829 (Macmillan, N.Y., 1951), p. 98. 2 White, o p . c it., p. 363. 3 White, T h e J a c k so n ia n s , 1829-1861 (Macmillan, N.Y., 1954), p. 3, quoting Van Buren’s A u to b io g r a p h y , p. 312. 4 R e p o r t o f th e O rg a n iza tio n o f th e P e r m a n e n t C iv il S e r v ic e (1853-4). 5 White, op. cit., p. 412, quoting Freeman Hunt from H u n t's M e rc h a n ts ' M a g a z in e , xxviii (1853), p. 776. 6 White, op. c it., p. 429. 7 White, T h e R e p u b lic a n E ra , 1869-1901 (Macmillan, N.Y., 1958), p. 280. 8 White, o p . c it., pp. 281-2. 9 White, op. c it., pp. 283-4. 10 Dorman B. Eaton, C iv il S e rv ic e in G r e a t B r ita in , with ‘Introduction* by George William Curtis (Harper, N.Y., 1880), p. i. 11 Eaton’s numbering, which omits ‘3*, has been retained. 12 Eaton, o p . c it., pp. 363-6. 13 White, o p . c it., p. 292. 14 H is to r y o f th e F e d e r a l C iv il S e rv ic e , 1798 to th e P r e s e n t (Official, Washington), pp. 53-73. 15 Cecil Woodham-Smith, T h e G r e a t H u n g er, Ir e la n d , 1954-9 (Hamish Hamilton, 1962), provides a highly dramatic account of the disaster and, despite its strictures on the Treasury approach, contains a good deal of valuable information about Trevelyan. 16 R. B. McDowell, T h e Irish A d m in is tr a tio n , 1801-1914 (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964), contains more judicious references to the administrative aspects of the tragedy. 17 P a rlia m e n ta ry P a p e r s (1875) xxiii, p. 100. 18 R e p o r ts o f C o m m itte e s o f In q u ir y in to P u b lic O ffices a n d P a p e r s C o n n e c te d T h e r e w ith (1860). 19 Anthony Trollope (1815-82), civil servant of outstanding competence and eminent novelist, touches upon his Civil Service experience in some of his novels, but particularly in T h e T h r e e C le r k s (1858), in which Trevelyan is caricatured as ‘Sir Gregory Hardlines*, a work still to be enjoyed. 20 H a n sa rd , 11th May 1860, Cols. 1130-61. 21 For example, Lord Hailey, A n A fr ic a n S u r v e y (Oxford, 1938 and later edition), a vast and invaluable store of information on the subject. 22 Sir Charles Jeffries, T h e C o lo n ia l O ffice (Allen & Unwin, 1956). 23 J. A. Cross, W h ite h a ll a n d th e C o m m o n w e a lth (Routledge, 1967). 24 Martin Wright, T h e D e v e lo p m e n t o f th e L e g is la tiv e C o u n cil, 1606-1945 (Faber, 1946), pp. 144-8. 25 Wight, o p. c it., p. 54. 26 Wight, o p . c it., p. 55. 27 Wight, o p . c it., p. 55.

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28 Sir Charles Jeffries, P a rtn e rs in P ro g re ss (Harrap, 1949), pp. 44 e t seq. 29 Haley, o p. c it., pp. 527-45. 30 For a delightful personal account of such routines see Kenneth Bradley, T h e D ia r y o f a D is tr ic t O fficer (Harrap, 1943). 31

C o lo n ia l P a p e r N o . 306.

32 A. L. Adu, T h e C iv il S e r v ic e in N e w A fr ic a n S ta te s (Allen & Unwin, 1965), p. 31. 33 Ralph Brabanti (editor), A sia n B u r e a u c r a c tic S y ste m s E m e r g e n t fr o m th e B r itis h Im p e r ia l T ra d itio n (Duke University, 1966). 34 Leonard Schapiro, T h e C o m m u n ist P a r ty o f th e S o v ie t U n ion (Methuen, 1966 edn.), pp. 38-9. 35 Leon Trotsky, T h e H is to r y o f th e R u ssia n R e v o lu tio n (Gollancz, 1934). 36 A. Denisov and M. Kirichenko, T h e S o v ie t S ta te L a w (Moscow, I960), p. 371. 37 Sidney and Beatrice Webb, S o v ie t C o m m u n ism — A N e w C iv iliza tio n ? (Gollancz, 2nd edn., 1937). 38 Denisov & Kirichenko, o p . c it., p. 389. 39 Schapiro, T h e G o v e r n m e n t a n d P o litic s o f th e S o v ie t U n io n (Hutchinson, 1965), pp. 175-7. 40 Schapiro, o p . c it., (Communist Party), p. 194. 41 Schapiro, o p . c it., pp. 228-9. 42 Schapiro, o p . cit., p. 238. 43 Schapiro. o p . c it., pp. 243-5. 44 Schapiro, o p. c it., pp. 246-51. 45 Merle Fainsod, H o w R u s sia is R u le d (Harvard and Oxford, 1963): (see charts on pp. 191-202). 46 Fainsod, o p . c it., p. 390. 47 Schapiro, o p . c it., pp. 166-9. 48 E. J. Phelan, Y e s a n d A l b e r t T h o m a s (Cresset Press, 1936). 49 Phelan, o p . c it., pp. xi-xii, quoting a speech at Bucharest, 1930. 50 Phelan, o p . c it., p. 260. 51 Phelan, o p . c it., p. 110. 52 Phelan, op. c it., p. 20. 53 Phelan, o p . c it., pp. 60-1. 54 Phelan, o p . c it., p. 65. 55 Phelan, o p . c it., pp. 20-1. 56 Georges Langrod, T h e In te rn a tio n a l C iv il S e rv ic e (Sijthoff, Leyden, 1963), p. 35. 57 Langrod, o p . c it., pp. 40-2. 58 Clyde Eagleton, I n te r n a tio n a l G o v e r n m e n t (Ronald Press, N.Y., 1948 edn.), p. 247. 59 Eagleton, o p. c it., p. 274. 60 David Coombes, T o w a rd s a E u ro p e a n C iv il S e rv ic e (PEP European Series No. 7, March 1968), pp. 5-11, and the same author’s P o litic s a n d B u r e a u c r a c y in th e E u ro p ea n C o m m u n ity (PEP, 1970). 61 Langrod, o p . c it., p. 52. 62 Lord Salter, M e m o ir s o f a P u b lic S e rv a n t (Faber & Faber, 1961), pp. 147-8. 63 Coombes, o p. c it., p. 56.

CHAPTER 10

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION ADAPTING TO THE NEEDS OF A NEW AGE Social, economic and political changes were, by the twentieth century, proceeding at such a rate that it was becoming more and more difficult for the practical man to bring about quickly enough essential modifications in existing institutions or to invent brand new institutions to cope with the emerging situation. Older tradi­ tions were being outdated and discarded even before new ones had been evolved. In the sphere of government history was being made daily. The function of the public administrator was being enhanced by these developments, the burden of his task immeasurably extended. It would require a treatise of the length of the present work merely to outline the new position as it had emerged by mid-century, and even then we should have reached no further than the day before yesterday. THE

ERA

OF

GLOBAL

INTEGRATION

In all ages the scope of government has been determined by the effectiveness of the community’s communications system, enabling it to deploy military power, transport material resources and transmit information. Time and time again we have seen how the earlier systems of government depended to a large extent upon the mobility rendered possible by its roads, internal water­ ways and access to the sea. The shape and pattern of public administration has largely been determined by the extent and capacity of these community nerve-networks. The history of early empires can be written in terms of the development of communi­ cations.1 The West had taken a vital step upon the world stage with the development of seaways in the fifteenth century and after.2 With the inception of the Industrial Revolution in Britain during the seventeenth century the need for product mobility led to renewed interest in the age-old means of horse transport — the road and the canal — the improvement and extension of which took place in a big way during the next hundred years, largely under the supervision of quasi-public Turnpike Trusts

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for the roads and private companies for the canals. But these ancient means were suddenly to be put in the shade by the inven­ tion of the steam engine, based on a principle first attributed to Hero of Alexandria (circa 130 b .c.) but not seriously developed until Thomas Savery, in a.d . 1698, patented his engine to pump water. Horse-drawn rail- and tramways had been widely intro­ duced in Europe during the sixteenth century and greatly extended in Britain as a consequence of the new industrialization. To this form of transport steam was first harnessed in 1830, with the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. The first steam railway in the United States was opened in the same year, while France followed suit two years later. A new era of mobility had dawned. In Britain the railways were constructed and run by private enterprise, but close government regulation was called for, mainly for safety reasons, throwing new supervisory duties upon the government. Early legislation actually foreshadowed public ownership, but in fact this was to come in many parts of the Continent well ahead of Britain. This revolutionary extension of the basic communications network of modern societies greatly widened the effective scope of administrative activity, at the same time increasing the responsibilities of public administration and causing it to reach out for new means of fulfilling its new duties. Pen, ink, paper and the bound ledger were still the main tools and media of the clerk and his office, but human ingenuity would soon be applied to speed up basic recording processes. During this same period the advance of science was already making available to inventors new materials and other means for facilitating the solution of technical difficulties that would have been beyond the capacity of the materials available in earlier times. Among these scientific advances was the harnessing of electricity, a phenomenon whose existence had been known for centuries but which awaited the discoveries of Volta in Italy, Oersted in Denmark and Faraday in Britain during the early part of the nineteenth century, to render practicable the transmission of electrical current as light and power, the transmission of signals by telegraph and the transmission of voice by telephone, all contributing importantly to further the development of the basic communications network that distinguishes modern society. The telephone, in particular, was by the latter half of the nine­ teenth century speeding up communications within and between administrative units and greatly improving the administration’s brain capacity. In Britain initially both these services were exploited commercially by private companies, which were later

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to be consolidated and absorbed into the state communications system under the General Post Office, one of the central state departments which, with the changing fashions, has now become a public corporation. Quite apart from the telephone just mentioned, at first regarded somewhat askance by some of the officials, other changes were coming inside the offices. Shorthand writing, which was far from novel — as we have already seen — received an impetus from the increased demand for secretarial work and reporting, with the result that several rationalized systems came into wide use. Time-saving machines were invented for such processes as adding, calculating, listing, addressing, duplicating, card punching and so on, although these were hardly coming into their own before the end of the nineteenth century. On the other hand the typewriter had already arrived. An early patent for a writing machine had been issued in England under the name of Henry Mill in 1714 during the reign of Queen Anne, but the modern commercial machine was largely developed in the United States during the later decades of the nineteenth century. It speeded up the process of letter-writing, superseding the fine script or copper plate writing that was at the time an essential skill of the clerk — for few gains are without their losses — and rendered the simultaneous production of a number of copies possible. Other copying devices were introduced, first of the type of the jelly hectograph, from which a number of copies of a document written in a special ink could be drawn off, and later by mechanical duplicators using specially typed master-copies. The introduction of loose-leaf ledgers and card records began to reduce the inflexibility of the bound hand-written record, which still predominated up to the First World War, and it was not until after that great tragedy that these changes really got under way. By this time the conquest of the air by the flying machine, whose invention had preceded the war by a few years, and the intro­ duction of wireless telegraphy, were the harbingers of changes that inter alia would have revolutionary effects upon the administrative context of society. THE

CENTRAL

GOVERNMENTAL

MOULD

Since Public Administration is the servant of government, any assessment of its form and achievement must depend upon the political ‘continuum’ within which it works. In the twentieth century central government, despite its wide variety of forms, has been compelled, by the vital factors with which it has to

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cope, to assume certain broad institutional forms: it almost invariably has a representational Legislature, whose membership has become organized on the basis of party support, which may be one-, two- or multi-party in form, and an Executive varying in power but invariably commanding the services of a complex administrative machine, fashioned to deal with the high com­ plexity of the extending state business. The actual patterning varies so much that every single govern­ ment could be said to differ in some, sometimes many, respects from every other. The former distinction between monarchies and republics is no longer of much significance, since the more important of the surviving monarchies are virtually republican in form and working, while among the republics the autocratic type of government formerly attributed to monarchies can most easily be discovered in the growing band of single party states, which constitute a new type of oligarchic autocracies. Three broad types of government can now be recognized: namely, (1) the Parliamentary type, with a ceremonial Head of State (King or President) and a Chief or Prime Minister with a Council of Ministers (Cabinet, Ministry, Executive Council) generally responsible to and mainly members of the Legislature; or (2) the Presidential type, embodying the principle of separation of powers, where the Head of State and the Executive leader are combined in the Presidency (which may be elective) not directly responsible to the Legislature; or (3) the Soviet^Communist type, which may be outwardly patterned on either (1) or (2), but is so organized that the basic power is in the hands of a single Party, with its own interlinking administrative structure operating at all levels in parallel with the normal governmental machinery. Types (1) and (2) may be either two- or multi-party. Dictatorships may fall under either (2) or (3). (1) is democratic, (2) may be demo­ cratic, (3) is only notionally democratic. Another complication at this level is whether the system is Unitary or Federal. The latter form may be needed to meet the administrative difficulties of a wide geographical outspread, though smaller communities may adopt it to accommodate differences due to religion or nationality. In any case pure federalism, which is rare in fact, presupposes a distinct division of sovereignty and is matched by a division of central government functions between two levels of authority. The division of the executive arm into a series of ministerial departments on a functional or service basis is no new thing. Aristotle visualized it3; many interesting early examples have been mentioned in the present work; Jeremy Bentham at the

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very outset of the present age had worked out a ministerial pattern that more or less forecast the position in the early part of the twentieth century.4 In the meantime the extension of the responsibilities of the modern state well beyond the confines of the Police or Regulatory State, and its metamorphosis during the nineteenth century into the Social Service or Welfare State, or even the Community Planning State, has led to an inexorable expansion of the functional departments, of which the following figure today in most national systems, often with several others: (1) Prime Minister’s (Chief Executive’s, Cabinet) (2) Finance (Treasury) (3) Economic Affairs (Industry, Trade, Commerce, Agri­ culture) (4) Transport, Communications and Power (including Post Office) (5) Employment (Labour) (6) Social Security (Social Service) (7) Education and Culture (Science, Religious Affairs) (8) Interior (Home Affairs, Local Government) (9) Justice* (10) National Security (Defence, Army, Navy, etc.) (11) Foreign (External Affairs, Overseas) (* covering only the executive as distinct from the strictly adjudicative functions) Only the smaller countries, and not all of them, manage to keep down the number of departments, for there is a strong tendency to create additional offices for political and prestige reasons rather than from real administrative necessity. Many of the newer (ex-colonial) countries have wasted precious man­ power and money in this way. Most countries have departments to meet special needs, such as for Family and Consumers Affairs in Norway, for Federal Owned Properties in West Germany, and for Ex-Servicemen in France. In Britain so many major Depart­ ments have emerged — today numbering over thirty — that not all are represented in the Cabinet, which at its greatest extent has had a membership of twenty-three. There is a trend to consoli­ date the Departments into broader functional groupings, as in Britain where the three Ministries for Admiralty, War and Air have been combined into a single Ministry of Defence, and the three external affairs Departments — Foreign, Colonies and Commonwealth — have been similarly consolidated. Already an hierarchy of ministers has developed to share the political realm at the top of the departmental structures. The development of

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fewer, more concentrated, functional groupings seems bound to strengthen the need for such a political hierarchy, engendering problems of its own, in both the political and the administrative fields. In the older type of Regulatory State the central executive was concerned mainly to ensure that the community was defended and policed against external aggression and internal unrest, that supplies needed for running the state were forthcoming, and that the laws of the land were carried out, which meant mainly the issuing of regulations and the use of individual agents to ensure that they were properly implemented. A simple pattern of Depart­ ments sufficed, even if often it was not achieved. Today any such simplicity has become a thing of the past. Whether the govern­ ment is avowedly individualistic or enthusiastically Socialist — and a mixed type is much more common — the difference in extent of the administration is but a matter of degree. Moreover it is necessary to place some public business in the hands of other public bodies, which may take the form of fully competent (usually multi-purpose) Local Authorities or autonomous, or quasi-autonomous (usually specialist), public bodies in the form of Public Corporations, Commissions or other public institutions. The Central Government, through the Central Administration, normally assumes a regulatory or supervisory relationship to such bodies similar to, though perhaps more intimate than, that which it exercises in respect of the private sectors (though under some systems a much closer integration between the different public sectors operates). In some cases, appropriately in the social service field, it is considered better that the Central Admini­ stration itself, through one of the Ministries or other Central agencies, should provide a particular service direct to the people, which the responsible organ will do through its own system of field offices.5 The Local and Corporational types of public administration, which have functional and structural characteristics that differ in various respects from those of the Central Government, will be looked at separately below, but first there are further points about the latter that need to be made. The common service and regulatory functions are those normally performed by the headquarter offices of Government Departments, usually centralized in the capital city, or cities. But under modern conditions the dispersal of such offices throughout the country may be adopted policy on social, economic and, particularly, manpower grounds, as has been the case in Britain since the Second World War, where Government Departments,

