The entire aggregate of means provided for one end should be under one
and the same control and responsibility. If they are divided among
independent authorities, the means, with each of those authorities,
become ends, and it is the business of nobody except the head of the
Government, who is probably without the appropriate departmental
experience, to take care of the real end. The different classes of
means are not combined and adapted to one another under the guidance
of any leading idea; and while every department pushes forward its own
requirements, regardless of those of the rest, the purpose of the work
is perpetually sacrificed to the work itself.
As a general rule, every executive function, whether superior or
subordinate, should be the appointed duty of some given individual. It
should be apparent to all the world who did everything, and through
whose default anything was left undone. Responsibility is null when
nobody knows who is responsible. Nor, even when real, can it be
divided without being weakened. To maintain it at its highest there
must be one person who receives the whole praise of what is well done,
the whole blame of what is ill. There are, however, two modes of
sharing responsibility: by one it is only enfeebled, by the other,
absolutely destroyed. It is enfeebled when the concurrence of more
than one functionary is required to the same act.
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