chinery by which the government of the country is carried on. Their duties necessarily range over a wide surface, embrace a great variety of occupations and requirements, and call for a corresponding diversity of ability, as well as of knowledge; and according to the degree in which these are possessed and applied, will the actual every-day conduct of affairs be well or ill performed. A country like England, with its almost boundless extent of territory, its vast and complicated social, political, and commercial relations-more various, extensive, and complicated than those of any other country-can less perhaps than almost any other, afford to have the ordinary working machinery of its government in an imperfect condition. Yet it seems to be allowed by general consent, as it certainly seems to accord with general experience, that this machinery is extremely imperfect. The only parties who have publicly denied that the service is in an inefficient state, are some few of the heads of departments; and even this denial has been rather a somewhat hesitating refusal to admit the terms or the extent of the charge than an attempt to refute it.

The imperfection may therefore be taken as admitted. But before the remedy can be sought after, we must endeavour to ascertain in what direction lies the fault. Are the men to blame? or is it the system of which they form a part that is defective?

Before attempting to answer these questions, we must, however, inquire somewhat more specifically, who are the officers, and what are the offices which constitute the Civil Service. The offices usually included in the term have been divided into two classes: the first consists of the Treasury, Home, Foreign, Colonial, Privy Council, Board of Trade, Admiralty, War, Ordnance, Paymaster-General's, Exchequer, Board of Works, and Audit Offices, which, according to the return of the number of persons liable to assessment for the Superannuation Fund, employ 1,855 clerks and superior officers, and 390 messengers. The second class consists of the National Debt, General Register, State Paper, Record, Stationery, Public Works Loan, Customs, Coast-Guárd, Excise, Stamps and Taxes, and Post Offices, which employ 6,330 clerks, and 7,763 messengers, exclusive of postmen, &c. In all there are therefore, according to this computation, in these offices, 8,185 clerks, and 8,153 messengers. But the Census Returns state the matter somewhat differently, and arrange the officers more distinctly. They give for the Civil Service in Great Britain 105 heads of public departments, 190 secretaries and chief clerks, 378 officers employed in special capacities, inspectors, professional advisers, &c., 1,893 heads of subordinate divisions or branches of establishments, accountants, librarians, &c., 3,476 clerks on the establishment, 506 extra or temporary clerks, 11,267 others, not being clerks, employed on some special duty, 3,867 officekeepers, messengers, and porters, and 17,465 inferior revenue-officers, postmen and letter-carriers, being a total of 39,147 persons, or if the 14,531 artificers and labourers employed in the dockyards, naval arsenals, &c., be added, 53,678 persons employed in the Civil Service. Neither of these statements, however, includes the diplomatic and consular, or the commissariat departments, which, as well as other foreign establishments, would undoubtedly "come within the

scope of any plan, the object of which was to secure the appointment of qualified persons for the Civil Service of the country.' Our present inquiry relates only, or primarily, to the clerks and upper servants; but it may be useful to bear the larger number in remembrance.

What then is the character of these clerks and upper servants? We have before us a thick 'blue-book,' which contains a Report on the " Organization of the Permanent Civil Service," by two of the highest class of officers of this service; and letters from other permanent chiefs of the various departments, commenting on that Report. Of the contents of the volume we shall speak more fully hereafter; at present we only refer to it, in order to borrow from this unim peachable source a passage or two respecting the condition of the service. First, then, we turn to the Report itself; and there we find it stated, that although there are " numerous and honourable exceptions," the service is characterised by indolence, routine, and inefficiency.

"It would be natural to expect," say the Commissioners, "that so important a profession would attract into its ranks the ablest and the most ambitious of the youth of the country; that the keenest emulation would prevail among those who had entered it; and that such as were endowed with superior qualifications would rapidly rise to distinction and public eminence. Such, however, is by no means the case. Admission into the Civil Service is indeed eagerly sought after, but it is for the unambitious, and the indolent, or incapable, that it is chiefly desired. Those whose abilities do not warrant an expectation that they will succeed in the open professions, where they must encounter the competition of their contemporaries, and those whom indolence of temperament or physical infirmities unfit for active exertions, are placed in the Civil Service, where they may obtain an honourable livelihood with little labour, and with no risk, where their success depends upon their simply avoiding any flagrant misconduct, and attending with moderate regularity to routine duties and in which they are secured against the ordinary consequences of old age, or failing health, by an arrangement which provides them with the means of supporting themselves after they have become incapacitated."