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or self-contained branches of such Departments, are being gradu­ ally transferred out of London to different parts of the country. There is, however, some administrative convenience in having a normal-sized administration concentrated near the seat of govern­ ment, especially where ministers have to operate concurrently with their Departments and within the Legislature. While policy-supporting, management services and regulatory functions make up the basic work of the central offices, and their activities are essentially administrative, and performed by the normal Civil Service gradings, it has to be realized that, not only do many of the long-established Departments call for specialist staffs, concerned with such matters as internal security and police, finance and taxation, posts and telecommunications, defence and diplomacy, but that the growing technicality of government business calls for the services of numerous professional and technical experts, engaged upon advisory, executive or research duties. Moreover, close liaison has to be maintained with the various sectors of the community, which means that in advanced industrialized societies a complex type of organization is necessary. Where the central department has to provide nation-wide services direct to the people a widespreading structure of field offices will usually be required. This will be the case in federal countries, such as the United States, where the Federal admini­ stration has to operate within the States on its own account and not through the agency of the State governments. There such services as posts and taxation called for the establishment of a network of field offices throughout the Union from the very outset. With the modern extension of public social services the State may, in the interests of uniformity, prefer to administer the system directly to the people — for example social security benefits and employment vacancy work — giving the whole job to the Civil Service, which is expected to acquire the necessary expertise. The structure of such Departments can become quite complex, with a number of Headquarter Offices in the capital and elsewhere, and a large number of Local Offices in the several provinces or regions into which the country is divided, possibly linked hierarchically to the centre through a series of intermediate Regional Offices. This is the pattern favoured in Britain which, if a highly com­ plex society, has the great administrative advantage of geo­ graphical compactness. Some countries prefer to use the Local Authorities as the operational agencies of the Central Govern­ ment, others to make extensive use of semi-public and voluntary

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bodies in social administration. The special administrative arrangements of Switzerland and Sweden deserve separate mention. In Switzerland, where governmental power is divided between the Federation and twenty-two self-governing Cantons, the administration at federal level is the responsibility of a Federal Council of seven, elected by the Federal Assembly (of two Houses voting in joint session). Membership of the Council is open to all citizens, although those selected usually have had wide experi­ ence of public affairs. While they represent broadly the main geographical divisions, the major parties and the several religions, they do not form a political group. Initially election is for four years, but in practice office is usually held for two or three, or even many more, terms. In fact the Federal Council is essentially a business executive, whose members take turn as President or Vice-President of the Confederation, and each controls one of the seven Departments into which the Federal Administration is divided, covering severally Foreign Affairs, Interior, Justice and Police, Military, Finance and Customs, Public Economy, and Posts and Railways, a compact division of functions which other systems of similar magnitude might do well to copy. Otherwise the function, structure and staffing of the Departments follow the normal civil service lines common elsewhere. It is in Sweden that a somewhat different division of respon­ sibilities is favoured.6 The government consists of the King’s Council of Ministers, appointed constitutionally by the King, but working under a Prime Minister depending upon support in the Riksdag (Legislature). Eleven Ministers take charge of the eleven Ministries at present comprising: Justice, Foreign Affairs, Defence, Social Welfare, Communications, Finance, Church and Education, Agriculture, Commerce, Interior, and Civil Service. There are also three to seven Ministers-without-portfolio, who usually include the Prime Minister and otherwise act as deputies to other Ministers. The Ministries are compact bodies concerned with policy formulation, direction, preparation of legislation, and appropriations, but not execution, which, in accordance with long-standing custom, is placed in the hands of formally inde­ pendent centrala ambertsverk (central administrative boards), which are headed by permanent officials. These Boards, successors to the seventeenth-century collegiums which were greatly favoured in Sweden, are responsible for the routine administrative work, including such matters as inspec­ tion, control of subordinate offices and local agencies and, in some cases, administrative appeals. Yet their definition of ad-

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ministration is wide, since they are expected to propose necessary developments within their individual fields of activity and suitable measures and reforms, and to submit their opinion on proposed measures before a decision is reached by the King-in-Council. Some of the Boards are even concerned with production, not unlike the British public corporations. They are headed usually by a Director-General who, together with the several bureauchiefs, constitute the agency’s Board of Directors. They work through their own Local Authorities in the several Districts. Significantly the Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not work through autonomous boards; while the Ministry of Defence has a Kommandoexpedition (Joint Command Office) staffed by mili­ tary officers. The Ministry of Interior and Health has Lansstyrelse (County Boards) — similar to the central administrative agencies directly responsible to the King-in-Council — whose function is to ensure the execution of the various statutes and decrees and to supervise the subordinate authorities. CONSOLIDATION OF T H E SERVICE

CIVIL

While the initial impulse to the introduction of regularized public services of a strictly civil nature can be credited to the royal autocracies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly in Prussia, conditions for the building of a demo­ cratically orientated professional and non-political Civil Service had to await the rise of representative democracies with con­ trolled executives. Initial selection, based upon prescribed edu­ cational requirements tested by competitive examinations, a system of classified functional grades, permanency of tenure, pro­ motional advancement on the basis of seniority and merit, work­ ing in accordance with carefully prescribed rules and regulations and an accepted code of conduct, and pensionable retirement were the characteristics of these public services. In Britain initial selection and certification were hived off, in 1855, to an independent and impartial Civil Service Commis­ sion, which fifteen years later was to be authorized to operate a system of open competition. The United States followed suit, but the Commission in this case was not confined to recruitment but to such personnel matters as Congress chose to confide to it. In some countries independent recruitment has been assigned to a central personnel branch, often attached to the chief execu­ tive or cabinet, unfortunately facilitating the reintroduction of political patronage with all its evils. ii

Bb

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A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

The United States, with its numerous, eventually fifty, autono­ mous States, was in a position to have as many separate adminis­ trative systems with the advantage of providing a wide range of civil service experience and many opportunities for experiment in this field. But the great difference between the British and American systems, originating from the same source and retain­ ing so many similarities, was the retention at the top of a wide band of political appointments in the United States in the form of ‘spoils’, of a nature that hardly existed in Britain, even in the worst periods of patronage. In Britain the civil servant’s political impartiality has been insisted upon as a basic principle, to a degree only attained in some of the countries that have adopted the British pattern. In Britain, too, more completely than is usual elsewhere, the idea that administrative leaders and workers are generalists rather than experts has been maintained, though the Fulton Report on the Civil Service, published during 1968, has recommended, with less sound reasons perhaps than it imagines, a complete reversal of this approach.7 The continental pattern, deriving from basic Roman law forms, has achieved similar standards and objectives, but with notable differences. Officials in these countries have been subjected to a separate system of administrative law which, in respect of their office as officials, has given special rights to and placed special obligations upon both official and citizen in the carrying out of public responsibilities. In all countries detailed codes of tech­ nical performance and personal conduct have been drawn up, but, while in some countries these have remained a purely internal matter, elsewhere they have been derived from administrative law, although under both systems it has become the practice for the public service to be subject to an act of statute passed by the legislature, clearly establishing the official’s rights and obligations and his general terms of service. France, and the group of countries whose administrations are based on the French pattern, fall into a group of their own. Here the civil servant’s activities are subject to droit administratif and to the guidance and direction of the Conseil d’Etat, itself a specialized sector of the Civil Service, while since 1946 the civil servant’s career and conditions of service has been ordered under the comprehensive Statut general des fonctionnaires. Apart from this essentially legalistic context of the civil servant’s activities, the attitudes engendered by the Roman law approach mean that the official is much more concerned with the legal authority for what he does than is the case in common law systems, which tend to leave much more initiative to the individual official, so

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long as he does not break the ordinary law; though, both in France and Germany for example, such attitudes are no doubt coloured by the esteem that is still acceded to a legal education as qualification for higher civil service appointments. As in most modern systems the high degree of responsibility resting in the hands of Ministers, and other Executive Heads of equivalent status, often reinforced by the historical survival of past powers, has ensured a strong trend towards departmentalism and a separation of careers within the wider service. Depart­ mental chiefs usually remain responsible for the appointment, dis­ cipline and dismissal of their staffs, while in France, the existence of the four grands corps — Cornell d ’Etat, Court of Accounts, Inspectorate of Finance and Prefectoral Corps — helps further to emphasize the special position of these prestigious groups, despite notable steps since the Second World War to consolidate the system and encourage the growth of a general administrative group at the top. These developments include the establishment of a National School of Administration (Ecole Nationale d*Administration) for the professional training, for the top grades of the several branches, of selected candidates from both inside and outside the service, and also the setting up of a Direction generale of the Administration and the Civil Service under the control of the Prime Minister as President of the Council of Ministers. Nevertheless a diversity of careers continues despite these changes; similarly in the United States where the idea of a general administrative class has received only partial endorse­ ment.8 LOCAL

GOVERNMENT

All government began in the localities and the division between central and local levels occurred only when means had developed to exercise power and co-ordinate functions over wider areas. Except in the smallest states today it is still convenient to have two levels of government. In fact certain governmental activities of a more strictly housekeeping or community nature are best carried out and taken responsibility for on the spot. Thus local government has two distinct advantages: (1) in enabling the people living in an area to look after functions of a more intimate nature, including those concerned with the safety and good order of the neighbourhood, and (2) in relieving the central government of responsibility for matters of detail that are of less importance to the country as a whole and not easily administered from afar. As the scope of governmental activity widens, it becomes less

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and less desirable, or even practicable, for the central government to look after everything. Consequently there is a tendency in some systems for a hierarchy of local authorities to develop, as in France where the departments are divided into arrondissements, the arrondissements into cantons, and the whole complexity is based on a number of communes of widely varying size and importance, although in practice it is only the departments and the communes that are really vital. In Britain, where the system has recently been investigated by Royal Commissions, there is an equivalent variety of authorities, although this is a mixed system which includes single-tier County Boroughs in the large concentrated urban areas (except London) and two-tier authorities in the Administrative Counties, which are divided into County Districts of several types, of which one type, the Rural Districts, are further divided into a third tier of Parishes. The relationships between these several levels is to a much lesser extent hierarchic, since each authority has its own specific responsibilities under Act of Parliament. In federations, the shaping and control of local government is best left to the State constitutions, as in the United States. While it is generally recognized that the basic government unit should consist of a reasonably intimate and compact neighbour­ hood unit — such as parish, ward, village, commune, town — the more important level below the central government is less easy to determine since the technicalities of the more important functions often assigned to local government, such as transport, education, area planning, major health matters — presuppose different areas for the achievement of maximum efficiency. Thus it is now generally agreed that the historically evolved county area in Britain and the much later evolved department in France are no longer large enough for certain purposes, and that radical reforms are needed. Local government authorities usually take the form of boards, commissions or councils, although it is only during the modern democratic phase that these have come generally to be elected by the people rather than appointed by authority. However, even in earlier times some town corporations were elected, though not usually on a very wide franchise. The custom of appointing local governing bodies or individual executives from the centre, which at one time was the rule and is still followed in some cases, contrary to the idea of local self-government, is really a system of devolution. In the Anglo-Saxon pattern the local council is paramount and may even participate directly in administration,

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as do the Councils in Britain through the committee system, which has the great advantage of enabling directly elected, parttime citizens to supervise the conduct of local authority business. In the United States, where the actual system varies from State to State, the electors often retain the right to elect officials and to recall them before completion of their term of office if they are not satisfied with their performance, as well as through the initiative and the referendum, to intervene in matters of policy and legislation. A high degree of freedom rests with the Councils in Britain and Ireland which exercise the right to select their own staffs. In most cases today the selection of candidates for councillorships is strongly influenced by the political parties, and inde­ pendents are less frequently chosen. The elected Council has the advantage of keeping the conduct of local government close to the community, providing electors with close access to their temporary rulers both through attendance at council meetings and through various forms of direct approach to individual representatives. Under some systems other persons with outside experience and expertise, which are not available within the local authority, can be co-opted to committees of the Council though, for quite different reasons, this is not usually popular either with the political members or the permanent staffs of the authority. Where key officials are appointed by the central government, as in France and Belgium, it seems unavoidable that increased administrative efficiency is bought at the expense of local autonomy. The degree of central control over local government varies from system to system. The Anglo-Saxon theory of local selfgovernment, which is widely supported in Britain, the United States and some Commonwealth countries, assumes that the localities should be left to look after, and pay for, their own affairs, and the system has been built up on this assumption. But the growing complexity of many local services, going hand in hand with the lack of sufficient resources and taxable capacity, has rendered central aid more and more necessary, thus weaken­ ing the operation of this principle, which is hardly a matter for surprise when it is remembered that similar considerations are tending to erode the independence of state governments in federal systems. A very different concept is instanced in the prefectorial system of France, and those countries that have modelled their local government upon it. In this system the Prefect, as central govern­ ment appointee (responsible in the case of France to the Minister of the Interior) has supervisory powers in connection with local

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government and also looks after the business of the several Ministries operating in the department. Thus the Prefect, accord­ ing to Brian Chapman, is ‘the representative of the State in the Department, the delegate of the Government, the agent of all the Ministers, the tuteur of the Communes, and the executive head of the Department’, which ‘means that he deals with three levels of officials’.9 While the local recruitment of local government officials is normal, and generally desirable, this is not invariably the practice. In some countries, notably Germany, they are regarded as civil servants, and there is perhaps no real reason, other than history and convenience, why there should be a fundamental distinction between central and local officials. Autonomous authorities like the local government councils in Britain normally appoint their own staffs, and welding them into a general service has proved difficult; or, applying strict democratic principles, some local government officials may be directly elected, as is common prac­ tice in the United States. This survival from the days of rotation in office is hardly desirable in an age that calls for candidates with high technical competence. Except where civil service standards are insisted upon — law degree or other accepted qualification as in Germany — school leavers may provide the bulk of recruits (as in the Netherlands and Britain) and be trained afterwards on the job, or assisted in acquiring the accepted quali­ fications of the general professions whose specialist skills are required for senior positions in the technical branches. Considerable efforts are being made to improve local govern­ ment management. Increasing complexity of local government business is rendering it more and more difficult for the elected councillors or representatives to undertake the tasks of day-today management as they have often done in the past. To meet this growing need a corps of skilled professional administrators has emerged or is emerging, as instanced by the Burgomaster of the Netherlands, the Mayor in France, the Oberstaatdirector of Germany and the City Manager of the United States and the Republic of Ireland.10 Characteristically England has so far been without a real Chief Executive in this sphere. There the nearest approach to this status has been that of the Town Clerk, who began as legal adviser to the Council and gradually developed into a sort of Secretary-Administrator to the Council, head of his own department and general co-ordinator, but no more than primus inter pares with the professional heads of the other depart­ ments, depending ultimately for his actual authority upon his

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strategic position in the authority’s administrative network and his personal character and drive.11 Moves towards the appointment of stronger executives are already under way to meet the new situation and an important committee has recommended changes in the existing management structure that would largely supersede the system of direct mana­ gerial intervention by committees of the council, to which reference has already been made, and replace it by a new manage­ ment structure capable, on the Council’s behalf, of giving a much more sustained attention to the authority’s affairs.12 The many influences that are in so many directions tending towards the improvement of management in local government and the integration of the authorities’ staffs into a coherent national service and even bringing them closer to the Civil Service, mark a decisive trend in public affairs. PUBLIC

C O R P O R A T I O N S A S AN A U X I L I A R Y G O V E R N M E N T A L ARM

At all stages in the development of society important admini­ stration has been carried on outside the strictly governmental sphere, from the family in the very beginning to the commercial and industrial corporation or company of the modern age. Corporations of a public type arose at an early stage and many have been referred to in the present work. One need only mention the chartered companies employed as instruments of overseas development, out of which purely governmental institutions took shape, like the notable East India Company, established during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Publicly sponsored or controlled bodies have commonly been established outside the ordinary government to provide communal services of all types. Thus during the Industrial Revolution in Britain there were Turnpike Trusts, empowered to provide effective main roads and to levy tolls to finance them and provide for their upkeep; Poor Law Corporations to spread the growing public assistance burden over a number of parishes; and Improvement Commissions to provide the new towns with lighting and police services at a time when the population was in a state of flux.13 To cope with the explosive developments in power and com­ munications during the nineteenth century both public and private bodies were established by law to supply the new ameni­ ties, although at this stage, where government assumed direct responsibility, it was usually undertaken by the local authorities in the form of municipal trading, which had a great boom in the

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latter part of the century as a phase in the movement towards more socialistic forms. The long-established exception in Britain had been the General Post Office, which had become a govern­ ment department way back in the sixteenth century. The modern nation-based public corporation gradually took shape out of earlier types of organization and its distribution has gradually widened. In the shape of a corporate body authorized by charter or statute to undertake specific functions, government appointed and controlled to a varying extent, the modern public corporation achieved an advanced form and widely approved status in Britain between the two world wars (1919-39). The new development was extensively discussed.14 Yet the number of examples that had emerged in Britain during this period was very small, notably the Central Electricity Board and the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1926, the London Passenger Traffic Board in 1933 and the British Overseas Airways Corporation in 1939, the latter too late to operate before the outbreak of world war. Elsewhere public corporations were being established to extend the field of public responsibility without locating the new func­ tions within the ordinary government machinery. Thus, in the United States Independent Regulatory Commissions were intro­ duced outside the normal departmental structure to regulate activities that crossed state boundaries, of which the Interstate Commerce Commission, established as early as 1887, was the first. Its activities were both administrative and quasi-judicial and the new institution in this case afforded a convenient means for performing essential public functions not provided for in the constitution.15 The public corporation was used in the United States during the First World War to look after public responsi­ bilities that were of a business rather than a governmental nature and the form became widely enough employed to lead to special legislation in the shape of the Government Corporation Control Act of 1945, which inter alia made such corporations fully accountable to both President and Congress.16 Perhaps the most noted and widely discussed of the United States public corpora­ tions was the Tennessee Valley Authority, authorized by Congress as part of the New Deal in May 1933, ‘to promote by its own efforts and its example the control, conservation and wise utiliza­ tion of the natural resources of the Tennessee Valley’, and means of co-ordinating activity and transcending the boundaries of the several States among whom the area was shared. Under the inspired leadership of its first chairman, David E. Lilienthal, this creation was offered, on account of its basic contacts with the

