It may be an entirely honest and efficient bureaucracy, as free from political partisanship as our British Civil Service and police-court magistracy are, but if it is admitted to be outside the jurisdiction of the House of Commons, and to be under no obedience to local councils, and if its powers involve a close inquisition into the lives of the people, and include the right to interfere daily with these lives, then bureaucracy and not democracy is the actual government.
A host of salaried political workers—agents, organisers, secretaries, etc.—will make popular representative government a mere matter of political rivalry, an affair of "ins and outs," and by this development of the party system will exclude from active politics all who are not loyal to the "machine," and are not strong enough to break it. But a host of public officers—inspectors, clerks, etc.—paid out of the public funds will do more than pervert representative government: they will make it subordinate to the permanent official class; and bureaucracy, once firmly in the saddle, is harder to get rid of than the absolutism of kings, or the rule of an aristocracy.
Yet a permanent Civil Service is better in every way in a democracy than a Civil Service which lives and dies with a political party, and is changed with the Cabinet.
On the whole, the best thing for democracy is that the paid workers in politics should be as few as possible, and the number of salaried state officials strictly limited. The fewer the paid political workers, the fewer people will be concerned to maintain the efficiency of the political machine, and the more freely will the electorate act in the choice of its representatives. The fewer the salaried officials of State, the less inspection and restriction, and the less encouragement to habits of submission in the people. Democracy must depend on a healthy, robust sense of personal responsibility in its citizens, and every increase in the inspectorate tends to diminish this personal responsibility, and to breed a "servile state" that will fall a willing prey to tyranny and bureaucracy.
Nevertheless, whilst in self-defence democracy will avoid increasing its officials, it will distinguish between officials and employees. It is bound to add to the number of its employees every year, as its municipal and imperial responsibilities grow steadily larger, and these employees, rightly regarded as public servants, cannot threaten to become our masters.
Working-Class Ascendancy
Still one more danger to democracy may be mentioned, and that is the notion that from the working class must necessarily come our best rulers.
"Rulers are not wise by reason of their number or their poverty, or their reception of a weekly wage instead of a monthly salary or yearly income. It is worse and more unpleasant and more dangerous to be ruled by many fools than by one fool, or a few fools. The tyranny of an ignorant and cowardly mob is a worse tyranny than the tyranny of an ignorant and cowardly clique or individual.
"Workers are not respectable or to be considered because they work more with their hands or feet than with their brains, but because the work they do is good. If it is not good work they do, they are as unprofitable as any other wasters. A plumber is not a useful or admirable creature because he plumbs (if he plumbs ignorantly or dishonestly, he is often either a manslayer or a murderer), but because he plumbs well, and saves the community from danger and damp, disease, and fire and water. Makers of useless machine-made ornaments are, however 'horny-handed,' really 'anti-social persons,' baneful to the community as far as their bad work goes; more baneful, possibly, than the consumers of these bad articles, quite as baneful as the entrepreneurs who employ them.
"The only good institutions are those that do good work; the only good work done is that which produces good results, whether they be direct, as the plough-man's, or navvy's, or sailor's; or indirect, as the policeman, or the schoolmaster, or the teacher of good art, or the writer of books that are worth reading. A man is no better or wiser than others by reason of his position or lack of position, but by reason of his stronger body, wiser head, better skill, greater endurance, keener courage."[[89]]