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    wine hot , and his house not well conducted ? he enjoys the privileges , while he undergoes the penalties , of restricted trade . Throw the trade open , let a house be set up in the same street , free to compete in the freshness of its beer , the strength of its spirits , the flavour and lightness of its wines , and the respectable conduct of the house , and the neighbours will certainly give the preference to the new shop . The better man will maintain his ground and the occupant of the

    ill-conducted shop will be obliged to give up . There is nothing like freedom of trade for teaching men how to serve the community in the way the community best likes . All respectable neighbourhoods desire to have wellsupplied and well-conducted public-houses . If in other neighbourhoods there are houses that are ill-conducted , let the police look to them . The best auxiliary both of police order and of revenue is complete freedom of trade . If Sir George Gbet desires to render

    his promised bill effectual for his purposes , and thoroughly in harmony with the facts ascertained by experience and by committees of the House of Commons , he will introduce into it that free-trade element .

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    COMPETITIVE EXAMINATION FOB / THE CIVIL SERVICE . Some members of Parliament are enamoured of competitive examination as if it were the panacea for all the defects of the Civil Service . Others denounce political patronage as if it were answerable for all the shortcomings that characterized the official conduct of the war . A third party—the 'ignorant public '—hearing that competitive

    examinations are already introduced , but that patronage is retained , are hopelessly unable to understand the question—a state of mind rather happy than otherwise . For of all the public topics of the day we know of none like this of the Civil Service on which all -writers and all speakers ( from those who never saw a government office to those who once wrote a letter to a chief clerk ) consider themselves competent to express a decided opinion . have been

    The old political patronage may a bad thing regarded as a means of corrupting constituencies or degrading representatives , but it supplied a very fair raw material for the Civil Service . The young men were nominated through p olitical influence . Now , p olitical influence in town or country is not generally possessed by men without character or property . The man who by property , or by force of character , or by political cleverness , can command ten or twenty votes in a borough , may not be a

    perfect person nor a very refined character , but he is a very good representative of the average Englishman , of the men whose industry and craft supply the staple of our prosperity . These were the men who obtained appointments for their sons and nephews . The official qualities required in those young inen were attention , obeclienco , trustworthiness , and readiness for work , nud there was nothing in their antecedents or in . social position of their families to make it unlikely that those qualities would show themselves if properly called forth . The two damning

    defeots , however , in the system were , firstly , that no proper means were taken to prevent very stupid or very silly boys from getting in ; and , secondly , that the service was utterly without an organisation calculated to make the best use of the raw material provided by political p atronage . The first of those evils has been removed by the examinations of the Civil Seryjce Commissioners ; but the second evil- ^ -the want of organisation in the service itself—remains unremoved . The examinations have been extended to competitive trials between nominoos ; but

    the plan is only tried partially , and m an underhand way . Some head of a department gives away a junior clerkship of 901 . a year to be competed for , and mentions the matter privately to a dozen masters of some of our third-rate schools . The ' good boy' of the school is sent up to fche competition , and the situation is given to the boy who has crammed into bis poor brain a greater amount of knowledge than the other boys . If one boy knows algebra , French , geography , Italian , German , and the use of the globes , and if another boy knows all these , and knows logarithms in addition , the lucky connoisseur in logarithms obtains the prize , and for the remainder of

    his life copies or writes routine official letters —something a little above printed circulars in variety or individual interest . This is but the natural result of a competitive examination as to the scholastic knowledge of boys . You must give the place to the best boy , and the best boy is he who knows most . The partial underhand manner of the present competitive examinations makes them the more absurd . A boy that will be beaten in the January trial when pitted against five or six first-rate boys , may be far . superior to some third-rate boy "who wins at the February examination because his opponents are all dunces . The nominations to the

    examinations and the competitions themselves are timed by chance , and . tlius there is no general competition . The advocates of competitive literary examinations as tests for Civil Service situations forget one consideration not altogether unimportant . Are the best literary men the best Civil Servants ? The work of the Civil Service involves various duties and demands some very special qualifications . In some

    offices there is a daily discharge of routine and petty duties requiring great patience and unrelaxing attention , qualities in which many very clever and well-informed men , capable of passing any examination , are signally deficient . The duties of a bookeeper require not alone a clear head , an unfailing habit of order , and a thorough knowledge of accounts , but an almost infallible talent for not making mistakes—a talent proved only by years of exactitude . Other offices connected with

