The incessant tyranny of Parliament over the public offices is prevented and can only be prevented by the appointment of a Parliamentary head, connected by close ties with the present Ministry and the ruling party in Parliament The Parliamentary head is a protecting machine.  He and the friends he brings stand between the department and the busybodies and crotchet-makers of the House and the country.  So long as at any moment the policy of an office could be altered by chance votes in either House of Parliament, there is no security for any consistency.  Our guns and our ships are not, perhaps, very good now.  But they would be much worse if any thirty or forty advocates for this gun or that gun could make a motion in Parliament, beat the department, and get their ships or their guns adopted.  The “Black Breech Ordnance Company” and the “Adamantine Ship Company” would soon find representatives in Parliament, if forty or fifty members would get the national custom for their rubbish.  But this result is now prevented by the Parliamentary head of the department.  As soon as the Opposition begins the attack, he looks up his means of defence.  He studies the subject, compiles his arguments, and builds little piles of statistics, which he hopes will have some effect.  He has his reputation at stake, and he wishes to show that he is worth his present place, and fit for future promotion.  He is well known, perhaps liked, by the House—­at any rate the House attends to him; he is one of the regular speakers whom they hear and heed.  He is sure to be able to get himself heard, and he is sure to make the best defence he can.  And after he has settled his speech he loiters up to the Secretary of the Treasury, and says quietly, “They have got a motion against me on Tuesday, you know.  I hope you will have your men here.  A lot of fellows have crotchets, and though they do not agree a bit with one another, they are all against the department; they will all vote for the inquiry.”  And the Secretary answers, “Tuesday, you say; no (looking at a paper), I do not think it will come on Tuesday.  There is Higgins on Education.  He is good for a long time.  But anyhow it shall be all right.”  And then he glides about and speaks a word here and a word there, in consequence of which, when the anti-official motion is made, a considerable array of steady, grave faces sits behind the Treasury Bench—­nay, possibly a rising man who sits in outlying independence below the gangway rises to defend the transaction; the department wins by thirty-three, and the management of that business pursues its steady way.