The Government of England (Vol. I)Lowell, A. Lawrence (Abbott Lawrence)
History
The Government of England (Vol. I)
Lowell, A. Lawrence (Abbott Lawrence)
Great Britain -- Politics and government
The third great source of public departments has been the creation in
comparatively recent times of a number of administrative boards or
commissions, whose duties (except in the case of the Board of Works) are
not primarily executive; that is, they are not concerned mainly with
direct administration, but rather with the supervision and control of
local authorities and of bodies exercising functions of a public or a
quasi-public nature. There are now five boards of this kind, the Board
of Trade, the Local Government Board, the Board of Works, the Board of
Agriculture, and the Board of Education. Some of them, the first and
last named, for example, have developed from committees of the Privy
Council; while others have grown out of administrative commissions which
were not originally regarded as political, and had no representatives of
their own in Parliament. Except in the case of the Board of Trade,[83:1]
both their organisation and their functions now rest upon
statutes,[83:2] and in general character they are all very much alike.
Each of them consists of a president,[83:3] of the five secretaries of
state, and of other high dignitaries, such as the Lord President of the
Privy Council, the First Lord of the Treasury, or the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and sometimes, in the case of the older boards, even of the
Archbishop of Canterbury and the Speaker of the House of Commons. But
the board never meets; the president alone constitutes a quorum, and he
conducts the business of the department, with the assistance, in the
case of the Board of Trade, of the Local Government Board and the Board
of Education, of a secretary who is not himself a member of the board,
but is, like the president, capable of sitting in the House of Commons,
and occupies, in short, the position of a parliamentary under-secretary.
In practice, therefore, these boards are legal phantoms that provide
imaginary colleagues for a single responsible minister; and, indeed, the
only department in the English government conducted by a board that
really meets for the transaction of business is the Admiralty.[84:1]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account