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pears to us that the two phrases are suggestive only of one idea) point to the introduction of incompetent persons into the public service, the sooner they are interfered with' and "frustrated" the better; but we cannot think that the patron is ever likely to entertain any such wish. The patron satisfies his client by giving him a nomination to the service, though entrance into it is obtainable only by the fulfilment of certain conditions. "I have done my part," he says, in effect, to the nominee. "Here is the nomination; it remains with you to determine whether you are to keep it or to lose it. I can give you the entrée of the service, but I cannot give you brains or industry." The conditions do not in reality detract from the obligation, and no one but a fool would think that they do. If we give a friend an admission-ticket to the opera, he is not fool enough to think more lightly of the kindness because he cannot go to his stall in top-boots and a "blue fogel." There are few good things in this world to be obtained without conforming to certain obligations as the conditions of actual possession. The favour of the patron is as great and as worthy of gratitude, whether the nominee takes up his appointment or not; and if the nomination reverts to the patron, he can give it to another, and so place two families under an obligation by means of a single appointment.

These objections, therefore, to simple examination, are not of much weight. Let us see what follows. "It causes delay and inconvenience by the rejection of candidates, and the necessity of providing others." There is something apparently more solid in this objection, but its solidity is after all delusive. If it were necessary to fill up substantive appointments post-haste, there might be vacancies in public departments any delay in the filling of which might occasion temporary inconvenience; but the existence of supplementary or probationary lists, from which actual appointments on the establishment may be filled, obviates inconvenience of this kind. Every public office either has, or ought to

have, a certain number of supernumerary clerks, to be brought, as vacancies occur, on the strength of the establishment; and no great public inconvenience can arise from one or two more or less of such supernumeraries being attached to a department. This, therefore, we hold also to be an imaginary objection.

"But," say the Commissioners, "the rejections throw unpleasant discredit on the patron." If it be so, the "unpleasantness" may have its advantages, for it may make patrons more careful in their distribution of patronage. But if the responsibility as to apparent fitness of the candidate were in some measure to be removed from the nominating minister, by a declaration such as we have suggested on the part of the person recommending, the objection of the Commissioners would be removed.

The minister would say, and with sufficient fairness, "I cannot be expected to know the physical, moral, and intellectual qualities of all the young men whom I nominate to the public service, but Mr Jones was recommended to me by Sir Thomas Brown, who declared that he knew the young man's family, and believed him to be a fit person for employment in the service of Government. I know Sir Thomas Brown to be an honourable gentleman, and I accepted his recommendation." This would be the position in which the minister would stand with respect to the patronage in his gift; and if, under such circumstances, his nominees were rejected, there would be no discredit in it. Moreover, we are somewhat disposed to think that, under such circumstances, the rejection of a candidate thus vouched for, would not be an event of very frequent occurrence. It is worthy of consideration whether the publication of occasional lists of Government nominees, showing by whom nominated, by whom recommended, and whether accepted or rejected by the Civil Service Commissioners, might not tend to diminish jobbery, and materially to reduce the number of bad appointments.

"If the rejections are frequent," it is alleged-the words being those

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of the Committee, following out the opinions of the Commissionerstheir frequency, instead of being ascribed to the unfitness of those sent up to pass, is attributed to the standard being fixed too high." And we suspect that it would be justly so attributed, if rejections were frequent, under any well-regulated system of nomination; but we have the strongest reasons for supposing that rejections would not be frequent. Again, the candidate who fails after nomination considers himself aggrieved by the loss of an appointment which he had looked upon as his own, and his patron probably shares in the feeling." We have, in a great measure, disposed of this objection already. We will only add, that the rejected competitor is far more likely to feel himself aggrieved than the rejected nominee. The nominee must know that his admission to, or exclusion from, the service is dependent upon himself, and that, if he is rejected, he has himself only to blame. But the rejected competitor may argue that he was not rejected because he was deficient, but because others were more efficient-that he was not below the standard of qualification, but that the successful competitors were higher above it than himself. Success, under such circumstances, is a mere matter of accident. All depends upon the degree of intelligence and amount of information possessed by other competitors. Batches of competitors vary. A youth rejected in August might have succeeded if he had gone up in May. We repeat, therefore, that a youth who loses his chance of entering the service, really through no fault or no failure of his own, is more likely, and certainly has more cause, to feel aggrieved than one who, having no competitors, is dependent solely on his own exertions, and fails to attain the minimum standard of proficiency. Indeed, the Committee themselves very naïvely observe, that "the candidate who fails in a competitive trial is not rejected as unfit." Surely this is a sufficient answer to what they have advanced before on the subject of grievances. To be rejected not as unfit-or, in

other words, as fit-is surely a substantial grievance. To prove your competency for a particular office and not to obtain it after all, is really a great hardship. The youth spends his time and his money in acquiring a certain amount of proficiency, and at last sacrifices it all, not, we repeat, because he is not proficient, but because others are more proficient than himself. Surely this is a hard case, and if any rejected youth has a right to complain, the rejected competitor who has passed a creditable examination is the one. He is assuredly the rejected one whose fate the public are most likely to compassionate.

