This chapter describes the growth of the Department of External Affairs at home and abroad over a thirty-year period since its reorganisation as a separate Department in 1935,examines its functions and considers its role in the formulation and execution of foreign policy. An outline of its history between 1901 and 1935 is also given.

Following Peters’ typology, we describe patronage appointments in Mongolia as political agents. We trace the development of Mongolia’s civil service from ancient into contemporary times. We emphasize the importance of political factions within the two dominant parties and the lack of a programmatic focus of the parties as the basis for the important role that patronage plays in the Mongolian hybrid presidential-parliamentary political system. We use patronage appointments in the diplomatic service as a case study of practices. Since factions within the two dominant parties are defined by personal ties rather than ideological orientation, we conclude that patronage appointments primarily act as political agents of these factions.

Chapter 8 is about the trial of Tinkler Ducket, a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, who in 1739 was arraigned before the Vice-Chancellor’s court in Cambridge accused of atheism on the basis of a letter he had written four years earlier, in which he gloried at having reached ‘the Top, the ne plus ultra of atheism’. The case was dominated by the testimony of Mary Richards, who accused Ducket of attempting to seduce her, and less attention was paid to a remarkable defence speech that Ducket made, in which he argued for the right to freedom of thought and private judgement and claimed that an atheist might be a perfectly moral being. Various witnesses were called, most of whom attested to Ducket’s good character, but the court declared him guilty, and he was expelled from the university. It is argued that the case illustrates a degree of complacency, combined with sensationalism, on the part of the authorities, which made its outcome a foregone conclusion. An appendix lists the various accounts of Ducket’s trial.