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MR. LAYARD rose to move the following Resolution—
That this House views with deep and increasing concern the state of the nation, and is of opinion that the manner in which merit and efficiency have been sacrificed, in public appointments, to party and family influences, and to a
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blind adherence to routine, has given rise to great misfortunes, and threatens to bring discredit upon the national character, and to involve the country in great disasters—
And said—Sir, I am more in need, even than usual, this evening of the kind indulgence of the House, both because I am afraid I shall have to trespass upon its attention for a considerable time, and because the question is one which, under any circumstances, might perhaps give rise to feelings of irritation upon the part of some Members of the House. It is, however, my especial wish to treat the question in as moderate a spirit as possible, and I shall therefore prefer reading such documents as I possess to expressing any strong opinion of my own upon the subject I shall have to bring forward. This question is one of far too serious a nature for me to make any appeal to the passions in discussing it, even had I the power and the eloquence necessary for me to do so. I wish merely to make a plain, straightforward statement. It cannot be denied that a general feeling is abroad that there is something wrong in the administrative system and the government of this country—that there are great evils in that administrative system which can only be remedied by some kind of pressure from without. I will endeavour, as concisely as possible, to state the grounds upon which the people of this country have come to that conclusion. It will be for Her Majesty's Government to show whether these grounds are correct—that conclusion justifiable or not—and it will rest with these Gentlemen who represent various branches of the public service in this House to show how far the country is right in believing that the departments with which they are connected are not properly administered. I shall endeavour to say nothing which will hurt the feelings of any of the right hon. or hon. and gallant Members present, and I trust that they, on their part, will permit me to state what I think without attributing to me any improper motives; for, I assure them, with the deepest feelings of conscientious conviction, that my only wish is to promote the public good. If the hon. and gallant Member for Weymouth (Colonel Freestun) is in the House, I trust he will justify his statement that things which I have said are not true, in a tone less bitter than that which he adopted on a former occasion; and, for my part, I will endeavour to prevent that question from giving rise to any personal acrimony.
§ Sir, my Resolution contains three distinct propositions. First, it states that the House views with deep concern the state of the nation; it points out, secondly, what I consider the source of the evil; and, thirdly, what will be the consequences if the present state of things continue to exist. To that Resolution an Amendment has been given notice of by my hon. Friend opposite (Sir B. Lytton)—if the hon. Baronet will allow me to call him so—somewhat of a similar nature to a Motion which was brought by a noble Lord (Lord Ellenborough) before another assembly when I gave notice of my Resolution. The noble Lord to whom I allude felt it necessary to place the sentiment he entertained in a somewhat palatable shape before that assembly; and I believe the hon. Baronet has now acted under a similar feeling, and, following the advice of the Italian poet, has anointed the edge of the jar with honey in order that his friends may more readily swallow the dose he is about to administer. I have endeavoured to call things by their right names, for I think this country has been placed in considerable danger from that not having been done. I also think that danger threatens this country from too great respect being paid to personal and private feelings. [Laughter.] Perhaps hon. Gentlemen, before they laugh, will allow me to explain my meaning. Those feelings are very right and necessary in private affairs, and no one can respect them more than I do; but those who put aside public duty out of consideration for them neglect their duty; and if that were the principle upon which the House were to conduct its proceedings, it would be as well to conduct our debates with closed doors, and we might as well make our debates secret at once as be guided by the conventionalities which are necessary in private society, and pay an undue regard to private feelings in dealing with public matters. What should we say if a judge did not use harsh words in condemning a criminal for fear he should hurt his feelings? There are cases in which we all agree that condemnation, to some extent, is necessary; but if phrases unduly harsh are used in expressing that condemnation, they are received with public disapprobation. I trust I shall do my duty in that respect. I will endeavour to be moderate. I will state facts; if I am wrong I hope hon. and gallant Gentlemen will tell me so without any irritating expressions, 2043 and I trust they will not find me unwilling to admit the errors I may have fallen into. It was said that the debate in another place led to nothing because the speeches made dealt solely in generalities, and no instances were adduced; but, when instances are adduced, then it is said, these are mere vulgar personal accusations which do not prove your case. We are thus placed in a double difficulty. No doubt the noble Lord at the head of the Government will say this evening, as he has done upon former occasions, that this is a mere attack upon the aristocracy. That accusation is odious to me. The noble Lord is welcome to say that I am attacking an oligarchy, but I utterly deny that I am making any attack upon the aristocracy. I only wish that every man should have the free power of raising himself in the public service of the country. Although the words of my hon. Friend's Amendment are not exactly the same as those of my Motion, yet, if they mean anything, they must mean precisely the same thing. He asks the House to recommend the Government that there should be a careful revision of the public establishments, with a view to simplify and facilitate the transaction of public business, to institute judicious tests of merit, and to remove obstructions to its fair promotion and legitimate rewards. That must mean that at the present moment there are no such tests of merit in the public service, and that there are obstructions to its fair and legitimate reward. If there are none there is no occasion to discuss the question; but if there are such illegitimate and unconstitutional obstructions to the reward of merit it is a fair subject for discussion. Then comes the question, what are those obstructions? Do not think that by voting for this Amendment you are escaping the difficulty which the Amendment is moved to enable you to escape, because its meaning is exactly the same as that which I have embodied in my Resolution. Why should we flinch from naming the things which we consider as obstructions to merit! Why should we shrink from stating that a man cannot rise in the public service of the country on account of the obstructions proceeding from party and family influence? That is the chief evil of which we complain. There is no use in denying that. Such, at any rate, is the feeling out of doors. If that feeling is not justified, it is surely well worth all the time this House may be able to bestow to remove, if 2044 possible, that feeling. For myself, I am willing that this feeling shall he removed. All I say is, that this feeling does exist. Nor is that feeling confined to a small and insignificant class; it is especially characterised by being prevalent among the most educated class in this country. My avocations and antecedents throw me a good deal among men connected with literature, art, and science, and I will ask any man frequenting that society whether the feeling I have described does not prevail among these men? Now, I do not say that the feeling is altogether warranted, although I believe that it is, and as it prevails among the class I have named it must prevail among the class below that, and it is, as I have said, so extensive and so general that it is well worth the time and attention of the House to endeavour to remove it if it can be proved to be ill founded. It must be known to the House that a large and powerful association has been formed to investigate this question, comprising among its members many men of wealth, of talent, and of enterprise. The opinions of that association have been re-echoed in the largest towns of the country, and that association is determined to push the doctrines and opinions enunciated in its address. Now, such an agitation may lead to great mischief, and if the House can remove the necessity for that agitation, it will do an essential service to the country. Notice has been given of another Amendment by the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. V. Scully), but as it is not on the paper for to-night, I presume it is the hon. Member's intention to bring it forward on some future occasion. The House will permit me to say one word upon my own Resolution, as it has been misunderstood in some respects, and I have been accused of altering and amending it. I believe that it stands, if not in the same shape, yet with the same intention as when I first placed it upon the books of the House, I have cut off a phrase which pledged this House to the prosecution of the war, because such an allusion was unnecessary after the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Disraeli); a few words in the way of recital have also been left out, but the words and essence of the Resolution have been maintained.
§ There are three propositions in that Resolution, as I have already stated, and I shall endeavour to substantiate each of them. I will first take the proposition relating 2045 to the state of the nation. I have heard it said that these words are now uncalled for, because of the successes we have recently achieved. But I deny that; I intended my Resolution to have application only to the military operation of the war. I look upon the campaign in the Crimea as an episode; upon our failure as a witness, and to the Blue-books as evidence; but they form only a part, and but a small part, of the question which I propose to bring before the House. But if the Blue-books, that contain so much that must be painful to the House and to the country are to remain dead letters, then our cup of disgrace will be full indeed, and I hope that something will be done upon those Blue-books irrespective of my Motion. What I mean by the state of the nation is, that I am fully convinced that this country is becoming very distrustful of this House and is losing its confidence in public men; that the people begin to believe there are great defects in our administrative system, and that a remedy must be applied to those defects; that the Government of this country has become a class monopoly, and that the recent changes in the Government show that that monopoly does not go out of the hands of a few families; and that the Government do not sufficiently represent the feelings of the country at large. They see a liberal Government voting against every liberal measure that has been proposed this session, and voting in the lobby on all these questions with hon. Members sitting on the opposite side of the House in contradistinction to the liberal party on this side the House. They have also seen those who have hitherto been the leaders of the people, and the representatives of popular opinions, absorbed in the Government and remaining mute and silent on questions connected with the opinion of which they were once the advocates. Is it then astonishing that the confidence of the people has waned with regard to public men? They have been so often betrayed by public men that I am not surprised that confidence in them is so much shaken. The country think that the great offices of State are sacrificed to the interests of party, and that the public service has been neglected, and to this they trace the disasters that have taken place. Now, Sir, I ask whether that is not a state of the nation that is alarming, and whether it may not give rise to a state of feeling that may be dangerous? 2046 That is what I mean by the state of the nation; and I say, let us if possible remove these impressions. I propose to look into three departments—the army, as that branch to which is confided the honour and defence of the country; the diplomatic and consular service, to which the conduct of foreign affairs is entrusted; and the civil service, which has the conduct of national affairs at home.
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Sir, to begin with the army. This is, undoubtedly, a very difficult and delicate question. I know that hon. and gallant Gentlemen in this House feel very indignant that a civilian should touch the army, hut I ask the House whether any but a civilian can touch the army? Why, a military man dare not touch the army. There is no doubt I may be led into errors in dealing with the army. The rules and regulations that affect the army have for some time been a matter of study to me, but I may be pardoned for some misapprehensions when even very eminent military men are ignorant of some of the rules and their application—nay, even of the very existence of some of the regulations affecting the army. I hold in my hand a letter from a gentleman of some rank in the army, whose name the House will see I cannot mention, and I cannot, therefore, give my authority; but this letter expresses so fully my own feelings and the existing state of things, that I will read it to the House. He says:—
A civilian, undertaking as you have done, to attack military abuses so deeply rooted, and of such long standing, as those which disgrace our service, is (as you very justly remark) placed in a particularly difficult position; for unacquainted as you, perhaps, are with all the minor details and intricacies which sometimes even puzzle professional men, you are not able to receive open assistance and evidence, which would probably be the ruin of any military man who might volunteer to enact such a Curtian part; and many a man who might be indifferent to the consequences as regarded himself, might feel averse to sacrifice the prospects of some near relation, who might either be, or be intended to be, in the military profession, and whose future prospects might thus he prematurely blighted in the bud. Then, again, you will have against you all those military men of family connection and great interest who, having profited by a corrupt system, will strenuously oppose any reform or innovation in the same. All these circumstances combined render your task one of no ordinary difficulty; still I would not despair, for you have not only the spirit of the times and public opinion in your favour, but also all that hard-working and ill-rewarded portion of the army, who have not sufficient interest or family connexions to push them unfairly forwards. All such, if they dare not openly applaud, will look with secret pleasure on your undertaking,
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and, I am sure, back it indirectly by any means which will not bring them under the influence of that inquisitorial tribunal which can more or less influence the fortunes of nearly every officer in the service, whatever may be his merits, in the same manner that it can by its fiat place men, most unfitted, in the highest and most responsible situations, which has unfortunately of late been so fully and fatally proved.
