A
popular government installed him in the Post Office, and made the
body, in spite of itself, obey the impulse given by the man who united
special knowledge with individual vigour and originality. That the
Roman aristocracy escaped this characteristic disease of a bureaucracy
was evidently owing to its popular element. All special offices,
both those which gave a seat in the Senate and those which were sought
by senators, were conferred by popular election. The Russian
government is a characteristic exemplification of both the good and
bad side of bureaucracy; its fixed maxims, directed with Roman
perseverance to the same unflinchingly-pursued ends from age to age;
the remarkable skill with which those ends are generally pursued;
the frightful internal corruption, and the permanent organised
hostility to improvements from without, which even the autocratic
power of a vigorous-minded Emperor is seldom or never sufficient to
overcome; the patient obstructiveness of the body being in the long
run more than a match for the fitful energy of one man. The Chinese
Government, a bureaucracy of Mandarins, is, as far as known to us,
another apparent example of the same qualities and defects.
In all human affairs conflicting influences are required to keep one
another alive and efficient even for their own proper uses; and the
exclusive pursuit of one good object, apart from some other which
should accompany it, ends not in excess of one and defect of the
other, but in the decay and loss even of that which has been
exclusively cared for.
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