partment of business, public or private; and that it is really no greater hardship to the outside community that they cannot make their way to official place and position because they have not family influence, than that they cannot make their fortunes in commerce or trade for want of family capital.

Moreover, even as regards the Public Service itself, the principle of public competition is, after all, only brought into partial operation. Junior clerkships in the public offices, artillery cadetships, and other minor appointments of the same kind, are competed for by boys who have not arrived at the full growth of their intellect, and whose official capacity as men cannot be tested by such competition. But we do not hear that higher appointments are competed for, or that it is intended to extend the system to any point of practical utility. Theoretically, it is true, official promotion depends on merit; but everybody knows that practically this is not the case. And it appears to us, that if the object be to give the Public a share in the management of their own concerns, the competition should be, not for the initial appointment to office, but for the subsequent official rise. In this, however, we are in some measure forestalling what properly belongs to a later stage of the argument. All we desire here to advance is, that the principle of public competition is only partially recognised, and that too in the least serviceable manner. What really concerns the public is, not that they should be permitted to go in for clerkships at £80 a-year, but that they should have a chance of obtaining those higher offices, the due performance of the duties of which really affects the interests of the country. It may be said that men appointed to such offices have previously proved their capacity, and that on account of this proved capacity they are appointed. But still more capable men may be passed over. The fitness is not comparative fitness tested by competition. An examination is one thing; a competitive examination is another. A man of proved capacity, it is said, is not required to undergo the ordeal of

an examination. But it is reasonable that a young aspirant should be called upon to prove that he is not absolutely an ass. If, however, the vindication of the principle demands not merely that fit men, but that the fittest, should be appointed, it is surely of more importance that the test of comparison should be applied in the higher than in the lower places of the public service. To say that the outside public are admitted to a share in the government of the country, because a few clerkships and cadetships are held up to public competition, is in reality a mockery and an imposture. Such application of the principle is wholly a mistake. If the theory, that the public have a right to have a hand in the management of their own concerns be a sound theory, and if it be capable of practical development, it should not be restricted as it is to the competitive examination of boys. It is either good for all, or good for nothing.

The argument, therefore, in favour of the competitive principle, based upon the common right of the Public to manage their own affairs, is praetically of little account. We must look for the real defence of the system in the allegation that competitive examinations contribute to the increased efficiency of the public service. We are likely, it is supposed, to obtain a better class of public servants if the choice be not limited to those who have some kind of family or personal interest, whereby they may obtain entrance into the service by simple nomination. It must be admitted that the hypothesis is not an unreasonable one: indeed, it may appear to be a self-evident proposition, that to extend the area of selection is to increase the efficiency of the service. But it is worth while to examine it somewhat, that we may ascertain whether, after all, it is a demonstrable fact, or merely a plausible delusion.

In the first place, then, we do not hold with Mr Dickens and other "administrative reformers," that the Tite-Barnacles are absolutely and entirely nuisances, to be rudely divulsed from the great rock of the public service. The hereditary place

holder is an unpopular animal, but he is not as black as he is painted. We have shown that theoretically there is nothing so abominable in this handing down from father to son of the capital acquired during a life of official service. Practically, it is still less offensive. As a rule, it may be alleged that the best public servants are those who have been, so to speak, "born and bred" in a particular department. We do not mean that an infusion of new blood from time to time into all departments of the public service is not expedientnay, necessary. If there were no such new blood, old traditions would be too pertinaciously worshipped; there would be no escape from the trammels of time-honoured routine. But routine is not a bad thing in its way. Indeed, we do not know how the public service could thrive without it. It is quite as necessary that somenay, that the majority of official men should keep themselves steadily in the groove, as that every now and then one should be found with courage to work out of it, and ability to do good in the more eccentric course. It would be curious-if it would not be disastrous to experimentalise upon a public office for a month, and see how its affairs would be managed by a number of administrative reformers, with what they call "large views." In their attempt to get rid of the red-tape, they would soon find themselves so hopelessly entangled in it, that the affairs of the country would be brought to a dead lock. The working machinery of government is dependent for its just action on the efficiency of the routine-men; and the most efficient routine-men are those who bring with them to their duties the traditions of the department-who have been brought up in the office, and trained and disciplined in its formalities. In the junior grades of the public service, indeed, it will commonly be found that the most efficient men are those who have been trained under the eye of some senior in the department. There is no more important service that the head of a department can render to the State than the education of the public servants placed under him; but it is a difficult, a laborious

duty, and few men can accomplish it without something more than a public interest in their subordinates. The best-trained and most efficient servants in a public office are generally, therefore, men whose fathers or uncles or elder brothers have been in the department before them. They may be a little too much addicted to red-tapery and routine; but we repeat that in the rank and file of the public service this respect for the traditions of the office is necessary to keep it in working order, and that original conceptions are serviceable only to the State when they are confined to the few. An intimate acquaintance with forms and precedents, and a clear understanding of the system of recordkeeping observed in the department, are the acquirements most useful in official subordinates. They may be despised by administrative reformers, but only they who know the nature and the extent of public business can fairly calculate the saving of time in the aggregate resulting from adherence to a system which appears to involve loss of time in individual cases. Everybody knows that a short-cut is often a very long-cut. There may be more directness than is supposed in circumlocution, after all.

