A.—s

612

Mr. DEAKIN : He makes the appointments. Ministers cannot differ from the recommendation of the Public Service Commissioner without laying the whole case before Parliament, and stating the grounds on which they propose to reject it. If it is rejected the Commissioner makes another nomination. Sir WILFRID LAURIER : He has the appointment, and you cannot dissent, except for cause ? Mr. DEAKIN : Except for cause laid before Parliament and approved. That interposes another set of considerations. There being no direct power of control in Ministers, that is to say, there being no control by appointment or dismissal in the hands of Ministers, the service having a' certain independence of its own, it becomes all the more necessary for us to exercise our criticism. Rewards and punishment are dispensed by the Commissioner, whose task it is to maintain efficiency. Our departments, free from patronage, might become merefy mechanical in methods without criticism. Perhaps in that way we pay something for our freedom from the burden of patronage and the many annoying associations connected with it So that when we criticise a public service, it need not be, and certainly has not been in any criticisms I have uttered here, a reflection upon the capacity of those engaged. It certainly is no reflection upon their integrity. Every country has its public service, and so far as 1 am acquainted with it, no country has a public service of a higher standard than Great Britain and its Dominions. The criticism of a public department does not necessarily mean a challenge either of the ability and certainly never of the honesty of its members. 'There are public departments in every other country besides our own. An interesting but rather imaginative gentleman who waited upon me some little time ago, and afterwards was good enough to credit me in the public Press with some of his own observations, pointed out that in his own country the bureaucracy was dominant, extremely capable, not, in his opinion, extremely efficient, but more powerful than ministries and parliaments. He pointed to his own country and certain other Continental countries as indicating what he called the rule of the bureaucracy. I told him then frankly that we saw something of that spirit even in our own country. We saw something of it in this country. But neither showed the state of things described by him. Our public departments were in much closer touch with our legislature, and not, as he suggested, sometimes almost in revolt against it. I mention the incident because it is partly the reason why I have made these preliminary remarks before coming to the question of the possible means we suggest for the consideration of the Secretary of State in regard to the Colonial Office. We make similar suggestions in our own country for every department. Possibly if we were associated with every public department in this country we should make it in all here. It is only because it is the Colonial Office with which we are directly connected and in respect to which we have a title to be heard, because its operations directly affect us that my observations are confined to it. I hope I have cleared away any possible misapprehension in this regard. The Colonial Office has, apart from the very important relations of which it is the channel, not only the most extensive, but the most difficult task, that a department can be called upon to perform. The very ablest men of Great Britain, if they were public servants in this department, collected into this building, shut up in it, and left dependent upon what they read or hear to understand the conditions of the hundred and one forms of government and varieties of conditions under which the Crown Colonies and self-governing Colonies grow up, would be quite unable

Fifteenth Day. 14 May 1907.

Interchange of Permanent Staff.