The Government of England Part 9

[Sidenote: The Defence Committee.]

One of the chief criticisms of Lord Hartington's Commission on the administration of the naval and military departments, bore upon the lack of combined plans of operation for the defence of the empire. They suggested the formation of a naval and military council, to be presided over by the Prime Minister, and to consist of the parliamentary heads of the two services, and their princ.i.p.al professional advisers.[104:2] In partial fulfilment of this recommendation a committee of the cabinet was formed, consisting of the Prime Minister, the parliamentary heads of the Army and the Navy, the First Lord of the Treasury, with the addition, if need be, of the Colonial Secretary. The committee was intended to deal with questions unsettled between the two departments, matters in which a joint policy was advisable, and questions relating to the relative importance of expenditures; and it differed from other committees in that minutes were to be kept of its proceedings, and formally recorded by the departments. The committee seems, however, not to have fulfilled the intentions of the Hartington Commission, for it has been openly stated in Parliament that it never met;[105:1] and even the Secretary of State for War admitted that it acted mainly with regard to estimates, and to questions within the War Office and the Admiralty, while, in his opinion, it ought to act on larger questions of policy. A new Defence Committee was, therefore, created in 1903, to consist, besides members of the cabinet, of the most influential experts of the two services, and when necessary of representatives of the Indian and Colonial Offices.

The committee is intended to deal not only with estimates, but with larger questions of military policy.[105:2] But whether this result will be permanently attained, or whether the committee will meet with the usual fate, and find itself absorbed by details of administration and of expenditure, is yet to be seen.

The departments of state that remain to be considered in this chapter need not detain us long. They are all concerned with the internal government of the kingdom, and so far as their work is of general interest it will be touched upon again.

[Sidenote: The Home Office.]

The Home Office is a kind of residuary legatee. It is intrusted with all the work of the secretariat that has not been especially a.s.signed to the remaining secretaries of state, or to the other administrative departments. Its duties are, therefore, of a somewhat miscellaneous character. As the heir to the residue of the secretariat, the Home Secretary is the princ.i.p.al channel of communication between the King and his subjects, and countersigns the greater number of the King's acts. He receives addresses and pet.i.tions addressed to the sovereign, and presents them if he thinks best. Among others he receives pet.i.tions of right--that is, claims to be allowed to sue the Crown--and consults the Attorney General about the answer to be given. Outlying places, such as the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, which are not from an administrative point of view a part of the United Kingdom and yet are not colonies, fall under his jurisdiction. He has charge of questions of naturalisation and extradition. But more important still, the central control over the police, not having been transferred to the Local Government Board, remains in his hands, and this gives him wide powers of supervision. The metropolitan police of London is, indeed, administered directly by the national government under his immediate control;[106:1] and although the police elsewhere is not under his orders, yet the fact that the central government pays one half of the cost on condition his regulations are observed, enables him to prescribe the organisation, equipment and discipline of the local police all over England. Moreover, all by-laws of counties and boroughs, except those relating to nuisances, must be submitted to him for approval, and may on his advice be disallowed by the Crown.[106:2] As a part of his authority in matters of police he manages the prisons, both the national prisons for convicts and the county and borough gaols. He is responsible for the appointment and removal of recorders and stipendiary magistrates. He appoints the Director of Public Prosecutions, and makes regulations about costs in criminal proceedings. By virtue of special statutes he sees to the enforcement of the acts relating to factories, mines, burial-grounds, inebriates, anatomy, vivisection, explosives, and other kindred matters.

He is a.s.sisted by a parliamentary under-secretary, and by a large staff of permanent officials, beginning with a permanent under-secretary, and including a prison commissioner, a metropolitan police commission, and a host of inspectors for factories, mines, police, and so forth.

It will be observed that although primarily responsible for public order, the Home Secretary is by no means a minister of the interior in the continental sense, for apart from the police he has very little to do with local government. The supervision of matters of that kind, although in part scattered among different departments, is mainly concentrated in the hands of the Local Government Board. The Home Secretary has, on the other hand, some of the functions of a minister of justice; and this will be referred to again when we come to speak of the Law Officers of the Crown.

[Sidenote: The Board of Works.]

