ndle-ends and cheese-parings in the cause of the country."(43) He held
it to be his special duty in his office not simply to abolish sinecures,
but to watch for every opportunity of cutting down all unnecessary
appointments. He hears that a clerk at the national debt office is at
death's door, and on the instant writes to Lord Palmerston that there is
no necessity to appoint a successor. During the last twenty years, he said
in 1863, "since I began to deal with these subjects, every financial
change beneficial to the country at large has been met with a threat that
somebody would be dismissed." All such discouragements he treated with the
half scornful scepticism without which no administrative reformer will go
far.

He did not think it beneath his dignity to appeal to the foreign office
for a retrenchment in fly-leaves and thick folio sheets used for docketing
only, and the same for mere covering despatches without description; for
all these had to be bound, and the bound books wanted bookcases, and the
bookcases wanted buildings, and the libraries wanted librarians. "My idea
is that it would be quite worth while to appoint an official committee
from various departments to go over the 'contingencies' and minor charges
of the different departments into which abuse must always be creeping,
from the nature of the case and without much blame to any one." Sir R.
Bethell as attorney-general insisted on the duty incumbent on certain high
officials, including secretaries of state, of taking out patents for their
offices, and paying the stamp duties of two hundred pounds apiece thereon.
"I shall deal with these eminent persons," he wrote to the chancellor of
the exchequer, "exactly as I should and do daily deal with John Smith
accused of fraud as a distiller, or John Brown reported as guilty of
smuggling tobacco." Mr. Gladstone replies (1859):--

I rejoice to see that neither the heat, the stench, nor service in
the courts can exhaust even your superfluous vigour; and it is
most ennobling to see such energies devoted to the highest of all
purposes--that of replenishing her Majesty's exchequer. I hope,
however, that in one point the case stands better than I had
supposed. The proof of absolute contumacy is not yet complete,
though, alas, the _animus furandi_ stands forth in all its hideous
colours. I spoke yesterday to Lord Palmerston on the painful
theme; and he confessed to me with much em