The
tendency of every French central authority is to allow no discretionary
power whatever to his subordinate. He wishes, often from a distance, to
control every detail of the administration. The tendency of the
subordinate, on the other hand, is to lean in everything on superior
authority. He does not dare to take any personal responsibility; indeed,
it is possible to go further and say that the corroding action of
bureaucracy renders those who live under its baneful shadow almost
incapable of assuming responsibility. By force of habit and training it
has become irksome to them. They fly for refuge to a superior official,
who, in his turn, if the case at all admits of the adoption of such a
course, hastens to merge his individuality in the voluminous pages of a
code or a Government circular.

The British official, on the other hand, whether in England or abroad,
is an Englishman first and an official afterwards. He possesses his full
share of national characteristics. He is by inheritance an
individualist. He lives in a society which, so far from being, as is the
case on the Continent, saturated with respect for officialism, is
somewhat prone to regard officialism and incompetency as synonymous
terms. By such association, any bureaucratic tendency which may exist on
the part of the British official is kept in check, whilst his
individualism is subjected to a sustained and healthy course of tonic
treatment.

Thus, the British system breeds a race of officials who relatively to
those holding analogous posts on the Continent, are disposed to exercise
their central authority in a manner sympathetic to individualism; who,
if they are inclined to err in the sense of over-centralisation, are
often held in check by statesmen imbued with the decentralising spirit;
and who, under these influences, are inclined to accord to local agents
a far wider latitude than those trained in the Continental school of
bureaucracy would consider either safe or desirable.

On the other hand, looking to the position and attributes of the local
agents themselves, it is singular to observe how the habit of assuming
responsibility, coupled with national predispositions acting in the same
direction, generates and fosters a capacity for the beneficial exercise
of power. This feature is not merely noticeable in comparing British
with Continental officials, but also in contrasting various classes of
Englishmen _inter se_. The most highly centralised