Journal of Historical Sociology Vol. 7 No. 3 September 1994 ISSN 0952- 1909

Bureaucracy as a Vocation: Governmentality and administration in

nineteenth-century Britain

THOMAS OSBORNE

Abstract This paper focuses upon ethical conduct and liberal mentallties ofgovernment in the context of the historical sociology of administrative expertise in nineteenth century Britain. After a brief consideration of theories of moral regulation, the paper pursues, by way of a discussion of the government of India and of the famous Northcote-Trevelyan Report on the Civil Service, the issue of the establishment of an appropriate bureaucratic persona in the nineteenth century.

Morals and Ethics of Rule

This article takes as its empirical focus the culture of nineteenth century governmental administration; its subject-matter, partly by way of a discussion of the government of India, is the well-trodden field of the formation of the British civil service. I t is a consideration of the relation between ethics and bureaucracy; but it is not an exercise in history or historiography. Its purpose is rather to raise again, if only to displace towards its own objectives, the sociological question of the relation of morality, ideology and, above all, ethics to the establishment of ruling authority.

Let us begin with the question of moral regulation. Various historical and sociological analyses have centred around key agencies of moral transmission, be they the classroom, social class, or the state. Here interest has tended to centre on institutions rather than practices, the focus being upon the varied means by which members of a given population are made the objects or subjects of moral regulation. The work of Philip Comgan and his colleagues represents a justly celebrated example of this tradition, which is basically an extension and refinement of the problem of legitimation. Corrigan, for example, treats the state as a ‘theatre of educative tendencies’ acting to encourage certain moral forms to the detriment of others: What the state regulates are thus moral features of the social environment, above all the encouraged/discouraged forms of expression, depressing, repressing and suppressing alternative forms which display contrasting moralities’ (Corrigan 1981: 327; cf. Comgan 1990: 264).

But there is also a parallel - perhaps more Weberian - concern to this question of moral regulation, and this relates to the question of the self-legitimation of rule, that is, with the ways in which rulers justify their own rule for themselves. This concern actually has two

0 Basil BIaclwell Lid 1994. Published by Blackwell Publishers. 108 Cowley Road. Oxford OX4 lJF, UK and 238 Maln Street. Cambridge. MA 02142, USA.

290 Thomas osbome

sides to it. When this question is raised it has most often been in the context of analyses of the moral justification or legitimation of authority. Again, the work of Corrigan and his colleagues can be instanced as confronting this question in an exemplary way. Indeed, for Comgan and Sayer, the ‘machinery of government‘ in nineteenth- century Britain itselfcame to function as a kind of concrete embodiment of moral forms for those who ruled as much as for those who were subject to rule (Comgan and Sayer 1985: 10: cf. Corrigan 1990). One might also instance in this context the work of Michael Mann, and those broadly associated with his approach (Mann 1986: cf. Abercrombie, Hill and Turner 1980; also Mann 1973). According to this emphasis, one of the main functions of ideology is not so much to subdue the masses as to boost the confidence - the ‘internal morale’, as Mann puts it - of elites themselves (Mann 1986: 24). Here indeed those who rule are themselves subject to a moral force: ideology as a condition of rule, a cohesive force tying together an otherwise culturally disparate group.

However, the second side to this question of the self-legitimation of rule is less often considered. This is the question, not so much of the moral justification of rule or of its legitimation through ideology, but of the establishment - through a variety of practices - of the ethical competence to rule. It is not just that those who rule need moral justification for rule, but that in order to secure rule there has to be some codification of the ethical type that bears particular competence to rule. Let us refer to this as the ethical - as opposed to the moral - constitution of authority (cf. Foucault, in Rabinow 1984: 352). This approach will concern itself with the diverse means and mentalities by which sources of authority construct themselves as, so to speak, authoritative subjects with the authorization to subject others to authority. To address this field is not to ask the question ’what does the ruling class do when it rules’?’, nor ’who rules?’, nor even ‘how is rule accomplished’?’ but. rather, ’what do those who rule have to do to themselves in order to be able to rule’?’ This question of practices of rule, then, is not just a matter of moral

legitimation or ideological justification; rather it concerns the ways in which moral - or better, ethical - techniques and practices are actually mobilized to fashion forms of ruling subjectivity. SpeciAc practices function as aids to the constitution of authority in that they guarantee the ethical competence of the ruling persona and seek to fabricate a ruling habitus. so to speak, on the part of those who rule. Nor is this question of ethical competence reducible to an analytic of class or gender, that is. one which derives ethical values from a source in the pre-given ‘interests’ of those who rule. Not, of course, that these issues are unimportant in themselves. But if much historical sociology tends to be concerned -quite justifiably -with those forms of moral regulation

Bureaucracy as a Vocation 29 1

that can be shown to serve particular pre-constituted ‘interests’. the analysis of the problematisati on of ethical competencies of rule might do better to concentrate upon the links between such ethical competencies and broader mentalities of government. This will entail following a ldnd of ‘principle of charity’ with regard to systems and practices of rule. Here, ethical practices will not be secondary to interests but will be perhaps analagous to what Austin called ‘performative utterances’, that is, utterances that achieve their effects, given the appropriate institutional conditions, as a result of their very enunciation (Rose and Miller 1992: 177; cf. Bourdieu 1991). Such ethical practices do not merely serve interests by way of legitimation or justification; they are in part productive of interests. Hence, moral forms will not be ‘transparent‘ entities, but will partly constitute or shape both the reality they confront and the moral identity of those who are subject to them. This ‘performative’ aspect of practices of rule will tend to be missed by a realist sociology that sets out in advance a repertoire of social interests for subjects to follow (cf. Hindess 1986).

Government, Administration, Liberalism Let us, then, pay attention to the ways in which the Aeld of government constructs authorities as particular ethical types (cf. Gordon 1991: 12). What do we mean by government here? By rationalities or mentalities of government we mean those broad networks or systems of thought and technique which seek to structure the Aeld of action or others; both so as to preserve and utilize the ‘freedom’ of agents, whilst also seeking to cultivate those agents in some or other way (Foucault 1982; cf. Foucault 1979; Rose and Miller 1992; Donald 1988: 12- 16). The Aeld of government always presupposes a certain reciprocity between the problematization of a domain to be governed and the ethical characteristics of those who are to be subjected to government (cf. Pasquino 1986: 104). This ‘ethical‘ component of government also embraces a certain attention to the ethical characteristics of those who govern, those who are constructed as the subjects of government; government is not just a question of shapingthe conduct of others, but, also - as regards those who are the agents of rule - of bringing about an ethical stylization of one’s own conduct. To rule, to govern in a particular way, presupposes a certain ethos of government, what might be called the ethical subjectivity of power (Rajchman 1991: 116); an ethos that functions not so much as an exterior agency of moral transmission but which grasps subjects, so to speak, ‘fromwithin’, as subjectswith the moral ‘authority’ to rule (cf. Burchell 199 1 : 1 19- 120).

