ting in concert with the Whigs.]

[Pageheading: DEPARTMENTS OF STATE]

[Pageheading: BUREAUCRACY]

_Viscount Palmerston to Queen Victoria._

STANHOPE STREET, _25th February 1838._

Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and with
reference to your Majesty's question upon the subjects to which Lord
William Russell's recent despatch relates, he has the honour to state:
that in the Governments of the Continent, and more especially in those
which have no representative Assemblies, the second class of persons
in the public offices possess and exercise much more power and
influence than the corresponding class of persons do in this
country. In England the Ministers who are at the head of the several
departments of the State, are liable any day and every day to defend
themselves in Parliament; in order to do this, they must be minutely
acquainted with all the details of the business of their offices, and
the only way of being constantly armed with such information is to
conduct and direct those details themselves.

On the Continent, where Ministers of State are not liable so to be
called to account for their conduct, the Ministers are tempted
to leave the details of their business much more to their
Under-Secretaries and to their chief clerks. Thus it happens that
all the routine of business is generally managed by these subordinate
agents; and to such an extent is this carried, that Viscount
Palmerston believes that the Ministers for Foreign Affairs, in France,
Austria, Prussia, and Russia, seldom take the trouble of writing
their own despatches, except, perhaps, upon some very particular and
important occasion.

Your Majesty will easily see how greatly such a system must place in
the hands of the subordinate members of the public departments the
power of directing the policy and the measures of the Government;
because the value and tendency, and the consequences of a measure,
frequently depend as much upon the manner in which that measure
is worked out, as upon the intention and spirit with which it was
planned.

Another circumstance tends also to give great power to these
second-class men, and that is their permanence in office.

In England when, in consequence of some great political change, the
Heads of Departments go out, the greater part of the Under-Secretaries
go out also; thus the Under-Secretary (with two or three exceptions)
having come in with his Chief, has probably no mo