Sir, I believe that letter eminently expresses the whole truth of this question with regard to the army. But I have another letter from an eminent military man, whose name I am permitted to mention—Sir W. Napier. I have spared no pains to go to the best military authorities before I ventured to touch upon this subject. Sir William Napier's letter is most fair and proper, and although it tells against me in some respects, I will draw the attention of the House to it. He says:—
The questions of promotion from merit and promotion from favouritism I have never examined carefully, thinking the latter an inevitable consequence of human selfishness, and the former impossible to solve, except in a few instances. With respect to favouritism generally, however, it certainly pervades the British army to an inordinate degree, seeing that no offieer of high or low rank, no man below the rank of an officer, no civilian related to or interested for an officer by relationship or friendship, or seeking himself to enter the army, but whose first thought and immediate course is, not very vehemently, to beseech some person privately to use influence to obtain by favour what is sought for. The universal constant prayer is, 'Let me have your interest.' Sometimes, indeed, some poor forlorn officer merely states his long and arduous services, his wounds, and the number of his relations who have died in action; but this only to sway the influential person addressed, not as grounds for acceding to his claim. Why is this? Surely because the absolute necessity of private interests, apart from merit, is universally felt to be dominant. Your purpose is to bring public opinion to bear on this system so strongly that an amelioration must take place, and I for one will not shrink from cheering you on in such a patriotic course. But while I do so on general principles, it would be ungenerous, ungrateful, and unjust not to state that I have made, I may say, hundreds of applications for officers and soldiers, who have had only their services to recommend them—favour without service I never asked for—and, while Lord Raglan was Military Secretary, in no instance did I ever fail of success, nor have I in the very few cases which I have brought before General Yorke, the present Military Secretary, found the least backwardness to aid deserving men.
If I were not addressing the House I should cheer that sentiment as much as any man; but, although that sentiment may tell against me, the fact as to the manner in which Sir William Napier states that his recommendations have been received
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are an argument in support of my case. Sir William Napier is a great military authority. He has access to the Horse Guards. He can recommend persons. Fortunately, his soul abhors a job, and he would never recommend any one for promotion who is unworthy of it. If every promotion went in the same way I should not complain. If I saw promotions made upon the recommendation of such men as Sir W. Napier, or that gallant General who so much adorns this House (Sir De Lacy Evans), or any man equally distinguished and equally pure, I should have no doubt whatever of the propriety of those appointments. It is not such recommendations as these that we complain of, or are disposed to call in question. A curious word occurs in the regulation which affects the very commencement of every man's career in the army. That regulation is, that all recommendations for commissions shall certify the eligibility of the person recommended in respect to education, character, and "connections." I do not really understand what is the meaning of the word "connections," unless it be relationship to persons of a certain position. I shall be very happy if hon. Gentlemen will explain it. I have no wish to put a wrong construction upon it; I merely take the word as it stands.
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Before I go into the several cases to which I shall call the attention of the House, I must beg their indulgence while I say a few words upon a personal subject. I do not suppose the House has forgotten what occurred some time ago with regard to myself and Colonel Hardinge. Up to this moment it has not been in my power to explain this matter fully. When the question was brought forward I was not prepared to meet it. I had received but a very short notice from the gallant Member that he intended to bring it forward, and other reasons prevented my entering then upon a full explanation. Those reasons no longer exist. Colonel Wilson has retired from the army; and the country has lost the services of an eminent and gallant officer, who distinguished himself as much as any one on the fatal day of Inkerman, who was in the thickest of the fight, who brought his company into action from the two-gun battery, and was one of the very few that survived. He has left Her Majesty's service. It is matter of regret to me, because I am partly the cause; but I am not to blame. I wish merely to state to the House this case of Colonel Wilson, because
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it eminently illustrates my proposition, and I will state it as fairly as I can, having taken great pains to obtain accuracy by most careful inquiries on all sides. I hope the House will understand that I will never be a party to deceiving it in any way whatever, not even if I could appeal to thirty-seven years' experience in Parliament. The House will believe me when I say that if I state anything it is from a conviction that it is true. I may be wrong, and, if the error is pointed out in a fair and quiet manner, I shall be the first to retract. Upon the occasion to which I allude I did not believe that I had stated that which was not strictly true, though I felt I was not in a position to prove it. I would not, therefore, retract, not from any want of respect to the House, but because I respected the House, and would not give it the impression that I had stated anything which I knew to be inaccurate. What was the case of Colonel Wilson? Three officers, captains and lieutenant-colonels in the Guards, were killed in action. The three officers next in rank were entitled to promotion. Two of those officers were not for purchase, and they were promoted. The third was for purchase, Colonel M'Kinnon, and he was also promoted. Colonel M'Kinnon, whose promotion was purchased, was killed. He had not heard of the purchase at the time of his death, and a regulation operated which was unknown to Colonel Wilson, and was unknown to many officers in the army. Colonel Wilson's friends were called upon to purchase the commission. He was then ill in the hospital at Scutari. He thought he had got his commission without purchase. It proved not to be so. His friends had paid the money, and he found himself gazetted by purchase. He thought, considering the circumstances, he might have had the option of purchasing or not, but that courtesy was not shown to Colonel Wilson. It does, however, appear that the rule was in this instance strictly complied with. I had what I considered the best possible proof that I was not understating the case of the Guards. I am not satisfied, though I quite admit I was wrong. Colonel Crombie was put on half-pay, Lord Burghersh was promoted without purchase, and Colonel Hardinge got his step. The House will see there were rules, and the rules were applied, and when I said there were not rules I was wrong, and that I retract. Let me call the attention of the House to Colonel Hardinge's career.
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I trust the House will believe that I regard Colonel Hardinge with no personal feeling whatever. He is a most gallant officer. He has distinguished himself, and I do not I grudge him advancement. It is not the man I attack; it is the system which I wish to expose. Let us look at Colonel Hardinge's career. Colonel Hardinge entered the army as ensign in 1844. His first appearance was in direct violation of a printed regulation—much stronger than; this regulation of which Colonel Wilson was ignorant, and which I presume is not printed—of a regulation which says that no officer shall be appointed to serve on the staff until he has for two years performed regimental duty. He was put on the staff and served as aide-de-camp to his father in his Indian campaign. For good service in that campaign—in which he ought not to have been, though I am glad to say he was—Colonel Hardinge was made lieutenant without purchase. There were hundreds of poor ensigns who went through that campaign, but they received no such reward. That was in 1845. He was low in the list of lieutenants in his own regiment, yet shortly afterwards he was allowed to purchase a company in another regiment, over the heads of all the lieutenants. That was not against rule, but it was done in a manner almost unaccountable. He is not in this new regiment many days before he exchanges into the Coldstream Guards, and is then advanced rapidly through the staff to the position in which we have lately seen him. Now, look at Hart's Army List, and take the case of an officer who entered the same regiment shortly after Colonel Hardinge—Lieutenant Henry Buck. This poor young man not only served through all the campaigns in the Punjab in which Colonel Hardinge distinguished himself, but was likewise present at Goojerat and the subsequent battles, and obtained several medals and clasps. Poor Henry Buck is still a lieutenant, and Colonel Hardinge has attained high rank in Her Majesty's army. I am glad to see Colonel Hardinge where he is; but the case of Lieutenant Buck is a reflection upon the system. When Major Hardinge is made an effective major on the staff in direct opposition to regulations; when Colonel Wood is placed over the head of Colonel Brough; when Colonel Cunynghame, son-in-law to Lord Hardinge, is placed over everybody's head; when all these things are happening together, can the House be surprised that an officer like
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Colonel Wilson, who has to pay for his promotion after all he has gone through, should have felt hurt; or that, naturally feeling some indignation, I should have made a somewhat inaccurate statement? I am sorry that I made it, and I now beg to retract anything which I may have incorrectly inferred. There is another question upon which I must say a word—that of Lord Eustace Cecil. There the promotion was in direct opposition to all regulations. An hon. and gallant Member opposite got up and excused that promotion because Lord Eustace Cecil had shown a meritorious desire to see service. That was a not very complimentary speech to the officers of the British army; but what are the facts of that case? Lord Eustace Cecil has exchanged out of every regiment which was seeing service. His regiment is at the seat of war; he is placed in a battalion which is at this moment in London, and Lord Eustace Cecil is within a mile of this House, or, indeed, he was so within a very few days. On a former occasion I alluded to the case of Captain Blackett, and I have since been accused of some inaccuracy, and I was asked by the father of that gentleman to retract my Statement, but which I refused to do; and, certainly, I was surprised and astonished that the father should have written to The Times a, letter, in which he denied that his son was promoted for merit, but that it was by the influence of Colonel Upton, with whom he had gone on some pleasure excursion. This reminds me of Canning's celebrated story of the knife-grinder, who would not be relieved, although some sentimental person was ready to afford it to him. I have a long list of lieutenants in the army who have served for years and years without having been promoted, but I will not refer to all of them. I will, however, call the attention of the House to a few cases, avoiding as much as possible the mentioning of names where it may be considered painful to individuals to do so. There was a Lieutenant Edwardes, who went to Spain in 1811, was at the storming of Badajoz in 1812, and was engaged throughout the whole of the Peninsular war. He was in six medal actions, and he was thirty times under fire, and was twice wounded; he was then with the army of occupation in France, and had been on service nearly ever since; and yet, notwithstanding a most earnest appeal to Lord Hardinge by Sir W. Napier in his favour, he has been a lieutenant ever since. Let
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me mention the case of Lieutenant D——. That officer made application for promotion to the rank of captain without purchase. He was an ensign in 1839. He is the son of an old officer, and has served some twelve or fourteen years out of the seventeen years on foreign service, having been during that time in India and in China, and has a medal for the Chinese war. He has a family, and has exchanged into his present corps, as it is impossible for him to support his family in England. He is now the oldest subaltern in the service, and he has applied to be appointed to an unattached company. But, no; he has no friend at the Horse Guards, and therefore he still remains a subaltern, I will now read to the House a most touching letter, which has been furnished to me by Sir W. Napier, who has applied in vain to Lord Hardinge on behalf of the writer, who is a captain in the 44th Regiment, and who has been forty-four years in actual service. The letter, although private, is one so touching, and so fully exemplifying the working of the whole system, that I make no apology for reading it:—
This day is the 40th anniversary of the Nivelle, when you showed us the way to fight and conquer. How few survive of those whom you so gallantly led ! Am I not somewhat privileged, as one of your old followers, to address you? I think so. Mine really is a singular fate! Here I am, one of the spared of the old guard, making preparations in Table Bay for the embarkation of the modern 43rd, destined for Madras. … During the last three years I have not been one night absent from my post. Sir George Cathcart has not been backward in acknowledging my services, and recommended me for a brevet majority (1s. per diem). My Lord Hardinge rejected my claims to this trifling boon with the inconsistency of admitting that he entertains a full sense of my merits. He has promoted a legion of youngsters over me; many of whom have been only in one little skirmish, pendant notre petite guerre. One, twenty-six years my jun., writes to me to say, 'I was surprised to see my name among the lucky fellows promoted, as I have never done anything.' The chief of our staff, a very intelligent officer, wrote to me not long since, stating—' I have no hesitation in saying that the zeal and diligence which you have exhibited in carrying on the various business at our great entrepôt, whence everything comes to this army, have been of more use than if you had been in every skirmish and on every patrol during the war.' My services are considered, however, unworthy of the smallest consideration. … Cependant n'importe ! la vie est si courte, et si triste, qu'on ne doit pas s'en chagriner."