To take administrative rule as our focus might seem perverse in this context. For is not administrative rule, with all its negative connotations

292 Thomas osbome

of ‘bureaucracy’, the archetype of a non-ethical form of power? Does not the very invocation of administrative or bureaucratic rule automatically imply a version of authority that is, by definition, devoid of an ethical language of persons? In fact, is not bureaucracy that form of rule which is exercised precisely without ‘regard for persons’? Yet, in fact, as I a n Hunter has argued, it is to Max Weber himself that we might draw inspiration for an insistence precisely on the ethical character of bureaucracy. Weber treated the bureau as a distinctive ethical Lebensordnung; a sphere characterized - whatever its corrosive consequences for the ethics embodied in the field of politics - by a specific ethical life-orientation that was itself an historical achievement - the ‘ethos of office’ (Weber 1978: 1404; Hunter 1993: 11; cf. Gordon 1987: 294). This historical achievement - if we can call it that - has, no doubt,

many possible genealogies. Weber’s own account of ascetic Protestantism could, of course, be a key component in any of these. But one might also narrow the canvas, and look at the fabrication of the ethos of administration in relation to particular mutations in governmental reason. This emphasis would consist in showing how particular rationalities of government sought to call upon, enroll or mobilize particular ethical stylizations on the part of administrative authorities. I t would not be a study of ‘techniques of the self in Foucault‘s sense. I t would not entail, for example, a study of how particular administrators or bureaucrats actually embodied or cultivated particular ethical forms. but would focus on how mentalities and techniques of government have sought to structure the possible action of others, and to programme particular ethical types into the field of power. However, we can draw from Foucault some insights into the linkages between ethics and the ‘political game’, as well as a certain perspective on what constitutes a liberal problematic of government.

Foucault takes up the theme - albeit not in itself a novel one for politicalphilosophy-thattheremay typicallybe an interconnectedness between practices of the government of others and ethical practices of the self (cf. Bruchell 1993). For example, in his discussion of the ‘political game’ in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds, he writes of an historical situation in which the structures of authority had become distanced and diffuse, resulting in an emphasis upon the cultivation of self as a component in the art of governing (Foucault 1990: 89). Such an ethical codification within the arts of government may be expected to form a key component within arts of government that deem themselves to be of a ‘liberal‘ nature (Foucault 1989: 109- 120). In Foucault% account, the liberal domain is not that of liberal political philosophy as such. Liberalism entails neither a substantive social form nor even a coherent political ideology (for example, an ideology

Bureaucracy as a Vocation 293

stressing the autonomy of principles derived from the market). Rather, liberalism entails generically a kind of permanent critique of governmental reason itself; it is, as Foucault argues, less a political ideology than a form of ‘critical reflection on government’ (Foucault 1990: 1 16). Liberal mentalities of government in Foucault’s account are characterized, above all, by the suspicion that in the very act of governing one runs the risk of governing overmuch: that is, that the very act of government can interfere with the felicitous execution of government itself. Of some special import here is the identiflcation of a realm of freedom that is in fact impervious to government (civil society, the market and so forth); this entailing the injunction that those who govern must take care that acts of government preserve the autonomy of such realms. A further aspect of Foucault‘s account of the specifcity of liberal mentalities is the heuristic contrast he invokes with earlier techniques of ‘police’: although it is not a question of the historical supercession of one ‘mode of government’ by another. Whereas police emphasized sovereignty over a territory. liberalism emphasized the regulation of a population: whereas police emphasized an authority that could be arbitrary over a totality of subjects, liberalism emphasized the substitution of continuous apparatuses of security over coups d’mtbrit& (Gordon 199 1 : 19-2 1).

Administrative Ethics: the Indian Laboratory No doubt the establishment in the nineteenth century of public administrative service as a particular ‘vocation’ - the fabrication of the civil servant as a permanent administrative official, separated from the vagaries of politics (Parris 1969: 39) - could be said to have owed something to this liberal problematic of security. To fidfll such a role, the administrator had to be constructed on a particular model. Colin Gordon, emphasizing the disciplinary element of this process, comments that:

if liberalism halts the cameralfst tendency towards the etatlzat[on of discipline, liberal government also pursues.. . a policy which Foucault mlls the ‘disdpllnarizatlon of the state’, that is to say, a focussing of the state‘s immediate interest In disdpllnary technique largely on the organization of its own statfs and apparatuses (Gordon 1991: 27).

The key monument to this question of the identity of the bureaucrat in Britain in the nineteenth century was the Northcote-Trevelyan Report (Parliamentary Papers [P.P.] 1854). Although the detailed recommendations of the report - the abolition of patronage and the establishment of open, competitive examination for civil service entry -were not properly addressed until Gladstone’s reforms of the 1870s (and even then not properly realized), historians have been justified in seeing Northcote-Trevelyan as a key point in the establishment of

0 Basil Blackwell ud 1994.

294 Thomas Osbome

modem mentalities of administrative rule (Hart 1972; Kitson Clark 1959: 20-3; Gowan 1987, 5-6; MacDonagh 1958: 64-5). What is signitlcant about the report in these terms is the fact that it sought to fabricate administration as an autonomous ethos or art, separatedboth from the pull of political patronage and from narrow, specialized expertise. Moreover, the administrator was not simply to be a faceless offlcial- the ‘bureaucrat’ of modem parlance -but was to enjoy a certain discretionary autonomy (Kitson-Clark 1959: 22-3). Northcote-Trevelyan stressed that permanent ofRcials needed to possess the ethical characteristics required in those who were to be relatively autonomous:

possessing sufadent independence, character and ability to be able to advise, assist and to some actem. influence, the who are from time to time set over them (P.P. 1854: 3).

The key to this was an emphasis on general rather than functional or specialized management. The civil service examination would not be restricted to particular types of candidate, nor would it relate to any particular position or department, but would be a general qualification for entry into the service; once one had passed the exam one was qualitled to become a public servant.

Historians have argued over the motives behind the report. One clear precursor, however, was the reform of the Indian civil service just before Northcote-Trevelyan itself. Indeed, we can conduct a kind of ‘micro-archaeology’ of some of the principles behind the nineteenth century administrative reforms - and throw some light upon the ethical assumptions behind the latter - with reference to the government of India in the Arst half of the nineteenth century. It is not novel to claim that India represented a kind of laboratory of liberal (and other) aspirations (Ryan 1972: 39 Stokes 1959). If the question of India was to take on such an importance for the more general question of styles of administrative rule in the Nineteenth Century (indeed, the term ‘civil servant‘ originated in the context of Indian government), the reason for this lies in the fact that that country posed for its British rulers, in an exemplary way, what might be described as the central problem of liberal government; that is, putting matters starkly - the question of how one is to govern at a distance (Rose and Miller 1992: 180).

Goveming India inevitably entailed a certain handling of the cultural distance between those who governed and those who were governed: ‘a Government of foreigners over people most difficult to be understood, and still more d.if3cult to be improved (P.P. 1857-8: 35). Indiathrewinto relief the question of government as the government of others; here the relation between rulers and ruled was posed precisely in so far as - at least prior to the interventions of the Utilitarians, notably James Mill - India was held not to be totally ‘other’, a blank space reduced to passive non-agency, but the remnants of a past civilization that had to be nurtured back to maturity. If India attained the status of a surface of

0 Basil Blackwell ud 1994

Bureaucracy as a Vocation 295

emergence for later civil-service reform in Britain, it was because it became a kind of experimental domain for practical innovations in styles of government; as Roach argues, India was throughout the century, ‘a laboratory where the English tried out ideas which were too revolutionary to be initiated at home’ Roach 1971: 23). India also raised, clearly enough, the question of geographical distance within the class of those who govern. The whole question of India inherently pinpointed the fact that to govern was necessarily also to delegate (Cohn 1987: 5 12); a most important consideration, again, especially for liberal forms of government. India raised the question of the scope for autonomy that one is to give to those who govern. How is one to govern those who are distant? How much should the centre delegate to those who govern some distance away, and how to monitor that delegation?

These questions of government were highlighted, of course, when at the end of the Eighteenth Century it was widely agreed by those that took the trouble to consider the question, that India was governed, in so far as it was governed at all, with a particular degree of incompetence (cf. Bearce 196 1 : 40; for a very different, if naturally biased, view of Company rule halfa century later; P.P. 1852-3). India was a byword for corruption and the abuse of privilege through patronage. Horace Walpole, commenthg on the proflt-making activities of East India Company servants from rice speculations during the 1769-70 famine, provides a vivid instance of prevalent attitudes:

We have outdone the Spaniards in Peru. They were at least butchers on a religious principle, however diabolical their zeal. We have murdered, deposed, plundered, usurped - nay what think you of the famine in Bengal in which three millions perished being caused by a monopoly of the servants of the East India Company? (quoted in Kopf 1969: 13-14; Cf. Cohn 1987 506).