"As to moral qualifications," say the Committee, following the Commissioners, "it cannot be alleged that in the majority of cases where candidates for office are nominated by heads of departments, there is any personal knowledge of the candidate on the part of the minister nominating." We have already suggested a remedy for this, in the shape of a declaratory statement on the part of the person recommending the candidate to the nominating minister. "Certificates of character," it is added, are required for those who compete; and a period of probation, during which the appointment is only provisionally conferred, gives facilities for the discoveries of any defects disqualifying for office." But there is no reason why these conditions should be attached only to the competition system-why certificates of character should not be demanded under the system of nomination-and why, under the latter system, the candidate should not be placed in the first instance ona supernumerary or probationary test, and subsequently drafted into the regular establishment. In fact, all the advantages which the Committee discourse upon are common to both systems, and all the disadvantages peculiar to the substitution. of the competitive test.

From such premises as these which we have examined, the Civil Service Commissioners draw the conclusion that there is nothing like the competitive system. They are in favour of unlimited competition, but they

think that it might be the safer plan to drift gradually into it; and so, for the present, they recommend a compromise. "The limited competition," they say, "may be made effective by means of a preliminary examination, which should distinguish the competent from the incompetent candidate; and, by applying the competitive examination to the competent candidates only in the proportion of three or more such candidates to each vacancy, the system of limited competition, thus arranged, would approach much nearer to open competition than to simple nomination." Now, this appears to us to be an aggravation of one of the very worst features of the competitive system. Our unhappy youths are to be drag ged over the slow fires of protracted failure. It is proposed that they should compete for permission to compete, and that then they should compete for the actual appointment. This is to compel the majority of candidates to spend more time and more money, and to subject themselves to more and more painful suspense and sickness of heart, only at last to be bitterly disappointed. The first success will aggravate the bit terness of the subsequent failure. It is bad enough to be remanded to a state of unemployed hopelessness after one competition; but to strip a youth bare of hope after two trials, and the first a successful one, and to turn him adrift in the world, after all this waste of time and money, of heart and hope, would be indeed cruel in the extreme. We set our faces most strenuously against so inhuman a proposition. Mr Mann, whose suggestions are also examined by Lord Stanleys Committee, is in favour of open competitive examination on a large scale, and we like his plan the better of the two.

The Committee, however, though in favour of the open system, declare that, knowing the prejudices and the interests against which it has to contend, recommend, in the first instance, the adoption only of a system of limited competition. They recommend, accordingly, that from henceforth every vacancy occurring among clerks in the Civil Service be competed for by not less than three can

didates, to be nominated as at present, each of whom, in the first instance, shall have passed the preliminary test-examination; except in the case of a single vacancy, which shall not be competed for by less than five. This is, in fact, to adopt the very objectionable system of double competition recommended by the Civil Service Commissioners. We hope that we have said sufficient to raise not only grave doubts of the propriety, but a strong conviction of the folly and the cruelty, of adopting any such system.

But, after all, it may be said that even by our own admission, the Civil Service of the country is not what it ought to be; that its improvement has not kept pace with the progressive intelligence of the nation; and that something ought to be done to raise the character and to enhance the competency of the working servants of the State. We do not admit this. The public are not served as they ought to be; but, all things considered, the wonder is that they are served so well. There is at least one commendable passage in the Committee's Report. Almost at the end of it, they very sensibly observe, that "success in obtaining qualified candidates for the Civil Service must depend quite as much on the prospects and opportunities of promotion subsequently held out to the clerk in his official career, as on the immediate pecuniary advantages offered, or the judicious selection of young men in the first instance." What really is needed to raise the character of the young men entering the Civil Service is increased inducement to enter it. As it now is, the prospects of the service are such as to induce only youths of mediocre ability and little hope of success in the open market of professional competition to launch into a career which presents few prizes even to the most successful, but which has no actual blanks. Whether the system of appointment be one of absolute nomination or open competition, the character of the applicants or competitors for employment in the service of the State must depend very much on the value of the presents or the prizes that are offered. Under ex

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isting circumstances, if a man has three sons, and he looks to the Civil Service to absorb one of them, the one selected for that service will in most cases be the least intelligent, the least promising of the three. Let us endeavour to raise the character of the service itself, and all the rest will follow in time. present we appear to be beginning at. the wrong end. Sublata causa tollitur effectus. If the Civil Service does not entice into its ranks the higher intelligence of the nation, it is because there is nothing to tempt that intelligence into it. Let us do away with this reproach, and we shall no longer have to complain that the State is not as well served as private companies or individuals.

