Brains and property managed the state. A candidate for office must have
marked ability, education, and high character, or he stood no sort of
chance of election. If a hod-carrier possessed these, he could succeed;
but the mere fact that he was a hod-carrier could not elect him, as in
previous times.
It was now a very great honour to be in the parliament or in office;
under the old system such distinction had only brought suspicion upon a
man and made him a helpless mark for newspaper contempt and scurrility.
Officials did not need to steal now, their salaries being vast in
comparison with the pittances paid in the days when parliaments were
created by hod-carriers, who viewed official salaries from a hod-carrying
point of view and compelled that view to be respected by their obsequious
servants. Justice was wisely and rigidly administered; for a judge,
after once reaching his place through the specified line of promotions,
was a permanency during good behaviour. He was not obliged to modify his
judgments according to the effect they might have upon the temper of a
reigning political party.
The country was mainly governed by a ministry which went out with the
administration that created it. This was also the case with the chiefs
of the great departments.
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