The Government of England Part 15

[Sidenote: Their Origin.]

The sharp separation of the clerks into cla.s.ses, with distinct examinations for each cla.s.s, did not arise at once. The first examinations under the original order of 1855 were required only for a "junior situation in any department," and they were not the same in the different departments. They were elementary affairs,[161:1] evidently designed to sift out incompetence rather than to test superiority; for it must be observed that in only a very small proportion of these examinations was there even a limited compet.i.tion.[161:2] When, however, the Order of 1870 extended the admission examinations to all positions in the service, not specially excepted or filled by promotion, and set up the principle of open compet.i.tion, it became necessary to distinguish between the higher posts, involving discretionary powers and requiring a liberal education, and the lower ones where the duties are of a clerical kind; to distinguish, in other words, between the administrator and the clerk. Such a distinction was made by the commissioners in their earliest regulations under the Order of 1870,[161:3] the two cla.s.ses being recruited separately by examinations of different character, the first of which was adapted to university graduates, and the second to young men from commercial life. At the outset the line was drawn somewhat at haphazard without sufficient attention to the real nature of the work to be done, and it was readjusted several times before it a.s.sumed its present form.[161:4]

[Sidenote: Exceptional Positions.]

Aside from the regular grades of clerks recruited by open compet.i.tion, there are various kinds of inspectors, clerks and other special officials, appointed after open compet.i.tion, limited compet.i.tion, pa.s.s examination or no examination at all. In fact the departments are full of anomalies, some of them the necessary result of peculiar conditions of service, and others due apparently to no very rational cause. The reader will, no doubt, be sufficiently wearied by a description of the more common methods of examination, without going into the eccentricities of the system. It may be convenient to consider first the open compet.i.tions, and then the appointments that are made in other ways.

[Sidenote: The First-cla.s.s Clerkships.]

The highest posts in the permanent civil service to which admission is obtained by compet.i.tive examination are known as the first-cla.s.s clerkships. In 1895 the examinations for these positions and for the Indian Civil Service were consolidated, and in the following year those for the Eastern Cadets[162:1] were added; so that a single annual compet.i.tion is now the gateway to all three careers, the successful candidates being allowed, in the order of their rank at the examination, to choose the service they will enter. In spite of the smaller pay the first men on the list have usually selected the home service, because the life is more agreeable; and so far as the vacancies make it possible they are a.s.signed to the particular department they prefer.

[Sidenote: The Entrance Examinations.]

Although these positions are called clerkships, the work is not of a clerical, but of an administrative, and in the upper grades of a highly responsible, character. The aim of the commissioners is, therefore, to recruit young men of thorough general education for an important and lifelong administrative career. With this object the candidates are required to be between twenty-two and twenty-four years of age, and the examination, which has no direct connection with their subsequent duties, is closely fitted to the courses of study in the universities.

As a matter of fact the papers in mathematics and natural science are based upon the requirements for honour degrees at Cambridge, the papers in cla.s.sical and other subjects upon those at Oxford; and thus it happens that by far the larger part of the successful candidates come from one or other of these two great universities.[163:1] The range of subjects is naturally large, and a candidate is allowed to offer as many as he pleases, but by an ingenious system of marking a thorough knowledge of a few subjects is made to yield a higher aggregate of marks than a superficial acquaintance with a larger number.[163:2] The examination papers are set, and the books are read, by well-known scholars, instructors at the universities and others, who are selected for the purpose. That the papers are severe any one may convince himself by looking at them. Moreover the number of candidates, which is two or three times as large as the vacancies in all three services together, insures a rigorous compet.i.tion; and the result is that the candidates who win the appointments are men of education and intellectual power. They belong to the type that forms the kernel of the professions; and many of them enter the civil service simply because they have not the means to enable them to wait long enough to achieve success in a professional career. They form an excellent corps of administrators, although the time has not come to express an opinion on the question whether they will prove the best material from which to draw the permanent under-secretaries and the other staff officers at the head of the different services. As yet few of them have attained positions of this grade, but it must be remembered that they have only recently begun to reach an age when they could be expected to do so.

[Sidenote: Their Social Effect.]

