And
here it must be acknowledged that a bureaucratic government has, in
some important respects, greatly the advantage. It accumulates
experience, acquires well-tried and well-considered traditional
maxims, and makes provision for appropriate practical knowledge in
those who have the actual conduct of affairs. But it is not equally
favourable to individual energy of mind. The disease which afflicts
bureaucratic governments, and which they usually die of, is routine.
They perish by the immutability of their maxims; and, still more, by
the universal law that whatever becomes a routine loses its vital
principle, and having no longer a mind acting within it, goes on
revolving mechanically though the work it is intended to do remains
undone. A bureaucracy always tends to become a pedantocracy. When
the bureaucracy is the real government, the spirit of the corps (as
with the Jesuits) bears down the individuality of its more
distinguished members. In the profession of government, as in other
professions, the sole idea of the majority is to do what they have
been taught; and it requires a popular government to enable the
conceptions of the man of original genius among them to prevail over
the obstructive spirit of trained mediocrity. Only in a popular
government (setting apart the accident of a highly intelligent despot)
could Sir Rowland Hill have been victorious over the Post Office.
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