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II. ‘Statesmen in Disguise’: Reflexions on the History of the Neutrality of the Civil Service

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

G. Kitson Clark
G. Kitson Clark
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Cambridge
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Extract

Without question constitutional and democratic principles demand that the permanent officials of this country, even the most important and intelligent of them, must be content to deserve the proud title of servant. The Ministers of the Crown who are responsible to Parliament and enjoy their places because they have been chosen by the electorate, must, while they retain power, have an absolute control of the whole machinery of state, and that includes the unstinted service of the experts who alone can work that machinery. Of course a loyal servant has no need to be servile, nor in the right context dumb. The civil servant must give his counsel freely, and his criticism boldly; but the policy he must put into effect must obviously be that of the ruling political party and not his own. He must give order and practicability to the programme to which ministers are pledged, if that is at all possible. If he is in a position in the service for his opinions to affect his work then his opinions must be unknown to the public, and he must avoid public controversy and eschew party politics. Discreet, anonymous and uncommitted he must be free to serve equally effectively any party, to carry into action any policy, which the sovereign people in its wisdom has favoured at the polls.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , March 1959 , pp. 19 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1959

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References

1 See Establishment Circular 26/53 (14 Aug. 1953); Cmd. 8783 on Political Activities of Civil Servants (March 1953); Cmd. 7718 Report of the Committee on the Political Activities of Civil Servants (presented to Parliament June 1949, reprinted 1958). See also, Public Administration (Journal of the Royal Institute of Public Administration), XXXI, 163; XXXII, 324 and Wheare, K.C., Government by Committee: an essay on the British Constitution (Oxford, 1955), 24–8.Google Scholar

2 W.H. Robson, The Civil Service in Britain and France (1956), ch. 2, ‘Civil Servants, Ministers, Parliament and the Public’ by the Earl Attlee; Morrison, Herbert, Government and Parliament. A Survey from the Inside (Oxford, 1954), XIV, 311–36.Google Scholar

3 Attlee, loc. cit. 16.

4 Sir James Graham, H[ouse] of C[ommons], 19 April 1853, Hansard, 3rd series, CXXVI, 112.

5 On the Patent Office, which interested Dickens, see Alexander, Victor G., ‘A Nineteenth Century Scandal’ (Public Administration, XXVIII, 295–304).Google Scholar

6 The Northcote-Trevelyan Report. See Par[iamentary] Papers. (1854), XXVII, 367–87; also Public Administration. XXXII (1954), 1–51, with an important article by Prof. E. Hughes.

7 Part. Papers. (1854–5), xx. 71–80. See also K. C. Wheare, The Civil Service in the Constitution. (1954).

8 Journal of Public Administration. XXXIV (S. E. Finer, ‘The Individual Responsibility of Ministers’, 377–96), 380.

9 Sir Stafford Northcote, H. of C. 21 July 1859; Hansard, 3rd series, CLV, 225; Gladstone to Northcote, 25 July 1859; Lang, Andrew, Life, Letters and Diaries of Sir Stafford Northcote. (Edinburgh, 1890), 1, 160, citGoogle Scholar. Lawrence Lowell, A., [The] Government of England. (New York, 1918), 1, 191–2.Google Scholar

10 Grey, Earl, Parliamentary Government considered with reference to Reform. (1864), 300.Google Scholar

11 ibid. 331.

12 ibid. 295–314.

13 ibid. 42–3.

14 Taylor, H., The Statesman. (Cambridge, 1957) (first published 1836), ch. XII, 75 ff.Google Scholar

15 Taylor, op. cit. 82–3.

16 Charles Buller, ‘Responsible Government for Colonies’ (1840). The most easily available edition is in Wrong, E. M., Charles Buller and Responsible Government. (Oxford, 1926).Google Scholar

17 Hughes, E., ‘Sir James Stephen and the anonymity of the civil servant’ (Public Administration. XXXVI, 29–33).Google Scholar

18 Debate in H. of C. 8 April 1806. The Trial by Impeachment of Henry Lord Viscount Melville. (1806), xliv.

19 Namier, L. B., Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (1929 edn.), 1, 47–53Google Scholar; Thomson, M. A., The Secretaries of State 1681–1782. (Oxford, 1932), 128–42Google Scholar. See also for the old system and the transitional period Finer, S. E., ‘Patronage and the Public Service’ (Public Administration, xxx, 329).Google Scholar

20 On this see Binney, J. E. D., British Finance and Administration 1774—9 (Oxford, 1958).Google Scholar

21 See Sir Thomas L. Heath, The Treasury (Whitehall Series, 1927), 12.

22 See Jones Parry, E.‘Under-Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs, 1782–1855’ (E[nglish] H[istorical] R[eview]. vol. XLIX, 308–20). I owe this reference to Mr Hinsley of St John’s College, Cambridge.Google Scholar

23 Correspondence and Diaries of J. W. Croker, ed. Louis Jennings (1884), 11, 74, Croker to Graham 20 Nov. 1830; ibid. 1, 81.

24 The Diaries and Correspondence of the Right Hon. George Rose, ed. Rev. Leveson Vernon Harcourt (I860), I, 24. I owe this quotation to Mr I. R. Christie, indeed I owe much in this paragraph to the help of Mr I. R. Christie and Professor E. Hughes. I wish I could have included all that they told me. I need not say how important for the understanding of this period and these problems are Mr Christie’s The End of North’s Ministry (1958) and Professor Hughes’s various articles and his Studies in Administration and Finance 1558–1825 (Manchester, 1934).

