CHAPTER VI

THE POLITICAL ACTIVITIES
OF GOVERNMENT

Classification of Government Activity
The Treasury
The Home Office

Keeping the Peace

Social Work
(i) Factory Acts
(ii) Public Welfare

Status of the Home Office
The Scottish Office
The Foreign Office

Keeping in touch with Foreign Countries

Assisting British Subjects Abroad

Planning Foreign Policy
The Armed Forces

Navy

Army

Air Force

General Considerations

CLASSIFICATION OF GOVERNMENT ACTIVITY.

Any Government must be able to keep order; if it does not
do this it is not a Government. Further, if it exists in a world of
Sovereign States, it must consider its relations with its neighbours.
In connection with both these tasks it will decide to keep certain
Armed Forces. To pay for these Departments it must get money.
So Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Armed Forces and Finance
may be called the necessary or POLITICAL activities of
Government. The philosophy called laissez-faire, which was
popular some 150 years ago, held that, if possible, Governments
should attend to these things and no more. Nearly all of the
community's economic life—the arrangements for the producing
and sharing of wealth—would thus t>e left outside Government

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