When the government was considering the introduction of compet.i.tive examinations, in 1854, fears were expressed that such a system would result in driving the aristocracy out of the civil service, and replacing it by a lower social cla.s.s.[164:1] Mr. Gladstone himself did not share that belief. On the contrary, he thought the plan would give to the highly educated cla.s.s a stronger hold than ever upon the higher positions in the service.[164:2] In this he proved a better prophet than his critics. By far the greater part of the successful compet.i.tors for the Cla.s.s I clerkships now come, as we have seen, from Oxford and Cambridge; and the men educated at those universities are still drawn chiefly from the upper cla.s.ses, from the aristocracy, the gentry, the sons of clergymen, of lawyers, of doctors, and of rich merchants who have made, or who hope to make, their way into the higher strata of society. Men of more humble extraction go, as a rule, to the provincial colleges. The Civil Service Commissioners have given in some of their annual reports the occupations of the fathers of the successful candidates at the chief open compet.i.tions; and while in the case of the joint examination for the Cla.s.s I clerkships and the Indian Civil Service the list includes no peers, and does include some tradesmen, yet on the whole it consists of persons belonging to the upper and the upper middle cla.s.s. Thus it has come about that compet.i.tive examinations, instead of having a levelling tendency, by throwing the service open to a crowd of quick-witted youths without breeding, has helped to strengthen the hold of the upper cla.s.ses upon the government, by reserving most of the important posts for men trained in the old aristocratic seats of learning. In this connection it may be observed that the highest positions in the civil service are often held by men of n.o.ble blood, and it has sometimes happened that the permanent under-secretary has been a man of higher social position than his political chief. Sir Robert Herbert and Sir Courtenay Boyle, for example, who were recently the permanent heads of the Colonial Office and the Board of Trade, were scions of ancient families in England and Ireland; and the latter had at one time as his political chief Mr.

Mundella, who had begun life as a printer's devil.[165:1]

[Sidenote: The Second Division Clerkships.]

Ranking below the Cla.s.s I clerkships, there is a large body of persons whose work is mainly clerical. These are known as the second division clerks, and they are recruited by open compet.i.tion. The standard of education required by the examination is naturally much less high than in the case of the first-cla.s.s clerks, and the candidates are consequently younger, the compet.i.tion being now limited to youths between seventeen and twenty years of age.[165:2]

[Sidenote: Nature of Examinations.]

As the work done by the second division is of the same general character as that performed by clerks in commercial houses, the examination was at first devised on the supposition that the candidates would have a commercial training, and it was adapted to test their immediate fitness for that work. Besides the elementary general subjects of writing, English composition, arithmetic, geography and English history, it covered copying, indexing, digesting returns and bookkeeping. Such a test was not inappropriate in the earlier days, when appointments were made by nomination and the object of the examination was simply to eliminate individual appointees who were unfit for their duties; but it was continued long after the system of open compet.i.tion, with its crowd of eager young candidates almost devoid of actual commercial training, had brought in a very different state of things. In 1896 the a.s.sociation of Head Masters pointed out, in a memorandum, the bad effect produced on general education. They showed that, in order to improve their chance of success, boys were prematurely taken from school and placed in the hands of crammers to acquire "a high degree of polish upon a rather low though useful order of accomplishment"; and they asked that the examination might be brought more into line with the curriculum of the schools. This was done, without giving up the former methods altogether, by introducing a number of options, so that a candidate need offer only the subjects ordinarily taught in a secondary school.[166:1] The result in the future will no doubt be to make proficiency in regular school work the real test for appointment, and thus, in accordance with Macaulay's principle, to base the selection upon general education instead of technical knowledge.

Unlike the first-cla.s.s clerks, the clerks of the second division are drawn mainly from the middle and lower middle cla.s.ses, and their education has been obtained in the grammar schools and other schools of a similar kind. Although a distinct corps, recruited by a different examination, and intended for a lower grade of work, they are not altogether cut off from the higher positions. After eight years of service they can, in exceptional cases, be promoted to first-cla.s.s clerkships, and this is sometimes done. But as the number of second division clerks appointed each year is about three hundred, and the number promoted to first-cla.s.s clerkships is on the average only about four, the chance of reaching that grade is very small.[167:1]

[Sidenote: a.s.sistant Clerks.]

Within the last few years a new grade, called a.s.sistant clerks (abstractor cla.s.s), has been formed, recruited at present by compet.i.tive examinations among the boy clerks. The work is chiefly in the nature of copying, but an a.s.sistant clerk may for special merit be appointed to the second division without competing in the examination.[167:2]

[Sidenote: Boy Clerks.]

The lowest grade of officials recruited in common for a number of departments is that of boy clerks.[167:3] These come from much the same cla.s.s in the community as the clerks of the second division, and the compet.i.tive examination, though more elementary, is of the same character,[167:4] the limits of age being fifteen and seventeen years.

The employment is essentially temporary, and in fact boy clerks are not retained after they are twenty; but the position is a step towards further advancement, for the boy clerks alone can compete for the a.s.sistant clerkships, and if they go into the examination for the second division a credit for the service they have done is added to the marks they obtain. Yet the examination for boy clerks is one of the few compet.i.tions for a large number of positions, where the quant.i.ty of candidates is insufficient.