The Board of Works is not regarded as a department of great political importance, and for this reason it presents one of the two or three cases where the minister has no parliamentary under-secretary. For a score of years the public lands and buildings were under the care of a body called the Commissioners of Woods and Forests; but in order to keep the revenue from land separate from the expenditure upon buildings, and so bring the latter more completely under the control of Parliament, the duties were divided in 1852. The Commissioners of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues were made a permanent non-political body under the Treasury, while the Board of Works was established to take charge of the construction and maintenance of parks, palaces and other buildings. At that time many of the public buildings were, in fact, committed to the care of the departments that occupied them; but by a series of statutes these have now been transferred almost wholly to the Board of Works.

Now, although the amount of money that pa.s.ses through its hands is very large, the board is by no means entirely free, for without the sanction of the Treasury it can undertake no work not directly ordered by Parliament, and it can make no contracts for the erection of large public buildings without submitting them to the same authority,[107:1]

which also appoints the ordinary permanent staff of the office.[107:2]

[Sidenote: The Board of Trade.]

The Board of Trade occupies, on the contrary, a position of great and growing importance. It has had a long and chequered history, and although in the course of its career it has lost duties enough to keep an active department busy, these have been more than replaced under that modern tendency toward state regulation of industry which is constantly adding to its burdens. It deals not only with trade, but with many of the chief agencies of trade, and especially with transportation.

As in the case of the three other boards to be described hereafter, the Board of Trade is engaged not in direct administration, but in supervising and regulating the action of private bodies and local authorities, and in keeping a watch upon the enforcement of the law.

Speaking broadly, its powers have grown by the process of making it responsible for the application of a great many statutes.

Its functions may be cla.s.sified roughly under the heads of collecting information, registration, inspection, and authorising acts or undertakings of a public nature; although any such cla.s.sification is sadly confused by the fact that duties of more than one kind have been conferred upon the board in regard to the same subject-matter, and even by the same statute. To the first of these cla.s.ses belong its functions in collecting and publis.h.i.+ng statistics relating to domestic and foreign trade, and giving advice on commercial matters to other departments of the government. To that cla.s.s belong also its functions as a labour bureau in preparing statistics about labour, wages and other matters touching the interests of workingmen. In this connection it has power also to act as a board of conciliation in labour disputes, and to name arbitrators or conciliators. Under the head of registration may be mentioned its duties in maintaining the standards of weights and measures; registering joint-stock companies; examining and recording patents and trade-marks; and keeping a register of s.h.i.+ps and seamen.

Under the head of inspection come its functions in ascertaining that merchant vessels are in a seaworthy condition, and properly laden, officered, manned and equipped; with the power to detain unseaworthy craft. Under the same head may be cla.s.sed its control over harbours, its duty to see to the enforcement of the laws relating to railways[109:1]

and to inquire into the causes of railway accidents and disasters at sea. As an example of the final cla.s.s of powers may be cited the fact that the by-laws of a railway company require for their validity the approval of the board; but a far more important instance is to be found in its control over the building of new lines of railway, over new undertakings for the supply of water, gas and electric light, and over the construction of tramways and light railways, the last being a recent invention legally very different, but physically indistinguishable, from tramways. This control is exercised by means of provisional orders, prepared by the board after an investigation and a hearing of all the persons interested, and then confirmed by Parliament.[109:2] The pet.i.tioner is not, indeed, compelled to resort to a provisional order, but may avoid the direct control of the Board of Trade by means of a private bill in Parliament. But a provisional order is far less expensive; and even when the procedure is by private bill the board endeavours to exert its influence by scrutinising the bill, and bringing to the notice of the officers of the House any departures from the general policy of legislation.[109:3] The result is that the board has an effective, although by no means an absolute, control over these matters.

The subject of bankruptcy has also been placed in the hands of the Board of Trade, and except for legal questions which come before the courts, it has the entire charge of the cases, maintaining for that purpose a staff of inspectors, examiners and official receivers.

The nearest approach to actual administrative work intrusted to the board is in the case of lighthouses, buoys and beacons, which are maintained by Trinity House, an ancient corporation composed of self-elected brethren but financially under the control of the Board of Trade.

[Sidenote: The Local Government Board.]

