The Treasury has its finger in every departmental pie except the Indian one, for no Minister and no department can carry out reforms or even discharge its ordinary routine without public money, and of public money the Treasury is the vigilant and inflexible guardian.  “I am directed to acquaint you that My Lords do not see their way to comply with your suggestion, inasmuch as to do so would be to open a serious door.”  This delightful formula, with its dread suggestion of a flippant door and all the mischief to which it might lead, is daily employed to check the ardour of Ministers who are seeking to advance the benefit of the race (including their own popularity among their constituents) by a judicious expenditure of public money.  But whatever be the scope and function of the office, and whatever the nature of the work done there, the mode of doing it is pretty much the same.  Whether the matter in question originates inside the office by some direction or inquiry of the chief, or comes by letter from outside, it is referred to the particular department of the office which is concerned with it.  A clerk makes a careful minute, giving the facts of the case and the practice of the office as bearing on it.  The paper is then sent to any other department or person in the office that can possibly have any concern with it.  It is minuted by each, and it gradually passes up, by more or fewer official gradations, to the Under-Secretary of State, who reads, or is supposed to read, all that has been written on the paper in its earlier stages, balances the perhaps conflicting views of different annotators, and, if the matter is too important for his own decision, sums up in a minute of recommendation to the chief.  The ultimate decision, however, is probably less affected by the Under-Secretary’s minute than by the oral advice of a much more important personage, the Permanent Head of the office.

It would be beyond my present scope to discuss the composition and powers of the permanent Civil Service, whose chiefs have been, at least since the days of Bagehot, recognized as the real rulers of this country.  For absolute knowledge of their business, for self-denying devotion to duty, for ability, patience, courtesy, and readiness to help the fleeting Political Official, the permanent chiefs of the Civil Service are worthy of the highest praise.  That they are conservative[36] to the core is only to say that they are human.  On being appointed to permanent office the extremist theorists, like the bees in the famous epigram, “cease to hum” their revolutionary airs, and settle down into the profound conviction that things are well as they are.  All the more remarkable is the entire equanimity with which the Permanent Official accepts the unpalatable decision of a chief who is strong enough to override him, and the absolute loyalty with which he will carry out a policy which he cordially disapproves.