CHAPTER XVIII
The House of Commons Stands For Extravagance
Authoritative character of the evidence tendered by the several Secretaries of the Treasury. Testimony, in 1902, of Lord Welby, who had been in the Treasury from 1856 to 1894. Testimony of Sir George H. Murray, Permanent Secretary to the Post Office and sometime Private Secretary to the late Prime Minister, Mr. Gladstone. Testimony of Sir Ralph H. Knox, in the War Office since 1882. Testimony of Sir Edward Hamilton, Assistant Secretary to the Treasury since 1894. Testimony of Mr. R. Chalmers, a Principal Clerk in the Treasury; and of Sir John Eldon Gorst. Mr. Gladstone’s tribute to Joseph Hume, the first and last Member of the House of Commons competent to criticize effectively the details of expenditure of the State. Evidence presented before the Select Committee on Civil Services Expenditure, 1873.
Before proceeding to the subject proper of this chapter, it is desirable to say a word about the organization and the work of the Treasury.[419]
The Treasury consists of the First Lord of the Treasury, who is almost invariably the Prime Minister; the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and three Junior Lords of the Treasury. “The Treasury is pre-eminently a superintending and controlling office, and has properly no administrative functions.” Its duty is to reduce to, and maintain at, the minimum compatible with efficiency, the expenditures of the several Departments of State.
The Treasury has three Secretaries: the Financial Secretary, the Parliamentary, or Patronage Secretary, and the Permanent Secretary. The Financial Secretary, after the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is the political head and conductor of the Treasury. He is one of the hardest worked officers of the Government. His duties were well described, recently, by Mr. Austen Chamberlain, in the course of a brief sketch of his official career. Said Mr. Chamberlain: “From the Admiralty he was transferred to the position of Financial Secretary to the Treasury, where, as his chief explained to him, he was in the position of an old poacher promoted to be gamekeeper, and his first duty was to unlearn the habits of five years and save money where previously it had been his pleasure to spend it.” The Parliamentary, or Patronage Secretary is the principal Government Whip. “He is a very useful and important functionary. His services are indispensable to the Leader of the House of Commons in the control of the House and the management of public business.” “It devolves upon him, under the direction of the Leader of the House, ‘to facilitate, by mutual understanding, the conduct of public business,’ and ‘the management of the House of Commons, a position which requires consummate knowledge of human nature, the most amiable flexibility, and complete self-control.’” As “Whipper-in,” the Parliamentary Secretary is generally assisted by two of the Junior Lords of the Treasury, who are, at the same time, Government Whips. “Those useful functionaries are expected to gather the greatest number of their own party into every division [of the House of Commons], and by persuasion, promises, explanation, and every available expedient, to bring their men from all quarters to the aid of the Government upon any emergency. It is also their business to conciliate the discontented and doubtful among the ministerial supporters, and to keep every one, as far as possible, in good humor.” “An estimate of the importance of the duties which would naturally devolve upon these functionaries—from the increasing interference of the House of Commons in matters of detail, and the necessity for the continual supervision of some Member of the Government conversant with every description of parliamentary business, in order to make sure that the business is done in conformity to the views entertained by the House—induced Sir Charles Wood,[420] to declare, in 1850, that the reduction of the number of Junior Lords from four to three was a very doubtful advantage.”
The Financial Secretary and the Parliamentary Secretary are political officers, that is, they sit in the House of Commons, and they change with every change in the Government. The Permanent Secretary, on the other hand, is a non-political officer, or civil servant, who retains office through the successive changes of Government, and secures the continuity of the office. He is the official head of the Department, and of the whole civil service.
The foregoing facts make it clear that for the purposes of this present discussion, one can cite no more authoritative personages than the several Secretaries of the Treasury.