the most part the entire dependence of the consequences of the whole
problem upon the reaction between the office on the one hand and the
weak, uncertain, various human beings who take office on the other,
doesn't seem even to be suspected by the energetic, virtuous and more or
less amiable people whose activities in politics and upon the backstairs
of politics bring about these developments. They assume that the sort of
official they need, a combination of god-like virtue and intelligence
with unfailing mechanical obedience, can be made out of just any young
nephew. And I know of no means of persuading people that this is a
rather unjustifiable assumption, and of creating an intelligent
controlling criticism of officials and of assisting conscientious
officials to an effective self-examination, and generally of keeping the
atmosphere of official life sweet and healthy, except the novel. Yet so
far the novel has scarcely begun its attack upon this particular field
of human life, and all the attractive varied play of motive it contains.

Of course we have one supreme and devastating study of the illiterate
minor official in Bumble. That one figure lit up and still lights the
whole problem of Poor Law administration for the English reading
community. It was a translation of well-meant regulations and
pseudo-scientific conceptions of social order into blundering, arrogant,
ill-bred flesh and blood. It was worth a hundred Royal Commissions. You
may make your regulations as you please, said Dickens in effect; this is
one sample of the stuff that will carry them out. But Bumble stands
almost alone. Instead of realising that he is only one aspect of
officialdom, we are all too apt to make him the type of all officials,
and not an urban district council can get into a dispute about its
electric light without being denounced as a Bumbledom by some whirling
enemy or other. The burthen upon Bumble's shoulders is too heavy to be
borne, and we want the contemporary novel to give us a score of other