[Sidenote: Other Compet.i.tive Examinations.]

Besides the open compet.i.tions for the general grades of clerks, there are many others for special cla.s.ses of employees in the different departments. Some of these positions require no peculiar qualifications, and there is no obvious reason for having a number of separate examinations differing slightly from one another; but certain departments still cling to their own schemes, and the Post Office to several schemes. All this is being gradually simplified, by having the same examination for a number of distinct services, that for the second division clerks, for example, being now used for recruiting the clerks in the Custom House.[168:1] The examinations for the second division could, probably, be combined with those for clerks in the Customs and Inland Revenue, just as a combination has been made in the case of the first-cla.s.s clerkships, the Indian Civil Service and the Eastern Cadets--and that will, no doubt, be the tendency in the future. The same criticism does not, of course, apply to all the examinations. Some of them require very different degrees of education; for others, such as those for draughtsmen, law clerks, and many more, professional or technical training is obviously necessary; while certain positions are reserved for women. Each of these examinations is governed by regulations prescribing the age of the candidates, the fee to be paid, and the subjects included, but it is clearly needless for our purpose to follow them in detail.[168:2]

[Sidenote: Limited Compet.i.tion.]

In most of the departments there are positions in the permanent civil service not filled by compet.i.tion, because the kind of experience and capacity needed cannot be tested, or fully tested, by examination; and in that case the examination may be wholly or partially dispensed with under Clause VII of the Order in Council of 1870. There are other positions where open compet.i.tion is inapplicable because the places to be filled are not numerous enough, or sufficiently tempting, to attract compet.i.tors at large; or, because, as in the case of the higher cla.s.s clerks in the Foreign Office, of attaches of legation, and of inspectors of various kinds, the work is of a delicate and confidential nature, and can be intrusted only to persons whose character is well known. In such cases it is common to have compet.i.tive examinations limited to candidates selected for the purpose.[169:1] Even a limited compet.i.tion has a tendency to raise the standard, but it must be remembered that in order to obtain a chance to compete in such cases some influence, direct or indirect, is indispensable; although the power of nomination does not, in fact, appear to be abused for political purposes.

[Sidenote: Nomination with a Pa.s.s Examination.]

There are positions for which no compet.i.tion is held, but where a single person is nominated subject to an examination to test his competence.

Some of these places might very well be open to compet.i.tion, and, indeed, there are still strange anomalies in various branches of the civil service; the strangest being the fact that the employees of the Education Department are, almost invariably, appointed without any examination at all, and this is true not only of inspectors, whose work requires peculiar qualifications, but even of clerks of the abstractor cla.s.s. There are, however, positions in the civil service where the technical knowledge or experience needed are really such as to render a compet.i.tion difficult. Even in manual occupations this is believed to be the case. In the royal dockyards, for example, although the apprentices are recruited by open compet.i.tion, the artificers are appointed subject to a pa.s.s examination touching only their skill in their trade, while the foremen are usually selected by a limited compet.i.tion which includes something more. Provincial postmasters also form a cla.s.s by themselves.

Until a few years ago they owed their positions to political influence; for long after the members of Parliament had lost all control over other appointments, they retained the power to fill any vacancies that might occur in the postal service within their const.i.tuencies, provided, of course, they belonged to the party in power. But this last remnant of parliamentary patronage was abolished in 1896, and provincial postmasters are now appointed on the recommendation of the surveyors of the postal districts.[170:1]

[Sidenote: Nomination without Examination.]

Finally there are the appointments made entirely without examination of any kind, either because examination is dispensed with under Clause VII of the Order in Council of 1870, or because the position is one excepted altogether from the operation of the Order. Such posts are chiefly at the top or at the bottom of the service. They include positions of responsibility at one end of the scale; and those of messengers,[170:2]

porters and servants at the other.

[Sidenote: Promotions.]

Political influence has not only ceased almost entirely to affect appointments to office, but it has also been very nearly eliminated in the matter of promotion. The struggle on this subject began as early as 1847, and the government has been strong enough to declare that an effort to bring influence to bear will be treated as an offence on the part of the employee; or as the minutes adopted by the Treasury in 1867, and by the Admiralty a couple of years later, ingeniously and forcibly express it, the attempt by a public officer to support his application by any solicitation on the part of members of Parliament, or other persons of influence, "will be treated . . . as an admission on the part of such officer that his case is not good upon its merits."[171:1]

These measures seem to have had the desired effect.[171:2]

[Sidenote: Why the Civil Service was Easily Freed from Political Influence.]

