The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told)
the most important Department under Government. No public business of
any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of
the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie,
and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the
plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express
authority of the Circumlocution Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had
been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody
would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had
been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks
of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical
correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office.
This glorious establishment had been early in the field, when the one
sublime principle involving the difficult art of governing a country,
was first distinctly revealed to statesmen. It had been foremost to
study that bright revelation and to carry its shining influence through
the whole of the official proceedings. Whatever was required to be done,
the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments
in the art of perceiving--HOW NOT TO DO IT.
Through this delicate perception, through the tact with which it
invariably seized it, and through the genius with which it always acted
on it, the Circumlocution Office had risen to overtop all the public
departments; and the public condition had risen to be--what it was.
It is true that How not to do it was the great study and object of
all public departments and professional politicians all round the
Circumlocution Office. It is true that every new premier and every
new government, coming in because they had upheld a certain thing as
necessary to be done, were no sooner come in than they applied their
utmost faculties to discovering How not to do it. It is true that from
the moment when a general election was over, every returned man who had
been raving on hustings because it hadn't been done, and who had been
asking the friends of the honourable gentleman in the opposite interest
on pain of impeachment to tell him why it hadn't been done, and who had
been asserting that it must be done, and who had been pledging himself
that it should be done, began to devise, How it was not to be done. It
is true that the debates of both Houses of Parliament the whole session
through, uniformly tended to the protracted deliberation, How not to
do it.
It is true that the royal speech at the opening of such session
virtually said, My lords and gentlemen, you have a considerable
stroke of work to do, and you will please to retire to your respective
chambers, and discuss, How not to do it. It is true that the royal
speech, at the close of such session, virtually said, My lords and
gentlemen, you have through several laborious months been considering
with great loyalty and patriotism, How not to do it, and you have found
out; and with the blessing of Providence upon the harvest (natural, not
political), I now dismiss you. All this is true, but the Circumlocution
Office went beyond it.