A thorough revision of the executive departments is necessary if government is to be both efficient and economical. There is plenty of good material in the Civil Service, and it will always be easy to obtain more. It is the system or want of system that is wrong.
The next question is to provide or restore a more effective general control over expenditure and impose checks on the growing expenditure which has been so marked in recent years, even before the War.
The ordinary machinery for dealing with and controlling expenditure is or should be fourfold.
(1) The spending departments make definite estimates or are supposed to do so. Since the War, this has not been the rule. Of course, there are many cases in which it would have been absolutely impossible to let the items of proposed expenditure be published or discussed in the House of Commons; but, as soon as War requirements permit it, proper estimates should again be prepared and pressure put upon the departments to reduce them. At present the pressure is all the other way; the heads of the departments apparently like to have a large establishment as well as to extend their jurisdiction. It is not merely to give their department more importance and a claim therefore to higher salaries; sometimes it is the natural tendency of the vigorous man to enlarge the scope of his influence. Boni judicis, says the old maxim, ampliare jurisdictionem. ("It is characteristic of the good judge to extend his jurisdiction.") It would be a good thing if instead of estimates being laid directly before a Committee of the whole House of Commons, where some small item is often the subject of long and acrimonious debate and millions are passed without comment or consideration in a few minutes, the estimates of each department were fully considered as a whole by some small competent Committee of the House, uninfluenced by party feeling, and representatives of departments could be asked questions on their estimates.
To compare small things with great, a committee of this kind has been found of the highest value in institutions where there are various departments requiring large expenditure. It is usually then felt by each person who sends in an estimate that it is to the credit of his department not to make claims for expenditure which cannot be justified. When the scale and character of the expenditure have been scrutinised and the estimate has been passed, it is much better to leave a very free hand as to the exact mode of expenditure. Outside control then becomes irritating, and is itself a cause of extravagance; it means more accounts, more correspondence, more consideration of papers.
(2) The Treasury is supposed to have the function of control, but a change appears to have taken place, and it has now to a great extent lost its control, and has even itself become a spending body. Professor A.L. Lowell, in the work above referred to, after speaking of the Treasury as the department which exhibits in the highest degree the merits of the British Government, points out that even ten years ago, "with the waning desire for economy and the growth of other interests, the Treasury has to some extent lost its predominant position; although it will no doubt maintain its control over the details of expenditure, one cannot feel certain that its head will regain the powerful influence upon general or financial policy exerted thirty years ago." A very guarded statement, as was becoming in an author writing in another country at a time when the tendencies to which he alludes were only beginning to show themselves. Things have advanced during the last ten years in the direction Professor Lowell indicated as probable, and it is high time that this advance should be stopped.
We might venture to ask, indeed, the following questions: (i) Has not the Treasury during the last ten years lost a large portion of its control, and since the War almost its whole control over expenditure on a large scale? (ii) Is the Treasury not more concerned
with paltry details than in imposing any real check on the extravagance of spending departments? (iii) Has not the policy sometimes been actually to encourage expenditure, and has not there been one case at least, even of introducing vexatious taxation where the amount collected is far less than the cost of collection? (iv) What has the Treasury done to prevent or control "the orgy of extravagance" since the War began? The department of State which has to do with revenue, with getting as much as possible and spending only what is necessary, which has the duty of "making both ends meet," ought to resume its functions and regain its influence so that the Government may be conducted "on strict business principles," to use Professor Lowell's phrase, "as it was throughout a great part of the nineteenth century."
(3) The Cabinet should exercise more controlling power, and recognise its collective responsibility for keeping down expenditure. As Professor Lowell points out, the position of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Cabinet was one of almost commanding influence. In Mr. Gladstone's time his powerful personality, regularly exercised in favour of national economy, did certainly have a great effect in preventing extravagance, and some other Chancellors of the Exchequer no doubt used an influence in that direction, but can it be safely asserted that there is in the Cabinet as a whole sufficient attention given to retrenchment?
(4) Lastly, the House of Commons is supposed to control expenditure. That control has generally been used, and quite rightly, as a means of calling attention to grievances, and as giving an opportunity for criticism of the executive; but the House of Commons should also put pressure on the executive to curtail expenditure, not so much by discussing small details which would be far better dealt with by such a small Estimates Examination Committee as suggested, but by using its influence generally against an increase of expenditure unless a clear case for it is made out. During the War, Parliamentary control, at least until the