Now, it is easy to perceive that if our public offices were to be stocked with men appointed thereto on account of their superior talents and acquirements, there would be a general repugnance to this routine-work and drudgery of detail. A few clever men in a public department, especially in the higher grades of it, are doubtless very serviceable; but who would like to be at the head of a department full of clever men? and of clever men, too, occupying their positions by virtue of their cleverness. Such men are likely to think, if not to say, that they did not compete for the privilege of doing drudgery-work that might be equally well, perhaps better, done by the slowest of their competitors. "What is the use of cramming and competing for this?" exclaims a clever youth, rejoicing in the number of his "marks," when he is told by a chief clerk to copy a despatch, to do a sum in

addition, or to index a volume of correspondence. But young TiteBarnacle, be he of the upper or lower class of Barnacles, takes kindly to this kind of work. His father or his uncle has done it before him, and he knows its importance. He does not set up for a genius; and if he has only copied so many folios, he can draw his salary at quarter-day with a not unpleasant sense of having earned it by good public service, though of a humble kind. He knows that he must walk before he can run, and that flying is somewhat out of his way. But your competition-men are only too likely to begin flying at once; and if they do, we may be quite sure that they will never make good public servants.

Indeed, although there has not been much time for the system to develop itself, old departmental officers are already beginning to discover that the young men who are drafted into the service, with the lustre of some great competitive success upon them, do not bid fair to become useful public servants. They may be brilliant classics or profound mathematicians, but brilliant classics and profound mathematicians are not wanted in our public officers. What is wanted is something which no competitive examination can test. But the notion of book-learning as a test of qualification for the public service is such, that we hear even of appointments in the Irish constabulary being held up to public competition, upon the same fond principle of literary examinations, as though any book-knowledge could render a man expert in the catching of thieves or the suppression of riots. There is something almost ludicrous in the trueism that active habits are not developed by sedentary pursuits; and yet appointments, as we say, for which a certain robust manhood is the best qualification, are to be competed for, like all the rest, by enervated book-worms. If there is to be any competition at all for what may be called out-of-door appointments, -let there be an out-of-door examination; and let Activity and Robustness have their "marks," instead of Algebra and Moral Philosophy.

This much with regard to the Home Service. Of the civil service abroad, and of the principle of competition as applied to it, something more may be said. The most important branch of the Public Service which has been thrown open to competition is the Indian Civil Service. Up to the year 1854, appointments in this service were the individual patronage of the members of the Court of Directors of the East India Company, and, by courtesy, of the President of the Board of Control. The new India Bill, which passed into law in that year, deprived the East India Company entirely of their civil patronage, and threw all the "writerships," as they were then called, open to public competition. This was thought by some people to be "a great improvement"-firstly, because it was an act of justice to the British public, who were to be suffered to participate in the loaves and fishes of the Indian service; and, secondly, because it was an act of justice to the Indian public not to place the government of the country in the hands of the sons and nephews of East India Directors-poor creatures like Metcalfe and Elphinstone-but to confide it to Jones, Brown, and Robinson, or any other young gentleman from Trinity College, Dublin, who might go in to "compete" and succeed. It is too soon for us to pronounce any opinion upon the practical results of the experiment. The only thing that we really know is, that it is stocking the service with "a different class of men." It is natural that the old class of employés-the "vested interest" menshould speak slightingly of their new comrades. We are bound, therefore, to make allowance for some amount of class prejudice. In India it is said that the initials C. S., which used to represent the " Civil Service," now signify something, the imputation of which may be ungenerousuncharitable-perhaps untrue. the fact of the competition-men being altogether a "different class" remains unassailable. The question is, whether, regard being had to the peculiar circumstances of Indian service, they are a better or a worse class.

But

Now, what we have before said on the subject of " vested interests" with reference to the home service, is equally true with respect to the Indian Civil Service. The hereditary placemen were by no means the worst description of men for the purpose. It was natural that a close service" should be denounced by the outside public; that a monopoly of public employment should be cried out against by all who expected to profit by the opening of the trade; but the "abuse" which called forth so much invective, was, after all, anything but an unmixed evil. Looking through the lists of the Indian Civil Service for the first half of the present century, you will doubtless see from time to time a comparatively small proportion of new names. The old familiar patronymics continue to meet your eye. As they disappear from the top of the list, they reappear again at the bottom. The son takes the place of the father, and ere long the grandson appears. Now, this it has been the custom to represent as an injustice to the community at large. Is our Anglo-Indian Empire maintained, it is asked, for the benefit of a few favoured English families? Not for a few English families, it is hoped, nor for many English families; but still, if it were for the few, and not for the many, no great injustice would appear, when we come to look searchingly into the matter. He who devotes the best years of his life to Indian service, has small chance of acquiring for himself any interest in other directions, such as will enable him to provide for his children in any other profession than his own. principle that meritorious service establishes a claim upon the State, and especially in behalf of the employment, in the same line of life, of the children of the deserving public servant, is generally admitted. The new India Bill especially provides that a certain portion of the remaining patronage of the Indian