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peoples of the areas directly involved, as a new type of democracy at the grass roots, though it is doubtful whether this original promise has been fulfilled.17 Normally such on-the-spot citizen co-operation is excluded by the very form of this type of public body. Yet the public corporation is catholic in its propensities and has been used for a diversity of ends and purposes. Thus in 1939 the Government of Chile introduced the Corporation de Fomento de la Producidn (Chilian Development Corporation) with the object of modernizing, industrializing and diversifying the national economy18: while, to provide a diversity of services to the separate territories of Kenya, Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and Uganda, the East African Common Services Organization appeared on the scene in 1961 (superseding an earlier East African High Commission, of three Governors which had been jointly established in 1947). The new body consisted of elected ministers of the three territories and was a public corporation of a special type designed to provide a variety of common services, only some of which were essentially of a business or industrial nature (namely Railways and Harbours, Posts and Telecommunications, and Air Services), an administrative experiment which many in the territories hoped, and continue to hope, may come to form the nucleus of a federal government for the region.19 In some countries mixed corporations have been preferred, in which both private and public interests participate, govern­ ment control being exercised by the occupancy of posts on the directorate and the ownership of shares, as in the case of the Suez Canal Company set up in 1866 under Egyptian concession, mainly with French capital, over which Benjamin Disraeli (180481), as Prime Minister, acquired a predominant shareholding for Great Britain by the purchase of the Khedive of Egypt’s personal shares in 1875. This institution was managed on the spot by the Canal Zone Administration, on which the Egyptian Government was represented by a Commissioner who had the right to scruti­ nize all dealings of the Company.20 (This arrangement came to an end with the nationalization of the Canal in 1956.) The equivalent of the public corporation in France is the etablissement public, or public institution, a specialized agency set up by the central government or a local authority to undertake administrative social services or nationalized industrial or com­ mercial undertakings. Although these bodies have a separate legal personality and financial autonomy they nevertheless remain part of the state. There are two types: the first is staffed and run on civil service lines, while the second, a later introduction, is

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subject to the rules of industrial management and is not staffed by civil servants. Yet such is the strength in France of the notion of the unitary state that the second category has in practice tended to revert nearer to the position of the first. In France also the mixed-economy company has become increasingly popular, based upon concessions which involve part-ownership of share capital and representation, as mentioned above, with the degree of state participation varying as between concerns. Such companies, employing both public and private management forms, are subject to special provisions.21 The employment of the public corporation has extended widely since the Second World War. In Britain in particular it has been adopted as the main form of organization for nationalization, based upon the pre-war pattern of the ministerially appointed board with financial autonomy (often eroded by the failure to pay its way) but iather more closely supervised than formerly. In some industries, notably electricity and gas supply, a regular constellation of public boards, was set up: one acting as a policy­ determining body and the others as autonomous supply organi­ zations distributed on a regional basis. The public corporation has been adopted widely by newly independent countries for the development of the productive sector. Thus by 1964 Pakistan had established thirteen Central Government Corporations and twenty-three Provincial Govern­ ment Corporations (fourteen in East Pakistan and ten in West Pakistan), which were closely linked to the government machine through the high proportion of directorships held by government officials.22 Israel has used the device even more widely. In 1964 there were as many as two hundred Corporations coming under state control, made up of (1) bodies in the management of which the government has a share, (2) bodies placed under inspection by resolution of the Knesset (legislature) or in agreement with the government, and (3) organizations in which other official bodies have a share in the management. The special interest here is the extent to which these bodies are subject to closer inspection by the high-powered State Comptroller, referred to below. The characteristic features of this form of public institution, which brings together and overlaps the normal spheres of govern­ ment and business activity, have been summarized by W. Fried­ mann in particular reference to British experience, under seven headings: ‘First, each public corporation is separately established by statute, or in rare cases by charter; it is an individual, not a type. Second, the

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public corporation is an independent corporation with separate legal personality. Third, its administration is in the hands of a governing board appointed by the Government, not by representative groups of interests. Fourth, the employees of the public corporation are not civil servants. Fifth, none of the public industrial corpora­ tions have shareholders. Most of them, with ministerial approval, can raise loans, but the holders of the stock have no rights of voting or representation. The basis of their finance, moreover, is not parlia­ mentary appropriation but permanent revenue-earning assets. They are directed to balance revenue and expenditure (over a period of years), and any profits generally have to be ploughed back into the development of the enterprises. They are commercially audited. Sixth, all public corporations are responsible to the Government through the competent Minister and they are subject to general direction, and through the Minister they are responsible to Parlia­ ment. Seventh, they have in their day-to-day operations the character of other private legal corporate persons. They are fully liable in law, and do not participate in any of the legal privileges and immuni­ ties of government. On the whole, the public corporations have a dual nature. In their commercial and managerial aspects they resemble commercial companies and they have an essentially private law status. But in so far as they fulfil public tasks on behalf of the Government and Parliament they are public authorities, and as such subject to control by the Government, within the limits defined by statute and developed by convention.’23

These headings provide a useful general summary of the form, but, as will be evident from the few examples quoted in our text, some of the suggested characteristics are absent or changing in practice — and this applies to Britain as much as elsewhere. The situation is extremely fluid. The question of control is a vexed one to which some reference will be made in the next section. CONTROL

OF

PUBLIC

ADMINISTRATION

In earlier ages, control of the administrative sectors of govern­ ment has been — as basically it still is — purely a matter of management, but the growth of government and the consequent extension and diffusion of public administration in modern societies has rendered this control a much more complex busi­ ness, involving also the operation of safeguards against the growth of bureaucracy. With the prospect of even greater changes ahead the question of control is certain to be of increasing concern to all who are involved, which means virtually everybody.

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Direct control of the Administration by its governmental masters rests normally with the Executive, although in fact the other branches participate if usually to a lesser extent. Apart from these strictly internal, or administrative controls, there are also the numerous external controls and influences operating upon the Administration from the outside, severally through the law, legislative supervision and various forms of intervention. Earlier chapters of this work have shown how this problem had emerged in former times. Even in the simpler conditions of those early ages rulers had found it necessary to employ inspectors to ascertain, execute on the spot and report back the position in the distant reaches of the administration. An early method of exercising control over the disbursement of funds, always a vulnerable point in the stream of official activities, was to place financial business in different hands from the ordinary executives, as in such varied systems as those of Imperial Rome and the Caliphate. In the more democratic systems of Ancient Greece and Republican Rome officials, or magistrates, holding office usually for short terms, were often publicly investigated beforehand and their performance subjected to scrutiny at the close of their term of office. In a later age France set up a Cours des Comptes to audit official accounts, while the French system of administration generally has developed droit administratif whereby both officials and citizens bear special responsibilities in the performance of public business for which they can be called to account in special administrative courts. With the development in the modern age of elected chambers and councils a more intimate and direct link has been provided between the people and their representatives, and between their representatives and the executive. This is closest where local council members are in direct contact with the citizens and, at the centre, where the Ministers, selected from among elected members of the legislature, are ever present in the latter to be called to account for their stewardship, which includes their responsibility for any sector of the administration (ministry or department) placed in their charge. Through this channel com­ plaints against the administration can be probed, by question or interpellation, while committees of the legislation can undertake more serious and extensive examinations. The Parliamentary question is a highly esteemed means for this purpose in the British system, as are the congressional investigatory committees in the American, where the separation of powers and the consequent absence of the departmental heads from the legislature means that such committees provide the latter with an essential means

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of probing the activities of the executive. In the Russian system the judiciary has special inquisitorial powers over the Admini­ stration, through the Procurator General, which has been copied inter alia in Poland, where it seems to have had a real measure of success, although there are contesting views about this.24 Two powerful trends seem to be rendering control of public administration from the outside increasingly difficult: (1) the sheer increase in the scope of governmental activity and the consequent encouragement of bureaucracy with all its draw­ backs, and (2) the increasing technicality of administration in all spheres, which renders it less and less easy to understand not only by the layman but also by the politician, who is responsible for its use and direction, and even by the officials themselves, whose professional education tends to fall well behind the needs of their work. An interesting development in this field, though not basically new, has been the export of the Scandinavian ombudsman, whose office dates back at least to 1809, when the Grand Duchy of Finland (then part of Imperial Russia) took over the earlier Swedish Chancellorship of Justice, charged with the responsibility for overseeing the King’s servants. It has continued since that date as Justitieombudsman,25 Similar offices were created in Norway in 1952, Denmark in 1955, New Zealand in 1962 and, as Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, in Britain in 1967. The scope and powers of this official varies, sometimes extending to local as well as to central government, while mili­ tary as well as civil appointments exist. In his more modern guise the ombudsman is an official of parliament, authorized to con­ sider complaints of maladministration and to report upon them from time to time to the legislature. Initially in Britain the Parliamentary Commissioner is confined to matters restricted to certain departments, excluding also questions relating to the safety of the state, overseas relationships, investigations of crime, the prerogative of mercy, discipline of the armed forces, com­ mercial relations, Civil Service personnel and all subjects provided for through the ordinary courts and other special bodies. No doubt in a country with a considerable population such a restricted start was wise. The official’s scope could easily be extended should the system prove of real value. A special Select Committee of the House of Commons has been set up to deal with Commissioners’ reports. The value of a Censorate as a normal branch of govern­ ment has been recognized in many earlier systems, and the ombudsman can well be regarded as a modern version of such an office. In a parliamentary system it merely forms part of a

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web of control that already exists and needs to be extended to cope with new situations. Another interesting development of a similar type is the State Comptroller of Israel,26 who seems to combine the financial audit of the Comptroller and Auditor General of the United Kingdom, who dates back to 1866, the complaint-investigation of the Parliamentary Commissioner, and, to some extent, the internal efficiency audit, or O and M, investigation. His duties are not confined to finance, but cover questions of regularity, moral integrity, efficiency, economy and thus provide an efficiency audit that probes widely beyond the normal governmental reaches into all fields of public participation. Only perhaps in a relatively compact community could a single office cover such a wide field on behalf of the legislature, but in its particular environment there can be little doubt of its effectiveness. The problem of achieving effective control of public admini­ stration, of guarding against the development of bureaucracy, has been considerably extended by the recent proliferation of the public corporation and similar autonomous bodies, not subject to the normal tests of profitability, as outlined in the preceding section. Where such bodies are closely integrated into the govern­ mental structure ministers can be held responsible and called to account through the normal channels, but where such ministerial responsibility is restricted by design, as in Britain, the problem has no easy solution. Here, having restricted its own direct responsibility — as for example to question the daily manage­ ment of the nationalized industries — Parliament itself has begun to develop more detailed indirect supervision through its select committees, notably the Select Committee on Nationalized Indus­ tries, which is empowered to investigate and comment upon the reports and accounts which the industries have to submit to the responsible minister for laying before Parliament. The multitude of senior appointments that the establishment of these numerous public bodies has created, has added conspicuously to the patron­ age exercised by politicians and placed a wide area of political activity beyond the scope of democratic scrutiny. The creation of a galaxy of powerful oligarchies within the public sphere is a more or less spontaneously generated evil that is coming to be accepted as a matter of course by the majority and not without a good deal of favourable acquiescence by the influential sector that may hope to derive the greatest benefit from such appoint­ ments.27 For the health of society this trend towards bureaucracy will need to be curbed, possibly by the invention and building into the system of a series of self-acting safeguards, or a recogni-

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tion that the newer forms of public administration are tending to pass the point at which the superiority over the older forms can continue to be taken for granted. PUBLIC

A D M I N I S T R A T I O N AS ACTIVITY

A SPECIALIST

Specialization based upon division of labour has long been recognized as one of the key-phenomena of human development, especially in the sphere of government, as this study clearly shows. In earlier ages, however, the administrative activities of government, in so far as they were differentiated, were of a comparatively simple nature and such as not to raise difficult questions of content, organization or technique. It was not until the great increase in the scope and complexity of government, following the social service or welfare state, that concentrated thought began to be directed upon public administration as a specialized factor of government, itself part of the wider province of politics. Nevertheless, merely because there is little surviving evidence of what transpired in this field in the past, it may well be wrong to assume that it is only recently that mankind has been thinking about such matters. One of the real advantages to be derived from a more intensive study of the history of public administration is the light that further research may well throw upon the subject. It is obvious that practical men often in the past felt impelled to think about the problems ancillary to governing, even if they did not leave a record of their cogitations. Moreover, as we have seen, there is considerable evidence of both literary and professional interest in administrative matters. Political philosophers have certainly not ignored the subject and in this context the Politics of Aristotle and 11 Principe of Machiavelli may be quoted from the realm of general literature. There have also been the surviving manuals of officialdom — usually considered by contemporaries as of ephemeral interest — in which were set down the rules of which scribes and copyists and others were expected to conform. Such documents were likely to disappear completely as soon as their period of usefulness had passed. From China, whose officials were the supreme administra­ tive experts of earlier ages, and further west from Byzantium a number of such manuals have actually survived. Nor should we overlook, from India, Kautilya’s celebrated Arthasastra in which the art of statecraft is so clearly displayed. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the consequent social unheaval that threw many new burdens upon

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the governors, a proliferation of notable official inquiries, directed to diagnose causes and to suggest solutions, placed Britain in the forefront of the movement to rationalize the pro­ cesses of public administration. It was soon discovered that, even when the social or economic problems had been correctly assessed, the solution often called for administrative ways and means that were not yet available. Such leaders of thought as Jeremy Bentham and his practical follower Edwin Chadwick did much to break new ground by their endeavours in this field. Thus, as an adjunct of his famous Constitutional Code, Bentham in 1830 provided an essay in public personnel management, under the intriguing title Official Aptitude Maximized Expense Mini­ mized, which inter alia combined the old with the new by pro­ posing recruitment of officials according to proved aptitudes by selecting from among qualified candidates those who were willing to perform the required tasks at the lowest market rate, an ingenious if rather unlikely compromise between the world of laissez faire which the Benthamites so enthusiastically advocated and the new administrative society of the future that they at least were dimly perceiving. Roman law systems had examined the content of administra­ tion in legalistic terms and had drawn up working codes for officials long before the Anglo-Saxons, to whom this was an alien approach. Then, towards the end of the century, Max Weber (1864-1920), an eminent German sociologist with the traditions of Prussian administration in his veins, came forward to adumbrate a theory of bureaucracy — using the term to mean ‘officialdom’ in general rather than the more widespread notion of a selfperpetuating and thoroughly unworthy type of administration. In contemplating the development of power relationships in society Weber saw bureaucracy as the admirable and highly desirable development of an impartial, expert and non-involved professional body intellectually equipped to cope with the admini­ strative needs of the new society, whether the leadership was in the hands of an autocratic, constitutional or elected body. By theoretical exposition he had reached similar conclusions to those reached by the progenitors of the new Civil Service by a process of trial and error. It was, however, in the United States, with its expanding plurality of governmental institutions and great variety of non­ governmental enterprise providing a rich experimental environ­ ment for the examination of institutions and organization, that a new phase in the growth of reasoned awareness of administration really took shape. Although the primary impact was practical

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rather than academic, it was a distinguished academic — albeit one who was eventually to become an even more distinguished practitioner in politics — namely Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), later to be President of the United States, who in 1887, in an essay on The Study of Public Administration, emphasized the importance of separate study of the administrative activities of government within the general field of political science; in fact as an essential development in the specialization of this particular branch of human knowledge. So it seems to stand today, despite the claims of later theorists in this field, who have broadened and enriched rather than superseded this original approach. The emphasis at this early stage was placed upon the broad shaping of structure, function and working methods. Con­ currently, increasing attention was being given by practical men to the examination of administrative ways and means in other fields, thus supporting the ideas of a growing body of thinkers who recognized administration as a general activity of which the public sectors were merely a certain, if very important, part. The experienced French industrialist, Henri Fayal (1841-1925),28 whose much read Administration industrielle et generate appeared in 1916 during the First World War, became the doyen of this movement. He laid down certain principles of administration which the leader had to take into account, and significantly he placed administration itself as one of six functions essential to an enterprise, thus giving it much less importance in the produc­ tion than in the governmental field. The difference was much more apparent at a time when governmental activity was still predominantly of an administrative nature and subsidiary to the nation’s productive sector. He makes an important point when he shows that, even in industrial enterprise, the activities of the directing group become increasingly generalist and administra­ tive, and less technical, in the higher reaches of the staff hierarchy. The practical approach was already being much advanced in the United States by Frederick W. Taylor in his Principles of Scientific Management (New York, 1911) and Shop Management (New York, 1911). He and his followers were primarily concerned with work-efficiency at the bench, with making the most of the workers’ individual efforts and skills, rather than with general principles and structure. They attempted to measure by time and motion study the actions of the manual worker in carrying out his normal tasks and to discover ways of rendering his efforts more effective, both to his employer and to himself, through economy of effort, avoidance of fatigue and so forth; but for II c c