An analysis by way of the ‘interests’ of those who governed would certainly not be out of place here. Marx, for example, spoke of a ‘double government‘ during the Nineteenth Century in India; the Board of Control and the East India Company, although the secret mover of India &airs was a third party, the shareholders - ‘elderly ladies and valetudinarian gentlemen’ - possessing Indian stock (Marx 1853b). This kind of analysis appeals to the motivated interests of those concerned. The establishment of the Board of Control in 1784 to oversee, moderate and regulate the activities of the East India Company was viewed by Marx in terms - hardly to be superceded today - not of an attempt by the British authorities to regulate the coups d’authorite of company rule, but as a bid for a stake in the economic rape of India. This entailed a policy of hiding behind this smokescreen of the East India Company’s commercial control. Marx quotes Mill: ‘it was necessary that the principal part of the power should appear to remain in the hand of the Directors. For Ministerial

Q Basil Blackwell Ltd 1994.

296 Thomas osbome

advantage, it was necessary that it should in reality be taken away' (Marx 1853a: 150). The real interest in the government of India lay in terms of those concerned with lining the pockets of the British government. Marx concluded in 1853 that 'the British government has been fighting under the Company's name for two centuries, until at last the natural limits of India were reached (ibid: 152).

Yet, if the analytic cynicism of a sociology of interests has an explanatory place here, this should not be allowed to obscure the status of the Indian question as a laboratory for thinking through questions of government. From this perspective, which necessarily entails a certain break from the paradigm of viewing ruling ideologies as merely obfuscatory of interests, the rule of the East India company posed the problem of the proper limits of government. This problem became particularly pertinent in relation to the role of the Company itself and the scope of its proper activities in India. For what precisely was the scope of the Company's rule to be? Its primary remit was in theory that of commerce, and yet it found itself after the Seven Years War turned effectively into a military and temtorial power (Coen 197 1 : 9). What, therefore, were to be the nature, the proper styhation and the extent of its rule? Authorities on these matters (and others) in the Arst half of the nineteenth century answered this question in various ways. Let us briefly. then, consider three predominant ways of considering this question of how to go about the government of India, comparing them as systems of moral authority: Orientalism, Anglicisation, and Utilitarianism (cf. Cohn 1987: 521-46).

At the turn of the Eighteenth Century there seems to have been a resistance to the idea of an overt moral transformation of the Indian populace. The Company was not to be a force of cultural change in India. That is to say, regulation was not to take the form of a moral proselytization of the general populace in India: whether secular or religious - indeed missionary activities were not permitted during this period. Rather. it was those who governed that were, so to speak, themselves to be morally regulated so as to attain the requisite social pacification of India on the basis of a kind of cultural hegemony. A key Ague here was the reforming Governor-general Richard Wellesley (Embree, 1962: 187-95). Anxious about the possibility of French incursion into India, Wellesley argued that the role of officials would have to relate to more than just the management of commerce, but should entail a form of 'statesmanship'. Wellesley argued that:

To dispense justice to millions of people of various languages, manners, usages and religions: to administer avast and complicated system of revenue throughout districts equal in extent to some of the most considerable kingdoms in Europe: to maintain civil order in one of the most populous and litigious regions of the world: these are now the duties of the larger proportion of the civil servants of the company (quoted in Embree, 1967 187: and Cohn 1987: 521).

0 B a d Blackwell Lid 1994

Bureaucracy as a Vacation 297

His plan for a training college for Company officials, an ‘Oxford of the East’, at Fort William, reflected the aspiration to found a cultural hegemony in India, a morally sound ruling order, based on the principles of Orientalism.

Much has been written about this phenomenon, in particular its racist implications (Bernal 1987: chapter 5; cf. the more subtle analyses in Said 1985: Inden 1990). More rarely have the implications of Orientalism as a mentality of government been spelled out. This matter might fruitfully be approached through the question of language, a factor central to the Orientalist ideal - the great symbol of the moment of Orientalism being the work of William Jones in the ‘discovery’ of a common Indo-European linguistic heritage (Schwab 1984: 35-6; Kopf 1969: 31-42: Said 1985: 77-9). Hence, at the heart of Orientalism was the positing of a kind of archaic yet fundamental link between Hindu civilization and that of Europe (Kopf 1969: 38). Here, one might say, we have an implicit ‘fantasy’ of government combined with a speciflc ethic of rule. A fantasy of government; given this common Indo-European heritage, government can not simply be a question of proselytization - a question of transforming that which is straightforwardly ‘other’. Matters are more complicated precisely because the agencies of rule are not dealfng straightforwardly with ‘bfeiiors’ or ‘barbarians’ but with the heirs to a great civilization that is both heterogeneous yet phylogenetically continuous with the culture of the ruling powers.

In so far as the ‘intellectualist‘ ideal of Orientalism impacted upon the ends of government this lay in the aspiration to bring to the attention of the Indians their previous, now disintegrated, maturity; amounting, in effect, to a system of moral regulation that could seek specifically to involve Hindu principles rather than resort to crude measures of Anglicization (Kopf 1969: 97-9). As an ethic of rule, Orientalism dictated, above all, that officials should cultivate a formidable linguistic proficiency, especially in the languages of India. The course at Fort William emphasized the ‘Oriental‘ corpus as a priority (Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit and six Indian vernaculars being on the curriculum), plus modem European languages, and Greek and Latin. But the import of languages here was not just a question of enabling communication between rulers and ruled: languages were not viewed as being merely facilitative of the instrumental ends of government. Rather, for Orientalism languages are an ethical- or more specifically, one might say, a ‘characterological‘ - affair. For the Orientalists, languages were the concrete embodiments of character- traits; to work upon language was to shape oneself ethically in terms of those traits embodied in the language. At Fort William, linguistic research was viewed as the optimum means for investigating those speciflc characteristics that functioned as the inherent character

0 Basil BlaclweU Lid 1994.

298 Thomas Osbome

traits of cultures and people. Kopf writes of Charles T. Metcalfe, for example (a future Governor-general of India) that:

He believed that the language of the British people was marked by its ‘openness and boldness of expression’. To him the French language was filled with terms of‘politeness and suavity.. . [that] bespeak of disposition and eloquence of manners’. India, Metcalfe thought, contained karious races and faiths’ and ’we have made only a beginning In understanding their languages’ (ibid: 101).

Hence, good government would require a certain emphatic understanding on the part of those who governed in relation to those who were governed: the very possibility of which would be guided by language-acquisition, Behind the ideal of Orientalism as an ethic of administrative government is the behalf that one can only govern on the basis of an almost intuitive linguistic sympathy with those who are the objects of government.

Here, one might say, it is the rulers who are to be morally cultivated. Orientalism entails a particular stylization of rule - related, above all, to language leaming - that makes the practice of rule possible. If there is to be moral hadcatbrz, this would pertain to a kind of “trickle- down’ effect whereby the dissemination of good practices of government leads to a raising of the moral level of the inhabitants. As an ideal of government. then, Orientalism could perhaps be described in terms of its potential alignment with a Zibed form of moral regulation in so far as its logic resists any impulse to inculcate moral forms in a direct manner: the ideal of government here is in principle a minimal one whereby the autonomy of the realm to be governed is preserved on the basis of the reflexive vigilance of those who govern.

