Daily Inspiration Quote by A. P. Herbert

A. P. Herbert lands this like a legal brief written by a comedian: he grants the premise everyone already mutters ("all allow") and then sharpens it into a paradox that humiliates the institution without ever raising his voice. The target is the kind of grandly titled public body that survives by sounding indispensable. If the official is "high", Herbert implies, it is only in rank and salary; the work itself is suspiciously low-to-nonexistent.

The line turns on a neat bait-and-switch. You expect an argument about pay; you get an argument about reality. "There wasn't any Board, and now there isn't any Trade" is devastating because it reframes bureaucracy as theater: first a Board that exists mainly as a sign on a door, then a policy outcome so barren it erases the very thing the Board supposedly governs. It reads like a punchline but functions as an indictment of administrative self-importance - the machine not merely failing to improve commerce, but actively substituting paperwork for trade.

Context matters: Herbert, a lawyer, satirist, and parliamentarian, spent his career needling the British state's talent for multiplying committees, titles, and salaries while claiming public necessity. The clipped diction ("there wasn't", "now there isn't") mimics the cadences of parliamentary debate, but the logic is comic in its ruthlessness: if the institution never had substance, and its stewardship ends with nothing left to steward, the only thriving enterprise is the official's paycheck.