Chapter 10 - Page 2

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.

Because the Circumlocution Office went on mechanically, every day,
keeping this wonderful, all-sufficient wheel of statesmanship, How
not to do it, in motion. Because the Circumlocution Office was
down upon any ill-advised public servant who was going to do it, or
who appeared to be by any surprising accident in remote danger of
doing it, with a minute, and a memorandum, and a letter of
instructions that extinguished him. It was this spirit of national
efficiency in the Circumlocution Office that had gradually led to
its having something to do with everything. Mechanicians, natural
philosophers, soldiers, sailors, petitioners, memorialists, people
with grievances, people who wanted to prevent grievances, people
who wanted to redress grievances, jobbing people, jobbed people,
people who couldn't get rewarded for merit, and people who couldn't
get punished for demerit, were all indiscriminately tucked up under
the foolscap paper of the Circumlocution Office.

Numbers of people were lost in the Circumlocution Office.
Unfortunates with wrongs, or with projects for the general welfare
(and they had better have had wrongs at first, than have taken that
bitter English recipe for certainly getting them), who in slow
lapse of time and agony had passed safely through other public
departments; who, according to rule, had been bullied in this,
over-reached by that, and evaded by the other; got referred at last
to the Circumlocution Office, and never reappeared in the light of
day. Boards sat upon them, secretaries minuted upon them,
commissioners gabbled about them, clerks registered, entered,
checked, and ticked them off, and they melted away. In short, all
the business of the country went through the Circumlocution Office,
except the business that never came out of it; and its name was
Legion.

Sometimes, angry spirits attacked the Circumlocution Office.
Sometimes, parliamentary questions were asked about it, and even
parliamentary motions made or threatened about it by demagogues so
low and ignorant as to hold that the real recipe of government was,
How to do it. Then would the noble lord, or right honourable
gentleman, in whose department it was to defend the