Ministry-maker can
put into his offices exactly whom he would like; a number of placemen
are always too proud, too eager, or too obstinate to go just where they
should.

[8] Now Lord Salisbury, who, when this was written, was Indian
Secretary.--Note to second edition.

Again, this system not only makes new Ministers ignorant, but keeps
present Ministers indifferent. A man cannot feel the same interest that
he might in his work if he knows that by events over which he has no
control, by errors in which he had no share, by metamorphoses of
opinion which belong to a different sequence of phenomena, he may have
to leave that work in the middle, and may very likely never return to
it. The new man put into a fresh office ought to have the best motive
to learn his task thoroughly, but, in fact, in England, he has not at
all the best motive. The last wave of party and politics brought him
there, the next may take him away. Young and eager men take, even at
this disadvantage, a keen interest in office work, but most men,
especially old men, hardly do so. Many a battered Minister may be seen
to think much more of the vicissitudes which make him and unmake him,
than of any office matter.

Lastly, a sudden change of Ministers may easily cause a mischievous
change of policy. In many matters of business, perhaps in most, a
continuity of mediocrity is better than a hotch-potch of excellences.
For example, now that progress in the scientific arts is
revolutionising the instruments of war, rapid changes in our
head-preparers for land and sea war are most costly and most hurtful. A
single competent selector of new inventions would probably in the
course of years, after some experience, arrive at something tolerable;
it is in the nature of steady, regular, experimenting ability to
diminish, if not vanquish, such difficulties. But a quick succession of
chiefs has no similar facility. They do not learn from each other's
experience;--you might as well expect the new head boy at a public
school to learn from the experience of the last head boy. The most
valuable result of many years is a nicely balanced mind instinctively
heedful of various errors; but such a mind is the incommunicable gift
of individual experience, and an outgoing Minister can no more leave it
to his successor, than an elder brother can pass it on to a younger.
Thus a desultory and incalculable policy may follow from a rapid change
of Ministers.

These are formida