persistently manoeuvring to increase their own functions. It has also to be remembered that the extension of popular education, coupled with the extension of the franchise, has created a powerful political influence in favour of increasing the numbers of the bureaucracy. For each year there are turned on to the world a large number of young men and young women who have passed through the secondary schools and perhaps even through a university, but who have not been trained for any special profession. To such young persons the civil service is a golden gate, and they bring to bear all the pressure they can to get appointments. In addition, ministers of the Crown, under the reckless methods of administration which have prevailed for the past ten or twelve years, have frequently created jobs for political ends. In these ways there has been built up a gigantic bureaucracy, the greater part of which is not only useless but positively mischievous, because the very redundancy of officials delays work.

One of the most urgent duties before the present government is to cut down this bureaucracy and to get back to the simpler methods of government under which the nation grew in strength and prosperity a generation ago. Needless to say, the dismissal of these useless officials will meet with strong opposition from the individuals concerned, and they will make use of every conceivable device to get themselves transferred to some other department if their own department is reduced. It is earnestly to be hoped that in this difficult matter the present government will have the courage to give honest effect to their definite pledge to economise public expenditure. It is far better to meet the hardships that may be involved in individual cases by giving liberal compassionate allowances than by continuing to employ persons in useless jobs. For, broadly speaking, each useless job creates another useless job, and both tend to obstruct the profitable activities of the nation. On the other hand, as soon as the unwanted official has been dismissed, he can, with the aid of his compassionate allowance, seek for some useful work, and thus become of service to the nation instead of being a burden on the backs of his fellow citizens.

One of the most hopeful means of diminishing the burden of bureaucracy and at the same time restoring real liberty to the nation is indicated in the article by Mr. Bernard Holland in this number of the EDINBURGH REVIEW on Central and Local Government.' Mr. Holland there shows how the constant

interference of the central government with the business of the local authorities has created new armies of officials who are engaged solely in criticising one another's proceedings. For example, on the south side of the Thames in the palace recently erected by the London County Council is an army of officials whose work largely consists in preparing accounts and documents for scrutiny by other officials in the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Health on the north side of the Thames. It is ridiculous that a body like the London County Council, representing the capital of the Empire and a population of over four million people, should not have full and final control over all public money spent on educational or sanitary services in London. The same consideration applies to most of our large towns and all our more important counties. There is no reason whatever why bodies of bureaucrats in Whitehall should interfere with details which the local authorities are much more competent to determine.

This interference has its origin in the mentality of many of our prominent politicians, who in recent years have passed laws to endow the central government with power to impose schemes of social reform upon the local authorities. In order to get these schemes accepted it was necessary to bribe the local authorities with grants from the national exchequer, and that method of finance in turn involved the necessity of central control over every item of expenditure, in order to be sure that the money was spent in accordance with the presumed intentions of parliament. The only way of getting rid of this waste is to restore full liberty to the local authorities, together with full financial responsibility. It is a financial absurdity that London and our big towns and wealthy counties should receive grants from the national exchequer. Such grants merely represent a payment from the taxpayer to himself as ratepayer. But that unfortunate victim, instead of transferring the money himself from his right-hand to his left-hand pocket has to pay for a multitude of officials, who, after the money has been collected in the shape of taxes, and handed over to the Treasury, redistribute it again. For these reasons, as Mr. Bernard Holland urges, a reform of our system of taxation is needed so that taxes which are essentially local in character, such as Schedules A and B of the Income Tax, the Inhabited House Duty, and the Entertainments Tax, should be collected

by the local authorities and retained by them for their own use. All that would then be necessary on the part of the central government would be to come to the assistance of those districts which for one reason or another were well below the general standard of national wealth.