I will now refer to a case of a very opposite description. It is that of an officer, a young man (Captain S——), whose name has never been mentioned in any order or
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despatch, find whose services are wholly unnoted. In 1853 he was promoted to a majority, and in 1855, on Lord Panmure's accession to the office of Minister for War, he was made a deputy quartermaster general and lieutenant colonel, which, of course, makes it certain that he will obtain his colonelcy in three years' time, while he still retains his captaincy in his own regiment. That, I contend, is a case of most unjust promotion. I say not a word against the individual, but I do most severely condemn the system. The first step in his promotion put him over the head of the senior major in his own regiment, Major A——, who entered the regiment four years before Captain S——was known in the service, and who was in the campaign of Afghanistan, at Ghuznee, Khelat, and in the Kafir war was severely wounded, and is well known as a distinguished officer. The second step in his promotion puts him over Lieutenant Colonel B——, whose name has often been mentioned in orders and despatches, and who is six years the senior of Captain S——, twice slightly wounded, once seriously. It puts him over the head of Brigade Major Simmons, who entered the regiment nine years before Captain S——was appointed, who was known to the House in the Seringapatam affair and in the Afghanistan campaign, and was seriously wounded at Ghuznee and twice at Khelat. I ask, is that a state of things that is to be tolerated? I could go into the particulars of an unlimited number of instances of a similar description, but I think those I have already mentioned will be sufficient to prove to the House that there is a system of favouritism pursued in the British army to a great and lamentable extent, and which operates most injuriously to those who have honestly and patriotically served their country. I will now go to the staff. I have already stated that the regulations of the army are infringed whenever it is thought they may be an obstacle in the way of the promotion of men having an influence at their command. One of those evils which have given rise to all the anomalies of which we have to complain is the numerous appointments to the staff. If you look through the Army List you will perceive this at once. It will be seen that there are not less than forty-five officers who, in spite of the regulations, are away from their regiments and serving on the staff. By those regulations, it is positively stated that no officer shall be on the staff while
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his regiment is on foreign service. I know that there is a distinction between the staff of the army and the personal staff of the general. General Jomini has said, that—
A good staff is, more than all, indispensable to a well-constituted army. It must be considered as the nursery whence a general is to draw the instruments of which he makes use—an assemblage of officers whose talents are to second his own. When the genius which directs, and the talents of those who are to carry out his conceptions, do not harmonise, success becomes doubtful, for the most skilful combinations are neutralised through faults in execution. A good staff has, moreover, the advantage of being more lasting than the genius of one man—it can remedy many evils, and we hesitate not to affirm that it is the best safeguard to an army. Petty interests, narrow views, misplaced self-love, may deny this assertion; it must nevertheless remain an undeniable truth to every reflecting soldier and every enlightened statesman. A well-constituted staff will be to an army what an able Ministry is to a monarchy—it will support the commander even when he is capable of directing all himself. It will prevent faults by furnishing him with good information; it will also prevent them when he is unequal to the duties of command.
It must, nevertheless, remain an undeniable truth to every reflecting mind that a well-constituted staff is to an army what an able Minister is to the Monarch; and I wish we had both. Those are most remarkable words. This House and the country know what we have suffered of late. There is an institution in this country specially devoted to the education of officers who ought to be on the staff. A return was called for some time ago, by an hon. Member, of those officers who had taken honours and were now on the staff. I made an error before, and I will correct it now by reading the return—
Omitting general officers, there are 116 officers serving on the staff, of whom 19 belong to the Guards, most of them of noble families, and 7 to the Rifle Brigade, of whom 4 are honourables. There are 6 lieutenant generals on the staff, not one of whom has taken a certificate in the senior department of the Royal Military College; 12 major generals, of whom 1 (General Eyre) has obtained a certificate; 4 colonels, 1 of whom (Colonel Cameron) has a certificate; 12 assistant adjutant generals, 2 of whom (Lieutenant Colonel Stirling and Major Ewart) have obtained a certificate; 1 quartermaster general, with a certificate; 9 assistant quartermaster generals, none of whom have obtained certificates; 29 deputy assistant quartermaster generals, 5 of whom have certificates; 1 military secretary, assistant military secretary, 12 staff officers, 30 aides-decamp, and 14 brigade majors, none of whom had obtained certificates; so that out of the whole staff, properly so called, only 7 have obtained certificates of the senior department of the Royal Military College.
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A return has been also made to this House of the names of those officers who have been promoted for good service during the campaign, coming down to the 11th of March. Out of 93 officers promoted, how many does the House suppose are on the staff? No less than 65. This is a most serious consideration. Remember the brave men in the Crimea; our officers are becoming disheartened by the present state of things. I say so from my own personal knowledge; I have mixed with them and heard from their own lips their opinions of the wholesale promotions of those whose services are inferior to their own. Let the House listen to a voice from the Crimea. The following observations have appeared in a public paper—
But, more by far than any injustice or indiscriminating liberality in distributing honours, is the tardiness with which the State rewards them (the officers and soldiers). How many of the soldiers of the Alma are there remaining among us? How many have passed away from the ranks of those who fought at Balaklava and Inkerman? Look, for example, at the case of Colonel Egerton, who fell the other night in a nocturnal action in the trenches. That gallant, loved, and honoured officer had never for a moment left his regiment, from the time they landed, till he met his death-wound; he led his regiment up the steeps of Alma; he commanded them at Inkerman, where Lord Raglan specially mentioned their services and exertions in recapturing three of our guns from the enemy; and many a weary night he passed in the dreary trenches; but, while Gazette after Gazette showered promotion on the peak of every cocked hat, wherever it was, in the fight, or out of it, Colonel Egerton received nothing—not one step. He had no reward except the regard of his general, the respect of the army, and the promise of a medal and clasps, which he never lived to see. That is the case of many a gallant soldier, and the cause of many a great complaint.
The authorities at home have, no doubt, ascertained privately, and through communications unknown to the public, how much disappointment exists among the senior officers in command of regiments out here at the delay which has taken place in the distribution of the rewards and honours which they have reason to expect, and to which they are so justly entitled. The feeling is expressed in every tent, in every conversation in camp. If colonels of regiments are to be made C.B.'s for past services, why are they kept waiting till they are heart-sickened? The case of Colonel Egerton, who went to his honoured grave followed by the regrets of the whole army, may be that of every one of the few remaining officers who led their regiments at Alma, Inkerman, and have served their country in the equally perilous, more trying, but less glorious service of the trenches during this protracted siege. There is understood to be some little difference of opinion between Lord Raglan and the War Office respecting the lists of officers to be rewarded; but it matters little to those who are pining for some acknowledgment of their services what the nice point
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may be which bars their right. Very recently, Colonel Rumley, who has seen but little foreign service as commanding officer, and Colonel Williams, who has latterly at least been principally employed in Ireland, have been appointed brigadiers general at Malta. It is felt that these appointments would have been conferred with much greater propriety and justice on some of the colonels of regiments out here—men who, like Colonel Garrett or Colonel Macpherson, belong to the Peninsula, and who are only in temporary command of brigades, from which they may be superseded at any moment; whereas Colonels Rumley and Williams have permanent commands. Colonel Shirley, of the 88th Regiment, has every day an opportunity of seeing his nephew, who never saw any war service, and who is junior to him by many years, in the uniform of a major general, with rank and pay greater than his own; and there is no doubt that Major General Shirley will not only have his local rank confirmed, but that he will also have a certainty of higher promotion if the force to which he has been appointed perform any service of importance, while Colonel Shirley, who has served with his regiment throughout the campaign, cannot be promoted, and does not even receive any honorary distinction for his conduct. He was a brigadier for a few days, but is so no longer. The case of Colonel Yea, of the 7th, than whom there is no more gallant, devoted, and energetic soldier in the service, is equally hard; and all the Alma colonels are aggrieved or slighted in the same way. Colonel Cunynghame is doubtless a deserving, zealous, and hardworking officer; but he has recently received an appointment which places him far above the heads of officers as deserving and far senior to him in the service. [The system we go upon is in fact unintelligible, it is neither one of seniority nor of merit.] What reward has Brevet Colonel Dickson received for the services he rendered at the Alma, and the incalculable results he produced at Inkerman by the fire of two guns, around which seventeen of the gunners were struck down beside him?
I know Colonel Dickson, and a more gallant or more able officer does not exist, nor one who has rendered greater services to the country. Does the House remember his father in the Peninsula, when the Duke of Wellington ordered a certain military operation, which the artillery officer in command said was impossible; upon which the Duke turned round to the young officer and said, "Will you do it?" he replied, "I will;" and he did it. What did the Duke of Wellington? He promoted the young officer to the head of the artillery on the spot, and moreover kept him there, in spite of favouritism at home, and even of officers being sent out to supersede him. Well, what was the result? Why, his artillery was the best in the British army. Colonel Dickson—the son's—was exactly the same case. At Inkerman the colonel commanding the artillery said it was impossible to bring up guns to a certain position which would decide the fate of the
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day. Colonel Dickson, however—who left this country, be it remembered, a brevet colonel, having been in Spain and seen long service there—said it was possible to bring up guns, and, like his father, he did bring them up, and played with such effect as to break the masses of Russian infantry which were attacking us. He is still a plain captain of artillery. The statement in The Times was—
It would surprise the Horse Guards, perhaps, if they could hear the names of officers who have, I know, expressed their intention of leaving the service as soon as they can, should their claims be disregarded any longer, or as soon as they complete a term of service to justify their demanding a retirement.
We have had reverses and why? Because we have had no men to command—no officers. And we shall have none if you continue to turn a deaf ear to just merit, and still determine to promote those only who have family or political influence to recommend them. Look at the staffs of the generals, look at that of my gallant Friend here—Sir De Lacy Evans. That staff was not composed of men selected because they were his relations or had political influence, but because they were the best men for the service—and good and true men they were. There was one Member of this House (Lieutenant-Colonel P. Herbert) upon that staff; but he was not selected on that account, for a more gallant officer could not be found, and in choosing him the General did honour to the House, and at the same time placed that officer in the right place. What are the remedies I suggest for the evils I have pointed out? They are promotion without purchase, and an end, if possible, to all favouritism in the army. That is the first step. As to promotion without purchase, I believe my hon. and gallant Friend (Sir De Lacy Evans) agrees with all those who are well acquainted with the army, that this system, which disgraces us in the eyes of foreign nations, must be put an end to. That has been proposed more than once, and the answer always has been "you cannot meddle with vested interests." I do not wish to do so; but if I can show you how you can remedy the evil without interfering with vested interests, will you give me a proof of your sincerity by adopting my plan? Here is a curious list, which I have made, of the number of commissions given without purchase up to this time. Will the House believe that out of 4,367 commissions given from the rank of
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captain downwards, more than one-half—. 2,413—have been granted without purchase? I will take two regiments at random. In the first regiment, out of twenty-eight commissions as captains, eleven are without purchase; lieutenants, twenty-two out of thirty-three; and ensigns, ten out of sixteen, without purchase. Now I will take the last regiment—the Rifle Brigade. There, out of forty-three captains' commissions, thirty were given without purchase; of lieutenants, thirty-four out of thirty-five; and of ensigns, twenty-three out of 129 were without purchase. Now, if you be sincere, you have an opportunity to put an end to one-half of the purchase system in the army—if you will say that all these commissions which have been given without purchase shall remain free commissions, to be given only to merit, and shall not pass by purchase. Thus, without touching in any degree vested interests, or injuring any man in any way, you can put an end to so much of the system of purchase, and, at the same time, be doing only an act of justice. Is it right that a man who has a commission given to him should go and sell it to a person who has merited it? I know he cannot do so immediately after he gets it, but he can very soon after; and supposing a man on obtaining his colonelcy sells out, he sells all his former commissions, although one or two may have come to him without purchase. If the Government wishes to encourage those men who are fighting our battles, and wishes to say one word of consolation to them, let the decision of this House go forth, that at least commissions given without purchase shall henceforth be given only to merit. The anomalies of the purchase system are greater in war than in peace. You have officers who have fought in all your campaigns; when vacancies occur they cannot, perhaps, purchase; and then men who have never left this country—who have been the whole time with the depôt—are enabled to buy over their heads, not only within their own but in any other regiments. The next thing you must do is to abolish the privileges of the Guards. There is the great evil. You take these regiments and place them above all others, which is an injustice; it is unfair and inconsistent with the spirit of the age, and must be put an end to. You must educate your staff—you must make a rule that no man shall be on the staff unless he shall have received the education necessary for
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such ah appointment. You must attend to the recommendations of the Commissions which have been appointed to consider these questions, and which have reported in favour of changes in our military system. There was a Report made last year by a Commission, signed by several Members of this House, in which I find the following passage—
It is generally admitted that in a naval command physical Vigour, and the energy which accompanies it, ate necessary to the full discharge of the duties imposed upon the commander; but, if this be true in the navy, in Which, though the responsibility and risk to life be increased in war, yet there is little additional fatigue or privation, comparatively, beyond what is encountered in peace, how much more is it true in the case of land service, where immense distances have to be traversed over unknown and difficult ground, where the general must necessarily spend days together in the saddle, visiting, as he must do, all parts of an extended line of operations, where the most opposite reports have to be balanced and decided, where the most elaborate combinations must be rapidly conceived and executed, in order to move and feed vast bodies of men in an unwilling or hostile country, to find means of transport for supplies of provisions and ammunition, to provide for the sick and wounded, to create, in short, with such materials as may be found, an organisation, any failure in which may result in a terrible sacrifice of human life, and may, in the most critical moment, baffle the best combinations. That labours such as these must require, not only the exercise of faculties of the highest order, but physical strength, and powers of endurance which shall keep those faculties unimpaired by bodily fatigue and privation, is too obvious to be disputed. The breaking out of a war, of which no one can foresee the duration or the extent, makes it incumbent upon us to take immediate and effective measures to remedy evils by which the efficiency of the service may, at a most critical moment, be seriously impaired.