On a former occasion we offered some observations on the general neglect experienced even by the higher members of the permanent Civil Service; and we do not purpose to return, save perhaps in an incidental manner, to this branch of the subject. Our present design is to treat of the prospects of the many, not of the few; but it is not to be forgotten that the honours and rewards obtainable by the few are so many direct stimulants to the many, and that a profession without any high prize is not one to attract into it men conscious of intellectual eminence and eager to assert it. We feel that until something is done to open out, through the permanent Civil Service of the country, certain roads to honourable distinction, and to emancipate it in some measure from the overpowering domination of the party chiefs of the hour, the young ambition of the country will not be eager to enter its ranks. Without these inducements, however, it is possible that the respectability of the service may be rendered even more respectable by some change in the present system of appointment and promotion; and to this end we would offer, before we conclude, a few practical suggestions to the consideration of all who take an interest in the subject.

But it would appear to be almost essential to the construction of any thing like a definite system, to determine, in limine, whether the Civil

Service is one or many. The Civil Service Commissioners are perfectly well aware of, and are laudably anxious to mitigate, as far as possible, the evils resulting from the "fragmentary character" of the service. The Civil Service at present appears to be a bundle of parts without any unity or cohesiveness in them. Ä youth obtains an appointment to a particular office; in that office, as a general rule, he grows grey, and out of that office he passes only through the gate of superannuation. You do not hear that he has obtained an appointment in the Civil Service, but in the Foreign Office or in Somerset House. Now, this detached system, it is needless to say, has something to recommend it. One branch of the public service, it may be said, is as much as a man can fairly master in his life. We want experience-a thorough knowledge of details — a familiarity with men and things such as can only be acquired by time; and every one knows that a rolling stone gathers no moss." But, on the other hand, it is to be said that men are wont to stagnate if they remain too long in the same place; they slide on too smoothly in the groove, and grow drowsy for want of something to arouse them. New brooms, they say, sweep clean; or, to pass from the language of the proverb-monger to that of the poet

"A new hand, a new eye,

May do much at our vigour's waning point."

On the whole, we doubt whether there would be any loss of practical efficiency in our public offices if there were to be more frequent departmental changes. There would always be power of control in heads of departments; and the frequency of change need never be such as to cause any official embarrassment. Whilst, therefore, there is no cause to apprehend any departmental inconvenience as the result of the greater oneness or integrity of the service, there is reasonable hope that, by extending the area of employment, and thus enlarging the field of honourable ambition, the general zeal of the service would be stimulated, and its activities increased. A man

with small hope of promotion in his own department, might obtain it in another for which he is better qualified. Indeed, if these departmental transfers were more frequent, there might be better hope of finding "the right man in the right place." On the whole, we concur in opinion with the Civil Service Commissioners, that the fragmentary character of the service is an evil to be deplored, and therefore to be mitigated. We would especially set our faces against it at the outset of the civil servant's career. We would have no departmental nominations. The initial appointment should be simply to a Civil Service (probationary) clerkship. We wish to recommend no violent reforms, and we have the strongest possible conviction that any proposal to transfer the patronage from the hands of the parliamentary to that of the permanent chief of a department would, in the present state of affairs, meet with no acceptance; and therefore we do not record it. It may come to that some of these days. At present all we would say is, that the nominating minister, instead of nominating, as now, a young man to his own department, should nominate generally to a clerkship in the Civil Service-the offices constituting the legitimate service being distinctly declared. Youths of sixteen or seventeen might be so nominated-the Civil Service Commissioners declaring at the commencement of every year the number of nominations that may be disposed of in the course of the ensuing twelve months, and these nominations being distributed, in accordance with some fixed rule, among the different members of the Ministry. These ministerial nominees should be appointed in the manner which we have already indicated. They should be recommended by some responsible person to the Minister, and should produce certificates

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of physical competency, and of moral and intellectual character. These certificates being approved by the Civil Service Commissioners, the candidates should be subjected to a preliminary examination. All who pass that examination should become probationary members of the service. The probationary period should extend over two or three years. During that time, the probationers may be drafted to different departments, as they are required; the Civil Service Commissioners, in military phraseology, " telling them off" according to the qualifications evinced by them at the preliminary examination. At the end of their probationary period of service they should again present themselves to the Civil Service Commissioners with certificates of proficiency, good conduct, &c., from the departments in which they have served; and if these certificates are satisfactory they should be subjected to a second examination, intended to test their official, rather than their general, competency. This examination should not be a competitive examination, any further than the relative rank of the civil servant is concerned. If he passes the examination at all, he should become ipso facto a member of the Civil Service; * but he should rank with the other men of his year according to the comparative amount of ascer tained proficiency exhibited at this second examination. We would offer a still greater inducement to exertion during the probationary period. The clerkships thus obtained, being distributed over a certain number of Government offices, the man who passes the best examination should be entitled to choose his department -we must add, however, under certain conditions and with certain limitations; that is to say, the power of choice should not be ab