25 Sir William Blackstone, Commentary on the Laws of England, Bk. 1, ch. 8 (last para, but three) (16th edn. 1825, 1, 335). Holdsworth, W. S., A History of English Law, X (1938), 514.Google Scholar

26 Gordon, Hampden, The War Office. (Whitehall Series, 1935), 32–3.Google Scholar

27 Oliver MacDonagh, ‘Emigration and State 1833–55:an Essay in Administrative History’ (Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, vol. 5, 1955, 133–59); M. W. Thomas, The Early Factory Legislation (Leigh-on-sea, 1948), 254ff.

28 MacDonagh, Oliver, ‘The Nineteenth Century Revolution in Government. A Reappraisal’ (The Historical Journal, 1 (1958), 52–67).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Roger Prouty, The Transformation of the Board of Trade 1830–53 (1957).

30 Cook, E. T., The Life of Florence Nightingale (1913), 1, 401–7.Google Scholar

31 Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution, part of no. VI on ‘Changes of Ministry’ (1920 edn., 183–90).

32 See 13 and 14 Vic. cap. 94 (1850). Mr G. F. A. Best of Trinity Hall is at present engaged in a history of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.

33 Willson, F. M. G., ‘Ministries and Boards’ (Public Administration, XXXIII, 43ff.); Lowell, Government of England, 1,83–5.Google Scholar

34 See Hansard, 3rd series, CLXXV, 371–82, Sir John Pakington’s speech.

35 From the papers of Sir James Graham in the possession of Sir Fergus Graham, published with the kind permission of Sir Fergus Graham. Charles Trevelyan to Sir James Graham, 14 Oct. 1843 (two letters). Graham to Trevelyan, 14 Oct. Sir Robert Peel to Graham, 15 Oct. (bundle 66 (B)). The letters in the Morning Chronicle appear on 14 Oct. and 15 Oct. They are referred to in the leading article of 17 Oct. I owe the references in the Morning Chronicle to the kindness of Mrs Woodham Smith who is investigating the whole matter for her forthcoming book on the famine in Ireland. See also Miss Brown, Lucy, The Board of Trade and the Free-Trade Movement (Oxford, 1958), 33, quoting Peel papers (B.M. Add. MSS. 40,449, fos. 84–5, Graham to Peel, 14 Oct. 1843).Google Scholar

36 . Sir George Otto Trevelyan, Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay (2nd. edn., 1877), 11, 378–80.

37 Alexander Bain, Autobiography (1904), 201, mentioned in Finer, S. E., The Life and Times of Sir Edwin Chadwick (1952), 317.Google Scholar

38 E.g. Blomfield, bishop of London in 1834. Finer, op. cit. 163.

39 E.g. Christie in the Andover Enquiry, ibid. 260.

40 ibid. 279–80.

41 ibid. 407.

42 ibid. 238–40.

43 ibid. 321.

44 G. Birkbeck Hill, Life of Sir Rowland Hill K.C.B. etc. and History of Penny Postage (2 vols., 1880). His interview with Cobden, n, 73–5; his approaches to M.P.s to get Maberley removed, 11, 198; to get particular returns, pp. 149 and 185; his relations with The Times, 11, 116.

45 Peel to Graham, 14 Oct. 1843 (Graham papers, loc. cit.). For the attitude of Porter and Macgregor and in particular for their relation to the Committee on Import Duties see Miss Lucy Brown, ‘The Board of Trade and the Tariff Problem 1840–9’ (E.H.R. LXVIII, 394–421), and her Board of Trade and Free-Trade, esp. chaps. 2 and 12. For their connexion with the Anti-Corn Law leaders see E. I. Barrington, The Servant of All. Pages from the Family, Social and Political Life of my father James Wilson (2 vols., 1927), e.g. 1, 6, 26, 66. DrMcCord’ informs me that there is further evidence of the intimacy of Porter with the Anti-Corn Law League in the papers of George Wilson now in the Reference Library at Manchester.

46 See Sir Lewis Namier, ‘Monarchy and the Party System’ (Romanes lecture, 1952), Personalities and Powers, particularly pp. 21–5; note especially the quotation on p. 24 from J. C. Herries. J. C. Herries to Sir Wm. Knighton, 27 Feb. 1827 (Letters of King George IV. ed. A. Aspinall, in, 200).

47 For a discussion of the law touching the subject see E. Jones Parry, loc. cit. (E.H.R.. XLIX, 309–13).

48 The most convenient edition for Trollope’s Autobiography and his Three Clerks is in the World’s Classics series. For Yates see Edmund Yates, His Recollections and Experiences (1885).

49 There is probably an analogy here with the advantages and troubles that derived from the recruitment into the education office of Sir Michael Sadler and Sir Robert Morant, each with another career behind him, at the end of the century. On Sir Robert Morant in particular there is now a reasonably large literature.

50 Mr R. J. Lambert of Sidney Sussex is now working on Sir John Simon’s activities. I believe that what he may produce may be of the greatest importance. Simon’s own work, English Sanitary Institutions. (1890) is, however, extremely revealing.

51 See debate on 12 April 1864. Hansard (3rd series), CLXXIV, 897–912.

52 E.g. see Brown, Board of Trade and Free-Trade, 209.