But how far have those recommendations been carried out? The Report gives a list of the ages of the general officers in the Peninsula—
The Duke of Wellington was a major genera at 33; the Marquess of Anglesey, 34; the Earl of Dalhousie, 38; the Earl of Strafford, 36; Lord Hill, 33; Lord Beresford, 39; Sir George Murray, 40; Lord Combermere, 41; Lord Londonderry, 32.
By way of contrast, I have here a list of the ages of the general officers in the Crimea, which, I believe, is correct, and which shows how much attention has been paid to the recommendations of the Commission—
Lord Raglan is 67; Sir J. Burgoyne, 73; General Brown, 65; Duke of Cambridge, 36; Sir De Lacy Evans, 68; Sir R. England, 62; Sir G. Cathcart, 61; Lord Lucan, 55; General Tylden entered service in 1806, 66; General Cator, entered
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service in 1803, 69; General Strangways, entered service in 1806, 66; Commissary General Filder, 64; Admiral Dundas, entered service in 1799, 67; Lord Rokeby, 57.
All these are gallant officers; they have served their country well, and the country would rejoice to honour them, and to pension them; but When the interests and honour of the country are at stake, we must not allow private considerations to have weight in appointments of this kind. I want to know why the recommendation of the Commission which I have just read was not carried out; and I want to know, further; whether it is now being carried out. By your present system you exclude from the army all the middle classes—those Classes which eminently represent the intelligence of the country; only those who have influence and family connections can get commissions; but if you were to throw open the army, you would at once have a large importation of the intelligent and energetic middle classes into it, even as privates, if you were to give them anything like a prospect of rising. But the Government have done nothing towards improving our military system, except throwing open the artillery, and uniting the Commissariat and Ordnance with the Horse Guards. I should not quite like to state my own opinion with regard to this last measure, but I will read to the House what the hon. Member for Middlesex (Mr. B. Osborne), who is a Member of the Government, and who ought therefore to be an authority, said on the subject some little time ago—
Will any man tell me that our military system, as existing at present, has tended to develop or bring forward military talent or genius? I deny it. Look, Sir, in the first instance, how the staff of the British army is composed. It is all very well for hon. Gentlemen to come down and talk of consolidation of the Ordnance, the Horse Guards, and the Commissariat, under one head, and the substitution of one Minister for another. I maintain (whatever may be the inherent vigour of that man, whatever may be his experience), a mere consolidation will not be sufficient; you must reconstruct your whole military system. The time has arrived when you cannot expect an army, besides winning battles in the field, to go through the vicissitudes of a campaign under the present state of things. You must lay an unsparing hand on that building adjacent to these premises; you must see, whether, in fact, you can find a modern Hercules to turn the Serpentine through the Horse Guards, and all the ramifications of the War Office. …. In England every one knows that it is not merit and capacity for which an officer is appointed to the staff, but interest and connection. …. I say you must not be satisfied with the army consolidation; you must reform the army and
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the Horse Guards. …. The fact is this, that you never will have any reform till you commence with the Horse Guards, and are not satisfied with the mere consolidation of offices. It is very painful for me to make this statement; I have a superior duty to perform; I represent a constituency.
Really, if I had been speaking myself, I could not have used more appropriate language. This being, then, the opinion of a Member of the Government, I trust something will be done. We must remember that our words here will travel far; I know that every regimental officer in the Crimea is watching what passes here with the deepest anxiety; they trust in us, and they are hoping that we shall be able to break up the system which exposes them to so great wrongs. With regard to the navy, I am afraid there is much in its system which produces the same injustice and the same grievances as those which I have described with regard to the army. I am afraid there is the same favouritism at work there too. I will just give one instance of the perversity which characterises the administration of the navy. If there is one class of officers more valuable and more deserving than another in the navy it is the masters. They are entrusted with most arduous and most responsible duties; if a shipwreck takes place, the blame is generally thrown on their shoulders; but although there is a power to promote masters, Government will seldom or never exercise it. Some time ago I pressed on an hon. Member of this House, who sits at the Admiralty Board, to do something for the masters, and he told me that something was being done. It turned out that that something was a mere increase of pay, but there was no improvement whatever made as to promoting them in rank. Now, a mere increase of pay I say is no encouragement at all to such men. I have received letters from masters telling me that they were so disgusted with the service that they were longing to quit it, and enter into the mercantile marine.
§ I come now to the diplomatic service, in which I am somewhat more at home, as I have had considerable personal experience of it, and have made it, too, a subject of study, and on which, therefore, I can speak with some confidence. I will divide it into two parts—diplomacy proper, and the consular service. Recent events have shown us of what importance our diplomatic service is, and what important questions are committed into its hands; and 2062 yet, if there is one service more than another which is made the vehicle of favouritism it is our diplomatic. Here is a little book published annually by the Foreign Office, which gives a list of those who are employed in our diplomatic service. I open it at random and I read—Hanover—Minister, the hon. John Duncan Bligh, C.B.; Secretary of Legation, hon. G. Edgcumbe; First Attaché, hon. W. Nassau Jocelyn. Then I go to Austria. There the Minister is the Earl of Westmorland; the Secretary of Legation, hon. Henry G. Elliot; First paid Attaché, hon. Julian H. C. Fane. I turn to Berlin, and there I read—Minister, Lord Bloomfield; Secretary of Legation, Lord Augustus Loftus; First paid Attaché, hon. Lionel S. Sackville West; Second Attaché, hon. William G. C. Elliot; and so on throughout, showing what a complete monopoly the service is. From this little book I have made the following analysis of the composition of the service—Heads of Missions: 7 lords, 9 honourables, 2 baronets, 3 noble families; 7 gentlemen—nearly all small missions; 21 against 7. Secretaries of Legation—2 lords, 9 honourables, 1 baronet, 5 noble families; 7 gentlemen: 17 against 7. Paid Attachés—1 lord, 7 honourables, 6 noble families; 10 gentlemen: 14 against 10, but the 10 include Turkish or Persian Mission. Unpaid Attachés—2 lords, 5 honourables, 9 noble families; 17 gentlemen; 16 against 17. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Wise) the other night mentioned the case of Mr. Stanley, who had been a precis-writer in the Foreign Office, and who, after six days' service as second attaché, was made first attaché; and, after three years' service as first attaché, was promoted to the post of secretary of legation. Certainly I should have thought that that family had had enough—two peerages and a bishopric, besides other things, ought to have sufficed for them. Then, on the other hand, there is the case of Mr. Alison—emphatically a man of genius—who has been kept in the embassy at Constantinople since 1839; an abler man does not exist; yet the Government, though they have made him Oriental Secretary, will not allow him to rank as a secretary of legation or to claim increase of pay; he is kept under such men as Mr. Stanley, and others who have been put over his head. What is the result of such a system as this? Why, honest, able, hard-working men give themselves up to despair, or get into a morbid 2063 state, and become unable to serve the public as they were wont to do. The system literally destroyed them. There are a great many other cases, all of which are equally bad; and let the House take my word for it—for I have been engaged in diplomacy and in the Foreign Office—there is nothing but favouritism in diplomacy. Yet the noble Lord (Viscount Palmerston) gets up and says that it is a great mistake to suppose that when vacancies occur in the higher offices the selections are not made with a view to efficiency. There is the case of our present Minister in Tuscany, whose office a Committee of this House recommended should be abolished, or merged in another. Certainly it has been well said that the country may afford to pension incapacity, but cannot afford to employ it. I am sorry to have to refer to individual instances, but I cannot flinch from that task when it is necessary to perform it in order to expose a crying evil and abuse. Some years ago it was determined to have gentlemen at Constantinople who should take the places of the foreign interpreters. Now I have heard the employment of M. Pisani and other gentlemen like him, performing the functions of interpreters to the British Embassy in the East, much condemned; and it has been said, that they are mere Russian spies, who are to be bought; but, in justice to this class, I must say (and I speak from experience), that I believe a more honest set of men does not exist; and I never heard of an instance in which they had ever in the slightest way betrayed the interests of this country. The system, however, is bad; and it is no reflection upon those gentlemen to say, that you ought not to have foreigners in your service if you can get Englishmen to fill their situations. Why should we not act as the Austrians, the French, and the Russians do in this respect? Well, several vacancies having occurred, four gentlemen selected from Oxford and Cambridge were sent to Constantinople to serve the office of interpreters; but up to this moment three of them are kept there upon miserable salaries and have not been so much as recognised as attachés. True they are told they can marry and settle there, and take up a profession; but how can they do so and keep up the position of gentlemen upon 250l. a year, less income tax and Foreign-office fees, without any chance of promotion, or even the advantages of a dragoman's place? Though one of these gentleman 2064 has been abroad since 1840, he has not risen a single step. Now what is wanted in diplomacy, as in the civil service, is some test on entering. When I was at the Foreign Office many documents were submitted to me on the subject of examinations. Some of them went even further than I thought necessary, because I do not know that an acquaintance with botany, astronomy, and other abstruse sciences is of much use to such officers. Some examination, however, is absolutely requisite; and, above all, we ought to employ no man without paying him. The whole of our system of unpaid attachés is rotten from top to bottom. If a man's services are worth anything, pay him from the very moment he enters your employment; if they are not worth remuneration, let him be dismissed. I look upon diplomacy as a most important profession, and what I would suggest is, that you should advance your attachés by seniority to a certain point—say up to secretaryships of legation. You cannot safely promote them further than that by seniority, because in diplomacy book knowledge is not sufficient; you want greater qualifications than that, and in order to secure superior efficiency, almost any departure from rule may be justifiable, but that departure should never be made for the purpose of perpretrating a job, as is the case unfortunately too often at present. In the competition to which diplomatic appointments should be subject, a preference should be shown to those who have taken the highest honours in some of your public and recognised places of education, and inducements should be held out from time to time to such gentlemen to enter into the diplomatic service of the country. A word or two with regard to the consular branch—a most important service also, and one that is as ill-treated as are your diplomatic agents. Your consular establishment consists of four divisions which it is necessary to distinguish—Consuls-General, Consuls, Vice-Consuls, and Consular Assistants. Your consular service is no profession at all, and men are employed in it for the most extraordinary reasons, and sometimes for reasons, I may almost say, that morality would repudiate. The claims put forward for appointment to such posts are, indeed, often so remarkable that I am astonished they should be listened to for a moment. But in this service men are never promoted. The consul general, who is at the top of the tree, 2065 ought to have previously been, but never is, a hard-working consul. The noble Lord at the head of the Government bore testimony to the efficiency of some of our consuls. I have myself been acquainted with these gentlemen in Europe, Asia, and Africa, in the immediate range of the Mediterranean at least; and I must say that among them are many most able men, and men, in tact, who from their wonderful acquirements would be entitled to the highest posts in any profession. But are they ever advanced? Some of them write to me stating their grievances, and complaining of their long and unrequited services; and I myself know men with large families who have been for twenty or even thirty years stationed in some small town. True they are told that they may trade if they please; but this is a mockery, for how can they trade without capital, of which they are destitute? If they attempted to do so they would soon become bankrupt; they would set all the other merchants of the place against them; they would get into constant quarrels with the pachas, and everybody would insult them. You put a man upon 200l., or 300l., or, it may be, 500l. a-year,; but, first, you deduct from his salary the income tax, which considering that he does not escape the taxation of the country in which he is living, is perhaps, rather hard. Then you subject him to another burden, which, I think, is an abomination—namely, what is called the Foreign Office clerks' fees. I will say nothing against the clerks in the Foreign Office, because during the short time I was in that department, I found men of such power and capacity there that I was ashamed to feel myself placed over them. But a consul and every diplomatic officer is obliged to pay so much for every 100l. he receives to a clerk in the Foreign Office for remitting his salary from time to time; and, what with this, and with the extras which the unfortunate consul, with 250l. a-year, has to pay, there is always a very large percentage to be deducted from his miserable income. I say, therefore, that you should do either one thing or another—either pay your Foreign Office clerks sufficiently, or fix your consular salaries at the amount which is actually paid; but do not by a sort of side-wind, eke out any inadequacy there may be in the remuneration of these clerks by cheating of his scanty earnings the poor consul in the East. Then you have your vice-consuls, who never rise; indeed, there is 2066 scarcely an instance of advancement in the consular service. Next you have got a perfect cloud of "consular agents;" but I scarcely ever knew an instance of a man rising in his office, and hence they are driven to objectionable practices as a means of compensating themselves for the want of promotion. These persons are mostly Greeks, or men of no nationality in the East. I read an amusing account of their proceedings in a book written, I understand, by a gentleman engaged in the Foreign Office, and entitled The Roving Englishman. I have seen hundreds of these consular agents myself over and over again; they are men who sell protection, who go about with two or three policemen bullying everybody; who make money by procuring exemption to individuals from the lock-up house and from the tribunals of the country, men who violate the law, represent themselves as British subjects, and pay these agents a small fee, in consideration of which, influence is exercised with the Pacha to secure their liberation. Thus, the authorities of the country are insulted; these men do not pay the customs' dues, and the local law is set at defiance. Well, the course which I would take to remove this scandal would be, if I ever heard of such a case, at once to dismiss the person concerned, and have him signally punished. Now, in the diplomatic and the consular services you should have a career. No man should enter the consular service unless he had previously been what in some European countries is called a "pro-consul;" but, as I do not wish to use high-sounding names, I will term it an "assistant consul." Let there be a probation to be gone through, as is the case in the French service, and when a man has served a certain period let him rise by merit to the highest places in his profession. Thus you will hold out to him that encouragement to exert himself which is now wholly wanting. I would also abolish the Foreign Office fees.
