The Church rate, an inconsiderable sum, but the occasion of much agitation ...

The Church rate, an inconsiderable sum, but the occasion of much agitation and some painless martyrdom, was persistently evaded, made voluntary in 1853, and abolished in 1868. The Civil Servants who ran this light machinery were of two sorts: clerks, infallible in accounts, writing a fair hand, the repository of precedent; gentlemen, or the proteges of gentlemen, of the political class, whose position when young might be anything from a copying clerk to a private secretary, and who when old were rather assistants and advisers to an executive chief than executants themselves.

There was much routine, so much that by the time the juniors were seniors they were usually unfit for anything else, and the higher posts had to be filled from outsider But almost everything that rose above routine was, except at the Treasury, policy, requiring the personal attention of the Minister the intermediate sphere of administration did not exist, because there were hardly any laws to administer. Readers of Disraeli's novels must sometimes have been puzzled by the importance of the Under-Secretaries as a class.

When the Cabinet was open only to birth, to exceptional genius or exceptional influence, men of excellent gifts had to be content, and were content, with Under-Secretaryships, and the unbroken Tory regime, had given some of them a very long innings.