The

Council shall be set aside for the children of Indian officers. There was in reality very little necessity for a legislative provision of this kind, for, in the natural order of things, the children of Indian officers were tolerably sure to obtain their share, or more than their share, of the Indian patronage. But, at all events, this public recognition of the claim is not in accordance with the outcry against hereditary placemen. If such a principle be just under any circumstances, it is especially just in the case of the Indian officer, who, his life being one of exile, cannot make interest with the dignitaries of the Church, the Law, the Army, the Navy, &c., in England, like his brethren at home.* withdrawal from the area of competition throws a larger share of the general patronage into the hands of the community at large, and therefore he is fairly entitled to somewhat more than his share of the particular loaves and fishes appertaining to his own profession.

His

We have next to consider how far this exclusiveness affects the efficiency of the public service and the interests of the governed. We all know how much has been said lately by administrative reformers about putting the square blocks into the round holes, and the round into the square. Now, the Indian service is a very peculiar service, and the very alleged defects of the old system were among its most striking advantages. The young man who went out to India encrusted with the traditions of the Company's service, was emphatically the round man in the round hole. His angularities had been rubbed off before he set his foot on Indian soil. He had been orientalised, more or less, from his childhood upwards. He had a kindlier interest in the natives of the country; he adapted himself more readily to its customs; he was less of a stranger and sojourner in India than those who have gone to India the first of

their race. If a young man, on his first arrival in India, was received into the house of his father or his elder brother, it was an incalculable advantage to him, in a public no less than in a private sense; but even if no such advantage were enjoyed by him, the traditions and associations by which he was surrounded made him a better public servant. The natives of the country liked him better, and respected him more. They clung to the old hereditary names, and confided in the men who bore them. But they have no faith in the new men of the competition system. We have heard-and if true, it is a significant fact that the native money-lenders of Calcutta charge the young civilians of the new school three or four per cent more in the way of interest for money advanced than they exact from the hereditary placemen who went out from Haileybury under the old nomina tion system. They look upon the new men as belonging altogether to a different and a lower caste. They are not the Brahmins of the public service. It is felt that they do not carry with them the guarantee of an accredited lineage. The same feeling that actuates the money-lender, inspires men in other relations of life. They feel that there is no guarantee for the public good conduct and competency of the new men, any more than for their personal honesty and competency in matters of business. There is no name, honoured in the public service of India, to vouch for them-no name, the dignity of which is to be supported; and therefore they are not only less respected by others, but less respected by themselves.

We do not say that this fact has been lost sight of by the advocates of the competition system, for in all probability the majority have never been cognisant of its existence. But it is a very important one, nevertheless, and greatly to be held in remembrance by all who would now endeavour still further to generalise the public service in India. The Indian Civil Service, we repeat, will henceforth be officered by a totally different race of men; and if, as appears only too probable, a consider

able reduction of official salaries follows close upon the abandonment of the service to public competition, it needs no great amount of acumen to perceive that the appointments will be competed for by men of inferior social position and general attainments. Say what we may about the advantages of the Indian Service, people will look askance at it. They prefer a humbler position and a smaller income in England. The competition for the Indian Civil Service is by no means brisk, though all our professions are overstocked; and there is really no competition for the Indian Medical Service, although the medical profession at home is more overstocked than any. To diminish the salaries of any of the competition services would necessarily be to attract to them an inferior order of fitness and capacity: it is strenuously, therefore, to be deprecated. If, as we apprehended, the character of the Indian Civil Service is already deteriorated, what is it likely to become when its emoluments are greatly reduced? We are by no means sure that, under the new system, a higher order of literary merit will be permanently secured to the service. But even if it be demonstrated that the competition system must draft into it men of greater abilities and more extensive learning, it does not follow that therefore they will be better fitted to perform the particular duties required from them. What we have now to say on this subject is, for reasons stated above, especially applicable to the Indian Service, which is of a peculiar and exceptional character; but it applies to public service of all kinds, and we desire it to be considered in its general, not its particular, acceptation.

Every year the principle of competition is brought into more extensive operation, and soon there will not be a place in the public service not determinable by the number of "marks."

If this system insured the stocking of the public service with the best men obtainable for the performance of the required duties, we might overlook the hardship which it necessarily entails on those who fairly consider that they have a better right