§
I now come to the civil service—a branch of the subject of pre-eminent importance, because it is a political question, and I hope we shall be favoured with the advice of the right hon. Gentleman behind me (Mr. Gladstone) upon it. Here we have safer grounds to go upon, because we have in evidence before us a collection of the most interesting and valuable papers drawn up by some of the most remarkable men in, this country who have been engaged in all departments of the public service. These
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papers give the grounds, I hope, of future improvement, and a basis on which this House may work. Instead of expressing my own opinion upon the state of our civil service, I will read the opinions of some of the gentlemen who have made the reports which have been laid before this House. It is stated that the civil service of this country has been entirely confined to those who have had family and political influence, but chiefly the latter; and we all know that an impression has gone abroad of the power of the right hon. Gentleman who represents the Treasury in the House in the distribution of offices. Let us see what these Gentlemen say in their reports. I will cite the opinion of Mr. Romilly, and he will be regarded as an authority, for he has been appointed one of the examiners under the new regulations. He says of appointments in the civil service—
The only motives for such appointments being filled by political partisans is gratitude for political services. Active exertions in obtaining votes in the House of Commons, large sums of money spent in elections, a steady adherence to one political party at last followed by one adverse vote, just to indicate that the former unswerving devotion ought to be duly appreciated—these and similar considerations actuate the Minister of the day in dispensing receiverships, secretaryships, commissionerships, and chairmanships, as they fall vacant. …. In all cases the men so chosen are appointed not because they are peculiarly fit for the situations, but because as political adherents they must be provided for; they look upon their appointments, not as imposing new duties, not as an important field for fresh exertions, but as a reward for the past, and an agreeable and easy retirement from active life for the future. In other words, the good of the civil service is sacrificed to political considerations. A political party must be kept together. Hopes must be raised in the minds of the rising generation of politicians. But in the same proportion as hopes are raised in members of the House of Commons by every fresh political appointment to situations in the strictly civil service, they are lessened and crushed in the civil service.
The words I have read are those of a gentleman who has been chosen by the Government themselves as an examiner in the new system they are about to adopt; therefore they will give due weight to his opinions. Now, let us see what Sir James Stephen says, He states—
The clerks in 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 number 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
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—such as large capacity of mind, literary powers of rare excellence, sound scholarship, indomitable energy, mature experience in public affairs, and an absolute self-devotion to the public service. It comprised some men who must have risen to eminence in any field of open competition, and who, if born to more ample fortunes, might reasonably have aspired to hold the seals of the office in which they were serving as subordinates. … The members of the third class—that is, the majority of the members 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. In many cases ample and valid excuses might be made for these defects; but of the existence of them it is impossible for me to doubt. Neither have I any doubt as to the cause of these extreme disparities between the persons of whom the establishment of the office was composed. The members of that which I have designated the first class, were, nearly all, men who had been sought out and appointed on account of their well-ascertained fitness for the public services. The members of that which I have named the third class were, without exception, men who had been appointed to gratify the political, the domestic, or the personal feelings of their patrons—that is, of successive Secretaries of State. The members of the so-called 'second class were chiefly, though not exclusively, indebted to such nepotism for their introduction into the department. It will, of course, be understood, that this classification is wholly distinct from that which prevails there, under the same names, to indicate the seniority of clerks to each other…… I conclude, therefore, that there is in our public offices a nepotism which generates many serious abuses in the conduct of them.
Such is the evidence of Sir James Stephen. Now I will take that of Sir Charles Trevelyan. He says—
It would be natural to expect 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 and 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 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.
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Then I have the opinion of Mr. Anderson, which I will not trouble the House with, as it is to the same effect as that which I have just read, but he states that when it was found necessary by a Commissioner at the head of a large department to introduce improvements in the mode of keeping the accounts, he could not find one among his large establishment of clerks who was sufficiently conversant with the scientific principles of accounts to carry out his plans of improvement. Mr. Chadwick, in his evidence, said—
A secretary, complaining of the disadvantages of his service, related in illustration that out of three clerks sent him from the usual sources there was only one of whom any use whatsoever could be made, and that, of the other two, one came to take his place at the office leading a bulldog in a string. I have been assured that, under another Commission, out of eighty clerks supplied by the patronage secretary, there were not more than twelve who were worth their salt for the performance of service requiring only a, sound common education.
A retired officer writes to Mr. Chadwick—
Many instances could be given of young men, the sons of respectable parents, who were found unable to read or write, and utterly ignorant of accounts. Two brothers, one almost imbecile, the other much below the average of intellect, long retained appointments, though never equal to higher work than the lowest description of copying. Another young man was found unable, on entering, to number the pages of a volume of official papers beyond ten.
These extracts show that all these gentlemen agree, in fact, that these evils exist, though there is among them some difference of Opinion as to the mode in which they are to be remedied. I suppose that the Order in Council which has been lately issued may be attributed to this Report, and to the little notice we are beginning to take of the civil service in this House. But this Order in Council gives no remedy for the evils I have alluded to; it merely declares that there shall be an examination; that when a man is sent up there shall be a test as to his being possessed of a reasonable capacity; but there is no system of competitive examination proposed. I will read to you what Mr. Romilly says on the subject of an examination, which I think will prove how useles a mere examination is without competition. Mr. Romilly says—
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 pant of the Board to say that they would reject him if
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he did not. … I have been twelve years in a Government office, and during that period no instance has occurred of any one being found undeserving of promotion.
I have great doubts as to Mr. Romilly's fitness for the office of examiner, though I do not generally object to him; yet, I think I am justified in my doubts on this point by the evidence which he has given. He says—
I am well aware that that which constitutes true gentleman-like feeling is found in every rank of life; but it is less common in the lower ranks than in the higher, and a selection, therefore, from a selected class would seem to me preferable to any choice, however extensive, founded upon competition. Admitting all the evils of patronage, and all the advantage of sweeping it away, as far as the Legislature is concerned, I do not think that the civil service should be made the instrument of the political regeneration of the country, unless it be good for the service itself. Parliament ought to be able to cure its own diseases, without having recourse to the civil service for the purpose.
I think this very extraordinary, but beyond I find a passage in his evidence which explains it. For he states that the effect of competition will be that the aristocracy Will lose the lion's share of the civil service; but I will read Mr. Romilly's own words. He says—
Notwithstanding its ability, the Report of Sir C. Trevelyan, together With other papers advocating open competition, have not convinced me. It still seems to me that the result of open competition will be a democratical civil service side by side with an aristocratical Legislature.
Before I read this Report I thought we had got rid of this vulgar delusion; but according to this gentleman we are still living under an aristocratical Legislature. He continues thus—
Open competition must necessarily be in favour of the more numerous class. The natural abilities of that more numerous class—i. e. of the lower or less rich class—are not inferior to those of the higher or richer class. Inducements to cultivate those abilities for a special and important object, attainable by such means, will not be wanting. The comparatively moderate prizes of the civil service rise in value as you descend in the scale of society. 200l. or 300l. a year is a much larger fortune to the son of a tradesman or farmer than it is to the son of a nobleman or 'squire; and I therefore believe that the great majority of the appointments will fall to the lot of those who are in the lower social position. The more the civil service is recruited from the lower classes, the less it will be sought after by the higher, until at last the aristocracy Will be altogether dissociated from the permanent civil service of the country.
If this means anything, it means this—that if you give the appointments to that
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class who possess the greatest amount of talent, and who have the greatest objects in working for the public service, you must introduce competitive examination, the effect of which will be to exclude the aristocracy. I am happy to say, that Mr. Mill, a gentleman of great experience, a profound philosopher as well as a political economist, has upset the absurdities of Mr. Romilly. Mr. Mill says—
If the sons of gentlemen cannot be expected to have as much ability and instruction as the sons of low people, it would make a strong case for social changes of a more extensive character. If the sons of gentlemen would not, even under the stimulus of competition, maintain themselves on an equality of intellect and attainments with youths of a lower rank, how much more below the mark must they be with their present monopoly, and to how much greater an extent than the friends of the measure allege must the efficiency of the public service be at present sacrificed to their incompetency? And more; if, with advantages and opportunities so vastly superior, the youth of the higher classes have not honour enough, or energy enough, or public spirit enough, to make themselves as well qualified as others for the station which they desire to maintain, they are not fit for that station, and cannot too soon step out of it and give place to better people. I have not this unfavourable opinion of them. I believe that they will fairly earn their full share of every kind of distinction, when they are no longer able to obtain it unearned.
