The Civil Servants are accustomed to hold a dinner every year; their Chairman in 1899 (on May 9th) was Lord Rosebery. This Address was his speech in proposing the toast of the evening, "The Civil Service." It will be noticed that in his opening sentences he refers to the preceding Address on "The Duty of Public Service." OUR CIVIL SERVANTS I HAVE taken on myself, in the despotic character of chairman, to put this toast (The Civil Service) before all the other services of the Queen. Sir Evelyn Wood rightly cheers, because this, to use the language of the last year of the nineteenth century, is the "show" of the Civil Service. The usual course of your chairman is to enter upon a long but a justified panegyric of all that the Civil Service does for the country. I do not propose to take that course, and I am glad to see that with the modesty inherent in the Civil Service that announcement is cheered. I do not do so for two reasons. In the first place, last autumn I had an opportunity of saying in Edinburgh what I thought of the Civil Service when there were no Civil servants there to blush. Now I should not care to see the whole audience turn crimson at hearing what I thought of them. Another reason which debars me from praising you too much is that between me and the Civil Service there is a great gulf fixed. There is, of course, the obvious gulf which you think I meant office, and that I am not. that you are in That is not what I mean, and I find it extremely necessary in these days to explain very clearly and explicitly what I do mean. The gulf that I speak of is this: that in our public offices there are two classes of officials. One is the political head, who, in the language of Lord Beaconsfield, may be described as a transient and embarrassed phantom who flits across the scene; and the other is a permanent official, who remains, and will remain while many Ministers cross his path. Sedet aeternumque sedebit. Well, as I belong to the first class, it is no use my pretending to praise the second too much. I think it better to keep up the description I have laid down, and speak as a more or less disinterested observer. But there is another difference between us. You know, I suppose, that ever since the time of Daniel, and I believe even as far back as the time of Pharaoh-I think my language recalls to you the worst moments of the examination that got you into the service-ever since the time of Daniel, and even back to the time of Pharaoh, there has been a broad distinction between those who make speeches and who dream dreams, and those who interpret them. I belong to the ingenuous class that makes speeches; you belong to the ingenious class that interprets them. And though I do not habitually dream dreams, I will venture to tell you a dream of mine, which you may interpret as you will. When I say that I make speeches, you may be well aware that I tell the truth; but when I say that you interpret them, you may think I am trading on your credulity. As a matter of fact I have hallucinations on the Civil Service, and one of them is this-that every morning the first object of a conscientious civil servant s to see the utterances of his political chief, to interpret them as best he can, and to trans |