ART. VI.—1. Report of Her Majesty's Civil Service Commis

sioners.

2.-General Orders of H. R. H. the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army.

3.-Regulations for conduct of Examinations for Appointments in the Indian Civil Service.

4.--Middle Class Examinations.

5.—General Orders of the Governor General in Council with regard to the Examination of all Junior Members of the Civil Service.

6.-Papers on the subject of the Instruction of Native Employés in the Civil Department.

EXAMINATION is the order of the day; it is the particular feature, perhaps snare, of the last half of the nineteenth century. In its two developments, either as competition based on a maximum, or qualifications based on a minimum, it has gradually inserted itself into every department of the State, civil or military, home or colonial. We expect before long that the principle will invade even domestic privacy, and that servants generally, partners probably, and wives possibly, will be selected with reference to tests, evidenced by certificates, and that all mankind in the great arena in the world will be docketed as good, indifferent, or bad: a great many false outward shows will no doubt be unmasked, but on the other hand much modest, but unpractical, merit will thus be trampled on.

We are of that party who never oppose the idea of the age, so long as it not opposed to morality or religion. The real revolutionist is your obstinate conservative, who, by opposing inevitable progress, brings on a catastrophe :-by floating on the advance wave of reform and progress, but with the rudder firm in hand, much may be done to prevent a popular idea being exaggerated into a burlesque, or shrivelled up into a dry form. We cannot lay this monster, which is the result of the educational fervour of the last fifty years: let us try to control it. We may find a good servant, where there would certainly have been at bad master.

Is competition then a snare? Is the trouble taken by Government to secure qualified employés thrown away? Have the fool, the inert, the nephew of my uncle, the brother of my wife, the good sort of young man to whose relations I am indebted, the fellow who plays the flute, the younger son who has outrun the constable, a monopoly of the good things of office? These are the

questions before us: if you deny the right alluded to in the lat ter question, you must affirm more, or less, the principle laid down in the former, for there are but three roads-seniority, patronage, merit. Now seniority implies a beginning from one of the two other sources, it can only deal with men in office, and no Government could be carried on on its principles only. Patronage soon degenerates into nepotism; it has almost become sy nonymous for it. Merit can only be ascertained by some sort of test, that of examination for aspirants, and of practical official life for employés.

There is nothing new under the sun, and the opponents of the new principle, failing in argument, have been glad to attack it by making it appear ludicrous; and a volume upon the Chinese, published by Mr. Meadows in 1856, in which one finds scores of things discussed which have no connection with China, gave them the opportunity. It appears that in China there is a regular system of examinations for public posts, which are in consequence monopolized by a certain literary caste, and moreover the tests are not practical, but dogmatical. Commissioner Yeh boasted that he knew "Taoli," and that that was enough. Now this is the exaggerated phase of the system, and is useful only as teaching us what to avoid.

At any rate the idea was not borrowed from the Chinese : if ever there was a popular movement, it is this. In every society, in every variety of human affairs, there are always two parties those who are in, and those who are out; only a certain portion of mankind can enjoy the good things of the world, and to those who are in possession it appears the simplest thing that this should be the case. But to those that are out of possession, it is always a mystery, a grievance, and a secret thorn, and periodically causes a great up-heaving of discontented spirits. In former days the "out" party were content to do their best to get themselves "in," but the spread of education has produced another cry, and at a meeting held in London in 1857, under the patronage of the Prince Consort and the President of the Educational Board, it was openly asserted that it was a right of the people to have all posts under Government thrown open to public competition, and the abuse of Parliamentary influence once and for ever abandoned. The beneficial effect, which such a measure would have on the spread of education, was mentioned as an incidental advantage, but the posts under Government were claimed as the inheritance of England's sons, without favour or prejudice, and it was pointed out that Government would be better served by the introduction of better

mcn.

Many things have combined to strengthen the general feeling:

the disasters in the Crimea exposed beyond power of defence the unsatisfactory mode in which appointments in every Department in England were filled up; the increase of Parliamentary corruption was traced to the same cause:-unfit men were appointed, because a pressure was brought to bear upon Ministers by their supporters. At the same time the patronage of India had to be disposed of, and a very different cause produced the same result. By degrees the Army has been infected, and all the professional branches have been thrown open, and, if this state of things continue, for the fools who are now in course of gestation, or who are still under age, it will be no easy matter to win a living, for hereafter if a man's wits do not help him, he may be pretty certain that his friends cannot. Now as it is a received fact that every family has one fool at least, if not more, we must expect that there will be a large body of malcontents with the new idea.

But there is no peace for the wicked, even after they have entered their profession; for the spirit of the age has not only embittered the sweets of a nomination by insisting on a certified efficiency, but it has fenced round promotion in the junior grades in a most, insufferable way. The Commander-in-Chief in England, and the Governor General in India, have done this wrong to the Army and Civil Service, and most unpleasant and irksome it is to have to study, when a few years ago the only duty was to draw pay. But as yet open competition has not invaded the ranks of any service, and a minimum qualification is still deemed sufficient, but in a speech last year in the House of Commons Lord Stanley, who, if his life be spared, is destined to exert a great influence during the next quarter of a century, openly asserted, that he had great faith in the system of unrestricted com'petition: though of comparatively recent origin, it had steadily 'made its way: every year brought over some new converts from 'the ranks of those, by whom it had been at first opposed:-he 'believed that it would prove itself eventually to be stronger than 'all Parliaments and all Governments, superior in short to all the influences which could be brought to bear against it."

