The Shadow of Great Britain

Capítulo 1282: Chapter 164: London Reactionaries

Faith can be entrusted to God; all else must be monitored.

—— British Secret Intelligence Bureau Motto

“Secret Service Fund?”

The Duke of Sussex was evidently unfamiliar with this term. He furrowed his brow, searching his mind, but no recollection of this fund existed.

Arthur noticed the Duke’s perplexity. However, one couldn’t blame him for not knowing about this fund.

Because as its name implies, it’s a secret fund, so much so that many members of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords are unaware of its existence.

Although Parliament reviews and approves the government’s financial allocations annually, only a minority of members have the patience to read through the government’s financial report page by page.

Even among the small group of members who do discover this peculiarly named special fund, they might not necessarily inquire into where this money is actually spent.

For most Tory and Whig members adhering to party discipline, discussing a government expenditure in Parliament without first understanding its specific use is risky.

After all, no one knows whose financial territory this money belongs to. If you insist on opposing these prominent figures, you’ll soon grasp the significance of ‘silence is golden’.

However, for Treasury civil servants and stakeholders like Arthur, they know the history of the ‘Secret Service Fund’ inside out.

This is a rather historical and old fund, established during the restoration of Charles II in 1660. Initially, it was primarily used for propaganda work in European Continent countries, bribing temporary informants and amateur spies, and offering diplomatic bribes to foreign politicians.

But as time went by, due to the government’s neglect of intelligence work, this fund was frequently misappropriated for domestic political activities over the following hundred years.

The first Whig Prime Minister in British history, Walpole, during his 21-year tenure, repeatedly used the fund for domestic election campaigns. In the 1734 election alone, he siphoned off nearly forty thousand pounds to treat and gift voters, host speaking rallies, and more.

The subsequent Tory government followed suit. When the Earl of Bute was Prime Minister, he extracted eighty thousand pounds from it in one go to bribe parliament members, ensuring the ‘Paris Treaty’ ending the Seven Years’ War passed in the lower house.

During the tenure of William Pitt the Younger as Prime Minister, the Secret Service Fund finally returned to its original purpose. Pitt primarily used it for foreign bribery, with France during the Great Revolution becoming its largest expenditure.

Under Pitt’s direction, British temporary representative in Switzerland, William Wycombe, used Switzerland as a base to continuously launch intelligence wars against their good neighbors, the French.

In just three years, Wycombe organized multiple royalist revolts and assassination attempts against France, including a notable attempt to bomb Napoleon.

Although these operations all ended in failure and most British spies were arrested, some highly skilled spies evaded scrutiny and successfully infiltrated the French military. Even before Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, the British government had already learned of the French’s next military plans.

Even though the Secret Service Fund played a significant role during the Napoleonic Wars, the ingrained mercantile character of the British determined that it would soon be misallocated to other uses after the war ended.

The London Police Intelligence Bureau couldn’t get a share, and the Foreign Office, Home Office, Royal Navy, and Army could only stare at this money in envy.

Despite being in any department, intelligence work was viewed as menial.

Thus, the Army Topographic Bureau, Royal Navy Hydrographic Office, and Scotland Yard Police Intelligence Department had minimal influence on White Hall.

Whether because life was too smooth or everyone’s morals were quite high, even British foreign officers rarely used secret channels to gather intelligence. Those supposed to undertake spy tasks, especially stationed military officers, particularly disdained espionage.

Compared to gathering intelligence through underground channels, they preferred spending time reading newspapers and finding public information from Britain’s proud, world-scale largest military library.

But you couldn’t blame them, considering the staffing: Royal Navy, Army, and Scotland Yard’s dedicated intelligence personnel were fewer than twenty across the departments, with an annual budget totaling under forty thousand pounds, yet they had to collect domestic and international maritime and land military intelligence as well as domestic security intelligence.

With so much work and so little budget and manpower, it’s no wonder people muddled through work.

Still, even facing the same funding shortage and manpower issues, there were significant performance differences among the three departments.

The Army Topographic Bureau and Royal Navy Hydrographic Office were poor, but they cared about reputation, so their work quality was naturally unimpressive.

The London Police Intelligence Bureau, though similarly poor, often received commendations from His Majesty the King and the Home Office for their work.

The working style of an organization is usually closely related to the character of its founding leader.

Sir Arthur Hastings initially directed the Police Intelligence Bureau’s work approach: the bureau is somewhat poor, but we can afford to be shameless!