Until the era of the Reform Bill local affairs in England were managed in the main by justices of the peace and town councillors, whose powers were derived from a host of statutes covering many subjects in great detail. These officers were kept rigorously within the limits of their authority because the legality of their acts could be tested in the courts of law; but they were almost entirely free from administrative control. The first wide breach in the system was made by the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which aimed at a reform in the method of giving poor relief, and set up for the purpose a commission to supervise the local bodies. The new commissioners, being vigorous and efficient, aroused hostility, and as they were not permitted to sit in Parliament, they found it hard to defend their policy. In fact the experience they went through is used by Bagehot as an ill.u.s.tration of the impotence of an executive department without a representative in the House of Commons.[110:1] In 1847 the body was reorganised under the t.i.tle of the Poor Law Board, with a responsible minister at its head, and thenceforth received from time to time additions to its duties. Various functions relating to public health and local government had in the meanwhile been intrusted to the Home Secretary and the Privy Council; and, finally, in 1871 the greater part of them were transferred to the Poor Law Board, which was given the name of Local Government Board.

Legislation of this kind has entirely transformed the nature of English local government. Partly by bringing the exercise of existing powers under the supervision of the central government, partly by subjecting to systematic control the new powers called into life by the wants of the time, the old system of local self-government--limited by law, but independent of any administrative superior--has been replaced by a system where the local bodies, and especially those outside of the great towns, are to a considerable extent under the tutelage of the state. The subjection is not the same as that which prevails in other European countries, and it is not so great, but it is in some respects more nearly akin to the continental system than to that of England in the eighteenth century.

Except for such matters as police, education, and the supply of transportation, light and water, the control over the local authorities is almost entirely vested in the Local Government Board; but as the subject of local government, and therefore the powers of the board, will be considered at some length in another part of this book, we do not need to enumerate its functions here. We need only point out that it has the unusual number of five a.s.sistant under-secretaries, and a large staff of clerks, auditors and inspectors. But although the amount of head work to be done, and therefore the number of permanent officials of high grade, is large, yet from a political point of view the department is not regarded as of the first cla.s.s.

[Sidenote: The Board of Agriculture.]

The creation in 1889 of a new department of state to attend to the matters that have been transferred from various commissions to the Board of Agriculture hardly seems to have been necessary; and, indeed, the board is not important enough to require a parliamentary under-secretary. It has inherited the duty of shaking the dry bones of ancient tenures by dealing with such subjects as the commutation of t.i.thes, the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of copyhold, the enclosure of commons, allotments to labourers, and the improvement of land by limited owners.

The control of fisheries, the promotion of agriculture and the prevention of contagious diseases among animals are also placed under its care, and it has been given power, or rather authority, to muzzle dogs and destroy the Colorado beetle.

[Sidenote: The Board of Education.]

The Board of Education is the youngest of all the boards, but in reality it is only a committee of the Privy Council reorganised with some additional powers. The most remarkable thing about the act creating it--apart from the erection of a sham board--is the extent of the authority delegated to the executive. Instead of prescribing minutely the organisation and functions of the department of education, the act empowered the government, in its discretion, to set up such a consultative committee as it saw fit, and to transfer to the board any educational duties of the Charity Commissioners or the Board of Agriculture that it thought best.[112:1] Both of these powers have been exercised by Orders in Council of Aug. 7, 1900, and the Consultative Committee has been made to consist of representatives selected by the universities and by other bodies interested in education. But the subject of public education will be treated in subsequent chapters, and it is enough here to note that by means of elaborate regulations, commonly known as the Education Code, the board prescribes the instruction to be given in all schools aided by public money;[112:2]

that it inspects endowed or private secondary schools at their request;[112:3] and that it has charge of the museums at South Kensington and Bethnal Green, and of the Geological Museum and Survey.

[Sidenote: The Post Office.]

From the point of view of the national government the Post Office has two functions. It is a great administrative department which conducts a huge business, with a minister at its head; and it is a source of income, its gross receipts forming about one seventh of the total revenues of the United Kingdom, its disburs.e.m.e.nts only about one tenth of the total expenditure. For that reason it is under a financial control by the Treasury so strict as to leave very little chance for independent action, and this renders the position of Postmaster General far less important than it would otherwise be. The office has been regarded as political since 1837; but until 1866 the holder could not sit in the House of Commons, and since that time he has occasionally been a peer, the Post Office in such a case being usually represented in the Commons by the Financial Secretary of the Treasury. The duties of the Postmaster General are minutely prescribed by statute, and while he has power to make regulations for the management of the postal service, it is not easy to make substantial changes or improvements without affecting the receipts or the expenses, and when that is done he comes at once under the control of the Treasury. The rates of postage, for example, and the compensation for carrying the mails, when not fixed by Act of Parliament, are subject to the approval of the Treasury; and so are the purchase or sale of land, and any lease of the right to carry on a telegraph or telephone business. The same approval is also required for his regulations touching money-orders, post office savings-banks, and the telegraph, although in these cases the revenue would not appear to be necessarily involved. In short, as Sir William Anson puts it,[113:1] "The Postmaster General is no more than the acting manager of a great business, with little discretionary power except in the exercise of the very considerable patronage of his office."[113:2]

