? The practice produces three great evils. It
brings in suddenly new and untried persons. Secondly, the man knows that
he may have to leave his work in the middle, and very likely never come
back to it. Thirdly, a sudden change of ministers may easily cause a
mischievous change of policy. A quick succession of chiefs do not learn
from each other's experience.

Now, those who wish to remove the choice of ministers from parliament
have not adequately considered what a parliament is. When you establish
a predominant parliament you give over the rule of the country to a
despot who has unlimited time and unlimited vanity. Every public
department is liable to attack. It is helpless in parliament if it has
no authorised defender. The heads of departments cannot satisfactorily
be put up for the defence; but a parliamentary head connected by close
ties with the ministry is a protecting machine. Party organisation
ensures the provision of such parliamentary heads. The alternative
provided in America involves changing not only the head but the whole
bureaucracy with each change of government.

This, it may be said, does not prove that this change is a good thing.
It may, however, be proved that some change at any rate is necessary to
a permanently perfect administration. If we look at the Prussian
bureaucracy, whatever success it may recently have achieved, it
certainly does not please the most intelligent persons at home.
Obstinate officials set at defiance the liberal initiations of the
government. In conflicts with simple citizens guilty officials are like
men armed cap-a-pie fighting with the defenceless. The bureaucrat
inevitably cares more for routine than for results. The machinery is
regarded as an achieved result instead of as a working instrument. It
tends to be the most unimproving and shallow of governments in quality,
and to over-government in point of quantity.

In fact, experience has proved in the case of joint-stock banks and of
railways that they are best conducted by an admixture of experts with
men of what may be, called business culture. So in a government office
the intrusion of an exterior head of the office is really essential to
its perfection. As Sir George Lewis said: "It is not the business of a
cabinet minister to work his department; his business is to see that it
is properly worked."

In short, a presidential government, or a hereditary government are
inferior to parliamentary government as admin