So think we also:-and this has induced us to place before the public what has been done in this matter, and some remarks on the advantages which may be expected therefrom.

At the time when England was excited by the mismanagement in the Crimea, a motion was made by an independent member of the House of Commons, Viscount Goderich (now the Earl of Ripon,) on this subject, but was not pressed, as the Government undertook to make a forward move themselves, and accordingly an order in Council dated May 21, 1855, was passed, appointing a Civil Ser vice Commission to conduct examinations of all young men propos

ed to be appointed to junior situations in the Civil Establishments. Nomination was to remain as before with the heads of departments, but dependent on a certified qualification, and moreover a period of probation would be passed in all cases, during which conduct and capacity were to be submitted to tests. Provision was made, that when persons of mature years and special qualifications were appointed, the Chief of the Department must formally record the fact, which would justify an exemption from examination. In March 1856 the first Report of the Civil Service Commissioners was presented to Parliament, and the copy is now before us. Their report most entirely justifies the measure, and it presents a curious insight into official life, and a sufficient exposure of official prejudices. The Commissioners had great difficulties to contend with in their desire to keep all departments in harmony, for, though the Chiefs were all with them, the hungry underlings with their imperfectly educated sons and nephews, opposed, as far as they dared. The cry was raised that there would be a risk of not getting such gentlemanly men, and that school proficiency was not the only test: this was especially amusing, as the very same cry was raised by the opponents of the principle of competition as regards the Civil Service of India; from which we gather that all those who are in possession of place and power, are, by courtesy of official parlance, gentlemanly. However the small end of the wedge was got well in, and out of 1078 persons nominated to hold places under Government, 309, or nearly one-third, were rejected, for bad spelling, bad writing, and bad arithmetic, and the Commissioners in the appendix supply some charming specimens of the proficiency of Parliamentary nominees. They remark, "that the frequent occurrence in candidates of deficiency in the simplest elements of knowledge arises from the fact, that many of the inferior appointments are made without per'sonal knowledge of the fitness of the party, on the recommendation of some person, who is desirous not of supplying the public with a useful officer, but of making a competent provision for a friend." This reads like bitter irony and hidden satire.

The order in Council expressly excluded competitive examinations, confining the measure entirely to the certified minimum, but some of the Chiefs of Departments were more liberal than the collective Council, and Mr. Labouchere, the Secretary for the Colonies, expressed a wish that when vacancies occurred for a writership in Ceylon, several candidates should contend, that the best qualified might be appointed. The Commissioners remark that both in the competitive examination for clerks in their own and other offices, those who had succeeded in obtaining the appointments possessed higher attainments than those

who had come in on nomination, and that if it were adopted as the usual course to nominate several candidates to compete for each vacancy, the expectation of the ordeal would act most beneficially upon the education and industry of those young men, who were looking forward to public employment.

These examinations were conducted both in London and the provinces the age of candidates was fixed with reference to the nature of the duty: the health was certified by a Medical Officer, and the character by some respectable person, but the responsibility of this last most difficult subject rested with the head of the particular department under the system of nomination. Each department submitted, their own scheme of examination, yet in the opinion of the Commissioners, after making every allowance for difference of standard, a common ground for one general examination might be attained, which should be indispensable to all, and which should serve as a species of matriculation, tending rather to exclude candidates who do not possess necessary qualification, than to designate absolutely the candidate considered to be best fitted for a particular vacancy. All that the Commissioners require of the candidates, and really they could not ask for less, is

I. To write a good hand.

II. To spell correctly.

III.

To write a simple letter grammatically.

IV. To be conversant with the elementary portions of

Arithmetic.

The "specialitès" of cach department would only be enquired into, when the indispensable qualification standard had been reached. We really think that the Commissioners could not have required less, and might well be blamed for not having demanded more, of the elegant and dapper young men who fill the public offices in England. They certainly are not paid highly, nor do they work very energetically. We have viewed with admiration, in some of the public offices, the calm and self-satisfied air of the official, the smoothly shaved chin, the neat necktic, the irreproachable costume, the easy way in which he turns over the leaves of his book, or deigns to commit his views to foolscap, with occasional refreshment from his sandwich box, a glance at the broad sheet of the Times, or a chat with his neighbours in the adjoining curtained partition, and we wondered how such a man would comport himself, if his destiny had doomed him to grow a red beard, while hunting down rebels in Oudh, or to sit in shirt sleeves with the thermometer at one hundred, judging the subject millions in the Punjaub. We confess that we have been puzzled in England to find out exactly the limit betwixt the mere copyist, the Baboo of the