How we cite our quotes:
Quote #4
It is true that How not to do it was the great study and object of all public departments and professional politicians all round the Circumlocution Office. It is true that every new premier and every new government, coming in because they had upheld a certain thing as necessary to be done, were no sooner come in than they applied their utmost faculties to discovering How not to do it. It is true that from the moment when a general election was over, every returned man who had been raving on hustings because it hadn't been done, and who had been asking the friends of the honourable gentleman in the opposite interest on pain of impeachment to tell him why it hadn't been done, and who had been asserting that it must be done, and who had been pledging himself that it should be done, began to devise, How it was not to be done. It is true that the debates of both Houses of Parliament the whole session through, uniformly tended to the protracted deliberation, How not to do it. It is true that the royal speech at the opening of such session virtually said, My lords and gentlemen, you have a considerable stroke of work to do, and you will please to retire to your respective chambers, and discuss, How not to do it. It is true that the royal speech, at the close of such session, virtually said, My lords and gentlemen, you have through several laborious months been considering with great loyalty and patriotism, How not to do it, and you have found out; and with the blessing of Providence upon the harvest (natural, not political), I now dismiss you. (1.10.4)
The amazing power of the Circumlocution Office lies in the fact that there were no civil service exams back in the 19th century, and government jobs were handed out by uncontestable appointment. So of course nepotism was rife, as dads set up sons and nephews in comfortable positions. Dickens is writing just as England is gearing up for the first set of reforms that would introduce merit-based competition for these jobs, after the widespread government failures in the Crimean War.
Quote #5
Bar [...] had been required to look over the title of a very considerable estate in one of the eastern counties--lying, in fact, for Mr. Merdle knew we lawyers loved to be particular, on the borders of two of the eastern counties. [...] Such a purchase would involve not only a great legitimate political influence, but some half-dozen church presentations of considerable annual value. Now, that Mr. Merdle was already at no loss to discover means of occupying even his capital, and of fully employing even his active and vigorous intellect, Bar well knew: but he would venture to suggest that the question arose in his mind, whether one who had deservedly gained so high a position and so European a reputation did not owe it--we would not say to himself, but we would say to Society, to possess himself of such influences as these; and to exercise them--we would not say for his own, or for his party's, but we would say for Society's--benefit. (1.21.27)
So this is a fun little passage. Basically, Bar is telling Merdle to buy a piece of land because with this estate he would control two things: he'd have a seat in Parliament to give away, and he'd also control the appointment of a comfortable position for a priest or two. This is just a small example of something called the "Old Corruption" – which was basically the way people in power would appoint their followers to cushy government jobs or church positions. This would both reward the followers and maintain the elite's power base, in a cycle that was very hard to break. Reforms to the Old Corruption started coming hard and fast just before Dickens began this novel, and since he set Little Dorrit 30 years before his own time, his characters are right in the thick of the spoils system.
Quote #6
It was uphill work for a foreigner, lame or sound, to make his way with the Bleeding Hearts. In the first place, they were vaguely persuaded that every foreigner had a knife about him; [...] they had a notion that it was a sort of Divine visitation upon a foreigner that he was not an Englishman, and that all kinds of calamities happened to his country because it did things that England did not, and did not do things that England did. In this belief, to be sure, they had long been carefully trained by the Barnacles and Stiltstalkings, who were always proclaiming to them, officially, that no country which failed to submit itself to those two large families could possibly hope to be under the protection of Providence [...] This, therefore, might be called a political position of the Bleeding Hearts; but they entertained other objections to having foreigners in the Yard. They believed that foreigners were always badly off; and though they were as ill off themselves as they could desire to be, that did not diminish the force of the objection. They believed that foreigners were dragooned and bayoneted; and though they certainly got their own skulls promptly fractured if they showed any ill-humour, still it was with a blunt instrument, and that didn't count. They believed that foreigners were always immoral; and though they had an occasional assize at home, and now and then a divorce case or so, that had nothing to do with it. They believed that foreigners had no independent spirit, as never being escorted to the poll in droves by Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle, with colours flying and the tune of Rule Britannia playing. (1.25.34-35)
Oh, the irony is thick here. Also, a pretty great description of the power of propaganda. Note how the narrator basically says that the people who live in Bleeding Heart Yard are prejudiced because they've been told what to think about foreigners by their government. It's actually a double insult: the government is cynical and opportunistic, but the British people are lazy-minded and don't want to think for themselves.