"Therefore, I call upon you both to—I think that's the course, Mr. Jinks?"
"Certainly, Sir."
"To—to—what, Mr. Jinks?" said the magistrate pettishly.
"To find bail, Sir."
"Yes. Therefore, I call upon you both—as I was about to say, when I was interrupted by my clerk—to find bail."
The satire here is particularly keen, because before the public the magistrate always takes the whole credit to himself, and is very sensitive about having the world believe that he is under the control of his clerk.
Lay Chief with Expert Subordinate an English Usage.
Leslie Stephen, I think, remarks somewhere that the characteristic feature of the English system of government is a justice of the peace who is a gentleman, with a clerk who knows the law; and certainly the relationship between the titular holder of a public post, enjoying the honours, and assuming the responsibility, of office, and a subordinate, who, without attracting attention, supplies the technical knowledge and largely directs the conduct of his chief, extends throughout the English government from the Treasury Bench to the borough council. Perhaps, indeed, it is not altogether fanciful to attribute the ease with which the principle has become established in the national government to the fact that the members of Parliament, and the ministers as well, have been drawn in the past mainly from the same class as the justices of the peace, and have brought with them to a larger sphere the traditions of the local magistrate.
Influence of Permanent Officials in the Colonial Office.
The extent of the control exerted in the national administration by the permanent officials is forcibly illustrated by the history of the Colonial Office. My colleague, Professor Edward Channing, has pointed out to me that the records of the American colonies reveal how largely the Committee for Trade and Plantations was in the hands of Blathwayt, its secretary. In spite of all the violent political upheavals of the time that functionary retained his post without interruption from the latter part of the reign of Charles II. until some years after the revolution of 1688; and if a colony wanted anything done by the home government it was he that must be persuaded, sometimes by inducements of a pecuniary nature.