Our Wonderland of Bureaucracy: A Study of the Growth of Bureaucracy in the Federal Government, and Its Destructive Effect upon the Constitution

"The twelve jurors were all writing very busily on slates. 'What are they doing?' Alice whispered to the Gryphon. 'They ca'n't have anything to put down yet, before the trial's begun.'

"'They're putting down their names,' the Gryphon whispered in reply, 'for they fear they should forget them before the end of the trial.'"--ALICE IN WONDERLAND.

THE Lord Chief Justice of England recently published a book, entitled The New Despotism in which he forcefully pointed out the subversion of Anglo-Saxon ideals of justice by the power of bureaucracy in England to make laws, interpret them, prosecute under them, and then act as judge and jury. Referring to the bureaucrat of his own country, he said:

"This course will prove tolerably simple if he can (a) get legislation passed in skeleton form, (b) fill up the gaps with his own rules, orders and regulations, (c) make it difficult or impossible for Parliament to check the said rules, orders, and regulations, (d) secure for them the force of statute, (f) arrange that the fact of his decision shall be conclusive proof of its legality, (g) take power to modify the provisions of statutes, and (h) prevent and avoid any sort of appeal to a Court of Law."

The Supreme Court of the United States declared in 1868, in The Floyd Acceptances, 7 Wallace, 666, that "we have no officers in this government, from the President down to the most subordinate agent, who does not hold office under the law, with prescribed duties and limited authority," and the Court added the further declaration that in order to determine the authority of such officers we must resort in every instance to constitutional or statutory law.

This was once a law--it is no longer so. Limitations of

-165-