I most entirely agree with those opinions. Let the public service be open to all classes. With regard to the examinations, I have a return which will somewhat amuse the House, of the system of examinations adopted, under the Order in Council, in each department, part of which I will read. In the Treasury—
The candidates are examined in the common rules of arithmetic, such as the Rule of Three, Vulgar and Decimal Fractions, Interest, and Discount; and they are required to make an abstract of some official documents, to test their intelligence, and to show that they are able to write and compose correctly.
One month is allowed for preparation for this examination. In the Customs—
Persons nominated to clerkships, upon presenting themselves to take up their appointments, are at once required to write from dictation in the presence of a properly qualified officer or clerk, and are examined in the principal rules of arithmetic and the first four rules of Decimal and Vulgar Fractions.
The candidates are here "placed on probation" for three months. In the Excise (Inland Revenue) office—
No person is fully admitted as a clerk until he has been examined and his proficiency has been ascertained in reading, writing, Vulgar Fractions,
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Decimals, bookkeeping by double entry, writing from dictation, correspondence, geography, and the history of the British empire.
In the Post Office the examination is very vague—penmanship, orthography, and arithmetic. In the Admiralty there are marks for the different subjects in which examination takes place, including writing from dictation, précis writing, arithmetic, English history, geography, Latin and French, the total number being 300. Any one who can get 100 is qualified, and, therefore, if a person can obtain fifty for writing from dictation, and fifty for précis writing, he escapes the other tests. There is no examination at the India Board, but appointments are probationary for one year. There are also no examinations at the Home Office, the Foreign Office, and the Colonial Office. The subjects of examination in the Paymaster General's Office are—
Practice; Rule of Three—direct, inverse, and double; Vulgar and Decimal Fractions; Interest, Purchase of Stock, and Exchange; writing from dictation; a précis or abstract of some official documents.
No examination takes place in the Office of Works, or the Office of Woods. The examination in the Audit Office comprises handwriting, English composition, and the rules of arithmetic up to Decimal Fractions. The subjects of examination in the Registrar General's Office are—
I, Writing from dictation; 2, arithmetic; 3, geography; 4, history (occasionally).
What is meant by "occasionally" I do not know. In the Ordnance Office there are no less than thirteen heads of examination, some of which are very amusing—
1, The candidate is expected to be able to read aloud with proper emphasis and discretion; 2, to write correctly from dictation; 3, to be conversant with the common rules of arithmetic, including Vulgar and Decimal Fractions; 4, to be acquainted with bookkeeping by double entry if appointed to an office of accounts; 5, to be acquainted with geography; 6, to be able to write a letter, and to make an abstract of correspondence; 7, to give a written or vivâ voce opinion on an ordinary subject which may be proposed to him for the purpose of testing his general intelligence.
I will not trouble the House with the other tests, but this examination seems to me, upon the whole, a very fair one. In the War Office—
The greatest importance will be attached to superiority in English grammar, English composition, and writing correctly from dictation, and in arithmetic to the extent of a practical
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acquaintance with the Rule of Three, Practice, Interest, and Vulgar and Decimal Fractions; a candidate will be allowed to indicate any book or subject upon which he may wish to be specially examined.
In the Poor Law Board and the Board of Trade there are no examinations. The examination in the Exchequer appears to be very fair, if properly carried out, and has been pronounced satisfactory by Lord Monteagle. In the National Debt Office—
A candidate nominated to a clerkship is subject to an examination to show that he can write with ease and facility a clear legible hand; that he can copy in a fair and correct manner from manuscript or print, and manuscript accounts selected and set before him for that purpose; that he is complete master of arithmetic up to and including Vulgar Fractions; that he has a fair knowledge of history and of geography.
I cannot conceive how a man who is unable to copy from print can have much proficiency in any other branch of knowledge. There are a few other offices alluded to in the return with which I will not trouble the House. Such are the examinations now in existence, but, unless you have a fairer means of appointment, these examinations are no test of qualification. We do not want a mere examination to enable a man, after he has been appointed, to enter the gates of a department; we want an examination which will really test the fitness of one man above that of others who may apply for the office. The question as to whether there ought to be competing examinations is one of considerable difficulty; but the arguments in their favour are, I think, stronger than the objections to them. It is said that if the public service is thrown open to all, you will be assailed by claimants from every part of the country. I do not think much harm would be done if that were the case. An eminent French statesman who was talking to me yesterday upon the subject took this objection, and illustrated it by an anecdote. He said that the Finance Minister of France, after the Revolution, received so enormous a number of applications for places that he did not know what to do; every man in France thought that he was entitled to a post under a free Government. In one day he received no less than 700 applications; and he then wrote to all the candidates desiring them to attend at his house on the same day and the same hour. When the time arrived the antechamber, the staircase, and the hall, were of course filled. The Minister presented himself, and said, "Gentlemen,
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what have you come here for? I suppose for places?" Their silence argued assent. "Well," said he, "I have only one place at my disposal; that is my own. If you would like to have it, apply for it." But I believe nothing of that kind will happen in England, if you upset the system which makes the distribution of places a political favour. Every Member of this House would be rejoiced to be relieved from the duty, for it has become almost a duty, of making applications for places for his constituents. There is no harm in those applications to a certain extent. The course I pursue with regard to my own constituents is this:—when a man asks me for a place, I say, if I know him, that I will certify that he is a respectable and competent person. If a person, known to be a respectable and competent man, applies for a small post in the town, it is no favour to get that post conferred on him. But the present system cannot be destroyed while your constituents have a right to ask you to forward their claims. A man ought to have other means of obtaining a post than an application to his representative. It is said to be almost necessary to the existence of a Government that they should have places at their disposal, and Mr. Romilly has stated that Members of Parliament are not to be kept in goodhumour without places. The first thing, then, that we ought to do is to pledge ourselves not to ask for places. If it is disagreeable to us to forward applications, and to the Government to receive them, let no more applications be made through us. But human nature will always remain human nature, and, unless a man has other means than those now afforded him of obtaining admission to the public service, the same influences will be employed, and the present state of things will continue to exist.
There is one more question upon which I wish to say a few words. A small pamphlet has been lately published on the re-organisation of the civil service, written by a gentleman connected with that service. Let the House hear, then, what these gentlemen have to say for themselves—for, although the pamphlet is anonymous, it is deserving of consideration. It shows, what the evidence which I have read proves, that the system in your public offices is as antagonistic as possible to the discharge of the duties of those offices; that men are placed in public offices whose claims rest upon political considerations; and that
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your offices are overcharged with incompetent people. The money voted for the public service is larger than the public like, and we therefore have Motions for the reduction of these sums; but the House does not usually cut down the salaries of the high officers, but those of the hard-working and useful men, the tendency of which is to fill the offices with useless and inefficient men. There is not one honest man, whether he is in favour of reduction or not, who will not say that a man who has a fair amount of duty to perform ought to receive a fair amount of pay. If you reduce your offices to the number of men who are competent to the duty, you may fairly increase the pay of those who fairly earn it. The first thing is not to cut down the pay of public offices, but to reduce the number of men to that which is required for the public service. Upon another point I agree with this Gentleman, when he speaks of the superannuation fund. It is all very well to say, that by means of this fund members of the civil service have a certainty to retire upon; but how is that certainty acquired? By cutting down the pay. It is clear it ought to be left to an actuary to estimate what a man ought to receive after the payment of a certain amount, and after a certain number of years' service. There is another question treated of in the pamphlet:—
The other question, that of leaving the service, is much more important. The secret history of the superannuation scheme is difficult to get at; but it is indisputable that the Government has been levying a tax upon all official incomes for the purpose of granting superannuation allowances, which tax, in its accumulations, exceeds its liabilities by many hundreds of thousands of pounds, and which allowance is always granted grudgingly—seldom until the recipient be quite worn out, and generally with some mysterious reductions and uncertainties as to its amount. It is difficult to conceive what the Government has to do with it at all, except to give up those accumulations, which, whoever may have a right to them, certainly do not morally belong to the present possessors. In the ordinary course of things, if a man does not choose to store up for a rainy day, there is no Act of Parliament compelling him to be provident; and if his salary as a civil servant be not sufficient to enable him to lay by for his old age, that may be an argument for increasing his emoluments, but not for levying a tax of 5 per cent upon what he now receives, where 2½ would do; nor, indeed, of meddling with the disposal of his private means at all.
He describes in a graphic way how the unfortunate man tries to get this retiring allowance:—
He has to shift and dodge on, broken spirited nervous, and dyspeptic. By night he runs the
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gauntlet of 'Parr's Life,' 'Norton's Camomile," Cockle's Antibilious,' and other miraculous medicaments; by day he is more occupied with his diet than his duty; his office gets disorganised, his juniors lose their temper, feel the injustice of working with a man who ought not to stay, and, yet who may not go, and become mutinous, while he either dies in harness full ten years before his time, or condescends to unworthy tricks and imaginative certificates, until he wrings a shorn and mutilated allowance from half-incredulous 'my Lords.'
The pamphlet is full of cases like this, and is clearly an exponent of the feelings of the men themselves, who would be affected by the changes proposed. I have read the evidence of Mr. Anderson, who shows that our public offices are overcharged with servants, and I will read another passage from his evidence. Mr. Anderson says—
Every person who has had experience in conducting a large office will admit that, if all were really efficient, not only would the business be better and more expeditiously done, but it would be probably executed by two-thirds of the number of clerks now employed.
I will not trouble the House with further remarks on the civil service, but I might say something on the manner in which the Governments of this country are organised. This subject comes within the scope of my argument, for I have the admission, of a noble Lord in the other House (Earl Granville), who said that, although he had many connections in the present Administration, yet he had three cousins in the Administration of the Earl of Derby. This, then, is no party question, and, if this is admitted, the question is placed upon the basis that I wish. Government, then, in this country, is more or less an affair of family relationship and connection. I do say that this is one of the most grievous causes of public complaint, and that it is working more than any other upon the country at large.
§
Now, Sir, I will go to the third proposition of my Resolution—that the state of things of which I complain has given rise to great misfortunes, and threatens to bring discredit upon the nation, and involve the country in great disasters. No one now will question the fact, that our public establishments are not what they should be either in regard to efficiency or economy, and no one will question the fact that very great changes are necessary—I doubt, indeed, whether any reasonable man will question the truth of the assertion, that the misfortunes that have happened may be traced to the imperfect condition of the public service of the country. I have
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found a curious speech, which I have extracted from the newspapers. The House will remember that the noble Lord at the head of the Government said there were no complaints made of the departments which were filled by members of the aristocracy, but that where complaints were made they were directed at departments like the Medical department and the Commissariat, which were not filled by members of the aristocracy. That was not a wise speech, certainly, and the senior surgeon of the hospital at Smyrna, in a speech printed in the public papers, appears to have called his brother doctors about him and made the following speech—
It may be very well for Lord Palmerston to get up in the House of Commons and say that the departments officered by the aristocracy have not failed in the recent trial, but that the Medical department and Commissariat have failed because their officers are taken from the middle classes. We can retort, and prove the truth of what we say, that, had we been left to ourselves, unchecked by the incapacity of those who have risen rather by family influence than by merit, it would not have been under the pressure of a great war that reforms—long since effected in our civil hospitals, long since imitated in some degree by our allies—would have been carried out by our military medical brethren.
