It seems to be widely acknowledged today that states need secret intelligence services. It is generally accepted, so long as those states are thought to be legitimate, trustworthy, and to represent a public as well as a more partisan interest. But it wasn't always the case. For most of the 19th century, espionage was thought to be a low and foreign practice that the British - or at any rate the English - should not stoop to in any circumstances. This was for a number of reasons: because it used deception, which was immoral; because the state could not always be relied on not to abuse it; and because it was counter-productive, since foreign espionage was often claimed as a cause of war, and domestic surveillance was considered intrinsically damaging to the trust people needed to have in their governments, and in each other, if they were to be content and thus politically stable.

LRB 19 November 2009 | PDF Download