In fact, this lack of a directly proselytizing moral impulse was precisely what worried those who governed from Britain. ultimately forming the context of what became known as the Orientalist- Anglican controversy. Fearing that the Orientalist ethic of administration could lead to an over-accommodation on the part of Company ofRcials to Hindu culture, the Court of Directors sought to reverse Wellesley’s foundation of the college at Fort William. The problem here was precisely that of the distance between those who govern: the fear that the agents of the ruling powers might come to detach themselves from their alignment with those who governed - in short that the Company’s government at a distance could be replaced by outright colonization (Embree 1962: 190). To combat the danger of British administrators becoming agents in the ‘perpetuation of Hinduism’ (Kopf 1969: 134: cf. 129). Charles Grant advocated, on the one hand, educating officials outside India itself, and. on the other, a more direct form of moral intervention on the part of the governing powers in India. There was to be a division of labour between pacification and administration: India would be pacified

Bureaucracy as a Vocation 299

through CMstian values: hence a key aspect of Grant’s opposition to Wellesley’s policies was an alternative emphasis on freedom of entry and movement for missionaries in India. But India would be governed, not through the lights of patronage, but by technical expertise. Government, in effect, was to be split - between religious proselytization and the technocracy of administration. The training of the latter was to be far from the corrupting site of administration itself but at Grant‘s own foundation, Haileybury College in Britain, where future officials were to receive their training prior to their immersion in Indian culture (Cohn 1987: 526-46; Woodruff 1953: 279-286; Monier Williams 1894: 1-25; Stokes 1959: 31).

The emphasis at Haileybury was to be upon the means of strengthening the reasoning faculties of officials to fit them for the technical tasks of government (the reality, as usual, was somewhat different; Monier-Williams 1894). To be sure, a condition of such expertise was the sure foundation of religion; ‘Overarching the whole curriculum ... was to be a concern for religion and morality, for without a full attachment to the principles and tenets of the Christian faith . . . the young civil servants would not be able to fuW their trust either to Great Britain or to the people of India’ (Embree 1962: 135- 6). And this religious dimension had an importance in terms of the moral governance of the inhabitants. Monier-Williams reports a Haileybuly professor telling his students:

Remember ... that when you reach India you will probably be sent to some remote province where you will be like a light set on a hill. Millions will watch your conduct and take their ideas of Christianity from your actions and words (Monier-Willlams 1894: 38).

Such devotion to a higher moral substance was to be only the complement, however, of a more ‘technical‘ form of administrative expertise, founded on the virtues of reason. All training was to be directed towards this end. Alongside the emphasis upon Oriental languages that had characaterized the college at Fort William, attention was paid to command of the classics, as the necessary basis for ‘a superstructure of that liberal knowledge which is required of men invested with public trust‘ (Embree 1962: 196); also to English literature and composition as aids to the clear and forcible expression of ideas; to mathematics for its power of ‘strengthening and improving the reasoning faculty’ (Report of Committee of Haileybuly College: quoted in Embree 1962:197); and to natural and experimental philosophy. Oriental languages were also prominent - only by now a far more instrumental motivation seems to have been behind this than had been the case within Orientalism per se, namely the practical need to carry on diplomacy in native courts without reliance upon interpreters (Embree 1962: 197). In short, as an ideal of rule, the

300 Thomas osbome

purpose was to establish a common culture of officialdom, separated from those who were governed, a homogeneous class of experts with a common ruling identity.

The neutral-administrative - as opposed to the moral-religious - side of this educational confection was pushed to its extreme over India by the Utilitarian tendency. It is striking that the most literally 'liberal' incursion into this area should represent a combination of secular proselytization, and ruthless dismissal of any merits for Indian civilization. However, there was a certain continuity between the Anglicist and the Utilitarian stances on India. These were partly related to the individuals Concerned (Malthus had taught at Haileybury, as had James Mill whilst J.S. Mill was, like his father, to be admitted to the executive government of the East India Company) but also in that both were ultimately concerned with founding a system of regulation in India that would lead eventually to the assimilation of Hindu culture intohglicized forms of life (Stokes 1959: 47-80), esp. 54; cf. Cohn 1987: 539).

One can date the onset of the Utilitarian approach to administrative rule h m James Mill's History ofBritishlndia( 18 17). a landmarkin that it was the most monumental work in a trend that was to make India a key target for elaborations of the ideal 'science of the legislator'. Mill's history was concerned to place India on a scale of peoples in order to deduce - on the basis of strict principles of utility - the appropriate form ofgovemment for the territory. He concluded that the arts of government in India should have to take note of the fact that India, being at a low stage of civilization (idealizations of a Hindu 'golden age' being now forgotten), could not be suited to the norms of representative government enjoyed in the Mother country. What was required therefore was an appropxiate framework of govemment to senre until such a time as Indian civil society might be brought to a state of maMty. Judicious - Ricardian - forms of taxation and an appropriate system of administration would be sufilcient to provide such a fkamework what was imperative was that the ruling powers should not be constructed so as to come into contradiction with this autonomous passage to maturity on the part of civil society. The very existence of the East India Company, as a kind of indirect institution of rule, would be of some hctional s.lgniticance here. Mill argued that 'the interests of the dependent or subject people might clash with, and hence be made subservient to, the interests of the more advanced or ruling nation. Fortunately India was not ruled directly. The East India Company provided the perfect instrument whereby impartial, far-sighted experts with no vested interest in misrule could apply their knowledge to human affairs' ( C O W and others 1983: 117).

Administrative expertise according to this view, was to be strictly objectivizing in so far as government here requires the application of

Bureaucracy as a Vocation 30 1

neutral technical principles. Mill’s antagonism towards William Jones and his work is sigruficant in this context. Language attainment was not to be a prominent part of the self-formation of expertise; witness Mill‘s mistrust of mere ‘eloquence’ on the part of those who govern (Collini and others 1983: 124). The Utilitarians felt that they had found a more precise, objective, emotionless terminology for politics that would replace the emotive vagaries of political language: ‘: the dismissal of eloquence was part of the self-conscious distancing process whereby the Utilitarians invented anew terminology to discuss politics - one that they claimed was more precise and less likely to contain vague sentimentsandmnancesofmerefeeling‘(Colliniandothem 1983: 124). Bentham also expressed this Utilitarian hostility to the effervescence of language with his advocacy of the use of ‘political arithmetic’ as an objectivist technical instrument for combatting social pathologies. As he famously expressed the matter in the Journal of the Statistical Society; The spirit of the present age has an evident tendency to confront the flgures of speech with the figures of arithmetic’ (quoted in McGregor 195 1 : 155). At this point, political language is purged of its moral force, and the moral vocation of government is replaced by a technocratic one: in a sense, then, Benthamism embodied the least ‘liberal‘ consideration of the government of India.

The Making of Home Administration - the technology of publicity

In spite of the starkness of the utilitarian position, the question of India remains interesting from the perspective of the government of administration in that it fed into conceptions of what a liberal problematic should be at home: and no doubt because there was something of an alignment between the question of how to govern an indigenous people, and how to govern (and enroll) the home population.

The example of India represented a situation where administrative government was necessarily posed in terms of an ethic, a way of Me. To be sent to India was necessarily of vocational consequence: a composite - ‘expatriate’ - conduct of living was at stake. At one level, this ethic may indeed have been tied to a seemingly mundane life; that of the writer or clerk whose written depositions, however, as J.S. Mill argued, constituted the essence of security:

All the orders given, and all of the acts of the executive officers, are reported in writing . . . so that there is no single act done in India, the whole of the reasons for which are not placed on record. This appears to me a greater secmity for good government than exists in almost any other government in the world, because no other probably has a system of recommendations so complete (P.P. 1852-3:314; Ryan 1972:40).