Sir, I admire the courage of a public servant who can get up and say this publicly and allow it to be circulated. But I am told that a better state of things is approaching, that great successes have attended our arms, and that there is no reason to fear any great disasters. No one is more willing than I am to acknowledge the importance of the successes we have recently obtained. But are those successes so extraordinary that we are to be surprised at them? I have always believed that successes would be the inevitable result if the two services, the army and navy, had fair play, and if we sent the right man to fill the right place. But do the successes we have recently obtained warrant us in concluding that we are at the end of this war? It is too much the habit of this country to express at one time a despondency which is not justified by events, and at other times a state of exhilaration which is not more justified by any accesses that we have obtained. The latter is the case at present. We have had some successes, but does that warrant the belief that the war will thereby be brought to a speedy and honourable conclusion? Sir, I very much doubt it. I warn the Government that although it may be all very well to divert attention from
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the question at issue by means of these successes, yet these achievements are but minor matters, and that their influence will not last long enough to remove from the Government that feeling of distrust which more and more prevails, and which will continue to prevail. I warn the Government not to depend upon these successes to remove the prevalent distrust, but upon the reform of our public establishments. Reform them, and we shall have some chance of real success. The late Duke of Wellington came to the command of the army in the Peninsula under a state of things not very different from that which prevails at present. When he was sent to Spain he had a commissariat to form and an army to organise; but by his abilities, talents, and energies, he did what was required. He not only reorganised his army, but he fed the inhabitants of Portugal; he opened a communication with America, and obtained supplies from the remotest parts of the world. Had we such a man now we should obtain the same successes. But, as it is, we ought not to flatter ourselves that we are at the end of the war. I did not expect that we should obtain peace on the terms proposed, because we had not obtained the necessary successes. But suppose further successes are acquired—suppose Sebastopol taken—shall we be essentially in a better position for concluding a peace? On the contrary, I fear our difficulties will be increased, and I warn the country not to believe that our recent successes, important and honourable as they are, entitle us to believe that they will bring us to a speedy and satisfactory peace. I believe the war will be a long war, and that it will only be determined by such a reform of the whole of our system, military and naval, as will lead us to send those men to the seat of war who are best fitted to carry on the war with due and proper effect. If we do not, the war will be either longer than we expect, or we shall incur such disasters as will compel us to make a peace which will not be honourable and satisfactory to this country. Let us infuse into the Government that energy, that intelligence, that wisdom in council, which is worthy of a great people in the present moment of national emergency. The hon. Member concluded by moving the Resolutions of which he had given notice.
§
Motion made, and Question proposed—
That this House views with deep and increasing concern the state of the Nation, and is of
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opinion, that the manner in which merit and efficiency have been sacrificed, in public appointments, to party and family influences, and to a blind adherence to routine, has given rise to great misfortunes, and threatens to bring discredit upon the national character, and to involve the Country in grave disasters.
§ COLONEL FREESTUNsaid, he wished to refer to some remarks made by the hon. Member of a personal character with respect to a letter he (Colonel Freestun) had addressed to a public journal with regard to his not having been present at the meeting of the Administrative Reform Association on Wednesday. He was surprised that the hon. Member for Aylesbury should have presumed—should have dared to question his veracity. ["Order!"] He asked the hon. Member if either the Members for Plymouth, Maldon, Gloucester, Brecon, or Leeds were present at that meeting? He repeated the statement in his letter that they were not. He rose merely with that object, and he was perfectly content to leave gentlemen of greater ability to deal with the general subject now before the House.
§ MR. LAYARDsaid, he was extremely surprised to hear what had fallen from the hon. and gallant Member. He did not say those Gentlemen were present—he merely remarked on the words of the hon. and gallant Member in the letter "with such truth," with a (?) after it, "by the hon. Member for Aylesbury." The hon. Member now charged him with being guilty of that of which he was himself accused.
§ COLONEL FREESTUNwas about to proceed, but resumed his seat on loud cries of "Order!"
§ SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTEsaid, he was anxious to say a few words on the latter part of the subject which had been referred to by the hon. Member for Aylesbury, to which he had paid considerable attention, namely, the state of the civil service. He agreed with many of the observations of the hon. Member for Aylesbury; but he thought the hon. Gentleman had not pointed out anything which was deserving of the name of a remedy for the evils to which he had directed the attention of the House. He (Sir S. Northcote) was anxious to explain, so far as he was able to do, the nature of the remedy which he believed might be applied to the existing state of things. Having been for some years a member of the civil service in a subordinate position, and having heard it continually made the subject of a great deal of abuse—sometimes of unfair abuse—he was 2080 anxious to plead their cause. It was a service which was very heavily weighted, which had imposed upon it very unnecessary restrictions, which had very few encouragements, and which was too often expected to perform duties which it was really—not from any inherent weakness in itself, but from artificial causes of weakness to which he would allude—unable to discharge. There was, in the first place, a great tendency to overlook the distinction between the political and the permanent branches of the service. The political branch consisted of a very small number of gentlemen, of high abilities and position, who had attained a rank which gave them, to a certain extent, absolute dominion over the offices over which they presided, and it was natural to expect that those noble Lords and right hon. and hon. Gentlemen should manage their offices, and make them effectual for the work which they had to do; but, however anxious they might be to make the offices efficient, they were prevented by the circumstances of their position. Within the last thirty years there had been something like twelve or thirteen total changes of Ministries, and in each Administration some one or two shifts in different departments; so that there was a tenure of office on the part of any one chief of a department averaging little more than two years. The Gentlemen who were appointed to the head of one of these departments probably had no previous experience or knowledge of it; they were obliged to spend a very large portion of their time in the discharge of their public and Parliamentary duties, with the additional obligation of making themselves acquainted with the public questions with which the department had to deal, so that they really had no time to make themselves acquainted with the routine and subordinate duties of the office at the head of which they were placed, or to become acquainted with the traditions of the office to which they were appointed. How, then, could the head of a department be expected to undertake the remodelling of it on a footing of thorough efficiency? Supposing a man to have the capacity of the Duke of Wellington himself, it was utterly impossible that during so short a tenure oil office all that could be accomplished, even if he had the most absolute power, to make changes and to enforce any system of discipline he might think fit. But that was not all. The truth was, he had not that power. In theory the 2081 chief had arbitrary power over the department, but that power was tempered by most important considerations. He found there a great body of men ranged in classes, which were the growth of twenty-five or thirty years. He found those men possessed of all the traditions of the department, which he had no means of attaining except through their instrumentality, and it was utterly impossible for him to dispense with their services, or materially to alter their position in the office, at all events on first coming into it, without throwing the office out of gear, and getting into inextricable confusion. That was one difficulty. But to take another. Supposing he promoted one man, whom he considered to merit it, above his superiors, or supposing he went further, and, where an officer was inefficient or past work, he dismissed him, he was immediately called to task—first, by memorials from juniors in the office; secondly, by letters in the newspapers; and, thirdly, very probably, by Motions in that House, calling him to account for the gross injustice of summarily passing over Mr. This or Mr. That, who, by a long course of service, with which no one of his predecessors found, or cared to find fault, had merited considerable praise, and the Secretary of State or President of a Board, whichever it might be, was supposed to have been actuated, not by pure motives—they were never given credit for any pure motives—but by imaginary favouritism. He appealed to hon. Members who had had long experience in that House whether that was not the true state of the case? He had known instances in the civil service of agitations got up against attempts made by the heads of a department to remove men, or to pass others over those of superior standing, and therefore he was quite certain the fact was as he stated it. Another difficulty was that the head of a department could not afford, in the middle of a Session, when a great deal of important work was on hand, to throw the office out of gear by suspending or dismissing the permanent servants. Supposing it could be done without much danger, they would have one hon. Gentleman coming with one set of views and altering the department so as to make it work in his particular way, and his successor, with other views, altering it again, so as to make it work in another way. They were told to look at any firm of bankers or merchants and see how they conducted business—that they did not go upon routine, 2082 but that they contrived to do their work—that they contrived to accomplish the task they set themselves; and they were asked why did not the heads of the Government departments do the same? To that question there was a very intelligible answer. If any man were to enter a merchant's office, and were to say to him, "I think your manner of conducting business creates confusion;" his reply would be, "What's that to you? I know the way in which I can do my business best, and I do it in that way." But would the same answer be applicable with regard to a public office? Not at all. Take the case of the noble Lord the Secretary for the Colonies. The noble Lord when he entered the department, would probably organise it upon a system of his own, which men sitting on the opposite side of the House might say was not a good system. If the noble Lord were in the position of the head of a private establishment he would naturally say, "What is it to you how I organise the department, provided I conduct the business properly?" and that would be all very well if the noble Lord were to remain at the head of the department for fifteen or twenty years. But perhaps at the end of two or three years there would be a change. Probably the right hon. Member for Droitwich (Sir John Pakington) might become head of the department, and that right hon. Gentleman, finding the business conducted upon a principle which he had always disapproved, would refuse to take the department upon the footing on which it had been left by the noble Lord, and would establish an entirely different system. How then was it possible, while the public departments were liable to such changes and rechanges, that they could be conducted in the way private establishments were? It was therefore necessary to have some fixed system of routine upon which the public offices were to be conducted in order to enable them to work at all. Now, the system of routine already established was not a good system. He did not make that assertion because individually he entertained views which would induce him to work an office on a different principle to that on which they were at present worked, but he did so because he could see that there were fundamental faults in the whole of the system by which the public officers were appointed; and that secondly, and to a much greater extent, here were faults in the mode in which 2083 those officers were worked when appointed. Possibly there might be such difficulties in the way of the adoption of an improved system for getting good men as to render it impossible to change it for the better; but what he contended was, that when good men were secured, they were worked upon the worst possible system. All the good that was in them was taken out of them, and they were not allowed to develope it for the benefit of the public service. The great evil which beset the civil service was the habitual disregard of the principle of promotion by merit. This at once reduced the faults of the system to a vicious circle. The service was made inefficient because the men working in it were habitually superseded by strangers in the highest and best appointments, and this on the assumption that they were not efficient for the discharge of these high offices. It was well known that our clerks in public offices were generally arranged in classes. A young man first entering the service was placed in the bottom class, with a very low salary, and employed in copying or some other mechanical work. From that position he rose by degrees, chiefly according to seniority, to a high post in the office; but when he had risen to the highest post in what might be called the hierarchy of classes, there were certain staff appointments—posts of much greater honour and emolument—to which he was almost invariably forbidden to aspire. Now, what was the consequence? A young man of eighteen or nineteen entered a public office at a salary of 70l., 80l., or 90l. a-year, and for the first five, ten, or fifteen years nothing was required of him but to copy despatches and fold up and seal letters. Was it reasonable to expect that the head of a department having such an appointment to make would be very critical in his inquiry as to whether the young man he was about to appoint was a man of first-rate abilities or had taken a degree at the University? Generally the result was the appointment of a young man of small abilities, because no young man of any ambition, or who possessed friends in a position to enable him to enter any of the open professions with the least hope of success, could be induced to enter the civil service as it was at present constituted. In the course of time the man who entered the service at the bottom of the list would rise to a post of greater emolument and importance, but the chief of the department 2084 would be always prevented from giving him a staff appointment, because when he entered the service he possessed very little ability, and while he had been there it had pleased Heaven to make it less. He had perhaps risen from 80l. a year to 500l., or to 600l., or it might be 1,000l. in the ordinary routine, without any inducement for making any extraordinary exertion, or showing any superior capacity; and should a man in this position in the service devote himself to anything in particular, it would only be by the rarest chance that he could get to any situation higher than that attained by the lazy fellow at his side. What could be expected from a man who at the beginning of his career possessed but little ability, who for ten or fifteen years was employed in the meanest and mechanical drudgery, and who was invariably told that his prospects did not depend in the least upon himself? It was utterly impossible to make anything of such a man as that. But it would be said, such men ought to be dismissed. Suppose the chiefs of departments could turn