Wartime Shuffles and the Duties of a Government

A prime minister resigns in Kyiv; the president announces a reshuffle; the war, we are told, begins at last to turn in the country’s favour. In quieter times such changes are occasion for gossip, not philosophy: one set of ambitious people gives place to another, and the world goes on much as before. But when a nation fights for its very independence, the displacement of a chief minister, and the promise of further changes in law enforcement, touch immediately upon the first duties of government. In war, every alteration at the summit may either steady the hand that bears the shield, or loosen the fingers that grasp it.

When I wrote in the Wealth of Nations that the sovereign has three chief duties – defence, the exact administration of justice, and certain public works and institutions – I did not imagine a world where artillery can cross a continent more swiftly than a courier crossed Fife. Yet the principle is the same, though the engines are new. A government at war must first fight; but it must also judge impartially, and it must maintain those works, visible and invisible, which allow the annual produce of the land and labour to continue in some tolerable measure. If the late prime minister is moved to a new and important post because another arrangement better secures these ends, the change is not a luxury of power, but a necessity of duty.

The manner of the change matters as much as its declared purpose. The president offers the former premier a new office; he speaks of further alterations among the chiefs of law enforcement. This is not the language of the man of system, who breaks his pieces and sweeps his board in order to execute some perfect plan that exists only in his imagination. It resembles rather the slow, sometimes clumsy, but generally safer practice of adjusting offices to experience – rewarding what has succeeded, relieving what has failed, and doing both without the disgrace which provokes desperate resistance. On the great chess-board of human society, it is no small merit to move the pieces without imagining that one can change their nature.

Yet the impartial spectator, whose judgment I attempted to describe in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, will not be content with graceful motions and fine professions. He will ask, who bears the cost and who reaps the benefit of this rearrangement? Every new dignity bestowed upon one statesman is a hope disappointed in another; every promise to reform the higher ranks of law enforcement is a threat to some existing interest. The visible gain – an air of renewal, a bolder narrative of victory – belongs to the rulers; the invisible cost is paid by the soldiers in the field and the labouring poor at home, if the transition disorganises supply, confuses command, or distracts from the prosecution of the war.

We must therefore trace the consequences, not to the flattering circle of courtiers, but to the price of bread, the security of the streets, and the confidence with which merchants send their goods to market. The division of labour, on which I laid so much stress, is limited by the extent of the market; in war that extent depends on roads safely travelled, contracts reliably enforced, and taxes levied according to clear and stable rules. A reshuffle that strengthens law enforcement in order to reduce peculation, protect property, and restrain violence widens the effective market even amidst bombardment. One that merely replaces one set of favourites by another, while leaving abuses untouched, narrows it still further, and converts a time of national trial into an occasion for private plunder.

In questions of this sort, self-interest must be presumed, not deplored. Statesmen are subject to the same love of power and distinction that leads the poor man’s son, whom I once described, to sacrifice tranquillity for greatness he can never fully enjoy. They will naturally be tempted to turn a moment of military success into an opportunity to entrench their followers, to silence rivals, and to distribute offices as rewards for personal fidelity rather than public service. The vile maxim of the masters of mankind – all for ourselves, and nothing for other people – insinuates itself easily into cabinets as into counting-houses. Only the steady gaze of an informed public, and the internal check of that impartial spectator in their own breasts, can restrain this propensity.

What, then, may we say, knowing so little of the secret springs that moved this particular change? We may say that in wartime a government is right to examine itself with unusual severity, to replace the negligent, and to promote the capable. We may say that the test of such a reshuffle lies not in the praises of foreign newspapers, nor in the flattery of domestic factions, but in whether soldiers are better supplied, justice more evenly administered, corruption more strictly punished, and the labouring poor more secure in their modest possessions. If these ends are served, the change will deserve, in time, not only applause, but praise-worthiness; if they are neglected, the new arrangement will be but another page in the long history of governments that mistake motion for progress and ceremony for care.