If we seek to understand how it happened that the baneful influence of political patronage in the civil service, which had been dominant in England in the eighteenth century, was thrown off with comparative ease a hundred years later, while in some other nations that influence was, at the same period, growing in strength, and has proved extremely tenacious; if we seek to explain this contrast, we must take account of a striking peculiarity of English public life at the present day that has come with the evolution of the parliamentary system. For reasons that will be discussed hereafter a member of the majority of the House of Commons votes on the side of the government with singular constancy; and as compared with most other countries under a popular form of government politics turn to an unusual extent upon public questions. The House is engaged in almost ceaseless battles between the two front benches with the ranks of their followers marshalled behind them; and the battles are over public matters. Questions affecting private, personal or local interests occupy a relatively small share of the attention of the member of Parliament. He is primarily the representative of a national party elected to support or oppose the cabinet, rather than the delegate of a district sent to watch over the interests of his const.i.tuents, and push the claims of influential electors. The defence, said to have been triumphantly made elsewhere, by a member accused of absence from important divisions, that he had procured more favours for his const.i.tuency than any other representative, could not be pleaded as an excuse in England. Hence the ministry is not compelled to enlist personal support either in the legislature or at the polls, by an appeal to private grat.i.tude. It can afford to turn a deaf ear to solicitations for patronage, and stand upon its public policy alone. In short, the enormous strength of party, in the legitimate sense of a body of men combined for a common public object, has enabled the government to do what it could not have done so easily had party required the support of artificial props. The political condition that has strengthened the government for this work is not in itself an unmixed good. It brings with it evils, which will be noticed in due course; but to its credit must be placed the purification of the civil service.

At the outset ministers feared that the change would meet with resistance in Parliament, but using one's influence to procure favours for others is not a wholly agreeable task, especially when more supplicants are disappointed than gratified. The reform brought to the House of Commons relief from pressure by importunate const.i.tuents, and all the later steps have been taken with the approval of the members themselves.

[Sidenote: Pensions.]

With the elimination of politics the civil service has become a career, steady and free from risk. But the salaries are not high in relation to the capacity required, and as a rule they begin low with a small increment for each year of service. They are not large enough to provide for illness and old age; and, hence, along with the progress of reform there grew up a demand for pensions. The law on the subject, although frequently amended, is still based upon the Superannuation Act of 1859, which grants to "persons who shall have served in an established capacity in the permanent civil service of the state" for ten years, and retire at sixty years of age or by reason of infirmity, a pension equal to ten sixtieths of their final salary. For every additional year of service another sixtieth is added up to a maximum of forty sixtieths.

Provision has been made, also, for the case of injuries received in the public service; while more recent statutes have authorised gratuities to women employees upon marriage--an allowance apparently given, as in the case of the other grants, rather in a spirit of commiseration, than in order to encourage matrimony.

FOOTNOTES:

[145:1] 12-13 Will. III., c. 2, -- 3. For a description of earlier efforts to the same end, see Todd, Parl. Govt. in England, II., 114-121.

[146:1] 4 Anne, c. 8, and 6 Anne, c. 7, ---- 25, 26. By -- 28 of this act officers in the Army and Navy are exempted from its operation. They may sit in the House of Commons, and they do so in considerable numbers, although they are as a rule required to resign their seats when given an active command. Military officers occupy, indeed, a position quite different from that of other public servants, for they not only sit in Parliament, and take an active part there in the discussion of questions relating to the service; but they are constantly talking to the public, a practice that would not be permitted for a moment in the case of civilians in government employ. The statements in this chapter are, therefore, confined to the members of the civil service.

[146:2] _Cf._ Rogers on Elections, 16 Ed., II., 21-24.

[146:3] For a list of such statutes, see Anson, I., 93-96.

[146:4] Treasury Minute of Nov. 12, 1884, Com. Papers, 1884-1885, XLV., 171.

[147:1] Electioneering by civil servants has been the subject of legislation. An Act of 1710 (9 Anne, c. 10, -- 44) rendered liable to fine and dismissal any post-office official who "shall, by Word, Message, or Writing, or in any other Manner whatsoever, endeavour to persuade any Elector to give or dissuade any Elector from giving his Vote for the Choice of any Person . . . to serve in Parliament." _Cf._ Eaton, "Civil Service in Great Britain," 85.

[147:2] 22 Geo. III., c. 41. Rogers on Elections, I., 196-97.

[147:3] 31-32 Vic., c. 73. All penalties attaching to any of their acts in relation to elections were abolished by 37-38 Vic., c. 22.

[148:1] Rogers, I., 197-200.

[148:2] _Ibid._, 207-08.