But the ethical side of Indian administration was also ultimately to reach into a romance of Indian administration. The high Indian

302 Thomas osbome

official came by mid-century to embody, at least for some and irrespective of the reality of the situation, the epitome of the public- minded, self-disciplined public servant. George Trevelyan, in the 1860s, provides us with a kind of apotheosis of the romance of Indian bureaucracy, the administrator governed by a calling, advanced on the basis of merit, and owing nothing to the false vagaries of patronage. Here, the Indian life is ethical in a deeper sense, in so far as it seems to express the essence of Enghsh 'character':

An Englishman cannot be comfortable if he is in a false position; and he never allows himself to be in a true position unless he is proud of his occupation, and convinced that success will depend upon his own effort ... He is the member of an official aristocracy, owning no social superior; bound to no man: fearing no man . . . he is well aware that his advancement does not hang upon the will and pleasure of this or the other great man, but is regulated by the opinion entertained of his ability and character by the service in general (Trevelyan 1864: 143-4; cf. Escott 1879: xxi).

This sentimental view of the official's calling - even though in the exceptional context of Indian administration with all its vast opportunities (Escott 1879: 148) -has to be seen, not just as the self- evident consequence of the hubris engendered by imperialist rule, but also as something of an 'achievement', the result of an historical negotiation between the mundanity of the administrative life and its ethical romanticization: and indeed, as a condition of possibility for the transformation of officialdom into a composite ethical calling.

On the other hand, the example of India is of import in more concrete terms in that it represented the immediate prototype of an administrative system based on the principle of open, competitive examination. In November 1854, Macaulay. Jowett and others had reported to Gladstone at theTreasury on possibilities for reform of the Indian civil service (P.P. 1854-5b: 8-14). The centrepiece of their recommendations had been the opening up of the service to open competition: and, with the examination to be tied more or less to the final examinations at Oxbridge, effectively disqualifying Haileybury College from any role in civil service training. India ceased at this point to be a mere laboratory of liberalism as the destiny of the two services began to coincide; the Northcote-Trevelyan Report was set up by Gladstone as a follow-on to the reforms in the Indian service P.P. 1853-4: Shannon 1982: 279-285; and esp. Conacher 1968: 312-332: on the closure of Haileybuxy, Moore 1964: cf. Hart 1960; Hughes 1949). The respective reports posited similar solutions to the question of how to govern; in each case what was at stake was to be neither a direct form of social control through a moral-religious form of proselytization nor a neutral-technical edifice of administration, but rather the installation of an administrative class that was to be also an ethical class: one that embodied and exemplifled a model of

Bureaucracy as a Vocation 303

ethical conduct based on the spirit of public service. Peter Gowan would seek to locate the basis of this public ethic in

the context of a particular brand of Coleridgean conservativisrn (Gowan 1987; cf. Matthew 1988: 63-5 and Knights 1987: 67). According to Gowan, what was at issue in Northcote- Trevelyan was the construction of a new ‘clerisy’ - a cultural and administrative intelligentsia - entrusted with a particular vocation in terms of moral regulation. Gladstone, for example, saw the establishment of a higher grade administrative class in the service as being the basis of a new secular clerisy which would ‘strengthen and multiply the ties between the higher classes and the possession of administrative power’ (Matthew 1988:85; Shannon 1982:283; Gowan 1987:25-6). Quite rightly eschewing the explanation of nineteenth century administrative reform that resorts to the interests of a rationallzing and reforming middle-class who wishes the administrative system to be open to merit, Gowan contends that what was at stake here was a certain Coleridgean antipathy to the ‘spirit‘ - though not, to be sure, the substance - of capitalism. For Coleridge and his disciples - from Thomas Arnold to Benjamin Jowett, and even Gladstone himself- capitalism must not be permitted to become the ethical basis of the social order that it had engendered. Capitalism was dynamic, but it did not breed consent within the national community. In Coleridge’s view the aristocracy did not live up to their ruling duties in this respect. But nor were religious ideals Qn their own enough to supply the level of consent envisaged by Coleridge; rather a secular form of moral regulation - a kind of cultural revolution of the middle-class intelligentsia -would have to be implemented. As Gowan glosses the matter, according to the Coleridgean view:

... t h e p m ~ c k s s e s m u s t d e v o t e a p a r t d t h e i r and fmpxuvement of the people, tasks to be undertaken by forming a cadre of dedicated, cultured intell- imbued with a pmfound sense of duty who would go forth into every comer of the nation to cement the classes into a genuine national community.. . this clerisy could be constructed through the reformed universities, a new breed of cM1 servants and f@ms like himself in public life (Gowan 198725-6 and 29).

Yet Gowan. in seeking to derive practices of government from a particular ideology. probably over-interprets the Coleridgean influence. There is no imperative that mentalities of government in any particular age should be ultimately attributable to this or that political philosophy; and nor was capitalism the key variable that Gowan’s Marxist analysis automatically assumes. In any case, it was a common view - spreading well beyond the intellectual influence of Coleridge - that there should be moral functions tied to a vocational civil service; that the service should be more than just the establishment of a neutral- technical administrative stratum but should embody a particular

0 BasU Blackatell Ltd 1994.

304 mmas osbonze

ethic of public responsibility. Edwin Chadwick, for example, not known for his Coleridgean sympathies, laid particular emphasis upon the moral role of the lower class of civil employee: the great mass of those who worked for the Post Omce, customs and excise officials and so on who exerted a moral innuence more mundane than that of the more exalted Oxbridge Coleridgean clerisy:

The social influence of more than 5O.OOO ofllcers, i.e. of a body of men twice as numerous as the clergy is. in itself, deserving of serious consideration.. . the lower class of officers are spread over the country and by their intelligence and respectability would exercise abeneflcial influence on the lower ranks of society in remote places (P.P. 1854-5: 155).

Yet what is at stake is not just the intended influence of moral proselytization wherein the populace is exposed to the cultural power of certain exemplary personae. but rather what we might want to term a ‘technology of publicity‘. This is not simply a question of the famous theme of the evolution of a ‘public sphere’ that is regarded as having reached culmination by this period (Habermas 1989: 67); for there is a more ‘technical‘ aspect to publicity than tends to be suggested by such evolutionary accounts. The reform of the administration in the 1850s was an attempt to inscribe the domain of the public into the acts of government in a particular way, and as such it was simultaneously an attempt to cortsti-t.tct, and guarantee the allegiance of, a particular kind of public. To be sure, the social profile of this public was in effect a limited one. To begin with, it is well known that one of the aims of the reforms was to tie the civil service more closely to the universities. Thus the civil service exam was effectively a re-run of the Oxbridge final year examinations; the liberal education of Oxbridge was tied to the vocation of civil service - just as had been decided in the case of the Indian service inthewakeofthe 1853IndiaBill.Therationalebehindthisdevelopment was that of finding a new vocation for the universities. On the simplest level this was a matter of finding alternative vocations for Oxbridge students unwilling to enter either the Church or the bar. Jowett, who, as G o m demonstrates, was one of the major influences on Northcote- b e l y a n . observed: ‘I cannot conceive a greater boon which can be conferred upon the University than a share in the Indian appointments. The inducement thus offered would open to us a new field of knowledge: it would give us another root striking into a new soil ov society; it would provide what we have always wanted, a stimulus reaching beyond the Fellowships, for those not intending to take orders’ (quoted in Moore 1964:253; cf. Roach 1971:28; P.P. 1854:24-31).