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obvious reasons this particular approach was not usually approved by the workers themselves, who harboured fears, often well justified, of exploitation. During this phase, which was concentrated mainly upon the field of industrial and business administration — a field to which the student of public administration must look for enlightenment — much attention came to be given to the discovery of ‘principles’ of administration, and also to the meaning and problems of organization and management. The ‘principles’ approach was effectively presented by James D. Mooney and Alan C. Reilly in their Onward Industry which appeared in 1930,29 but the search for universally applicable principles was dogged at every step by the difficulty of drawing precise conclusions from the study of social activities in which inevitably the investigator himself is subjectively involved. An important contribution during this phase, consisting of a number of papers by different authors, was embodied in Papers on the Science of Administration, published in 1937 under the editorship of Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick, both worthy pioneers in the field. Gulick’s own paper made a characteristic contribution by coining the code phrase P(lanning) O(rganization) S(taffing) D(irecting) C(o)0(ordinating) R(eporting) B(udgeting) to summarize the functions of the higher officials in all branches of administration, a development of Fayol’s original interpretation and one that subsequent develop­ ments and suggestions have not completely superseded. Of writ­ ings on these lines the number is legion, some stimulating and the majority American, but among the pioneers the Englishman Lyndall F. Urwick stands out and his two works The Elements of Administration (Pitman, 1943) and The Pattern of Manage­ ment (Pitman, 1956) are illuminating, but it has to be admitted that the Briton’s characteristically empirical approach has not encouraged the production of distinguished theoretical contribu­ tions. Indeed there are some works purporting to deal with ‘principles’ about which the least said the better. In fact the search for principles, as distinct from a more strictly analytical approach, with which a number of outstanding studies were vitally concerned, was to receive its coup de grace (at least until some revolutionary advance has been achieved in the social sciences) with the publication in 1945 of Herbert A. Simon’s Administrative Behaviour, in which he demonstrated that the so-called principles of administration, which he preferred to label ‘proverbs’, were ambiguous and could lead to opposing con­ clusions. As his title indicates, Simon was concerned with probing the administrator’s activities and behaviour, placing a new

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emphasis upon an approach which, if not absent from the work of the pioneers, had certainly been gaining ground since the Second World War. In future attention was to be spread more widely over such subjects as the behaviour of the participants, questions of psychology, consideration of administration as a subject in its own right, the importance of the environment in which the administrator operates, and so forth. These several approaches widened the scope of the subject and have certainly heightened its value to the public administrator, who also had his own problems to solve. It is only when such lines of approach are regarded as the unique way to final solutions that their partial nature can become a menace, though, except in colleges and institutions with a vested interest in creating their own intellec­ tual preserves, it cannot be said that there is any real evidence that either industrialists or public officials have allowed them­ selves in practice to be confused on the several issues. It would be out of focus to attempt a detailed analysis of the various schools of thought here but a brief reference to some of the interesting studies that have appeared, again mainly in America, since the ’thirties should help to indicate the general trend of thought on the subject.30 The human relations approach was given a considerable impulse with the publication of the results of the experiment, carried out in the late ’twenties and early ’thirties, at the factories of the Western Electric Company at Hawthorne in the United States which led to the conclusion that the workers’ attitudes and morale had a far more decisive effect upon output than mere changes in work conditions or even increased monetary incen­ tives.31 A notable contribution was made by Mary Follet (18651935) whose concern with industrial relations and their effect upon management went back to the earlier decades of the century.32 Her idea that if only worker and manager could master the basic facts of the situation the actual decision would be prescribed by the very situation was perhaps somewhat naive, but it injected a new factor into the discussions at a time when management in the United States was beginning to suspect that the current strong-arm methods were not ensuring the most effective results. An impressive contribution to the understanding of the responsibilities of the manager was made by Chester Barnard in his much-quoted Functions of the Executive (Harvard, 1938), which considerably modified the approach of earlier writings by switching the emphasis from techniques to attitudes. Latterly

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attention has been concentrated on organization with the object of formulating a general theory of this factor.33 Some have concentrated upon administration as a process, while others have given particular attention to environmental factors.34 Attempts to work out a general theory of public administration continue impressively in the United States, where the subject is widely taught, and the list of general text-books is ever increasing. In other countries too increasing attention is being given to the subject, but Britain is still backward in this field, though there are favourable signs of coming change. While general histories of public administration are few and far between it will be evident from the book references in the present work — a mere selection from a much wider pool — that specialized studies of administrative institutions and activities at different times and places abound, so that the basic store of rele­ vant information is being rapidly increased.35 THE

FUTURE

OF

PUBLIC

ADMINISTRATION

Under this heading we reach the final stage of our survey. In a history it is perhaps not appropriate, and certainly not wise, to include a forecast of the future, and when one examines such forecasts as have from time to time been made it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that observers equipped with more profound technical knowledge have usually made a poor job of their diagnoses, which become more and more precarious in a time of rapid change such as the present. Geniuses of the calibre of H. G. Wells are rare indeed. Here we can only set down tentatively what can be seen today as the need of an immediate tomorrow. The future of public administration must hinge primarily upon the future of government, and in this sphere radical changes are to be hoped for, if not exactly expected, in the direction of improved democratic participation, which in its turn will depend upon better informed citizenship, thus presenting a burning task to the educator, whose own accomplishment is at sixes and sevens. Public administration itself must be equipped to meet new demands as they arise, and an increased awareness of their responsibilities among administrators at all levels is clearly called for. A better interchange of ideas over the whole field of human endeavour is a crying need, in the fulfilment of which the administrator would benefit as much as others, and in which he is in fact in a special position to assist. The shape and content of administration is already being

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radically altered by the multitudinous developments going on around us, and especially by the impact of automation — particu­ larly through the expanding use of automatic data processing (ADP), a means whereby, through the use of electronic com­ puters infinitely large and varied masses of information can be assembled, sorted, stored and accurately selected in an incredibly short space of time. When it is remembered that a basic function of administering has been the laborious copying by scribes and clerks of documents, the extraction of information therefrom, their filing for future reference, and their eventual selection for the handling of future problems and cases, a process that in more advanced governmental and business systems has often meant the deployment of large clerical staffs, properly controlled by supervisors, themselves graded on a number of distinct levels, it is not difficult to understand how such unwieldy staff groupings, expensive in manpower and accommodation and inevitably cumbersome in producing results, can now be replaced (usually as a mere fraction of its maximum potential) by a computer which requires but a small group of technicians and experts to manipulate and service it. Apart from the obvious economy of resources the results come speedily and, because of the practic­ ability of incorporating effective cross-checking devices, the human factor is reduced to a minimum and a high degree of accuracy is ensured. One of the first of these operations to be taken over by ADP was the weekly and monthly pay-roll, on which large-scale organi­ zations, such as Government Departments, had to employ large clerical staffs. A problem of producing satisfactory pay-rolls was the need for incorporating, continuously and usually on an individual basis, new factors, such as overtime payments, age increments, special deductions, income tax and social security variations, by which the employees’ pay packets are constantly modified. To the electronic computer, properly programmed for the specific goal, the fulfilment of this task with practically up-tothe-minute changes is just child’s play. Basically the computer is a mechanical aid to arithmetical performance, and the idea goes back to the simple abacus used by the Greeks and other early peoples. In fact many of the recently introduced and highly sophisticated management tech­ niques stem from rule of thumb methods long used by persons who had their own calculations to make. The first machine capable of performing the four fundamental operations of arith­ metic was invented by Blaise Pascal in 1642, significantly from our point of view, to assist his father who was a Customs official.36

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It carried out multiplication by repeated addition and division by repeated subtraction. Leibniz improved upon it in 1671 by enabling it to carry out multiplication directly, but its reliability was suspect and it was not until the nineteenth century that satisfactory calculating machines came to be constructed. Charles Babbage (1792-1871), one of the pioneers of the digital computer, had invented an improved calculating machine — his Difference Engine — in 1812 and received government support in its con­ struction. In 1863 the Registrar General was to use a model of this machine to calculate life tables, which were widely used in insurance work. In the meantime Babbage had conceived the idea of an Analytical Engine which, through automatic working, would carry out a sequence of operations under automatic con­ trol provided by means of punched cards. This was in effect a mechanically powered digital computer, but, despite substantial support, between 1833 and 1842, by H.M. Treasury, whose provision in that economical age speaks well for the basic idea, an effective machine failed to emerge. Evidently engineering science was not yet sufficiently sophisticated to produce the precision work that the manufacture of such a machine required. Having spent much of his time and his own fortune upon the project Babbage died in 1871 and his ideas for the time being were forgotten.37 In America Herman Hollerith used the method of the punched card for a machine first used in 1889 to speed up the American census, and powered machines gradually came into use for tabu­ lating and statistical purposes, but Babbage’s idea was not to be taken up again until 1939, when the United States produced the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, which was to be replaced by the Electronic Computer. The first of these, labelled ENIAC (Electronic Numeral Integrator and Computer) emerged in 1943 to provide firing tables for the American Army. Out of this idea J. von Neumann conceived the design for the modern electronic computer and the first stored-programme computer, EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator), came to be built in the mathematical laboratory of the University of Cambridge in England and was put into operation in May 1949. Four years later a modified version, known as LEO (Lyons Elec­ tronic Office), was built for J. Lyons and Co., the caterers, and brought into service towards the end of 1953. It was the first ever to be applied to office work. This machine continued in use until January 1965, but in the meantime developments in the field had been so rapid and extensive as to inaugurate a new technological revolution, the probable impact of which is only

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just being dimly visualized. In a bare fifteen years great strides have been made, especially in the United States where the potentialities of the new advance were quickly grasped. The electronic computer in its different forms has its uses in many fields, particularly in the improved mechanization of production in industry, e.g. in process control, and not least in administra­ tion, whose simplification and concentration is facilitated at a time when its almost spontaneous proliferation seems likely to impede further development in all fields in which increasing administrative support is essential, particularly in government. Apart from its manifest use in the rationalization of office work — in all operations where a large number of items of infor­ mation have to be handled and selected, as in the payroll work already mentioned; in statistical and census activities; stock control; police work — the computer is proving of increasing use to management. In providing ample up-to-date information to support planning, control and decision-making, specifically in the working of such new management processes as operational research,38 the electronic computer is undoubtedly widening the scope for managerial action, not least in public administration where large-scale organization and extensive operation is now the natural order of things. Of its eventual influence upon the actual structure of administration, such as the simplification of organiza­ tion and procedures and in such economical arrangements as the concurrent administration of income tax levying with social security payment, we have as yet but hazy notions. But the time is very young and it might be wise to hurry slowly. The big danger may well be that the changes thus introduced could lead to such a high degree of instability in the social organization as to delay unduly or even prevent the gathering of all the fruits that the invention promises. Fundamental changes are called for and in our hurry we may well fail to adopt such preparatory arrange­ ments as are necessary to ensure their maximum acceptance. This is very much a task for the administrator. Even the legislator will need to call upon the expert for advice on how he may, by modifying the roots of his legislative impulse, ensure that new law does not, through excessive complexity, add insupportable costs to the national budget. We all have to learn as we go along and to take nothing for granted. It is to be remembered, however, that the electronic computer is but the most sophisticated of new tools and not a substitute for the human brain, a fact that forecasters know well enough but, in their justifiable enthusiasm for the marvels of science, are too liable to overlook. Hence their rosy pictures of the world in the

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twenty-first century, which proliferate in press, lecture-hall and more permanent print. That, in a model situation, science is fully capable of doing what the pundits promise can hardly be denied, and more — for there must be many new inventions just round the corner which even the scientists do not pretend to foresee. But our prophets usually start from the premise that the gap to be filled falls between the position reached by limited groups in the more advanced societies and what a selected group could achieve in the near future, other things being equal. Yet the mere task of organizing such advances for the vast under-supplied body of mankind as it is and the colossal task of educating them and their children raises problems that are frightening in their immensity, quite apart from the major question — still to be answered — whether the vast majority of mankind will be capable of grappling with the complexities of the world that the scientists have in mind. In this sense the scientist today is taking over the role of the Utopian of yesterday: it is for the sociologist, the psychologist and the administrator to bring his dreams down to earth. Assuming that the problem of plenty really were solved and productivity had been so far increased and organized as to meet all man’s material demands — a very tall assumption indeed — the inevitable need for many new services would extend employ­ ment in many new directions. This problem is already with us in litter-cluttered streets, dirty railway carriages, and the extended police, salvage and supply services required when everyone is on vacation — crowding roads, beaches and hills. Of course, there are improved mechanical solutions in process, but inevitably they take up time and absorb manpower. And there is the increasing demand for social and medical services to keep back the growing tide of psychological and mental unease or near­ breakdown, due to the reactions to the new conditions of human beings not tempered to live in the new Elysium, if that is the proper term. Added to these is the more mundane problem of replacing superseded equipment, and indeed of the emerging equipment as new inventions shoal upon us. Britain among the European nations is a crying example of the colossal task of getting rid of the Victorian material heritage in, for example, the disgusting homes that many people, reasonably well-off but life-conditioned to their inconvenience, prefer to continue with rather than to curtail their enjoyment of such pleasures as bingo and the race track. The foreshadowed new society, with its skycoverings to

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keep the temperatures of towns even, described as long ago as 1898 by H. G. Wells in The Sleeper Awakes and already being experimented in by the Russians for their vast Siberian outlands of maximum inhospitability, presents servicing problems of unexampled complexity. The consequences too have to be faced of endangering the balance of nature by these incredible advances, of building up a society individually incapable of self-help in the case of unanticipated crisis, and of irretrievable breakdown because it has all been so nicely integrated that the congenital saboteur will have a fine selection of means to induce complete stoppage. Such a system may inevitably say goodbye to all prospects of democracy, and be capable of being run only by an oligarchy of technicians, operating behind the scenes, a group which the sly and cunning would aspire to join, as probably the only one capable of constructing their own life rafts in case of catastrophe. Such nightmares of the fiction writers do not recede with the advance of science. The answer is not obvious. Clearly the practical solution must rest upon responsible politicians with the co-operative support of well-informed citizens everywhere. But a great responsibility must continue to rest upon the public administrator, whose historical contribution has been examined in this book. His timehonoured function will not be radically changed in the prospec­ tive new world. He will continue to be the servant, but a servant necessarily better equipped technically and more highly skilled in his own line than ever before, and even more ubiquitous as the relative importance of personal services over material pro­ duction increases. Such problems are already being studied by small groups of scholars and practitioners, but the total effort is relatively meagre. The time must come when both politician and citizen are much better equipped for the running of affairs than they have ever been. Our education needs to be re-orientated to cope with life and there can be little doubt that there will be much obstruction, not only from those people who exalt art and literature as a substitute for life but also from those scientists who confuse their exciting means with the true ends of living. As part of our training in political action and active citizenship — two objectives that are tragically neglected today, a neglect that contributes considerably to our present incompetence — we all need to know much more about the administrative assumptions of our present world, and to be better equipped to understand what our administrators are about, not only for the clarification of our own activities, but also to equip us with the capacity to

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A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

ensure that such bureaucratic trends as are endemic in all societies do not have the chance to develop. For the public administrator himself this points to better understanding through more appropriate education and training, and constant retraining in the processes of his profession and of such other branches of knowledge as are vital to the running of the business of government. The new citizenship will look more to the universities for post-graduate study and research, while the public administrator will require to supplement such further education with improved and continuing professional training. Administration is a common factor in all social situations, an understanding of which will assist positively in providing a key to developments in almost every field, and in a timeless sense in which problems of social co-ordination become increasingly vital, administration in all its aspects, both as art and science, will be one of the essential ingredients in everyone’s education. To the public official, servant of citizens in general and of politicians in particular, the study of administration of the public field will be an essential discipline, while to all it will commend itself as a major subject that will help to explain and illuminate much of what at present too often seems obscure.