Among the principal causes of the increase in our national and local expenditure in the course of the present century is the recklessness with which money has been spent on public education. Many politicians are in the habit of talking as if they believed that any public expenditure that can be brought under the head of education is necessarily profitable to the nation. There is no evidence to justify that belief. On the contrary there are many grounds for believing that the lavish expenditure of public money on the provision of gratuitous education has in some directions actually diminished public interest in intellectual subjects. The worst blunder the country made in the matter of education was the abolition of fees in elementary schools in 1891. Most human beings are so constituted that they attach little value to what they get for nothing. When parents had to make some payment for the education of their children they attached importance to it. Precise evidence on this point is still available. The Act of 1891, which Mr. Joseph Chamberlain forced upon a reluctant Conservative Party with the aid of Radical votes, permitted local authorities still to maintain some fee-paying schools as long as sufficient provision was available for the children whose parents preferred to pay nothing. Many of these schools survived down to 1918. They were kept in existence not so much for the sake of the revenue they yielded, for the fees remained fixed at the low figures of 1891, but because large numbers of working class parents preferred to send their children to fee-paying schools. In these fee-paying schools the attendance was constantly kept up to the full capacity of the school, whereas in free schools there was always a large percentage of absentees.

Why then were these schools abolished? Solely because the payment of fees conflicted with the Socialist ideals of the Labour Party, and that party brought pressure to bear upon Mr. H. A. L. Fisher, then Minister of Education, who incorporated in his Bill a clause prohibiting the payment of any fees in public elementary schools. It is significant to note that

the House of Commons did not venture to interfere in the same way with the liberties and the self-respect of the people of Scotland. The Scotch Education Act, passed in the same session, expressly provides that local education authorities may maintain or support schools where fees are charged in some or all of the classes.'

One of the most important educational and social reforms that the present government can undertake is the reversal of the false step taken in the English Education Act of 1918. Every Local Education Authority should have power to charge such fees as it thinks desirable in any elementary school, subject to the obligation to make provision for the gratuitous education of children whose parents are too poor to pay anything. This reform would quicken the parents' interest in the progress of their children, and would go a long way towards checking the spirit of pauperism that has been developed by Mr. Lloyd George's promises of ninepence for fourpence.'

That policy lies at the root of nearly all our present financial and social troubles. The policy of ninepence for fourpence is essentially a policy of communism. For if the individual is to be entitled to claim ninepence from the community in return for a payment of fourpence, why is he not also entitled to claim a shilling in return for a penny, or a pound in return for nothing? No nation can flourish if its citizens are thus deliberately encouraged to live on charity. It is the duty of every citizen to support himself and in addition to contribute to those collective needs of the nation, such as national defence, which can only be met by collective expenditure. Yet instead of insisting upon this elementary principle of sound nationhood, our government of recent years, under the influence of Labour Socialists or Tory Social Reformers, has attempted itself to play the part of fairy godmother to the nation. It is a part that cannot be played except in fairyland. In a world of realities the State depends upon the citizen, not the citizen upon the State.

EDITOR

No. 484 will be published in April, 1923.

Printed in Great Britain by ROFFEY & CLARK, Croydon.

The Edinburgh Review

APRIL, 1923

No. 484

ARTHUR ELLIOT

EDITOR OF THE EDINBURGH REVIEW 1895-1912

SINCE

INCE our last number was published, the death has taken place of one who for many years was identified with this REVIEW, and who gave up no small part of the best years of his life to maintaining the high traditions which for a century had clung to the oldest of the literary periodicals. His political views are well-known to everyone; and in these pages far less than anywhere else is there any occasion to emphasize them. His loss is felt as the disappearance of a well-known figure representing a political outlook that has become rather rare. But it is felt still more acutely by his remarkably wide range of friends and acquaintances. Even when their political views differed widely from his, no corresponding differences arose in their personal regard for him. His deep and powerful feelings, absolute sincerity of purpose, and complete self-subordination to his moral and political principles: these sprang straight from a warm and upright heart. Though many who knew him did not agree with him, yet there were few indeed who did not love and respect him.

Arthur Elliot was born in 1846, the second son of the third Earl of Minto. At about the age of four he had a fall over some toy wooden bricks, and the surgeons found it necessary to amputate his leg in order to save his life. Thenceforward he experienced a very hard time, for his intense sociability of temperament impelled him to take part in the rough games of his three brothers, none too safe even

VOL. 237. NO. 484.

All rights reserved.

N