Patronage and the Public Service
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1952.tb02802.x |
| Author | S. E. Finer |
| Date | 01 December 1952 |
| Published date | 01 December 1952 |
Patronage
and
the Public Service
Jeffersonian Bureaucracy and the British Tradition
By
PROFESSOR
S.
E.
FINER
The Professor
of
Political Institutions
in
the University College
of
North Staffordshire
compares Amencan
and
British Central administration during the period
1789-1830
and
in
their
subsequent
development.
N
1948 Professor
L.
D. White
I
produced
The
Federalists;
and
now, with
The
Jeffersonians*
he has
completed his study of
U.S.
Federal
Administration
in
the fist forty years
of the Republic. Nothing
on
this
topic has previously been attempted
comparable in scale, range and
scholarship
;
and whatever criticisms
may
be laid against the work must
be accounted
minor
in the light of
this great and overriding merit.
Surveying the new and vast field
opened up by these books, every
historian will doubtless harbour
private and favourite notions as to
how he himself might have treated
it;
but one would be lost to all
sense of perspective not to appreciate
that with these studies Professor
White has put a generation of
scholars in his debt.
For British students these volumes
have a special value irrespective
of
the contribution they make to
American studies
;
and this for two
reasons. In the first place, the
Radicals of the period of the Napo-
leonic wars held up the American
administrative system as a model of
efficiency and economy
;
and there-
fore, it is now possible for the first
time to examine their claims. In the
second place-and this is
of
con-
siderably more importance-the
studies throw
light
on
the relationship
between patronage and efficiency.
By patronage we
mean
the recruit-
ment of public servants by private
recommendation. (There is
no
reason why a patronage system
should necessarily be the same as a
“
spoils
”
system.) Now a period
of
inefficiency and extravagance in
our
own public service,
viz.
during the
18th and early 19th centuries, coin-
cides with recruitment by personal
recommendation; and
so,
the
two
phenomena are commonly regarded
as necessarily linked.
It
is inferred
that the inefficiency and extravagance
must have been due to the patronage,
and that patronage must necessarily
conduce to inefficiency and extrava-
gance. Yet Professor White’s volumes
show that from 1789 to 1829 the
American Federal Service,
also
recruited
by
personal recommenda-
tion, achieved more economical, and
possibly higher, standards than the
British. This leads one to suspect
that the inefficiency
and
expense
of
British administration during
this
period might have been due to deeper
causes than the patronage system; and
it
leads one to explore what these causes
might have been. This is the problem
examined
in
the following pages.
AMERICAN
ADMINISTRATIVE
A.
The
American
Administrative
The
U.S.
Administrative System
set up in 1789 consisted
of
the
President as supreme head of the
Executive Branch, and three Depart-
ments, viz. the Treasury, the State
Department and the War Depart-
ment. The Post Office was recon-
structed by an organic statute, in
1792; and the Navy Department,
hitherto a branch of War, was
ACHIEVEMENT,
1789-1828
System,
1789-1828
*“
The
Jeffersonians
”
:
A
study
in
Administrative History,
1801-1829.”
L.
D.
White,
University
of
Chicago.
Maanillan
&
Co.
1951.
Pp.
XI.
572.
45s.
329
PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION
created in 1798. The Attorney-
General’s post was a hybrid, half-
time appointment, and not until
after 1817
did
it
develop, through
the inspiration of Wirt,
into
a full-
time and permanent office. Into
these departments (notably into the
first three) were fitted the new
functions of government as and when
they arose: the Land Suryey, the
purchase of army supplies, the
Census,
the Mint, the grant of
patents, the establishment
of
light-
houses, the control
of
Indian trade,
the disposal of public lands; thus
earning the enconiums
of
Jeremy
Bentham of whose “principle of
single-seatedness” it was a signal
illustration.’
Of
these Departments the most
powerful and complex was the
Treasury.
It
was as
if
the British
Board of Customs, Board
of
Excise,
Exchequer,
Tax
Office and
Com-
missioners
of
Audit were all rolled
into one; for
it
collected the revenue,
received, held and paid out
sums
of
money, and audited and passed the
accounts. The State Department
was responsible for domestic security
at home and abroad like the
original
Secretaries, office in England before
it
ey.olved intQ the Home
and
Foreign
Offices in 1782. The Post Office,
tiny at
first,
contained
in
1828
divisions dealing
with
Finance,
Con-
tracts, and Appointments. Navy, by
1828, was controlling
six
dockyards
and built its own ships by direct
labour:
it
had
also
set up a Naval
Medical Service. The Army had
established West Point and initiated
the Army Corps
of
Engineers, which
body, used for Internal Improve-
ments as early as 1824, was by 1828
engaged
in
no
less than 37 works
of
civil construction and 28 surveys.
