believe; bishops make false returns of their revenues; and at their elections to college-fellowships, well-to-do priests make oath that they are pauper, pius et doctus. From the local inspector whose eyes are shut to an abuse by a contractor's present, up to the prime minister who finds lucrative berths for his relations, this venality is daily illustrated; and that in spite of public reprobation and perpetual attempts to prevent it. As we once heard said by a State-official of twenty-five years' standing"Wherever there is government there is villainy." It is the inevitable result of destroying the direct connection between the profit obtained and the work performed. No incompetent person hopes, by offering a douceur in the Times, to get a permanent place in a mercantile office. But where, as under government, there is no employer's selfinterest to forbid--where the appointment is made by some one on whom inefficiency entails no loss; there a douceur is operative. In hospitals, in public charities, in literary funds, in endowed schools, in all social agencies in which duty done and income gained do not go hand in hand, the like corruption is found; and is great in proportion as the dependence of income upon duty is remote. In Stateorganizations, therefore, corruption is unavoidable. In trading organizations it rarely makes its appearance; and when it does, the instinct of self-preservation soon provides a remedy.

To all which broad contrasts add this, that while private bodies are enterprising and progressive, public bodies are unchanging, and, indeed, obstructive. That officialism should be inventive nobody expects. That it should go out of its easy mechanical routine to introduce improvements, and this at a considerable expense of thought and application, without the prospect of profit, is not to be supposed. But it is not simply stationary; it strenuously resists every amendment either in itself or in any thing

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with which it deals. Until now that County Courts are taking away their practice, all officers of the law have doggedly opposed law reform. The universities have maintained an old curriculum for centuries after it ceased to be fit; and are now struggling to prevent a threatened reconstruction. Every postal improvement has been vehemently protested against by the postal authorities. Mr. Whiston can say how pertinacious is the conservatism of Church grammar-schools. Not even the gravest consequences in view preclude official resistance: witness the fact that though, as a while since mentioned, Professor Barlow reported in 1820, of the Admiralty compasses then in store, that "at least one-half were mere lumber," yet notwithstanding the constant risk of shipwrecks thence arising "very little amelioration in this state of things appears to have taken place until 1838 to 1849."* Nor is official obstructiveness to be readily overborne even by a powerful public opinion: witness the fact that, though, for generations, nine-tenths of the nation have disapproved this ecclesiastical system which pampers the drones and starves the workers, and though commissions have been appointed to rectify it, it still remains substantially as it was: witness again the fact, that though since 1818, there have been a score attempts to rectify the scandalous maladministration of Charitable Trusts-though ten times in ten successive years, remedial measures have been brought before Parliament-the abuses still continue in all their grossness. Not only do these legal instrumentalities resist reforms in themselves, but they hinder reforms in other things. In defending their vested interests, the clergy delay the closing of town burial-grounds. As Mr. Lindsay can show, government emigration-agents are checking the use of iron for sailing-vessels. Excise officers prevent improve

"Rudimentary Magnetism, by Sir W. Snow Harris. Part III., p. 145

ments in the processes they have to overlook. That organic conservatism which is visible in the daily conduct of all men, is an obstacle which in private life self-interest slowly overcomes. The prospect of profit does, in the end, teach farmers that deep draining is good; though it takes long to do this. Manufacturers do, ultimately, learn the most economical speed at which to work their steam-engines; though precedent has long misled them. But in the public service, where there is no self-interest to overcome it, this conservatism exerts its full force; and produces results alike disastrous and absurd. For generations after bookkeeping had become universal, the Exchequer accounts were kept by notches cut on sticks. In the estimates for the current year appears the item, "Trimming the oillamps at the Horse-Guards."

Between these law-made agencies, and the spontaneously-formed ones, who then can hesitate? The one class are slow, stupid, extravagant, unadaptive, corrupt, and obstructive: can any point out in the other, vices that balance these? It is true that trade has its dishonesties, speculation its follies. These are evils inevitably entailed by the existing imperfections of humanity. It is equally true, however, that these imperfections of humanity are shared by State-functionaries; and that being unchecked in them by the same stern discipline, they grow to far worse results. Given a race of men having a cer tain proclivity to misconduct, and the question is, whether a society of these men shall be so organized that ill-conduct directly brings punishment, or whether it shall be so organized that punishment is but remotely contingent on ill-conduct? Which will be the most healthful community that in which agents who perform their functions. badly, immediately suffer by the withdrawal of public patronage; or that in which such agents can be made to suffer only through an apparatus of meetings, petitions,

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polling booths, parliamentary divisions, cabinet-councils, and red-tape documents? Is it not an absurdly utopian hope that men will behave better when correction is far removed and uncertain than when it is near at hand and inevitable? Yet this is the hope which most political schemers unconsciously cherish. Listen to their plans, and you find that just what they propose to have done, they assume the appointed agents will do. That func tionaries are trustworthy is their first postulate. Doubtless could good officers be ensured, much might be said. for officialism; just as despotism would have its advantages could we ensure a good despot.

If, however, we would duly realize the contrast between the artificial and the natural modes of achieving social desiderata, we must look not only at the vices of the one but at the virtues of the other. These are many and important. Consider first how immediately every private enterprise is dependent upon the need for it; and how impossible it is for it to continue if there be no need. Daily are new trades and new companies established. If they subserve some existing public want, they take root and grow. If they do not, they die of inanition. It needs no agitation, no act of Parliament, to put them down. As with all natural organizations, if there is no function for them, no nutriment comes to them, and they dwindle away. Moreover, not only do the new agencies disappear if they are superfluous, but the old ones cease to be when they have done their work. Unlike law-made instrumentalities—unlike Herald's Offices, which are maintained for ages after heraldry has lost all value-unlike Ecclesiastical Courts, which continue to flourish for gener ations after they have become an abomination; these pri vate instrumentalities dissolve when they become needless. A widely-ramified coaching system ceases to exist as soon as a more efficient railway system comes into being. And

not simply does it cease to exist, and to abstract funds, but the materials of which it was made are absorbed and turned to use. Coachmen, guards, and the rest, are employed to profit elsewhere-do not continue for twenty years a burden, like the compensated officials of some abolished department of the State.

Consider again how necessarily these unordained agencies fit themselves to their work. It is a law of all organized things, that efficiency presupposes apprenticeship. Not only is it true that the young merchant must begin by carrying letters to the post, that the way to be a successful innkeeper is to commence as waiter-not only is it true that in the development of the intellect there must come first the perceptions of identity and duality, next of number, and that without these, arithmetic, algebra, and the infinitesimal calculus, remain impracticable; but it is true that there is no part of any organism whatever but begins in some very simple form with some insignificant function, and passes to its final stage through successive. phases of complexity. Every heart is at first a mere pulsatile sac; every brain begins as a slight enlargement of the spinal cord. This law equally extends to the social organism. An instrumentality that is to work well must not be designed and suddenly put together by legis lators, but must grow gradually from a germ; each successive addition must be tried and proved good by experience before another addition is made; and by this tentative process only, can an efficient instrumentality be produced. From a trustworthy man who receives deposits of money, insensibly grows up a vast banking system, with its notes, checks, bills, its complex transactions, and its Clearing-house. Pack-horses, then waggons, then coaches, then steam-carriages on common roads, and, finally, steam-carriages on roads made for them-such has Deen the slow genesis of our present means of communi