It may be supposed, as it has been very commonly said, that this is too highly coloured; that the Commissioners having formed an unfavourabie estimate of the junior members of the service, in the endeavour to state their case strongly, were led to use language much overcharged; or to apply generally that, which if true at all, was only applicable to a very limited portion of the service. But we find the Accountant-General of the Navy broadly stating, that "there is scarcely a department of the Government in which you will not find some unambitious, indolent, and incapable men, who have been got into the service, not because they were indolent or unambitious, but because their parents or guardians could get them off their hands without difficulty or expense of education." And if parents and guardians were able without difficulty thus to get off their hands indolent, unambitious, and uneducated sons, we may be quite sure

the supply of such would not be deficient. But even less favourable in his review of the service, is Sir James Stephen, now Professor of History in Cambridge University, but who, for thirty-five years, was in the public service, holding first the office of Assistant UnderSecretary, and subsequently, that of Under-Secretary of State in the Colonial Department; and who is a very decided opponent of the views of the Commissioners. He states, that during the period he was in the public service, the members of the Colonial Office" were clearly distinguishable into three classes: the first, a very small minority; the second, being more numerous than the first; and the third, exceeding the numbers of the other two united.

In the

narrow circle of the first of these classes were to be found, not indeed combined in any one of the members of it, but variously distributed among them all, qualities of which I can still never think without the highest admiration and respect-such as large capacity of mind, literary powers of rare excellence, sound scholarship, indomitable energy, mature experience in public affairs, and an absolute selfdevotion to the public service. The second of the three classes which I have mentioned, was composed of men who performed diligently, faithfully, and judiciously the duties to which they were called; and those duties were, not rarely, such as belonged rather to ministers of state than to the clerks in the office of such a minister. The members of the third class, that is, the majority of the Colonial Department in my time, possessed only in a low degree, and some of them in a degree almost incredibly low, either the talents or the habits of men of business, or the industry, the zeal, or the knowledge required for the effective performance of their appropriate functions. The members of the first,' and, in some cases, of the 'second class' also, joined us not as school-boys, but in their early manhood, with their intellectual habits formed, and with a fund, more or less considerable, of literary or scientific knowledge. The members of what I have described as the third class,' usually entered the office at the age of eighteen or nineteen, coming directly from school, and bringing with them no greater store of information, or maturity of mind, than usually belongs to a boy in the fifth form at Eton, Westminster, or Rugby. What they so brought they never afterwards increased by any private study. Finding themselves engaged in the actual business of life, they assumed that their preparation for it was complete; and (as far as I could judge) they never afterwards made or attempted any mental self-improvement." Nor is this state of things confined to any one department. So far indeed is this from being the case, that Mr. Chadwick, than whom few have had wider opportunities of knowing the real state of the various departments, expressly states, when commenting on this passage of Sir James Stephen's letter, that "the above may be taken as a short view of the position of the public service relating to private service, and as constituting, as respects the higher offices, a pressing case for the proposed measures of amendment." And subsequently, he observes," It is a fact, really of most serious importance, that the larger proportion of appointments has been given to persons of education and qualifications greatly below the range of their own

class. A secretary, complaining of the disadvantages of his service, related, in illustration, that out of three clerks sent to him from the usual sources, there was only one of whom any use whatever could be made, and that, of the other two, one came to take his place at the office, leading a bull-dog in a string. I have been assured that, under another commission, out of eighty clerks supplied by the patronage-secretary, there were not more then twelve who were worth their salt, for the performance of service requiring only a sound common education." Mr. Anderson, the principal clerk for financial business at the Treasury, mentions likewise, that the Commissioner at the head of a large department, finding that it was necessary to make improvements in the way of keeping the accounts, which were in a very defective state, determined upon applying the principles of the commercial system of book-keeping to the public accounts of his department," but although he had a large establishment of clerks almost wholly employed in the business of accounts to select from, he could not find one who was sufficiently conversant with the scientific principles of accounts to carry out his plans of improvement." Yet the system which he proposed to introduce, was one which for a long period has been in almost universal practice in this and other countries for all accounts of any magnitude.'

arc.