Public Examination Yet what was at stake was also more than this; more than just a cynical job-hunt for those who traditionally inherited the

Bureaucracy as a Vocation 305

responsibilities of rule. Publicity guaranteed an ethical concern on the part of the administrator. The technology of publicity represented, on the one hand, an attempt at fabricating an ethical persona for the administrator (one different from that demanded by either patronage or ‘bureaucracy’) and, on the other, at fabricating a public that were to be the subjects of this particular kind of administrative rule. The key to both sides of this equation - the relay that linked them -was to be the examination.

The liberal values of an Oxbridge education actually had a kind of technological import in so far as they fed into the aspiration to create a civil service ’vocation’. The key to the system was its very generality. As Northcote-Trevelyan argued, by gearing the civil service to the young (one effect of the examination system) ‘regular habits may be enforced (P.P.d 1855%). Moreover exams were not to be held for speciAc posts but at regular periods: the exams were not to be for particular positions but to test the general vocation of the potential civil servant. The installation of a general hierarchy of merit and promotion would work against the departmental fragmentation of the service, that is. again, to introduce a sense of unity into administration asavocation (P.P.d 1855:22-3). ButtheOxbridgeethicalsocontributed to this generality. This relates to the content of the exam. Once again, the issue of language was to be important in the context of government. For one of the mainstays of liberal education at these universities was. of course, the acquisition of classical languages, especially Greek. The reasons for this will be familiar: Greek was the language of Reason, of ‘civilization’. But in a sense this was not simply a ‘linguistic’ matter; for the consolidation of the Classics as the mainstay of Oxbridge education in the 1830s and 1840s (1 822 is the date of the Arst Cambridge Classics Tripos) was not just tied to a valorization of linguistic learning but immersion in the entire cultural and institutional contexts of the classical world. The views promoted by the liberal educators - from Thomas Arnold to Connop Thirlwall and William Whewell- combined in what Bernal has described as an ethos of Romantic-scepticism, an ethos embraced by the entire mid- Victorian “new intelligentsia’ (Bernal 1987:322: Jenkyns 1980). Above all, Greek imbued the scholar with what might be described as an ethic of distance, or of liberal toleration, combined with a concern for the practicalities of facts over speculation; in Mathew Arnold’s words, those subjected to the Greek world were ‘more truly than others under the empire of facts, and more independent of the language current among those with whom they live’ (quoted in J e w s 1980:65-6: cf. Rothblatt 1976: 147).

To what or whom was the administrator to be responsible? I t is easy to dismiss the patronage system as a necessarily corrupt bypassing of any concept of public responsibility. Yet, one might say that as a

306 Thomas Osbome

principle of government patronage merely represented an alternative conceptualization of responsibility itself. Those benefitting from patronage would be responsible to their patron, hence it would be in the utmost interests of the patron to be assured of the good character of the appointed official. In a sense the opposition to the system of patronage was conceived by way of an alternative patronage system; as an attempt to substitute the patronage of the many (public opinion) for that of the few. Again, it is Chadwick who provides, albeit from an extreme position, perhaps the clearest avowal of the rationale at stake. For Chadwick, it was precisely patronage that lead to bureaucracy in the derogatory sense; an administrative apparatus that merely served the interests of its incumbents, that proliferated according to its own logic, and which impelled in the official no responsibility towards the public that it served. The aim was not, in the negative sense, to create a bureaucracy, but to motivate officials for public service, to make them vocationally responsible to the public (P.P. 1854-5: 187-8; cf. Finer 1952: 477-83).

The key to this principle of publicity, its technological aspect, so to speak, was to be the public examination itself (MacLeod 1982; Roach 1971: 22-34). In the 1850s when the general vogue for examination first took off, it was conceived by its advocates - although hardly, needless to say, by its opponents (Shannon 1982: 283-5) - precisely as a means for the generation of ‘character’. Lord Ashley had written of the coming generation in 1844 that:

we must have nobler, deeper, sterner stuff; less of refinement and more of truth: more of the inward and less of the outward gentleman: a rigid sense of duty and not a delicate sense of honour (quoted in Thane 1990: 28).

In his account of this kind of demand in its relation to Victorian governing values, Stefan Collini has recently written of the political aesthetic of ‘muscular liberalism’: a body of thought that sought to invoke specific moral qualities of character, duty etc as a condition of moral authority (Collini 199 1: 1 13). Perhaps, stretching matters somewhat, the examination can be conceived as a technology of muscular liberalism (cf. P.P. 1854:3). In any case, the exam was not to be some kind of neutral, transparent technique for testing the presence of such virtues in the candidate. Rather. there was to be a direct tie between the examm * ation and the cultivation of virtue. The broad base of the proposed civil service examinations, prototyped in the Indian civil service, was notjust a ‘technical‘ matter; rather, there was a momlbasis to the competitive principle of examination. Roach observes:

For the individual, examinations are a test of common-sense and of character as well as of book-keeping. To do well in them demands perseverance and self-denial which strengthen the character. For the nation, acompetittve system would be based on high moral principle and would reduce corruption and place-seeking (Roach 1971:30).

0 Basil Blackwell Lid 1994.

Bureaucracy as a Vocation 307

Jowett claimed that the exam measures character in so far as ‘the perseverance and self-discipline necessary for the acquirement of any considerable amount of knowledge are a great security that a young man has not led a dissolute life’ (P.P. 1854:24). One respondent to the Civil Service Commission commented approvingly that exams were anti-democratic (in the sense of democratic as the exercise of ‘mere numbers over virtue, intelligence, property’) because their existence encouraged the inculcation of good habits (‘steadiness of conduct’, ‘self-denying diligence’);

without steady application a long course of study cannot be mastered: and nothing is more certain than that habitual diligence brings other virtues in its train; for instance temperance and self-control, to say nothing of punctuality and accuracy: yet even these latter have a real connection with truth and honesty [Charles Graves, in P.P. 1844-5: 28; cf. the comments of J.S. Mill, 95).

In addition to acting to discipline the virtues, the exam system represents an apparatus for the formation of public allegiance. It is less that the official will be accountable to the public, than that the public will And itself allied in its aspirations to the ideal of officialdom; indeed, that officialdomwill be an expressionof public allegiance. For above all the existence of open competition will spur on the middle and lower middle classes to better themselves (Jowett in P.P. 1854: 30); the examination system is notjust a passive legitimation device, rather it gives something for the lower orders to grasp as an aspiration, hence it ties them to the system. Even those who fail will have had the benefit of the character-building aspects of the exam system as a whole (P.P. 1854-5:25). Roach quotes a pamphlet on public examination by Richard Dawes - Remarks on theReorgcuzization of the Civil Service and its Bearing on Educational Progress ( 1854) - to the effect that the existence of public examination would act as an incentive for people to educate their children better: that no reform ’would do more to attach the lower and middle classes of society to theinstitutionsoftheircountry‘(Roach 1971: 29). Not directrule, not moral regulation: but the indirect mobilization of allegiance; and the creation of a public sphere oriented in aspiration to state service.

But the exam is also a liberal technique in that in so far as it acts, by promoting merit, as a brake upon the arbitrary excesses of government. it also checks the tendency of government to proliferate by introducing greater accountability. For Chadwick, the increased accountability of the administration would mean an economizing of administrative tasks (P.P. 1854-5: 208). But also, in a wider sense, the very existence of a reformed civil service would be a brake upon, and a principle of limitation of, the excessive proliferation of government. The existence of the civil service creates a neutral space of government, one subject to public control yet outside the coups

0 Basil Blackwell U d 1994.

308 Thomas osborne

d’authorite characteristic of politics (‘government does everything badly’). The function of the Treasury was to be central here: so much was evident from Gladstone’s Minute of 1853 (Wright 1969: xiii). For Gladstone, one of the lynchpins of the reform proposals was that they should result in overall Treasury control of the home service. The principle of publicity should itselfensure this: for the system of public examination should produce, above all. an imperative of efficiency in the service: ‘the object is, that the business of the public should be done in the best and most economical manner’ (P.P. 1853-4b: 373). Hence the fabrication of the civil service was precisely directed at a de-politicization of state tasks: an attempt, one might almost say. at the de-politicization of government.