The War Department
also
looked
after Indian affairs-the negotiation
330
of treaties, the payment
of
annuities,
and the attempts at
‘‘
civilising
”
the
tribes,
as
well
as
the control
of
Indian trade.
By
1824 a
distjnct
office
called the Bureau
of
Indian
AfFairs had emerged inside the War
Department: and
no
wonder,
for
it
employed one hundred agents and
sub-agents (all of them
in
the field).
This
organisation had started as
a tiny group of two-room offices
with
a minute staff; but while population
trebled between 1790 and 1828 the
public service increased from some
1,500 to approximately 9,000.a (The
increase was largely due to the rapid
extension of postal services between
1801 and 1828.
Also,
most of the
increases took place
in
the
field
agencies of government, rather than
in the headquarters staffs, for
these
grew from about
50
in 1789 to only
about
300
in 1828.)
On
the eve
of
Jackson’s election the United States
administrative system was a going
concern, steadily expanding
its
services and progressively adapting
its organisation to the new burdens.
At a first glance, these adminis-
trative arrangements appear to have
four virtues much looked
for
in
administration. The
U.S.
organisa-
tion appears small:
it
appears
vigorous and efficient:
it
seems
to
possess a high degree
of
probity
and
permanence: above
all
it seems
extremely
cheap.
“
Washington
and
his
assistants
had a keen sense
of
good organisation.
They gathered all the activities
of
government into three departments
so
that nothing was left at loose ends.
They insisted that single officials
bear the responsibility for adminis-
tration rather than boards. They
provided everywhere for due sub-
ordination and for authority
com-
mensurate with responsibility. They
valued competence at
all
levels. They
PATRONAGE AND
THE
PUBLIC
SERVICE
were alert to the importance of a
favourable public opinion. The prin-
cipal officials were conscientious and
hardworking.
“
It
is not
difficult
nevertheless to
find examples of tasks that were
bungled.” (Here follow ten such
examples ranging from criticism of
postal
arrangements and the failure
to
set
the Mint
on
its feet, to the
passing of an Act by Congress with
a
whole section omitted.)
“
Such
errors
and omissions are bound to
occur in any organisation and the
Federalists had their share.
“The moral standards of the
Federalist public service were extra-
ordinarily high-higher by far than
those prevailing in the British public
service or the French and approaching
the austerity of the administrative
system perfected by Frederick the
Great in Prussia. The sale of office
was unknown and would have been
intolerable. Fraud in the financial
transactions of the general govern-
ment could not be discovered even in
repeated investigations by Hamilton’s
opponents. The number
of
revenue
officers who had
to
be removed for
delinquency was exceedingly small.
Probably never in the history of the
U.S.
has the standard of integrity
of the federal civil service been at a
higher level even though the Feder-
alists were sometimes unable to
maintain their ideals.
“
The public standing
of
the civil
service was also high
. .
.
the Feder-
alists took for granted permanence
of tenure and were sensitive to the
claims of office-holders except where
they proved untrustworthy.
.
. .
The literary standards of the public
service were notably good
”
(The
Federalists,
pp.
513-15).
Thus does Professor White
sum
up the Federalist achievement:
on
the whole, despite the blunders
(which he does not hesitate to parade),
he looks at their handiwork and finds
it
good. When he comes to sum
up the Jeffersonian contribution in
The
Jeflersonians,
he concludes
on
the whole that the Federalist stan-
dards were maintained.
“
A Feder-
alist gentleman Mered only in his
political views from a Republican
gentleman. The basic ideal of
behaviour was the same in both and
carried with
it
a sense of obligation
to serve the state when called to
public office. Since the government
was in the hands of Republican
gentlemen from 1801 to 1829,
it
was
inevitable that its character should
remain the same as in the previous
decade when it had been in the
hands of Federalist gentlemen. The
qualities of integrity, restraint,
deference, responsibility and honour
that characterised gentlemen, also
characterised their government and
administrative system
. .
.”
(p.
550).
“
The Republicans discovered as
ample a supply of administrative
talent as had been employed by their
predecessors.
. . .
These men gave
an impulse to the conduct of affairs
quite equal to that which had
prevailed earlier in the
‘
reign
of
energy’
.
.
.
The Republican years
confirmed Federalist ideas about
permanent service in the general
government. Tenure, although not
protected by law, was in fact
during
good behaviour.
.
. .
Clerks might
end their official work
in
the
same
office, indeed in the same position
in which they began, but the expec-
tation of life service was high”
(The
Jeflersonians,
p.
553-5).
B.
British
Admiration
for
the
American Achievement
The economy of this system moved
British radical observers to admira-
tion. Bentham, Cobbett, Sydney
331
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