The business of the department is certainly enormous, the number of persons employed being little short of two hundred thousand. In addition to the usual work of transmitting letters, books, parcels and money-orders, the Post Office in England maintains savings-banks, with deposits of about 150,000,000; and it has been given exclusive control of the telegraph by provisions which have been held to include the telephone also. But while the administration of the telegraph has been retained by the government in its own hands, the right to conduct the telephone business was granted, by means of temporary licenses, to private companies, and to some extent to local authorities also; and the government has only recently decided to take over the management as soon as the licenses expire.

FOOTNOTES:

[82:1] Such are the offices of the Lord Steward and the Lord Chamberlain, the latter having in his charge also the censors.h.i.+p of plays and theatrical performances.

[83:1] The name of the Board of Trade is now statutory (25-26 Vic., c.

69, -- 2; 52-53 Vic., c. 63, -- 12, cl. 8). Its composition, however, is fixed not by statute but by Order in Council at the beginning of each reign, save that an act of 1867 (30-31 Vic., c. 72) abolished the office of Vice-President, and provided instead that one of the secretaries to the board might sit in Parliament.

[83:2] For the organisation of the Board of Works, see 14-15 Vic., c.

42; 37-38 Vic., c. 84; for the Local Government Board, 34-35 Vic., c.

70; Board of Agriculture, 52-53 Vic., c. 30; Board of Education, 62-63 Vic., c. 33.

[83:3] In the case of the Board of Works he is styled First Commissioner.

[84:1] The Council of India, described hereafter, has some of the characteristics of a board.

[84:2] Hans., 4 Ser. LXVIII., 678-9; LXX., 338, 351; LXXIII., 632, 666.

[84:3] _Ibid._, LXXIII., 676.

[84:4] In the course of the debate Lord Norton declared (Hans., 4 Ser.

LXVIII., 676) that he had served on two different boards, and could remember only one instance where a board had been called together or consulted in any way.

[85:1] Hans., 4 Ser. LXX., 353. There may have been good reasons for not creating a sixth secretary of state, and among them the fact that a secretary of state receives a salary of 5000, while the president of the board receives 2000. But, as Mr. Bryce pointed out (Hans., 4 Ser.

LXXIII., 632), a secretary might have been appointed who, like the Secretary for Scotland, should not be a secretary of state. The salary of the Secretary for Scotland is, in fact, 2000.

[86:1] Until a few years ago the departments were: (1) the Eastern (Eastern Europe and Central Asia); (2) Western (Western Europe, Northwest Africa and the Pacific Islands); (3) American and Asiatic (which includes China, j.a.pan and Siam); (4) Consular (including East and West Africa); (5) Commercial; (6) The Chief Clerk's (which has charge of financial business); (7) The Library (with the papers of the office); (8) The Treaty Department. (Fourth Rep. of the Comn. on Civil Establishments, Com. Papers, 1890, XXVII., 1.) Within a few years four new departments have been created: an African, an African Protectorates, a Far Eastern and a Parliamentary. (See the Foreign Office List.)

[87:1] Ch. viii. The permanent under-secretary at the head of the staff holds, however, an important place.

[88:1] See Hammond, "The Adventures of a Paper in the Foreign Office."

Rep. of Sel. Com. on Trade, Com. Papers, 1864, VII., 279, Q. 1384.

[88:2] Colonial Office List, 1907, XIII.

[89:1] Three of the members may, however, be appointed for life, and any other member may be reappointed for five years. Ilbert, "Government of India," 112.

[89:2] _Ibid._, 152-55.

[91:1] Report of Comrs. on Admn. of Naval and Mil. Depts., Com. Papers, 1890, XIX., 1, pp. viii-ix.