Concluding Remarks Northcote-Trevelyan has long been a magnet to historians of administration: much of our discussion has merely followed some already well-trodden pathways. Why again have we resurrected for discussion this monument to a reform programme that was, after all, a failure in immediate terms? Restricting ourselves to the establishment of the home administration, several conclusions can be drawn.

On the subject of failure itself, if one’s criterion is that of the realization of thought, then Northcote-Trevelyan was indeed a failure. But if one’s interest is in the history of thought itself then a reform project like that of the 1850s takes on a kind of density of its own. Northcote-Trevelyan is, in crystallized form, a kind of diagram that outlines a rationale for acting upon others in a particular, liberal way. For thought is itself an agent in the history of arts and practices of government: it is a point of reference, a relay for a diverse assemblage of schemes, aspirations and techniques. Northcote-Trevelyan has justifiably been of interest to historians precisely because it is itself part of the historicity of the Nineteenth Century.

Northcote-Trevelyan also, of course, partakes of the historicity of bureaucracy and of the modem state. The constitution of a permanent home service clearly represents an attempt at the establishment of a civil, bureaucratic arm as an adjunct to the political and military functions of the state. But as an historical example, our consideration of Northcote-Trevelyan also serves usefully to displace these seemingly fast sociological categories. This disturbance comes by way of the question of ethics. There is a theoretical point to be made here that relates in general to the question of rule. We have sought to contend that rule is not simply a question of the realization of the interests of those who happen to rule: that one must pay attention to the relations that those who rule bring about with regard to themselves, that is, not

Bureaucracy as a Vocation 309

just the ideologies or moral justifications of rule, but the ethics of rule. This attention to the question of ethics does not signify a concern with the internally generated ‘conscience’ of those entrusted with rule: rather ethics are themselves programmed ‘from without‘ via mentalities of government. Nor does this relate just to how those who rule justify and seek to legitimate, or delegate, rule. Rather, the point about this concern with ethics is to highlight the ways in which those who rule or govern seek to constitute themselves in a space where rule is rational, reasonable, predictable and justifiable: and the means by which the requisite capacities for rule are to be installed, maintained and regulated. What lay behind Northcote-Trevelyan was not a disciplinary impulse, nor even merely an educational one, but an attempt to inscribe into government a particular ethics of rule that would be appropriate to a discretionary - as opposed to a neutral- technical - bureaucracy. One might conclude that it is not the neutrality of bureaucrats that makes them ethical: it is their ethical fomation that allows for a particular conception of what it is to be “neutral”. If what was at stake was, as Gladstone put it, a bid for ‘a more strenuous ethic in public life’, then, as such, it was also a bid to construct an ethic ofpublic life, one that would be dependent for its functioning upon the moral effects of the ‘public’ (‘Publicity is a check, said James Graham, in so far as ‘public character is so valuable to a public man’: Parris 1969: 78). And if an apparantlynon- bourgeois, or even aristocratic, ethic (or Coleridgean or whatever) seems to have been involved in this construction, this should not lead us automatically to conclude that such an ethical concern formed part of a British ‘exceptionalism’; rather, one deploys the ethical tools that are to hand. In any case, the machinery of rule cannot be conceived simply as a pure instrument of class or state. Rule, even bureaucratic rule, is partly a matter of the ethical preconditions of rule: and power, even state power, has to pass by way of ethics (cf. Marsh 1979).

Perhaps, then, an historical turn can serve to show that conceptions of the radically non-ethical character of bureaucracy, so often derived from Max Weber, are surely misleading (both with regard to bureacracy and with regard to Weber). For Weber, the bureaucratic principle famously leads to the rule of ‘formalistic personality’, rule conducted sine ira et studio (cf. Hennis 1988: 101). But to use Weber to argue that bureaucracy brings about an eclipse of ethics is to run together his thinking on discipline with his thinking on bureaucracy. Bureaucracy could be said to differ from discipline in so far as it presupposes an ethical formation on the part of the bureaucrat, a bureaucratic vocation, as opposed to a more or less blind obedience to rules and orders: the very rationalization of tasks, the very condition of experiencing authority as deriving from abstract rules,

0 BasU BhckweU Lid 1994.

310 Thomas osbome

roles, not persons - this presupposes an ethical formation on the part of the bureaucrat (cf. Strong 1992: 15). So what is interesting about Northcote-Trevelyan, perhaps what has drawn the historians to this moment, is that, here at the apparent dawn of the modem bureaucratic spirit, was a realization that bureaucracy cannot be considered as other than ethical by government.

And this is where bureaucracy is, as Weber insisted, separated from - and possibly corrosive upon - politics. What is ‘liberal‘ about Northcote-Trevelyan is precisely this ethical consideration - that the bureaucrat has to be a certain vocational ‘type’; a liberal ethical consideration on the part of government that - in its implicit codification of elements of rational discretion - was not previously accorded, for example, the administrative agent of ‘police’ or the recipient of patronage. As has been argued, part of this liberal concern related precisely to a ‘de-governmentalization’. a subtraction of administration from the complexities of patronage and politics. Hence, Northcote-Trevelyan programmed the ethical side of its concerns in a certain alignment with those that related to efficiency and economy, that side of its concerns that implied, in fact, the very least of any ‘regard for persons’. The condition of possibility for this was an understanding of the character of the administrator - one based, indeed, upon a typically ‘liberal‘ view of education - as being guided ethically by a sense of responsibility to a wider public: hence the very ethical formation of the administrator would lead to the delimitation of wasteful. ‘bureaucratic’, tendencies. Perhaps the moment for such an alignment of governmental and ethical concerns wasvery soon passed: and, no doubt, other mentalities of government. other ruling authorities, would seek to codify the bureaucrat in different ways. But, then, there is no reason why bureaucracy should follow some hard and fast, trans-historical model: the bureaucratic impulse should invoke in the minds of its analysts the form of a plurality rather than the inevitability of a monolith.

Note

comments on an earlier drafi. Many thanks to Ian Hunter and two anonymous referees for their invaluable

Bibliography Abercrombie, N., N. Hill, and B. Turner (1980) TheI)ominantIdeology%s&.

Bearce, G.D. (1961) British Attitudes Towards Zndia 1784-1858. L OUP. Bernal, M. (1987) Black Athena, Volume One. L: Free Associations. Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and Symbolic Power, C: Polity Burchell. G. (1991)‘PeculiarInterests: civilsocietyandgoverning‘the system

of natural liberty‘. ’he Foucault Eflect, Studies in govenunentaUty (ed. G . Burchell, and others). Brighton: Harvester/Wheatsheaf.

L Macmillan

a.

0 Basfl Blackwell Ltd 1994.

Bureaucracy as a Vocation 31 1

Burchell, G. (1993) ‘Rationalities of government and practices of the self.

Coen, T.C. (1971) The Indian Political Service: A Study in Indirect Rule, L

Cohn, B. (1987) An Anthropologist Among the Historians, 0: OUP. Collini, S. (199 1) Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Liie in

Collini, S., and others (1983) That Noble Science OfPolitiCs. C: CUP Conacher, J.B. (1968) The Aberdeen Coalition 1852-1855, C: C.U.P. Corrigan, P. (1981) ‘On Moral Regulation - some preliminary remarks’.