    our dip lomacy and foreign politics require a most honourable reticence of secrets that could be sold for ten . times the amount of any clerk ' s salary . Now , official patieuce , punctual exactitude , and gentlemanlike honour , cannot be ascertained by any literary examination ; and as to the latter quality , wo would sooner trust to one hundred men nominated by members of parliament than to one hundred men appointed because they were clever fellows . 13 ut even' clover fellows ' are not the men who come best out of the

    competitive examinations . The pupils of clever tutors sometimes succeed ; a man who can retain in his memory a mass of facts crammed into it for tho previous month is almost sure to succeed—and we have heard u very sensible , intelligent candidate say that ho owed his success not to his quickness in composition , nor to his kuowledgo of languages , but simply that lie had luckily learned by heart the day before a chronological table of two hundred dates of tho principal events of

    the world . If the examinations wore constructod so as to bo testa of general literary ability there might bo a pardonable prido in considering that wo aro outstripping our enemies tho Chinese iu official honours to litornry men ; but tho examinations aro mainly as to the dry facts of history , geography , or soienco ~ kuowledgo in which , perchance , some of our boat literary men may or may not bo very deficient . At the risk of being accuaed of assorting a mere truism , wo must eay that tho object of

    appointing a man to a civil situation is to get the special service of the post well done . We have not appointed him to reward him for being a good boy at school , or to encourage literature—two very good objects , but not so great that we must sacrifice the efficiency of the Civil . Service to promote them . If we examine the candidates , we should then examine them as to their jitness for the situation —not as to their fitness for the editorship of a magazine or the conduct of a village school . If the candidate thoroughly knows the duties

    of the post , why reject him because he is ignorant of decimal fractions ? And yet such rejections have taken place ; in one instance , a lad who wrote a fine engrossing hand and who had a useful knowledge of legal details , was rejected for a situation in a solicitor ' s office in one of the G ovemment departments simply because he did not know decimal fractions—an ignorance that would never incapacitate him for any possible duty he should ever have to discharge . In another case , a

    gentleman of our acquaintance was examined for the post of interpreter , to be sent out to the East during the war ; he knew several Eastern languages , and was a smart , fine young fellow . The examiner , who barely knew the Turkish alphabet , asked the candidate where was the island of Sbcotra , and the candidate confessed ignorance . He was turned away , and but for the influence of a friend of the family would have been finally rejected !

    The faults of the present practice are twofold . 1 . The nominations are departmental . For instance , the political chief of the Foreign-office nominates his friends to that office ; but his friends may possess not a single peculiar qualification , whilst for other departments of the service they may be signally fitted . He cannot interfere , however , with other departments . His friends ' cram ' for the examination—not competitive—and pass it , or are rejected . But while they are rejected there are passed for the Customs or the Waroffice young men far below them in qualifications , who have been subjected to a much lower test . Thus we have not the best man

    in the best place , but a chance medley of men in the places which patrons can give , and which cramming can secure . 2 . The second evil is , that the examination is in knowledge , and not in ability ; in literature , and not in official talent ; in general qualifications , and not in fitness for the particular situation . The qualifications of a good Civil Servant nre varied and high enough to form the subject of a severe examination , but somo influentiol men , bent on encouraging literature , think otherwise , and think that any man who knows about the second . Punic war and the position of the island of Socotra , must bo able to do official work .

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    BELGIAN POLITICS . Ooji estimate of tho character of the movement in Belgium appears to have been the correct one . Despite somo excesses and certain unjustifiable acts of violence—provoked partly , as at Jemmappes , by local causes of irritation—tho Liberal party may bo said to have acquitted itself very creditably . Thero was nothing , at any rate , in their conduct to justify tho absurd ravings of the

    Bonapartiat Parittiun journals , which insiwt , in tho cut-and-dry rhetoric that came into fashion with tho Empire , that ' tho hydra ot anarchy has raised its head , ' and that Parliamentary government has received a mortal blow in Belgium . Parliamentary government ia not quite so delicate a creature as that . It is accustomed tp . and dosorvca a little rough treatment at timoa ; and , indeed , could never live in tho fulao atmosphere which Continental politicians would throw round it . A

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    June 13 , 1857 . J THE LEADER . 566

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), June 13, 1857, page 565, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2197/page/13/