It would be idle to quote further, and we need not dwell on the opposite statements put forward by the supporters of things as they The charge of incompetency and inefficiency they meet with that "general but emphatic denial" which such broad imputations, it is said, alone admit of: a more particular charge would, no doubt, receive an equally energetic contradiction. "I venture to assert,' says Mr. Waddington, and his assertion may be taken to represent the views of those who take that side of the question, "I venture to assert that the hopeless incompetency described in the Report is rare indeed; and that competency is the general rule, the exceptions being not the honourable ones, as stated in the Report, but the dishonourable, and not being numerous, but few." Mr. Waddington, however, like those who think with him, takes avowedly a lower standard for the service than the Commissioners, believing it to be a sheer absurdity to expect that the "ablest and most ambitious youths of the country" could be tempted to enter it; yet even he is still ready to admit that, "though by no means in an inefficient or discreditable state, like most other institutions, it is capable of receiving a certain degree of improvement."

But how is it that so much incompetency is admitted into the service, or, being admitted, is retained there? The answer to either question is not difficult. It arises from the method of appointment in the first instance, and then from the routine of occupation and the course of promotion. The original appointment to an office is by the nomination of the political chief of the department to which it belongs. Very much the greater amount of patronage of this kind is, however, vested in the Treasury; and the Secretary of the Treasury is generally known in the service and in the House of Commons as the Patronage Secretary. According to Mr. Bromley, the Accountant to the Navy, this "concentration of the whole, or nearly so, of the

patronage of the public service," has chiefly taken place since "the period of the great reductions and consequent alterations attending the passing of the Reform Bill in 1832, since which time the patronage which then rested with the heads of departments has become absorbed in the Treasury." The consequence of this method of appointment, at any rate in the case of the junior clerks, is that the persons nominated are mostly personal or family connexions, dependents, or recommendations; or young men whose parents or friends have some political interest or parliamentary influence; or, in a few cases, youths who, as the sons of meritorious public servants and others, are supposed to have a primary claim to public favour. The nomination, in a word, is seldom or never made on account of personal, though it may occasionally be of vicarious, merit; is frequently due to family and class influence; but is most often intended as a payment for political service done or expected. Nothing can, it is evident, be well worse in theory than this system, and nothing can well be worse in practice. It is, as Mr. Gladstone truly enough called it, "a system of unmixed evil." And he stated, as the result of his observation and experience, "With respect to the first admission to the public service, there is no responsibility whatever. . . You may appoint the most indifferent persons, and in a great number of instances the most indifferent persons are appointed :" adding, as though to mark his sense of the evil still more emphatically, "The getting rid of that system would be an immense relief and blessing to the country."

But the person so nominated does not necessarily receive the office to which he has been nained. For some time past, in most of the public offices, the nominee has had to pass an examination, conducted by some one or more of the upper officers of the department before his nomination could be confirmed. The examination varied in character with the department; for the nature of the examination was left to be determined by the department itself, and the rigour with which it was conducted depended solely upon the examiners. That as the rule it would be an insufficient scrutiny into the qualifications of the candidate, might, without much risk of error, be surmised from a consideration of the relative positions of the several parties-patron, nominee, and departmental examiner. In point of fact the examination was usually a mere form. Mr. Romilly, chairman of the Board of Audit, himself an examiner under the old system, and one of the Board of Examiners appointed by a recent Order in Council, admits this. "The nomination obtained, the subsequent appointment may be said to be practically secured. I have been twelve years the member of a Board, and during that period not one candidate has ever been rejected; and only one, who was wholly incapable, was, with difficulty, induced to resign, after a still greater difficulty on the part of the Board to say that they would reject him if he did not." After a statement so startling for its admissions, it is hardly necessary to say a word on the evils which must result from such an examination following such a nomination; or if any observations be needed, they will be best supplied by the sentence in Mr. Romilly's letter which immediately succeeds that