Corrigan, P. and D. Sayer (1985) The Great Arch; stateformation as cultural

Corrigan, P. (1990) Social Fonns/Human Capacities, London, Routledge Donald, J. (1992) Sentimental Education. S c h l i n g , popular culture and the

Embree,A. (1962) ChksGrantandBritishRuleinIndia. LAllenand Unwin. Escott, T.H.S. (1879) Pillars of the Empire: Sketches of Living India and

Cobnial Statesmen, Celebrities and Og2cials, L: Chapman and Hall. Finer, S. (1952) The Liie and Times of Edwin Chadwick, NY, Barnes and

Noble. Foucault, M. (1979) ‘Governmentality’ Ideology and Consciousness. Number 6, Autumn 1979 [trans. C. Gordon).

Foucault, M. (1982) The Subject and Power’. Afterword to H. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow. Michel Foucault - Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics. Brighton: Harvester.

Foucault, M. (1989) Resume des cours. P: Juillard. Foucault, M. (1990) ‘Ke Care of the SeG Penguin, Harmondsworth Gordon, C. (1987) The Soul of the Citizen: Max Weber and Michel Foucault

on Rationality and Government‘, in S. Lash and S. Whimster (eds), Max Webec Rationality and Modernity. L Allen and Unwin.

Gordon, C. (1991) ‘GovernmentaLity - an Introduction’. The Foucault Eflmt, Studies in goumntauty (ed. G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller). Brighton: Harvester/Wheatsheaf.

Gowan, P. ( 1987) The Origins of the Administrative Elite’ New Left R, Number

Habermas, J. (1989) The Structural ’kansformation of the Public Sphere, trans. T. Burger and F. Lawrence, C: Polity.

Hart, J. (1960) ‘Sir Charles Trevelyan at the Treasury’. English Historical R, Volume lxxv (January): 92- 100.

Hart, J. (1972) The Genesis of the Northcote-Trevelyan Report‘ in G. Sutherland (ed), Studies in Nineteenth Century Govenunent Growth L: Routledge and Kegan Paul

Hennis, W. (19881 Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction, L: Allen and Unwin. Hindess, B. (1986) ‘Interests in Politicalhalysis’ in J. Law (ed) Power, Action

and Belit$ L Routledge. Hughes, E. (1949) ‘Sir Charles lhvelyan and Civil Service Reform 1853-5.

English Historical R, Volume IXIV: 53-8 and 206-34. Hunter, I. (1988) CultureandGovemment:Theemergenceofliteraryeducation.

L Macmillan. Hunter, I. (1993) ‘Culture, Bureaucracy and the History of Popular Education’

in D. Meredyth and D. ’Qler (eds) Child and Citizen, Institute for Cultural Policy Studies, Griffith University

Economy and Society, 22, 3, 267-82

Chatto and Windus.

Britain, 0: Clarendon Press.

S~~io log ica l R, 29 (2): 313-37.

reuolution. 0: Blackwell.

regulation of liberty. L Verso.

162, M=ch/April 1987: 4-34.

Inden, R. (1990) Imagining India, 0: Blackwell

B Basll Blackwell U d 1994.

312 Thomas Osbome

Jenkyns, R. (1980) The Victorians and Ancient Greece, 0: Blackwell. Kitson Clark, (1959) * "Statesmen in Disguise"-: Reflections on the History

Knights, B. (1987) TheI&aoftk Ckrisy in theNineteenth Cenfmy, C: CUP. Kopf, D. (1969) British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance. Calcultta:

MacDonagh, 0. (1958) The Nineteenth Century Revolution in Government

McGregor, O.R. (1950) 'Civil servants and the civil service, 1850-1950,

MacLeod, R. (1982) Days ofJudgement: science, examination and the state tn

Mann, M. (1970) The Social Cohesion of Liberal Democracy' American

Mann, M. (1986) The Sources of social Power, Volume One. C. CUP. Marsh, P. (ed) (1979) The Conscience of the Victorian State. Hassocks,

Harvester. Marx, K. ( 1853a) The East India Company - its history and results'. New York

Daily Tribune. July 11 (number 38161, in Marx/Engels Collected Works, Volume 12 (1979). L/M: Lawrence and Wishart.

M a , K. (1853b) The Government of India'. New YorkDaily 'Xbune. July 20 (number 3824). in Marx/Engels Collected Works, Volume 12 (1979), LJM: Lawrence and Wishart.

Matthew, H.C.G. (1988) Gladstone 1809-1874,O: OUP Mill, J. (1826) The History of British India (3rd ed.) (6 vols), L: Baldwin,

Monier-Williams, M. (and others) (1894) Memorials ofOldHaiZeybury College,

Moore, R. J. (1964) The Abolition and Closure of Haileybury College'.

Mueller. H.-E. (1984) Bureaucracy, Education and Monopoly. Berkeley, CA.:

Parliamentary Papers (1852-3) (88),VolXXX(Repo rt... intobettergovernment

Parliamentary Papers (1853-41 (439), Vol XXX (Copy of Treasury Minute,

Parliamentary Papers (P.P.) (1854) [ 17 131. Vol IX (Report on the Organization

Parliamentary Papers (1854-5) 118701, Vol XX (Report and Papers relating to

Parliamentary Papers ( 1854-5b) (34), VolXL (Report on the Indian Civil Service) Parliamentary Papers (1857-8) (75), Vol XLIII (East India (Improvements in

Parris, H. (1969) Constitutional Bureaucracy, L: Allen and Unwin Rabinow, P. (ed.) (1984) The Foucault Reader. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Rajchman, J. (1991) Truth and &os, L: Routledge

Rose, N. and P. Miller (1992) 'Political Power Beyond the State: problematics of government'. British J ofSociology 43 (2): 173-205.

Rothblatt, S (1976) ?Izldition and Change in English Liberal Education. L: Faber.

Ryan, A. (1972) 'Utilitarianism and Bureaucracy: theviews 0fJ.S. Mill', in G. Sutherland (ed), Studies in the Growth ofNineteenth Century Government, L: Routledge.

of the Neutrality of the Civil Service', Historical J, 2. 1, 19-39.

Firma L. Mukhopadhgay.

- A Re-Appraisal', Historical J, 1, 1, 52-67.

Political Quarterly, 22, 154-63.

late Victorian England, DSeld : MatBerton.

SocWlOgical R. 35. 3. 423-39.

Craddock and Jay.

Westminster: Archibald Constable.

Historical J, VII (2): 240-257.

U. California P.

of her Majesties' Indian territories; Minutes of Evidence)

12th April 1853)

of the Permanent Civil Service)

the Reorganization of the Civil Service)

Administration)).

Roach, J. (1971) publicJhmnh&o * IS in England 1850-1900 C: CUP.

Bureaucracy as a Vocation 313

Said, E. (1985) Orientalism Harmondsworth: Penguin Schwab. R. (1984) The Oriental Renaissance. NY: Columbia University Press

[ 19501 (trans. G. Patterson-Black and V. Reinkingl. Shannon, R. (1982) Gladstone Vol 1 , 1809-1 865, L Hamish Hamilton. Stokes, E. (1959) The English Utilitarians and India. 0: OUP. Strong, T. (1992) ' "What have we to do with morals?" Nietzsche and Weber

on history and ethics', History of the Human Sciences, 5, 3, 9-18. Thane, P. (1990) 'Government and Society in England and Wales, 1750-

1914'. inF.M.L.Thompson (ed) TheCambridgeSocialHistoyofBritain,Vol 3, c : C.U.P.

Trevelyan, G. (1864) The Competition Wallah, L/C: Macmillan Weber, M. (1978) Economy and Society (Vol2) Berkeley : U of California P. Woodruff, P. (1953) The Men Who Ruled India: the Founders L: Cape Wright, M. (1969) Treasury Control of the Cwil Service 1854-1874, 0:

Clarendon Press.

0 Basil Blackwell U d 1994.