REFERENCES 1 See, for example, H. A. Innis, E m p ir e a n d C o m m u n ic a tio n s (Oxford, 1950). 2 See, for example, A H is to r y o f G e o g ra p h ic a l D is c o v e r y a n d E x p lo ra tio n (Harrap, 1937 edn.). 3 Ernest Barker, T h e P o litic s o f A r is to tle (Oxford 1946), pp. 273-8. 4 In his C o n s titu tio n a l C o d e: see E. N. Gladden, A n I n tr o d u c tio n to P u b lic A d m in is tr a tio n (4th edn., Staples Press, 1966), p. 55. 5 Gladden, T h e E ssen tia ls o f P u b lic A d m in is tr a tio n (Staples Press, 3rd edn., 1964), pp. 182-3. 6 Nils Andren, T h e G o v e r n m e n t o f S w ed en (Swedish Institute, Stockholm, 1955), and M o d e rn S w ed ish G o v e r n m e n t (Almqvist & Wiksell, Stockholm, 2nd edn., 1968). 7 T h e C iv il S e rv ice : V ol. 1 — R e p o r t o f th e C o m m itte e , 1966-68 (Cmnd. 3638, H.M.S.O., 1968), especially Chap. 1, pp. 9-14. 8 For a succinct comparison of the governmental systems of Britain, United States, France, Switzerland and Russia, see Appendix to E. N. Gladden, A p p r o a c h to P u b lic A d m in is tr a tio n (Staples Press, 1966), pp. 141-83. 9 Brian Chapman, T h e P r e fe c ts a n d P ro v in c ia l F ra n ce (Allen & Unwin, 1955), p. 72. 10 Maud Committee Report, M a n a g e m e n t o f L o c a l G o v e r n m e n t: V o l. 4 — L o c a l G o v e r n m e n t A d m in is tr a tio n A b r o a d (H.M.S.O., 1967), covering

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN A NEW AGE

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

399

systems in Ireland, Sweden, United States and Canada, the Netherlands and the German Federal Republic. T. E. Headrick, T h e T o w n C le r k in E n glish L o c a l G o v e r n m e n t (Allen & Unwin, 1962). Maud Committee, o p . c it.t V ol. 1 — R e p o r t o f th e C o m m itte e , especially Chap. 3, pp. 22-67. Sidney and Beatrice Webb, E n g lish L o c a l G o v e r n m e n t: S ta tu to r y A u th o r itie s f o r S p e c ia l P u rp o ses (Longmans, 1922). For example, T. H. O’Brien, B ritis h E x p e rim e n ts in P u b lic O w n e r sh ip a n d C o n tr o l (Allen & Unwin, 1937), and Lincoln Gordon, T h e P u b lic C o rp o r a tio n in G r e a t B rita in (Oxford, 1938). Bernard Schwartz, A m e r ic a n C o n s titu tio n a l L a w (Cambridge, 1955), pp. 116-19. H. A. Hanson (Editor), P u b lic E n te rp ris e (International Institute of Administrative Sciences, Brussels, 1955), pp. 32-4. C. Herman Pritchett, T h e T en n essee V a lle y A u th o r ity (Univ. of N. Carolina, 1943), and David E. Lilienthal, T .V .A . on th e M a r c h (Penguin edn., 1944). Herman Finer, T h e C h ilian D e v e lo p m e n t C o rp o r a tio n (I.L.O., 1944). Gladden, ‘The East African Common Services Organization’, article in P a r lia m e n ta r y A ffa ir s , vol. xvi (Hansard Socy., 1962-3), pp. 428-39. Hugh J. Schonfield, T h e S u e z C a n a l (Penguin special, a n te 1939). F. Ridley and J. Blondel, P u b lic A d m in is tr a tio n in F ra n ce (Routledge, 1964), pp. 239-44. R. Braibanti (Editor), A s ia n B u r e a u c r a tic S y ste m s E m e r g e n t fro m th e B ritis h Im p e r ia l T ra d itio n (Duke Univ., 1966). Hanson, o p. c it .f ‘A Theory of Public Industrial Enterprise’, by W. Friedmann, pp. 20-1. Walter Gellhorn, O m b u d s m a n a n d O th e rs (Harvard, 1967), pp. 314 e t seq.

25 Gellhorn, o p. c it .t pp. 194 e t seq. 26 Official publication, T h e S ta te C o m p tr o lle r o f Isra e l a n d H is O ffice a t W o r k (State Comptroller’s Office, Jerusalem, 1963). 27 J. K. Galbraith, T h e A fflu e n t S o c ie ty (Hamish Hamilton, 1958). 28 On Fayol and other pioneers, see M a n a g e m e n t T h in k e rs Ed. by A. Tillett, T. Kempner, and G. Wills (Penguin, 1970). 29 Republished as T h e P rin c ip le s o f O rg a n iza tio n (Harper, N.Y., 1939). 30 For a stimulating summary (if we ignore a queer attempt to shape the historical context to the Hegelian-Marxist dialectic) see K. M. Henderson’s E m e r g in g S y n th esis in A m e r ic a n P u b lic A d m in is tr a tio n (Asia Publishing House, 1966). 31 Elton Mayo, T h e S o cia l P ro b le m s o f an In d u stria l C iv iliz a tio n (Routledge, 1949). 32 The collected papers of Mary Parker Follett, D y n a m ic A d m in is tr a tio n (edited by H. C. Metcalf and L. Urwick, Management Publications, 1941). 33 From among the numerous works on general administration from both sides of the Atlantic the following works may be consulted: G. E. Milward, A n A p p r o a c h to M a n a g e m e n t (Macdonald, 1946); W. H. Newman, A d m in is tr a tiv e A c tio n (Pitman, 1951); E. F. L. Brech, O rg a n iza tio n : T h e F r a m e w o r k o f M a n a g e m e n t (Longmans, 1957); B. N. Gross, T h e M a n a g in g o f O rg a n iza tio n s (Free Press of Glencoe, N.Y., 1964); and Sir Geoffrey Vickers, T o w a rd s a S o c io lo g y o f M a n a g e m e n t (Chapman & Hall, 1967).

400

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

34 On the former there is William Brownrigg, T h e H u m a n E n te rp ris e P ro c ess a n d its A d m in is tr a tio n (Univ. of Alabama, 1954), and on the latter F. W. Riggs, T h e E c o lo g y o f P u b lic A d m in is tr a tio n (Asia Publishing House, 1961). 35 Among general works from Britain are S. E. Finer, A P r im e r o f P u b lic A d m in is tr a tio n (Muller, 1950), and E. N. Gladden, The E ssen tia ls o f P u b lic A d m in is tr a tio n (Staples Press, 3rd edn., 1964); and on general history the somewhat brief T h e D e v e lo p m e n t o f P u b lic S e rv ice s in W e ste rn E u r o p e , 1660-1930 (Oxford, 1944), by Ernest Barker. 36 F. J. M. Laver, I n tr o d u c in g C o m p u te r s (H.M.S.O., 1965), provides an excellent introduction. 37 Urwick and Brech, op. c it ., pp. 20-7, includes a photograph of Babbage’s ‘Difference Engine’. 38 For an interesting summary of the new management techniques, in some of which the electronic computer is an important tool, see H.M. Treasury’s G lo ss a ry o f M a n a g e m e n t T e c h n iq u e s (H.M.S.O., 1967).

INDEX Aberdeen, Earl of, prime minister, 312 Absolutism in Europe, 141 Accountability, 75 Accountancy, 44, 155 Adams, John, president, 276, 277 Administration, basis of, 80; as essential activity, 30; gradual development of, 45; nature of, 80; 336-7, 389; studied by Inca heir apparent, 114; backwardness of, 273; French and British compared, 351 Administration of government, F e d e r a list definition, 309 Administrative councils, Napoleonic, 288-9 Administrative law system, 374, 384 Administrative Reform Association, 313 Admiralty/Admiralty Board, 170-2, 177, 178, 179, 181, 264 A d u , A . L ., quoted, 334 Africa, varied colonial experience, 324 Air transport introduced, 367 Akbar the Great, 231-240; as organizer, 238 Alexander the Great, 352 A l-F a k h ri, Arab treatise on govern­ ment, 79 American Colonies, early control and government, 262-3; Locke, Shaftesbury and Council of Trade and Plantations, 263; central de­ partments involved, 264-5; Board of Trade, 265; inadequate co­ ordination, 265; Crown ap­ pointees, 266; Burke and, 267 American Revolution, independence declared, 270; T h e F e d e r a list and other inspirational texts, 270, 271;

administration under Confedera­ tion, 272; Washington, as first president, 272, and Federalist doc­ trine, 273, his administration, 273-8; French participation, 279. See also ‘United States of America* A n c ie n R e g im e , 158, 186, 278, 279, 280, 286, 295 A n d r e w s , C . M ., quoted, 266 Angevin Empire, 39 Anglo-Saxon society, 4 Anglo-Scottish border, sixteenth cen­ tury control of, 98-100 Anne, Queen, 261 Anti-imperialism, 331, 356 Apostolic Chamber, Papal State, 37 A rc h o m a n ie , 185 Aristotle, departments defined, 368, P o litic s, 387 Arrow War, China, 222 Astrologers, official (Maya), 120, (China), 220 Atahualpa, Inca leader, 112 Atlantic Charter, 1941, 331 Authentication by seals, 22 Aurungzebe and Mughal decline, 241 Automatic data processing (ADP), 393, 394 Aztecs, early history (Olmecs, Toltecs, Zapotecs), 123; tribal basis (Tenochas), 124; overlord, 124; ceremonial, 125; training of leaders, 125, military organiza­ tion, 125-6; merchant class, 126; roads, 126; granaries, 126; public works, 126; theocracy, 126; human sacrifice, 126; overthrow by Spaniards, 126-7; paper, 127 Barbar, victory at Panipat, 232

402

INDEX

Babbage, Charles, analytical machine of, 394 Bank of England, 260, 269 Banking, 12, 18 (Italian), 44 Barnard, Chester, Functions of the Executive, 391 Barnes, G. N., official, 348 Basil II, emperor, 77 Basil the Eunuch, official, 77 Bentham, Jeremy, 187; departmental pattern, 368; Constitutional Code, 388 Bill of Rights, 1689, 260 Biography: Explanation x; Richard of Ely, 9; Hoccleve, 29, 32; Chaucer, 31; Lufti Pasha, grand vizir, 61; Psellus, 76; Basil the Eunuch, Lord Chamberlain, 77; Nizam al Mulk, 78; Ibn Khaldun, 80; Machiavelli, 87; Thomas Cromwell, official, 95; Lord Burghley, 101; Philip II, 104-9; Richelieu, 142-7; Louis XIII, 143; Louis XIV, 148-53; Colbert, MS57; Frederick William of Bran­ denburg, 159; Lionel Cranfield, 165-9; Pepys, 169-81; Su Tungpo, 191-4, 197-206; Wang Anshih, 1947; Matteo Ricci, 215-222; Wang P’an, governor of Shiuhing, 21618; Wen-hsiang and the Tsungli Yamen, 223-5; Akbar the Great, 233-40; Muzzaffar Khan, 234; Mir Fatahullah Shirazi, 235; Sir Robert Walpole, 262; George Washington, 272; Timothy Picker­ ing, 276; Abbe Sieyes, 279, 287; Napoleon, 289-297; Peter the Great, 301-5; Menshikov, Peter the Great’s first Procurator-General, 303; Sir Charles E. Trevelyan, 319-23; Albert Thomas, 348-52; Sir Eric Drummond, 359; David E. Lilienthal, administrator, 380 Black Book of the Household of Edward IV, 14 Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 270 Blake, John, clerk of works, 28 Blunt, Sir Edward, quoted, 243 Board of Civil Office, 214 Board of Control (India), 248 Board of Rites, 221, 222, 223, 224

Board of Trade (and Plantations), 265, 268, 269 Bodin, on statistics, 156 Bolsheviks, 335 Bon, Ottaviano, and Ottoman Im­ perial Household, 59 Book-keeping, double entry, 44; Luca Paccioli’s early treatise, 45 Books, glyph-written, 120, 123 Bourienne, F. de, quoted, 292 Bradley, Kenneth, The Colonial Service as a Career, 333 Britain, government and adminis­ tration in, 369, field offices, 371 Bryant, Sir Arthur, quoted, 169, 174, 177, 181 Bryce, Lord, quoted, 35 Buckingham, Duke of, and Cran­ field, 167, 169 Bureau des Parties Casulles, 185 Bureaucracy, 109, 164, 204, 245, 247, 254, 326, 386 Buren Martin van, quoted, 309 Burghley, Lord, 85, 101-4 Burgos, Laws of, 135 Burke, Edmund, 267-8, 270 Butler, H. B., official, 348, 350 Byzantium, 49, 50-2; failure to re­ join West, 51 Cabildo, local council, Spanish America, 132 Cabinet, 261 Cabot, Sebastian, 129, 300 Calais, English realm, 34, 41 Caliphate, 55 Cam, Helen, quoted, 24 Cambacdrfcs, French Statesman, 288, 291 Cameralism, university chair in, 162 Camphausen, Otto, quoted, 165 Carmagnola, Venetian mercenary, 54 Casa da India, Lisbon, 128 Casa de la Contratacion de las Indias, Seville, 128; Pepys visit to, 180 Castile, Council of, 129, 136 Castle building, 27 Castle of the Barbarians, Peking, 221

Catherine the Great, 304

IN D E X

Cecil, Sir William, see ‘Burghley, Lord* Cecil, Sir Robert, 102 Censorate, Chinese, 198, 208-9, 218; Russian procuracy, 303, 345, 38551; ombudsman, 385 Censorship, (France), 297 Central government administration, general forms, 367 Ceremonials, 56, 60, 125 Chadwick, Edwin, 388 Chamber, The, 9 Chancery, Norman, 5, 26 Chandragupta, 231 Chapman, Brian, quoted, 378 Charity administration, 57, 237-8 Charlemagne, 1, 35 Charles I (England), 104, 169, 183, 243, 259 Charles II (England), 171, 176, 179, 180, 181, 258; and Pepys, 174; and Lord Treasurer, 259 Charles II (Spain), 105 Charles V (Spain), 104, 184 Chartered companies 241, 300, 379 Chaucer, Geoffrey, poet-official, 31; Canterbury Tales, 32 Chelebi, Evliya, quoted, 65-6 Chichen Itza, Mayan city, 121, 122 Chilean Development Corporation, 381 Chimu Empire (S. America), 113 China: Sung Dynasty and its neighbours, 191; Su-Tungpo, official, 191-4; 197-206; totalitarian experiments, 194; Wang Anshih, official, 194-7; Censorate, 198, 2089, 218; Mongol victory, and Yuan Dynasty, 207; Ming Dynasty, 2078; Emperors Hung Wu and Yung-Lo; 207; Manchus and Ch’ing Dynasty, 207; Manchu system, 209; Li Fan Yuan (ex­ ternal bureau), 209; local govern­ ment, 209-12; village self govern­ ment, 211-12; Ch’ing Civil Service, 212-15; Board of Civil Office, 214; attitude to foreigners, 215; mission of Matteo Ricci, 215-22; Macau, Portuguese settlement, 216; power of Peking eunuchs, 219; official astrologers and mathematicians, 220; general relations with the

403

West, 222; Tsungli Yamen, 222, 223, 224, 225; Russian hostel, 222; Collected Statutes on em­ bassies, 222; Kow-tow, 222; Treaty Ports with trading rights, 222; Grand Secretariat and government, 223; Board of Rites and Court of Dependencies, 224; Wen-hsiang, official, 223, 224, 225; Civil Service, general review, 225-7; British Parliament’s views on Chinese administration, 313 Ch’ing Dynasty, 207, 212-5 Chirograph, or indenture, 23 Christianity, Chinese and, 217 Church, administration by, 16 Church of England, headship, 93 Church of Rome, see ‘Rome, Church of Churchill, Winston, 331 Cities, medieval, 19-20 Civil Office, Board of, 214 Civil Service (British), 169, 178; ex­ aminations, 311; TrevelyanNorthcote inquiry, 1853, its great influence, 312, recommends open competition to abolish patronage, 312, widespread opposition to, 312; subsequent reforms, appoint­ ment of Civil Service Commission, 313, 373; Administrative Reform Association, 313; Trevelyan’s career, 319-23; recent develop­ ment, 374 Civil Service (United States), Jefferson and appointments, 308; Tenure of Office Act, 1820, 309; spoils system emerges, 309; Jackson’s attitude to administra­ tion, 309-10; President as chief personnel officer, 310; Senate ap­ proves classification scheme, 311; examinations introduced, 311; opposition to reform 313; decline in efficiency, 313; President Grant receives increased powers, 314; first Civil Service ‘Commission’, and competitive examinations, 314-5 experiment fails and Grant sends Eaton to report on Civil Service in Britain, 315; President Garfield shot by disappointed office seeker, 318; Civil Service

404

IN D E X

(Pendleton) Act, 1883, establishes Civil Service Commission and competitive examinations, 318; general, 374 Civil Service (various), 212-15, 225-7, 246-54, 327-33, 359-61, 373-5 Civil Service Commission, 313,314-5, 318, 373 Civil Service regulation, 374 Clement VII, pope, 88 Clerk of the Kings Works, 28-9; Chaucer as, 32 Clerks, royal, 26 Clermont, Council of, 38 Clive, Robert, 242, 244 Codex (early book), 22 Coinage, 8 Colbert, Jean Baptiste, 141, 147, 148, 165; mercantilist programme, 149, 156; finance and statistics, 154-6; industry and navy, 156-7; eco­ nomic planning, 157; and sale of offices, 186 Collegiate administration, Prussia, 160; Russia, 312, 346; Sweden, 372 Colonial Administration, 323-35; varying national approaches, 324; Dominions, 324; Home Depart­ ments, 325, 333; Crown Colony control, 325-6; Whitehall control, 326; Governor’s powers, 326-7; Parliament’s modest interest, 326; Colonial Office reports, 326; bureaucratic government, 326; The Colonial Service, 327; Indian Civil Service influence, 327; recruit­ ment, 328-9, training 329-30; indirect rule, 329-30; District Officer as model, 330; dissolution of sea-linked empires, 330-1; Commonwealth superseded, 332-4; wrong application of sophisti­ cated institutions, 334 Colonial Office, 325, 326, 328, 333 Colonial Secretary (Secretary of State) 325, 328-9 Colonial Service, The, (British), wide range of functions, 327; separate specialist services, 327-8, 333; ex­ ample: Colonial Medical Service, 328; recruitment, 328-9, 333; post­ war developments, 333; Her

Majesty’s Overseas Civil Service, 333 Colonna, viceroy of Sicily, 109 Columbus, discoverer of America, 45, 111, 130 Comnenus, Alexius, 50 Comnenus, Isaac, 78 Commissioners (Domesday), 6 Common Market, European, 357 Commonwealth Relations Office/ Commonwealth Office, 326 Communications expansion, 352, 365-6 Communist Party (Russia), 338, 339, 340-3, 347 Conciliar government, 85, 91, 109 Condottieri, see ‘Mercenaries’ Confucian philosophy, 212, 226 Conquistadors, Spanish, 130, 131 Conseil d’Etat, 288, 289 Consolidated Fund, 269 Constantine VIII, 77 Constantine IX, 77-8 Constantine X, 52 Constantinople, falls to the Turks, 42, 50; founded, 50; assaulted by Fourth Crusade, 51; city govern­ ment, 64, 66; the Phanariots, 71 Control, Board of (India), 248 Control, nature of, 383; inspection, 384; separation of financial busi­ ness, 384; droit administratif, 384; control by representatives, 384; Russia’s Procurator-General, 385; reasons for increasing difficulties, 385; ombudsman, modern version of censorate, 385, Israel’s State Comptroller, 386; Parliamentary Select committee control, 386; in­ creased patronage, 386 Cornwallis, Lord, 247, 249, 251 Corregidores, 136 Cortes, Hernando, 111, 123, 130-1 Corvee system, Spanish America, 135 Council, Edinburgh, 99 Council, King’s, see *Curia regis' Council of Castile, 129, 136 Council of Clermont, 38 Council of Italy (Spanish), 107-8 Council of the Indies, 133, 136, 184 Council of the Marches in Wales, 97 Council of the North, 98

IN D E X

Council of Trade and Plantations, 263 Councils, administrative (Napoldon’s), 288-9 Councils, Royal (France), 151-2 Cour des Comptes, 294-5, 384 Court, Royal, peripatetic, 8 Court of Dependencies, 224 Court of Wards, 102-4 Court of Star Chamber, 93, 98 Craig, Sir John, quoted, 170 Cranfield, Lionel, merchant to minister, 165; Surveyor General of Customs, 165; previous taxfarming, 165-6; many posts, 166-7; Lord Treasurer, baron and earl, 167; Member of Parliament, 168; his strong measures, 168; downfall and impeachment in Parliament, 168 Cromwell, Oliver, and Common­ wealth, 258 Cromwell, Thomas, official, 86, 93, 94, 95-7 Crown Agents for Overseas Govern­ ments and Administrations, 328 Crown Colonies, 325-6 Crusades, 50, 51; Pope’s regulation of, 39 Curia regis, 9, 12, 91 Curtis, G. W., and Civil Service Re­ form (U.S.A.), 314 Cuzco, Inca capital, 113, 118, 119, 131 Danube, European Commission, 353 Delevigne, Malcolm, official, 348 Departmentalization, 23, 25-7, 55, 59, 61, 74, 92, 145, 159, 164, 208, 234, 258, 274, 280, 290, 301, 302, 325, 368, 372, 375, 390-1 Deslandres, Maurice, quoted, 289 Dickens, Charles, Miscellaneous Papers, 75 Dickson, William Martin, praises spoils, 317 Dialogus de Scaccario, 6, 22 Diplomacy, 31, 41, 55, 71, 213, 222 Direction and Top Management: Explanation viii; feudal house­ hold, 2; Anglo-Norman realm, 5, 12; Venice, 20; London, 21; Papal State, 36; Venetian Republic, 52,

n Dd

405 54; Seljuks, 55; Ottoman, 58, The Harem, 62, Slave Family, 66, grand vizir, 60; millet system, 70; Safavid, 72-3; Isaac Comnenus’s policy, 78; Al Fakhri, 79; sixteenth century Europe, 85-6; Florence and Machiavelli, 88; Tudor Royal Council, 91; Council of the North, 98; Queen Elizabeth I, 101; Philip II of Spain, 104, 106-7; Sicily, 1078; Lord Inca and Incan hierarchy, 113, 115; Maya city state system, 120; office of ruler, 121; League of Mayapan, 122; Aztec system, 1245, 126; Spanish overseas control from Seville, 128; Council of Castile, 129; Conquistadores, 130; townships incorporated, 130, 132; encomienda system, 131, 134; cabildo or local council, 132; Patronato or Church control, 133; general, 134; corregidores, 135; Council of the Indies, 136; seven­ teenth century France, 143; French royal councils, 146, 151; Louis XIV, 148, 150; Prussia, 159-165; War Commissars, 159-60; Police State, 160; Frederick’s changed policies, 164; Navy Board (English), 171-2, 176; Chinese em­ peror’s power (Sung), 201, (Ming), 208; Mandarin power, 212, 217, 218; China, nineteenth century government, 223; Hindu and Mohammadan regimes, 232; Mughal administration, 232; vizirship pluralized, 234; participation from outside government, 238; king’s provincial executive, 239; East India Company power, 2434; administration under Regulat­ ing Act, 1773, and Government of India Act, 1784, 247; Treasury control and Board of Control, 247-8; Company directorate modi­ fied, 248; Stuart government after Restoration, 1660 (King as execu­ tive), 258; Ministers and Depart­ ments, 258; Parliament and Ministers, 259; William III and Mary II inaugurate the Glorious Revolution, 260; Bill of Rights, 1689, 260; Crown retains execu-

406

IN D E X

tive power, 260; financial control, 260; succession fixed by Act of Settlement, 1700, 260; Cabinet and parties, 261; prime ministership emerges, 261-2; American colonies, 262; American Federal Govern­ ment and sovereignty, 271; Wash­ ington’s Executive, 273; France, power to nation and people, National Assembly, 279; depart­ mentalization of France, 280; 1791 Constitution, 281; Republican rule and direct executive control, 283; 1795 Constitution introduces Directory, 285; The Consulate, 287; First Consul as leader and administrator, 289; Napoleon, life consul, then Emperor of the French, 290; high state dignitaries re-introduced, 290; government re­ modelled, 290; France as a police state, 293-4; Russian Tsardomelimination of republics and popular assemblies, 298; Oprich­ nina or Separate Establishment; 299; Peter the Great’s Senate, 301; system of colleges, 301; inspec­ torial system, 302-3; Guards officers used as agents, overriding normal machinery, 304-5; Russia becoming a police state, 305; American president as chief personnel officer, 310; British Dominion government, 324; Home Departments’ responsibilities, 325; Crown Colony control, 325-6; Colonial Governor’s powers, 3267; Colonial Service, 327-29; Dis­ trict Officer as model, 330; Soviet Russia, federal system, 337-8; 1936 revisions—Supreme Soviet, P r e ­ sidium and Council of Ministers, 338; power from outside, govern­ ment machine as administrative network, 339; Party as policy­ making and controlling institu­ tion, 341; Party’s changing func­ tions and structure over the years, 343-4; Party-state power system, 347; nature of power in inter­ national administration, 356; executive of European Com­ munities, 357; modern central

government, 368-70; control of public administration, general, 383-6 Dispersal of government offices, 370 Disraeli, Benjamin, 381 District Officer, importance of, 248, 251, 330 Division of labour, 3, 25, 85, 307, 334, 387 Domesday Book, 5-7, 24 Dominions Office, 326 Domo-stroi, book of household management, 301 Double-entry book-keeping, 44 Drinking-houses, government, 301 Droit adminstratif, 374, 384 Drummond, Sir Eric, official, 359 Duclos, Roger, consul with Bona­ parte, 287, 288 Dupleix, Joseph-Francois, 242 Easby baronial household, 3 East African Common Services Organization, 381 East India Company, 241, 379 Eaton, Dorman B, Civil Service in Great Britain, 315 licole Nationale d’Administration, 375 Economic planning (Colbert), 157 Education, 19, 79, 103, 115, 125, 297 Edward I, 16, 24 Edward II, 23, 30 Edward III, 23, 43 Edward IV, 14 Edward the Confessor, 23 Electricity discovered, 366 Electronic computers, 394 Elizabeth I, 85, 90, 101, 165, 241 Ellul, Jacques, quoted, 1 Elton, G. R., quoted, 91, 95 Embassies, China, 222 Empleomania, 184 Encomienda system, 131, 134, 135 Engels, Friedrich, 336 England, Church of, 93 English Channel, influence of, 34 English Revolution 1688-9; 257-62; Oliver Cromwell and Common­ wealth, 258; Stuart government after 1660, 258, king and ministers, 258, Parliament and ministers, 259; William of Orange and his

INDEX wife Mary inaugurate the Glorious Revolution, 259-60; Bill of Rights, 1689, 260; financial control, 260; Act of Settlement fixes succession, 260; Cabinet and parties develop, 261; prime ministership emerges, 261; Act of Union (England and Scotland), 261-2 lit ats Generaux, 279 Eunuchs, 62, 73, 219, 220, 226 European Commission of the Danube, 353 European Common Market, 357-8 European Economic Community (E.E.C.) 357-8 European Free Trade Association (EFTA) 358 European Unity, 356; brief history, 357; institutions, 357-8 Examinations for officials, etc., 162, 163, 165, 177, 192-3, 196, 202, 206, 210, 213, 226, 302, 308, 311, 312, 314, 315, 318 Exchequer, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 93, 94 Exchequer, Chancellor of the, 95 Factories, government, 74, 233, 236, 242-3 Falkland’s, Lord, dictum, 246 Faraday, scientist, 366 Farm products, Inca, 114 Fayol, Henri, Administration industrielle et generale, 389 Fazl, Abul, Akbar Nama and A*in­ i’Akbari 232 Federal government, 338, 368, 371, 372 Federalist, The (Hamilton, Madison and Jay) 270, 273, 274 Fee taking and other payments, 73, 86, 103, 211, 212, 314 Feodaries, local officials, 102 Ferdinand, King of Spain, 129 Feudal system, 1-4 Field services, 277, 371 Fillmore, Millard, president, 311 Finance, 8, 36, 44, 61-2, 93, 146, 154-6, 235, 237, 260, 268, 294, 301, 384 Finer, Herman, quoted, 158, 161 First World War, 353, 367, 380 Flambard, Ranulf, justiciarius, 39

407

Fletcher, Giles (ambassador), quoted, 301 Florence, city government, 19; Re­ public of, 87 Follet, Mary, on administration, 391 Fontane, Arthur, official, 348 Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Dept, of, 326 Foreign technicians imported, 299, 301 Fortification rediscovered, 2 Foscari, Doge of Venice, 54 Fouche, Joseph, politician, 291 Frederick William of Brandenburg, 159, 162 Frederick I, Prussia, 161 Frederick the Great, 163, 164 Frederick William I, Prussia, 161, 163 French Revolution, 1789, 257, 268; administrative reforms needed, 278, litats Generaux called, 279; Constituent Assembly and Declara­ tion of the Rights of Man, 279; changes in local administration, federations formed, 280; new pro­ vincial Departments and Com­ munes, 280; Paris Commune, municipal administration, 280; new bodies to relieve growing poverty, 281; 1791 Constitution, 281; terror intervenes, Louis XVI guillotined, Republic declared, 282; direct rule, 283; official propa­ ganda machine, 284; fall of Robespierre, and reaction, 284; administration reorganized, 285; Directory introduced, 285; admin­ istrative shortcomings, 286; coup d’etat, 286; the Consulate, 287: Conseil d'Etat and administrative councils, 288, 289; Napoleon as administrator, 289; Napoleon, Consul for life, then Emperor of the French, 290; high state digni­ ties re-introduced, 290, govern­ ment re-modelled, 290-1; local administration, 291; the Prefect, 291; Napoleon’s Codes, 292; police administration, 293; finan­ ces, 204; Cour des Comptes, 2945; judicial reform, 295; public as­ sistance, 295-6; official propa-

408

IN D E X

ganda, 296-7; image of the leader, 296; public education, 297 Friedman, W. quoted, 382 Fulton Report on (British) Civil Service, 374 Functions and Organization: Ex­ planation ix; feudal household, 3-4; Norman realm, 8-10; Royal Household, 12-14; medieval towns, 19; departmentalization, 25; King’s Works, 27; Papal State, 36; Seljuk Turks, 55; Ottoman system, 61; Palace School, 68-70; millet system, 70-1; Safavid administration, 73; Florence, 88; Tudor administra­ tion, 91-5; Court of Wards, 102-3; Philip II’s councils, 106-7; Spanish Empire and Sicily, 109; Inca economy, 113-14; Mayan clans, 121; Aztec administration, 124-7; Spanish overseas control, 128-30; encomienda system, 131; New World municipalities, 132; Louis XIII (France), departmentaliza­ tion, 144-5; Louis XIV (France) general, 150-4; financial organiza­ tion, 154-6; German states, royal estate management, 158; Prussian administration, 159-65; British Admiralty, 171-2, 177-9, 181; Chinese censorate, 198; Ming and Manchu administration, 208-9; Chinese provincial administration, 209-12; Tsungli Yamen, 221, 223, 225. Mughal administration, 233-7; provincial administration, 239-40; East India Company, executive and judicial functions, 248; Com­ pany’s functions change, 250; ad­ ministration of American Colonies, 263-5; U.S. Federal and State governments, 271-2; French Revo­ lution, poor relief, 281; French central administration, 282-4; ad­ ministrative reorganization, 288; First Consul’s ministers, 289; ad­ ministrative councils, 288, 289; Napoleon’s departmental pattern, 290-1; local administration, 291-2; police, 293; finance, 294; public assistance, 295-6; Russian prikazy (bureau) system, 301; Russia, local government reorganized, 303-4;

British Colonial pattern, 327-8, 330; Soviet government, functional structure, 339-40; League of Nations structure, 353-4; United Nations structure, 355-7; Euro­ pean communities structure, 357-8; modern central government, 369, 370-3 Galbraith, V. H., quoted, 23, 24 Garfield, James, president, shot by disappointed office seeker, 318 General Eyre, 25 General Post Office, 367, 379 George I (Britain), 261 German states, 182 Ghana under Nkrumah, 362 Glanville, Ranulf, justiciar, 40 Glorious Revolution, 181, 259-60 Glyph writing, 120, 123 Goa, Portuguese base for mission­ aries, 216 Governor, British colonial, 326-7 Grain supplies, 126, 213 Grant, General Ulysses, president, 314, 315 Great Charter, see ‘Magna Carta* Great Seal, 23 Great War, see ‘First World War’ Greek amphictyonic councils, 352 Guilds, 18, 43, 129 Gulick, Luther (and Lyndall Urwick) Papers on the Science of Administration, 390 Hague Conference, 1899, 354 Hall, Hubert, quoted, 11 Hanney, William, Comptroller of the Works, 28 Hanseatic League, and trade, 44 Hanseatic Steelyard, London, 44 Harem (Ottoman), 60, 62-4 Hastings, Warren, 245, 246, 248, 251, 254, 267 Haye de Launay, de la, French official in Prussia, 164 Henry I (England), 9, 10 Henry II (England), 7, 9, 39, 40 Henry III (England), 13, 40 Henry III (France), royal secretariat, 144 Henry V (England), Normandy organized, 40

IN D E X

Henry VIII (England) and Thomas Cromwell, 85 Henry VII (England), 90, 93 Henry VIII (England), 90, 93, 96, 97 Her Majesty’s Overseas Civil Service, 333 Hero of Alexandria, 366 HilU Mary, C., quoted, 29 Hispaniola (Haiti-Dominica) 111 History (Inca), official remem­ brancer, 113, 116; annalists and amautas, 115 Hobson, J. A., Imperialism, 331 Hoccleve, Thomas, poet-official, 31, 32-4 Hollerith, Herman, punched card machines, 394 Holy Roman Empire, 1, 3, 35, 104 Hong Kong leased, 222 Hospitals, 57, 202-3 Household administration, 2, 3, 4, 12, 15, 91 Hundred Rolls (1274-75), 15-16, 24 I bn at-Tiqtaqa, quoted, 79, 80 Ica-Nazca culture markings, 112-3 Ibrahim, Grand Vizir, 64 Imperialist expansion, 331, 352 Improvement Commissions, 379 Incas, early history, 112-3; official remembrancers, 113; social units, 113, Lord Inca and hierarchy, 113-4; farm products, 114; no writing, quipu substitute, 115; quipacamayus and annalists, 116; haravecs (poets), 117; religion and priesthood, 117-8; chosen women and Virgins of the Sun, 118; road system, 118-9 India (Mughal), early developments, 231; Akbar the Great, 231-2; Barbar’s victory at Panipat, 232; Abul Fazl, and Mughal adminis­ tration, 232; Akbar’s daily routine, business at the darbar, 233; vizirship pluralized, 234; departments, 234; Akbar’s officials, 234; finance, 235, 237; religion and charity, 2378; Akbar as organizer and ad­ ministrator, 238; provincial ad­ ministration, 239; sipahsalar as King’s local executive, 239; taxes, 239; central control, 240; weakness

409

of the system, 240-1; empire’s lack of national spirit, 241; decline un­ der Aurungzebe, 241 India (East India Company), incor­ porated under Elizabeth I, 241; first trading stations, 242; Clive and Dupleix, 242; merchants’ attitudes, 242; staff organization, 242; power thrust upon Company, 243; Clive’s reforms, 244; ac­ quired revenue administration of Bengal, 244; attitudes to Indian institutions, 244-5; Crown as­ sumes control, 1853, 246; birth of a civil service, 246; Warren Hastings’s reforms, 246; Lord North’s Regulating Act, 1773, 247; Lord Cornwallis as GovernorGeneral, 247; Treasury control, 247; Board of Control introduced, 248; Company Directorate modi­ fied, 248; Charter Act, 1793, civil service reforms, 249; Charter Act, 1833, changes Company’s func­ tions, 251; policy of Indianization adopted, 251; the new structure, 251; training college at Fort William founded, 252; charac­ teristics of the service, 253-4; C. E. Trevelyan’s service with Company, 319, 322-3 Indian Civil Service’s influence, 327, 330, 335 Indies, Council of the (Spanish), 133, 136, 184 Indianization, 251, 254 -Indirect rule, 329-30 Industrial Revolution, 257, 269, 309, 365, 387 Independent Regulatory Com­ missions (U.S.), 380 Information, 149 Inquiries (inquests), 24, 25, (General Eyre), 25 Inquisition, Spanish, 107, 136 Inspectorate, 302, 383 Intendant (France), 152-4, 155, 280 International administration, 352; substitute for imperialist expan­ sion, 352; effects of communica­ tions expansion, 352-3; European Commission of the Danube, 353; international unions, 353; Inter­ national Telecommunications

410

INDEX

Union, 353; Universal Postal Union, 353; League of Nations, 353-4; and Treaty of Versailles, 354; effect of U.S.A.’s absence, 354; International Labour Organ­ ization, 354; Permanent Court of International Justice, 354; United Nations, 355; the Specialized Agencies, 355; European Unity, 356; new type of official, 358-60 International Court of Justice, 356 International Labour Organization (I.L.O.), 348-52; 354, 359, 360; Albert Thomas as first Director, 348; his selection, 348; special position of international public servant, 349; special nature of I.L.O., 349-50; its functions and office organization, 350; its branch offices, 351; differences between British and French administration, 351; personal cabinets introduced, 351 International officials, 349, 351, 359-63 International Telecommunications Union, 353 International unions, 353 Interstate Commerce Commission (U.S.), 380 Ireland, famine relief, 319-20 Irrigation, 114, 212 Islam and theocracy, 58; and Buddhism, 231 Israel, State corporations, 382; State Comptroller, 382, 386 Italian cities, banking and finance, 44 Italian city government, 20; resident ambassadors, 41 Italy, Council of (Spanish), 108 Ivan the Great, 298 Ivan the Terrible, 299, 347 Jackson, Andrew, president, 309-10 Jahangir, emperor, 233 James VI (of Scotland), 100; I (of England), 104, 165, 183, 262 James, Duke of York, 171, 180; (II), 181 Jannisaries, 61, 68 Jaures, J. L., French politician, 349 Jefferson, Thomas, president, 276-7, 308-9

Jenckes, T. A., congressman and civil service reformer, 314 Jenghiz Khan, 49, 207 John, King (England), 9, 12; as ad­ ministrator, 13, 23, 40 Judges, on General Eyre, 26 Juries, 6, 16 Justice, International Court of, 356 Justice of the Peace, 16, 32, 97, 259 Justiciar, 9, 10, 24, 39 Juzgado General de Indios, 135, 136 Kautilya, Arthasastra, 387 Kaye, /. W. Sir, quoted, 249 Khaldun, Ibn, Maqaddimah, 82; and Tamerlane, 82 King, /. E., quoted, 148, 150, 157; quotes Usher, 153 Kings Messengers, 28 Kings Peace, 3 Kings Works, 27; in Calais, 41; Official History, quoted, 28-9 Knotted cord records, see ‘Quipu’ Koenigsberger, H. G., quoted, 109 Kublai Khan, 45; employs Marco Polo, 207 Kung, Prince, 223, 224, 225 Kurbatoff, Alexis, inspector, 303 Lancaster, Duchy of, 94 Langrod, Georges, quoted, 353, 359 Languages, official use, 4, 5, 56, 69, 79, 105 Latourette, K. S., quoted, 196 Law keeping in medieval cities, 19 Laws of Burgos, 135 Lay, H. N., English official in China, 225 League of Mayapan, 122 League of Nations, 353-4, 359, 360 Lebrun, Consul of French Republic, 288 Legion d’Honneur, 290 Lenin, 335, 337, 341, Imperialism, 331; What is to be Done?, 336 Lex talionis, 19 Li Fan Yuan, Chinese external bureau, 209 Li Ping, hydraulic engineer, 171 Liberia and American institutions, 335 Leibnitz, philosopher, 302 394 Lilienthal, David E., administrator, 380

INDEX Lima, Peru, 131 Lin Yutang, The Gay Genius, quoted, 195, 201 Linda, Diego de, Franciscan writer on Mayas, 120 Liveries administration, 102 Liverpool and Manchester Railway, 366 Livery companies, 21, 43 Local (including Provincial) Admin­ istration, Anglo-Saxon, 4; Nor­ man, 16; Venice, 52; Inca, 113; Spanish-American, 130; French, 152, 156; Chinese, 209-12, Mughal, 239-40; England, 259; Revolu­ tionary France, 280, 285, 291-2; Russia, 303-4; general functions, 370, 375; French and British struc­ tures, 376; need for larger units, 376; Councils-structure, appoint­ ment and participation, 376-7; types of central control, 377; financial needs, 377; prefect sys­ tem, 377; staff appointment, 378, management and chief executives, 378 Locke, John, philosopher, 263; Two Treatises on Civil Government, 270 Lombards and banking, 44 London Mint, 8 London government, 20-1; guilds, 43 Lord Chamberlain, as censor, 12 Lord Chancellor, 5 Lord High Treasurer, 101 Lord Inca, 113-15 Lorenzo the Magnificent, Italian ruler, 87 Louis XIII (France), 142, 145 Louis XIV (France), 142, 147, 152; le Roi Soleil, 157 Louis XVI (France), 279; guillotined, 282 Loyseau, Charles, and sale of office, 185 Lucas, Sir Charles, quoted, 245 Lufti Pasha, grand vizir, 61 Lybyer, A. H„ quoted, 58, 66 Macaulay, Lord and Indian Civil Service, 250; Trevelyan and, 319 Machiavelli, 87-90; II Principe and History of Florence, 88, 387 Mackie, /. D ., quoted, 90

411

Magna Carta, 12, 21 Mahmud of Ghazni, warrior chief, 231 Mamluks and slave recruits, 67 Management techniques, 389-91, 393 Manchus, 207, 209, 214 Manzikert, Seljuks defeat Byzantines at, 49, 55 Map, Walter, quoted, 15 Marco Polo in China, 45 Martin V, pope, 36, 37 Mastership of the Queens Wards, 102-103 Mary (Tudor) I (England), 91, and Philip II, 104-6 Marx, Karl and Marxism, 227, 331, 335, 336 Marxist-Leninism, 331, 344 Mauryan Dynasty, 231 Mayas, 111, 119-23; early history, 119-20; glyph writings, 120; autonomous cities, 120; farming and religion, 120; clan based sys­ tem, 121; hot baths and water con­ servation, 121; office of the ruler, 121; League of Mayapan, 122; road system, 122-3; paper, 123 Mayor, maire, 18 Mazarin, Cardinal, 151, 154 Mendoza, Antonia de, viceroy, 130 Menshikov, Procurator General, 303 Mexico City, cabildo, 132; town planning, 133 Mercantilism in Europe, 141-2, 149 156 Mercenaries, condottieri, 53 Michael VIII, Palaelogus, 51 Miestnichestvo custom, 299 Mildmay, Sir Walter, official, 94 Military, 125-6, 61, 68 Mill, Henry, inventor, 367 Mill, John, as official opposes Indianization, 251 Millet system, 70 Ming Dynasty, 207; emperor’s position, 208 Ministerial system, see ‘Depart­ mentalization* Minorsky, V., quoted, 72 Mir Fatahulla Shirazi, official, 235 Mohammed, 231 Mohammed II, 61, 68; captures Constantinople, 52 Monasteries confiscated, 93

412

IN D E X

Mongols invade China, 207 Montchr6tien, on statistics, 156 Montesquieu, 187, Esprit des Lois, 270, 281 Montezuma, Aztec emperor, 111, 125 Montfort, Simon de, 16 Mooney, J. D., and A. C. Reilly, Onward Industry, 390 Mughal Empire, 231-41 Municipalities, New World, 132 Muqaddimah, of Ibn Khaldun, 82 Murad III (Ottoman), 63-4 Murad IV (Ottoman), 64 Muscovy Company of the Merchant Adventurers, 300 Muzzaffar Khan, official, 234 Myers, A. R., quoted, 14 Napoleon Bonaparte, 287, Emperor, 290; his fonctionnaires, 291; his codes, 292; his authoritarian system, 297 National state, roots of, 34 National Debt Office, 269 Nationalization, 382 Nationalized Industries, Select Com­ mittee on, 386 Nations, League of, 353-4, 359, 360 Navy Office and Pepys, 171-6 New World divided by Papal bull, 128 Nicholas II (Russia), 336 Nizam al Mulk, official, 78 Normandy under Henry V, 41, Robert Woodville, seneschal of, 41 North, Council of the, 98 North, Lord, Administration of, 269 Northcote, Sir Stafford, and Trevelyan Report, 1853, 312 Notaries (tebelliones), 22-3 O.

& M. (Organization and Methods), 386 Oersted, Danish scientist, 366 Offa’s Dyke, 27 Office machines introduced, 367 Office records, 154 Officials, remuneration of, 30, see also ‘Fee taking . . Officials, Soviet Russia, 345-7 Officials, specialist and technical 371

Officialdom, essence of, 205-6 Omar Kyayyam, poet, 79 Ombudsman, 303, 345, 353, 385 Open competition, 312 Opium War in China, 222 Oprichnina, 299-300 Ordinances of 1445 and 1478, 14 Organization, special Inca skill, 113, 119 Organization and Methods ap­ proach, 321, 386 Ottoman Turks, 55, 57, adopt Byzantine administrative practices, 57; structure of government, 58; Slave Household, 58-9, 66-70; Outside Services, 59; Inside Ser­ vice, 60; Grand Vizir, 60; finance, 61; departments, 61; Harem and eunuchs, 62-3; Constantinople, city establishments and services, 64-5; training of slave family, 6670, sale of offices and favouritism, 70; millet system and Phanariots, 70-1 Overseas Civil Service, H.M., 333 Overseas Development, Ministry of, 333, 356 Overseas trading companies, 241-2 Paccioli, Luca, early treatise on book-keeping, 45 Paine, Tom, Rights of Man, 270 Pakistan public corporations, 382 Palmerston, Lord, 322 Papal State, 36-7; Constitutiones Egidiane, 36; finance, 36 Paper, 21, 42, 123, 124, 127 Paper mill, first in England, 21 Papyrus, 21 Parchment, 21 Paris Commune and municipality, 280, 282, 285 Parliament, Cranfield and, 168; policy on India, 245, 247; ‘economical’ reform and, 267-9 Parliamentary Commissioner, 385 Parliaments (cortes) in Spain, 106, 184 Parry, J. H., quoted, 134, 138 Partner, Peter, quoted, 36 Party, political, 261, 309, see also ‘Communist Party* Pascal, Blaise, philosopher, 393 Patronage, 143, 163, 312, 386

INDEX Patronato, Church control in Spanish America, 133 Paulet, William, official, 94 Pedro the Cruel (Castile), 81 Pen, tool of the writer, 275 Pendleton Act, 1883 (U.S.), 311 Penzer, N. M„ quoted, 69, 70 Pepys, Samuel, 141, praises Colbert, 157; Diary, 169, 171-6, 177; serves Edward Montague, Ad­ miralty, and George Downing, Exchequer, 170; with mission to welcome Charles II, and James Duke of York, 171; Clerk of the Acts, 171; Navy Office and Board, 171-2, 176; Younger Brother, Trinity House, 172; Commissioner for Tangier, 172; Member of Parliament, 172; President of Royal Society, 172; Navy Office clerk­ ship, 172; his business habits, 1734; effects of plague, 174; Fleet re­ duced to impotence, 1667, 175; Pepys defends Office, 175-6; Secretary to new Commission, 177; school for apprentices for sea, 177; professionalization of Officers, 178; falsely accused, com­ mitted to Tower, but later released 179; mission to Tangier, 1683, 180; visits Casa de Contratacidn, Seville, 180; accedes to top control as Secretary to Ad­ miralty, 181; Secretaryship ter­ minated, 1688, 181 Permanent Court of Arbitration, 354 Permanent Court of International Justice, 354 Persia, Safavid administration, 72-5 Personnel: Explanation, ix; feudal household, 2; Anglo-Norman, 11, 13, 14; Royal Household, 14; localities, 15; towns, 18; London, 20-21, Chancery, writing office, 26; Kings Works, 28; general development, 29; Kings Messen­ gers, 29; Papal State, 36, 38; justiciarship, 39-41; Seljuks, 55; Ottoman, 59-60; Constantinople, 65, 66; Slave Family, recruitment and training, 66-70; Phanariots, 71; Safavids, 73-4; Republic of Florence, 87; Tudor Royal Coun­ cil, 91-2; Anglo-Scottish border,

413

99; Court of Wards, 102; Sicily, 109; Inca system, 114-6 quipacamayus and amautas, 116-7; Inca priesthood and church ser­ vants, 118; Maya, official astro­ logers, 120; roads official, 122; Aztecs, training of officials, 125; Spain’s overseas control, 129; New World municipalities, 132; cabildos, local councils, 132-3; general, 135; Council of the Indies, 136; Richlieu’s colleagues, and patronage, 143-4; Colbert’s re­ lationships, 150; Royal Councils, staffs, 151-2; Intendants, 152-4; expansion of royal bureaucracy, 156; German States/Prussia, 1589; public services expand, 161; espionage system, 161; good personnel administration, 162; professional soldiers to civil posts, 163; French fiscal experts im­ ported, 164; Admiralty officials, 171-2; gifts to officials, 173; Pepys and Spanish examination of officials leaving office, 180; sale of office, 182-7; Chinese examina­ tions, 192, 193, 197, 202, 206; Chinese censorate, 198, 208-9; local officials, 210; hsien magis­ trate at local yaman, 210-11; Ch’ing civil service, 212-15, 219; organization, reports, and regula­ tions, 214; eunuchs, 219-20, astrologers and mathematicians, 220; Tsungli Yamen; 224; Akbar’s high officials, 234; and personnel system, 238; East India Company officials, 242; daily routines, 243; results of inadequate salaries, 245; Collectors and District Officers, 248; Covenanted Civil Service in­ troduced, 249; improvement in quality follows, and term ‘civil service’, comes into use, 249-50; 1833, Charter Act proposes competitive examinations, 250; Indianization adopted, 251; the new structure, 251; training colleges at Fort William and Haileybury, 252-3; characteristics of the new Civil Service, 253-4; English American Colonies, Crown ap­ pointees, 266; U.S. service, selec-

414

IN D E X

tion and control, 272; appoint­ ments by President and Senate, 273; U.S. field services, 277; Napoleons fonctionnaires, the Pre­ fect, 291; finance officials, 294, effect of educational system, 297; Russia, miestnichestvo, right to public office, 299; officials of Oprichnina, 299; way open to new bureaucracy, 300; Table of Ranks and remoulding of bureaucracy, 302; inspectorate and informers, 303; Chief Fiscal for maladminis­ tration, 303; U.S. Presidents and appointments, 308; spoils system, 309; types of appointee, 310-11; Civil Service classification, 311; Britain 1853-5 reforms, 311-12; Civil Service Commission, 313; similar reforms in U.S., 314; Dorman B. Eaton on British sys­ tem, 315-17; C. S. commission and examinations introduced in U.S., 318; British Colonial Service, 327; Her Majesty’s Overseas Civil Service, 333; Soviet personnel sys­ tem, 345-7; political acceptability important, 346; Albert Thomas Director of I.L.O., 349-52; staffs of international unions, 353; new type of international civil servant, 359-62; need for technical and specialist staffs, 371; modern civil services, 373-5 Personnel management, art of, 4 Peter the Great, 301-5 Petitions (Safavid), 74-5; Spanish, 134 Petrucci, Prince of Siena, 89 Phanariots, 70-1 Phelan, E. J., Yes and Albert Thomas, 349, 352 Philip II (Spain), 86, 136, 137, 148; as administrator, 104-9; King of England, 106; sale of office, 183-4 Philip III (Spain), sale of office, 183 Philip IV (France), 26, 183 Philip IV (Spain), 185 Pickering, Timothy, Official, 276 Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536, 98 Pipe Roll, 11 Pitt, William, 269 Pirenne, quoted, ‘tides of history’, 1; town administration, 19

Pizarro, Francesco, 112, 131 Plato, Republic, 66-7 Playfair Commission, on civil ser­ vice, 321 Pluralist officials, 96, 102, 172, 266 Police State, 160, 293-4, 344-5, 369 Police system, 293, 305 Poor Law Corporations, 379 Poor relief, French Revolution, 181 Portuguese exploration, 45, 128 Portugal joined to Spain, 106 POSDCORB, 390 Postal service, 19-30, 129-30, 213, 367, 379 Postal Union, Universal, 353 Potosi, Peru, silver from, 132 Powicke, Sir Maurice, quoted, 12 Prefect, France, 291 ‘see ‘Intendant* Prescott, W. H., The Conquest of Peru, 115-17 Prikazy (bureau), system, 301 Prime ministership, 261 Printing, 42, 86, 192 Privy Council, 92-3, 97, 102, 259, 261, 264, 265 Privy Seal, 28, 29, 32, 93 Procuracy (Russia), 303, 345, 353, 384-51 Propaganda, official (France), 284, 296-7 Provincial administration, see ‘Local Administration’ Prussian administration, 158-65 Psellus, Michael, 52, Chronographia, 76 Public Administration, Chinese, 202; as specialized factor in govern­ ment, 387; early writings and manuals, 387; Max Weber on ‘bureaucracy’, 388; U.S. special contribution to studies, 388-9; Woodrow Wilson on The Study of Public Administration, 389; Henri Fayol’s contribution, 389; other early writings, 389-90; future of public administration, 392-8; im­ pact of ADP and new techno­ logical revolution, 394; new management processes and aids, 395; its future contribution, 397-8; importance as a subject of study, 397-8 Public assistance, 295-6 Public Corporations, 370; non-

IN D E X

government administration, 379; earlier public bodies, 379; modern types in different countries, 380-1; widely used for nationalization, 381-2; general characteristics, 3823 Public official generalized, 34 Public relations, 211, 283, 293, 296-7, 350 Public works, 27, 126 Quipuy knotted cord records, 115, 119 Rae, T. I., on The Administration of the Scottish Frontier, 1513-1603, 99, 100 Ragman Rolls, 24 Railways introduced, 366 Ranum, O. A., quoted, 143, 145 Recall, 272 Records, official, 21, 111, 154, 366 Recruitment, Ottoman, 66; inter­ national, 321-2; see also ‘Examina­ tions’ Red Book of Alexander de Swerford 13 Referendum, 272, 377 Reformation, The, effect on public administration, 86, 158, 166 Regulatory State, 370 Reilly, A. C. and Mooney, A. C., Onward Industry, 390 Religion, 117, 126, 237 Renaissance, The, 42 Ricci, Matteo, missionary to China, 215-22; his friend Michael Ruggieri, 216; invitation from Wang Pan, Governor of Shiuhing, 216; moves to Shiuchow, 218; visits Nanking and then Nanchang, 218; along Imperial Canal to Peking, 219; hostility of eunuchs cause his withdrawal, 219; second hazardous journey to Peking, 220; lodged in Castle of the Barbarians, 221; mission ter­ minates with his death, 221 Rice, Tamara, T., quoted, 56 Richard de Lucy, justiciar, 40 Richard of Ely, Son of Nigel, Dialogus de Scaccario, 6, 9, 11, 31 Richelieu, statesman, career and policy, 142-7, 153, 154; Testament Politique, 148

415

Rights of Man, Declaration of, 279 Rites, Board of, 220, 222, 223, 224 Roads, 119, 122-3, 126, 127 Robert, Earl of Leicester, justiciar, 40 Robespierre’s fall, 284 Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, justiciar, 40 Roman law and public administra­ tion, 374 Roman roads, Incan compared with, 119 Romanoff, Michael, 300 Rome, Church of, 35-9; local ad­ ministration, 38; in Spanish America, 133 Roosevelt, Franklin, president, 331 Rosenberg, Hans, quoted, 159, 164 Rosier, Bernard du, first textbook on diplomacy, 41 Rotation in office, 309-10 Roxelana, Suleyman’s favourite, 64 Royal Household, 12-14, 15, 91 Royal Navy, 263, 264 Royal Society, London, 172 Ruggieri, Michael, missionary to China, 216 Russia, early history, 298; Byzan­ tine influence, 298; Tsardom and Ivan III, ‘the Great’, 298; elimina­ tion of earlier institutions, 298; miestnichestvo, 299; colonies in non-Russian areas, 299; importing technicians, 299; Ivan IV ‘the Terrible’, 299; destroys power of Boyars (nobles), 299; dual ad­ ministration of the Oprichnina, 299; Michael Romanoff, 300; con­ sultative sobors and new bureau­ cracy, 300; contacts with West, 300; Muscovy Company of Merchant Adventurers, 300; government drinking houses, 301; bureaux system, 301; Peter the Great’s reforms, 301; encourage­ ment of foreign specialists, 301; colleges replace bureaux, 302; Table of Ranks and remoulding of bureaucracy, 302; new inpectorate, 303; Chief Fiscal and Procurator-General, 303; local government reorganization, 304; Catherine the Great reconstitutes local government, 304; Peter uses

416

IN D E X

Guards officers as agents, 304-5 Russia (Soviet), Bolsheviks and Lenin as leader, 335; Soviet basis of system, 336; Provisional Government, 336; Lenin’s What is to be Done? states policy, 336; old monolithic system restored, 337; new government federal in form, 338; constitution revised, 1936, 338; Communist Party out­ side the constitution, 338; machinery of government as ad­ ministrative network, 339; Council of Ministers, 339, 346; supervision of soviets at the several levels, 340; Party as policy making and controlling institution, 341; party structure, 342; revision after Lenin’s death, 343; changing structure and functions over the years, 343-4; security (police) sys­ tems, 344-5; party officials and state employees 345-7; party-state power system, 347 Russian Revolution, 1917, 257, 335 Sachenspiegel (Saxon Mirror), 35 Safavid administration, 72-5 Safieh, Venetian favourite of Murad III, 64 Saint-Simon on Louis XIV govern­ ment of clerks, 148 Sale of Offices, 70, 158, 182-7; Velasquez and, 183; empleomania, 184; French Bureau des Parties Casuelles, 185; Loyseau and archomanie, 185 Salter, Lord, quoted, 360 Savery, Thomas, inventor, 366 Scotland and England, 1707 Union, separate systems of law, 261 Scotland and France, allies against England, 99 Seals, 5, 22-3, 26 Second World War, 320, 355, 370, 375, 382, 391 Secretary, Kings, 23 Secretary of State (British), 101, 264, 268, 269, 325, 328 Secretary of State (French), 144, 150 Seigneur’s household, 2; staffing of, 3 Select Committee on Nationalized Industries, 386

Seljuks of Rum, 49, 50, 55, 78 Seljukid calendar, 79 Separation of powers, 270, 271, 290 Settlement, Act of, 260 Sieyes, Abb£, philosopher and states­ man, 279, 287, 288 Shaftesbury, Earl of, 163 Shah Jahan, 233, 241 Shakespeare, 227 Sheriff, 9, 10, 11, 15, 97, 102 Shorthand, 77, 107, 109 Sicily, Spanish administration, 109 Signet seal, 22 Simon, H. A., Administrative Behaviour, 390 Sismondi, J. C. L., quoted, 52 Slave Household, Ottoman, 58, 66 Smuggling in England and America, 267 Social administration (Constanti­ nople), 65 Social services, 17, 19, 57, 65, 237, 281, 295-6 Solis, Juan de, office holder, 129 Spain’s expansion, 85, 128; and de­ cline, 142 Spanish administration, examination of officials leaving office, 180 Spanish (Great) Armada, 106 Spanish America, 128; influence of existing administration, 128; con­ trol from Seville, 128; Consulado or merchant guild, 129; Council of Castile, 129; postal service, 130; Conquistadors’ control, 130; townships incorporated, 130; social pattern and government, 131; encomienda system, 131, 134, 135; municipal organization, 132; silver at Potosi, 132; cabildo or local council, 132; Mexico City, 132; town planning, 132-3; Church of Rome, 133; petitions to Crown, 134; Laws of Burgos, 135; corvee system. 135; corregidores, 136; Council of the Indies, 136; admin­ istrative summing up, 137-8 Spanish Colonial Empire, 104 Spoils system (U.S.), 309, 317, 374 Stalin, J. V., as administrator, 337, 342-3, 347 Staple and wool trade, 43 Star Chamber, Court of, 93, 98 State Comptroller, Israel, 382, 386

INDEX Stationery Office, H.M., 269 Statistics, collection resisted, 141; influence of Bodin and Montchrdtien, 156 Stephen, King (England), 9, 40 Strachey, Sir Henry, quoted, 249 Su Tungpo, author-official, 191-4, 197-206; education, 191-2; ex­ aminations, 192-3; career, 193; on free criticism, 198; rise to top posts, 200; reforms at Huangchow, 202-3; his downfall, 205 Suez Canal Company, 381 Suleyman the Magnificent, 38, 39, 61, 63, 70 Sumer’s religious corporations, 352 Sung Dynasty, 191-207 Super-powers, 331 Swart, K. W., quoted, 183, 187 Sweden, delegation to executive boards, 372 Switzerland, business executive, 372 Table of Ranks, Russia, 302 Ta Ch'ing Hui Tien, Chinese civil service code, 214 Ta Ch’ing Lii Li, Chinese civil service penal code, 214-5 Tadhkirat-Al-Muluk, Manual of Safavid Administration, 72, 74 Tallies, 22 Tallyrand, 291 Tamerlane, 72, 82 Tangier and Pepys, 172, 180 Tax farming, 165-6 Taxation, 164, 239 Tawney, R. H., on Reformation, 166 Taylor, F. W. Principles of Scientific Management and Shop Manage­ ment, 389 Technical aid, 332 Technical Co-operation, Depart­ ment of, 333 Techniques: Explanatory, x; Domes­ day Survey, 6-7; Exchequer, 10; medieval, general survey, 21-30; tallies, 22, seals, 22; chirograph, or indenture, 23; inquiries, 24, 25, writs, 26; paper and printing, 42; accountancy and banking, 44; Seljuk, 56; Constantinople Stamp Office, 65; Ottoman Slave Family, 67; Safavid, state scribes, 73; petitions, 74; appointments, 75;

417

Constantine VIII, dictation by, 77; printing and manuscripts, 86; Tudor finance, 93; Inca quipu, 115-7; Maya trading, 121; admin­ istrative techniques, 121-2; paper, 124; Toltec-Teotihuacan, 124; Aztec, 126, 127; Spanish overseas, 129-30; Cabildo of Mexico City, 132; petitions to Spanish Crown, 134; Spanish-American adminis­ tration, summing up, 137-8; Richelieu’s information system, 149; French royal secretariat, 144; Louis XIV and Colbert, 148-9, 150-1; Royal Councils, 151-2; official records, 154; finance and statistics, 154-5; tax-farming in England, 165-6; touching by monarch against evil, 171; instruc­ tions on Navy Office, Pepys’s business habits, 173-4; Chinese administration, 194; Censorate, 198; preparation of edicts, 201; local administration, 210; public relations, 211; Ricci’s approach to Emperor, 220; collected statutes on embassies, 222; kow-tow, 222; Mughal administration, 233; United States, election, recall and referendum, 272; pen and clerical processes, 275; Thomas Jefferson on office techniques, 276-7; Napoldon’s routines, 289; police control, 293-4; financial arrange­ ments, 294; public relations, 296; International Labour Office, different French and British ap­ proaches to administration, 351; basic recording techniques con­ tinue, 366; office machines intro­ duced, 367; methods of control of public administration, 383-6; automatic data processing, and other management aids, 393 Technological change, 333 Telecommunications Union, Inter­ national, 353 Telephone and administration, 366 Tellier, Michel le, diplomat, 154 Tennessee Valley Authority, 380 Tenochtitlan (Mexico City), 111, 123 Teotihuacan, 124 Theory: Explanation x, but prac­ tical manuals are included;

418

IN D E X

Dialogus de Scaccario, 6; Red Book (on Household and Ex­ chequer practice), 13; Black Book (Liber Niger) on Royal House­ hold, 14; Hoccleve, De Regimine Principum, 32; Bernard du Rosier, text-book on diplomacy, 41; Ottaviano Bon; Description of the Grand Signiors Serraglio, 59; Tadhkirat Al-Muluk (Safavid ad­ ministration), 72; Psellus, Chronographia, 76; Ibn at-Tiqtaqa, Al Fakhri, Arab treatise on govern­ ment, 79; Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun, 82; Machiavelli, The Prince, 88; Richelieu, Testament Politique, 147; Pepys, Diary, 169, 171-6, 177; Charles Loyseau on sale of office, 185; Abul Fazl, Akbar Nama and A ’in-i-Akbari, 232; Ta Ch’ing Hui Tien and Ta Ch’ing Lti Li (Chinese Civil Ser­ vice Codes), 214-5; Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, 270; The Federalist, 270, 273. Abbe Sieyes writings, 279; Domo-stroi, Silves­ ter’s book of Household Manage­ ment, 301; The Organization of the Permanent Civil Service (TrevelyanNorthcote), 322; Dorman B. Eaton, Civil Service in Great Britain, 315-7; Phelan, Yes and Albert Thomas, 349; Lilienthal, TVA, On the March, 380, 399; Bentham, Official Aptitude Maxi­ mized, Expense Minimized, 388; Max Weber on ‘bureaucracy’ 388; Woodrow Wilson, The Study of Public Administration, 389; F. E. Taylor, Principles of Scientific Management, 389; Henri Fayol, Administration industrielle et generate, 389; Mooney and Reilly, Onward Industry, 390; Gulick and Urwick, Papers on the Science of Administration, 390; H. A. Simon, Administrative Behaviour, 390; Chester Barnard, Functions of the Executive, 391 Thomas, Albert, as official, 348-52, 360; quoted, 348; his administra­ tive practices, 350-1; his great energy, 352; early death, 352 Time and motion study, 389

Touching by monarch, against evil, 171 Tout, T. F., quoted, 2, 23, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32 Town emerges as governing centre, 17, 18 Town planning, Spanish America, 132-3 Toynbee, Arnold, quoted, 19 Trade, Board of, 265, 268, 269 Trading communities, Medieval, 17; Maya, 121 Training of officials, 68-9, 114, 115, 125, 252, 375 Transport (Inca), 119 Treasurer, Lord, 94, 259 Treasury, (Thesaurus), 8, 10, and Treasury control, 236, 247, 258-9, 264, 270, 319-21, 394 Treaty ports, China, 222 Trevelyan, Charles Edward, 312; India, 319; and Macaulay, 319; Assistant Secretary to Treasury, 319; famine relief in Ireland, 31920; improving administrative efficiency, 320; evidence to Playfair ‘Commission’, 321, accused Sir Edward Colebrook of taking bribes, 321; inaugurates series of investigations into home Depart­ ments, 321-2; Anthony Trollope’s ‘Sir Gregory Hardlines’, 322; further service in India and later social service activities at home, 322-3 Trevelyan-Northcote Report, The Organization of the Permanent Civil Service, 312, 322 Trollope’s ‘Sir Gregory Hardlines’ (in The Three Clerks), 322 Trotsky, Leon, as organizer, 337 Tsungli Yamen, 222-5 Tudor administration, 85, 90; financial, 93 Turks, 20; see also ‘Ottoman Turks’ and ‘Seljuks of Rum’ Turnpike trusts, 379 Typewriter introduced, 367 Union, Act of 1707 (England and Scotland), 261 United Nations, technical aid, 332; organization, 355; Specialized Agencies, 355

IN D E X

United States of America, adminis­ tration under Confederation, 2723; Washington as administrator, 273-6; departmental pattern, 274; field services, 277; administration under Jefferson and Jackson, 308; New Deal, 330; absence from League of Nations, 354; field offices, 371, see also ‘American Colonies' and ‘American Revolu­ tion' Universal Postal Union, 353 Universities founded in Europe, 43 Urwick, Lyndall, F„ quoted, 390 Urban II, pope, and Council of Clermont, 38 Usher, quoted by J. E. King, 153 Velasquez, as official, 183 Venice and Venetian Republic, 7-8, 20, 49, 52-3 Versailles, Treaty of, 354 Vespucci, Amerigo, explorer, 129 Veterans, appointment of, 308, 318 Viebahn, Moritz von, minister, 161 Volta, scientist, 366 Von Pastor, quoted by Sir Charles Petrie, 105 Wales, Council of the Marches, 97 Walpole, Sir Robert, first prime minister, 262 Wang Anshih, official, 194; financial proposals, 195; his main reforms, 196; their failure, 197; Su Tungpo’s criticisms, 197, 202 Wang P’an, governor of Shiuhing, 216-8 War Departments, 264 Warden, Anglo-Scottish border, 98100

Wardrobe, 3, 9, 26, 29 Wards, Court of, 102-4; Mastership of Queen’s, 102

419

Washington, George, 270, 272-6 Water supply, 56, 121, 171, 203 Webbs, Sidney and Beatrice, on Soviet System, 339 Weber, Max, on bureaucracy, 388 Wellesley, Lord, 252 Welfare State, 332, 369, 387 Wells, H. G., 392, 397 Wen-hsiang, official, 223, 224, 225 Western Electric Co., Hawthorn, ex­ periments, 391 White Leonard, D., quoted, 272, 313 Whitleyism, 351 William of Orange (William III) and Mary (II), 181, 259 William Rufus, King, 39 William the Conqueror, 4, 5, 6, 21; castle builder, 27; delegates autho­ rity, 39 William the Silent, 106 Wilson, Woodrow, on The Study of Public Administration, 389 Winchester, as capital, 8 Wireless telegraphy invented, 367 Wolsey, Thomas, Cardinal, 91, 96 Wood, Sir Charles, quoted, 322 Woodville, Robert, Seneschal of Normandy, 41 Wool trade and the Staple, 43 Works, Kings, 27-9, 41 Workshops, official (Safavid), 74 Writ, 5, 26 Writing activities, 4, 22, 120, 123, 127 Writing office (scriptorium), 26, 56 Yuan Dynasty, 207 Yung-Lo, Emperor, Hanlin Academy tions, 207, 221 Yung-Lo Ta Tien, Chinese literature,

Grand Canal, and examina­ excerpts from 207

Zuero, Don Miguel, Pepys visits, 180