out all in their offices and appoint whom they pleased, what would be the result? In America nearly the whole body of civil servants went out with the change of Government, and a new set came in. What was the consequence? The other day the new party, the "Know-Nothings," issued a manifesto in which they stated that party action had lost all its dignity, and had degenerated into a mere struggle for office. It was not desirable that this state of things, which was said to exist in America, should be introduced into this country. Then if they could not manage to work their offices by the influence of the political chiefs, could they work them by their permanent chiefs? In the Colonial Office, for instance, they had had Sir James Stephen for many years, and they had now Mr. Merivale; both men of eminence, and both holding a permanent position; it might be said, why not remove the appointments from the hands of the political chiefs, and place them in the hands of these permanent chiefs? That was a doctrine in which there was a great deal of plausibility; at the same time there was a tendency in such a plan to what was called "bureaucracy," just as, in the other supposed case, there would be a tendency to what was called the "wire-drawing" system, and there would be as much opposition to the introduction of a system of bureaucracy 2085 as of the wire-drawing system. But was there any other system proposed for the adoption of the House? He had listened to the hon. Member's speech, but he was disappointed; for, after having pointed out the evils, he had proposed no remedy for the evils. The hon. Member had alluded to the Report he (Sir S. Northcote) and Sir Charles Trevelyan had drawn up, and he had thrown cold water on it; but he had proposed no other remedy for the evils complained of, except one—the taking of the "Goderich pledge"—that every hon. Member should pledge himself never to darken the doors of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Treasury again. But the hon. Member, at the same time told the House that all appointments must still be made by the Secretary to the Treasury; and, if Members took the Goderich pledge, it was to be feared that while the best men in the House would keep that pledge, it would be broken by the more unscrupulous. But then, again, people said, "Why don't you, seeing that you have in this country a large number of individuals who have succeeded in important undertakings of a private nature—why don't you, when an emergency arises, call in the assistance of such men, for example, as Sir Samuel Peto or Mr. Lindsay?" To any such course as this he conceived great objections existed. We had a civil service expressly constructed for the purpose of doing all this work, and was it to be said that when business of any importance arose it was necessary to apply to private enterprise in order to get it done? There was a homely proverb which said that "those who keep dogs should not attempt to bark themselves." If we kept a dog in the civil service we should make him do his duty; we fed him well, and why should we not get our money's worth out of him? By calling in assistance from without, and giving rise to the inference that our own employés were unequal to the occasion, we inflicted a heavy blow upon the morale of the service. Our civil servants would then say, "Oh, we shall reap no honour in any case; the prizes of the service will be given to men called from without; and we, therefore, have no incentive to exertion." Why, this was the great evil of which the civil service at this moment complained, namely, that the chief appointments were given to successful lawyers, to military men when they retired from the army, to men who had risen to 2086 some rank in this House, and that they were not given to those diligent, faithful, meritorious civil servants who had worked in the ranks, and had striven to raise themselves, and who would naturally work with greater zeal and hopefulness if they thought that they would be rewarded by those higher posts at present conferred on others. This was exactly the case of the regimental officers in the army against the staff; and if the regimental officers were disheartened at seeing the honours showered upon the staff and themselves passed over, so in the same way the civil servants were at present disheartened by finding that their services were overlooked and the best appointments given to strangers. Perhaps he might here mention a case which had occurred within his own knowledge, and which confirmed the statement of the hon. Member, that by a proper distribution of employés you might materially diminish the expenses of the civil service, while at the same time you might reward merit and secure efficiency. The statistical department of the Board of Trade, which was founded some twenty years ago, was presided over by the late Mr. Porter, who was extremely well qualified to discharge the duties of superintendent, and who, during the ten years in which he held it, brought the department into a very perfect state of organisation, and established such a system for the collection of information as would almost go on of itself, with the aid of proper clerks. Mr. Porter held the office of superintendent for ten years. Under him were an assistant superintendent, and two or three clerks. When the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. John Macgregor) resigned the appointment of Assistant Secretary to the Board of Trade, the vacant office was most properly conferred on Mr. Porter. That gentleman then stated to the head of the office that the statistical department was now in such a state of efficiency that he could rely on its going on with comparatively little superintendence, and that if the Government would give to the gentleman immediately under him—who he stated had always proved highly efficient—an increase of 100l. a year, he (Mr. Porter) would be very willing to give such superintendence as should insure the proper working of the department. By this arrangement there would have been a saving of nearly all the salary of the superintendent of the Statistical Department; a clear saving of 500l. or 600l. a year would have been effected; 2087 while proper encouragement would have been given to those subordinates who had been working efficiently under Mr. Porter for so many years. The Government rejected that proposal, because they had the appointment of a Superintendent of the Statistical Department, and did not wish to throw it away. Well, whom did they appoint? They appointed a gentleman against whose merits he (Sir S. North-cote) could say nothing—Mr. Fonblanque. Had he been in the civil service? Not at all. Had he had anything to do with statistics? Not at all. He was a gentleman of great literary ability, one on whom the Government of the day naturally looked with favour, and it was as good an appointment of the kind as could be made; but it was thoroughly vicious in principle. To appoint a man out of the service, and over the heads of those who had long worked in it, must naturally discourage them and break down the efficiency of the department. Remonstrances were made, and the reason given for the appointment was that the Government were about to undertake the institution of a system of agricultural statistics, and that therefore Mr. Fonblanque was appointed to superintend it. Had he done so, or had it been intended he should do so? With respect to the plan which had been proposed by Sir Charles Trevelyan and himself, he (Sir S. Northcote) begged to remark that it had been inaccurately described as a plan to recruit the civil service by competition. That was a portion of the plan, but not the whole. They drew up a plan recommending a system of promotion by merit, division of labour in the offices, and also the principle of appointments by competition. It had been stated that they began with a crotchet about competition, but the fact was, they began with the idea of appointments, to be checked by a system of examination, as a fixed test. He was ready to make an admission to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Hayter) that he was of opinion the patronage administered by that right hon. Gentleman was better administered than any other part of the Government patronage. He referred to the patronage exercised by the right hon. Gentleman in the Inland Revenue and Customs Departments. In no other department was there a more perfect system for a division of labour, or a better system of promotion by merit, or so good a system of appointments. The mode was for the right hon. Gentleman to 2088 nominate candidates, whom the department examined, and if found to be wanting they were rejected. This examination was, he believed, a thoroughly bonâ fide one, and Sir Charles Trevelyan and himself were so satisfied with it that at first they had an intention to recommend that some system should be made general and the whole patronage of the Government should be placed in the hands of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of the Treasury. He did not mean to say that they had named the right hon. Gentleman in their Report; but they meant that the Treasury should name the men, and that a separate board of examiners should be appointed to see that they were properly qualified to fill the office to which they were nominated. When that plan was proposed serious objections were made to it by gentlemen who were connected with other departments, and who were jealous of Treasury patronage, which they thought was already too great, and they were obliged to give it up. The appointments, too, in the Customs and Inland Revenue Departments were very differently circumstanced from those in other branches of the service, because they were not sought for by persons in the higher stations of life, but were generally sought by the lower class of voters for their sons or other relatives. The system was, for the voter to ask his representative to get his son or nephew an appointment. The Member recommended the candidate to the Secretary for the Treasury, but did not, perhaps, much care whether he got the place or not. The right hon. Gentleman in his turn recommended the candidate to the department, but did not much care whether the department accepted him or not. All the Member wanted to do was, to send a civil answer to the voter, to show he had done his best, and all the right hon. Gentleman wanted to do was also to send the Member a civil answer, to show he had done his best. But if Mr. John Wood, for the purposes of the service, said, "This young man will not do;" then the right hon. Gentleman says to the Member, "I am sorry, but you cannot expect me to sacrifice the civil service to your friend." The Member might grumble a little, but he would send the answer to the voter, who perhaps would grumble a little louder. It was like a series of "buffers" going through a train, and a shock was not felt so much as if a first-class carriage was run direct against 2089 the engine. But supposing that the Treasury patronage were extended to higher departments, to which hon. and right hon. Gentlemen might appoint their own cousins and nephews, the pressure on the examining board would become too great, and, in fact, the plan could not be carried out. He agreed with the hon. Member for Aylesbury that the appointment of a commission of examiners was a step in the right direction, provided it was intended to proceed further, otherwise it would do more harm than good. If a fixed test was to be established, it must be a moderately low test, otherwise complaints would be made,—"My son distinguished himself at college; his tutor says he is a most promising young man; to be sure he did not take his degree, on account of ill-health or some reason, but to be plucked upon this examination is monstrous. He is perfectly competent, as I can get half-a-dozen certificates to prove." No board of examiners could stand against that; it must either be a board for stereotyping mediocrity or for concealing bad appointments. All bad appointments could then be defended by saying the candidates passed the board of examiners. He was reminded of a story of a Bedouin tribe, to whom a neighbouring sultan intrusted the charge of an elephant—a charge which the Arabs soon found to be onerous and ruinous to them. The sheik undertook to visit the sultan with a companion, and explain their grievance; but as it was an awkward thing to go to the sultan with such a message, it was agreed that the sheik should commence the conversation by the words "the elephant," whereupon the companion should take up the story of their distresses; but, being overcome with awe at the sultan's presence, he was unable, when the proper time came, to utter a word. The sheik repeated, "Sir, the elephant;" when the sultan, growing impatient, exclaimed, "What about the elephant?" "The elephant," stammered the sheik, "languishes for the want of a companion;" upon which the sultan immediately committed a second elephant to the custody of the tribe. The board of examination might become the second elephant, sanctioning and endorsing the previous bad appointments, and creating additional patronage for themselves. The examiners must be most eminent men, for the commissioners could not be expected to carry on examinations, and the expense would be great. Unless they 2090 made the system effectual, unless they altered the whole code and morale of the service, they would do nothing. They might spur a living horse to exertion, but they could not galvanise a dead one into life; and they might depend upon it that under the present system the civil service was depressed and was rapidly approaching the state of the dead horse. They must get rid of the great bane of patronage. Promotion by merit was always felt by those who were not originally appointed by merit as a species of favouritism; they were unable to look upon it in any other light; and as long as the idea was kept up in the civil service that promotion went by favouritism, they could not expect that it would be believed that a man was appointed to a place because he was fit for it. We fostered this spirit by our common language. People talked of "giving a man a place." The maxim was, "here is a place that will do for this man," and not "here is a man that will do for this place." The man was put down on a list until a place was found that would suit him; and it was made a matter of favour to appoint him to it. If a person appointed by a Whig Government were placed over a man appointed by a Tory Government, the latter would immediately say, "Oh! that is because he is a Whig and I am a Conservative." This was one mode by which favouritism operated. But there was the converse of this:—Suppose one man appointed to an office by one Government, and the succeeding Government should know another man infinitely superior for discharging the duties of the office to the first, still the latter Government would often say, "Oh! we cannot promote that man over the other, because it will be said that we have done it as an act of favouritism." And thus it was that the whole system of the appointments in the civil service was rendered vicious. He did not understand what the objections were to the introduction of an entirely new system. The hon. Member for Aylesbury had alluded to the argument used by Mr. Romilly in favour of the appointment of the members of the aristocracy to the higher offices of the civil service, or, as the word had been especially used—the appointment of "gentlemen" to those offices? But what was meant by the word "gentleman"? Was it one who could boast of sixteen quarterings in his escutcheon? He believed that the general acceptation of the word "gentleman" was 2091 that of a person who had nothing to do. As when boys would say—" I will be a lawyer"—another would say, "I will be a soldier"—and a third, being of an idle disposition, would say, "I will be a gentleman." The real argument of those who said, "We object to this new system because it will not give us gentlemen," was, that the system would not give them gentlemen in whom they could place confidence. If that argument were good for anything, how much must it tell against the examination system. A man might be selected because he was known to be a good and proper man, and yet he might be rejected by the examiners. He felt that he should be doing injustice to the civil service if he were to sit down without expressing his strong opinion as to the inadequate scale of remuneration made to them. He thought it most unfair. He did not mean to deny that there were many persons in the civil service who were paid far above what they ought to be, but the real evil of the scale was that the men who really did the work and who deserved to be well remunerated, were paid very much below their deserts. If a proper system of remuneration were established, every man in the service might be amply remunerated, and yet much economy might be effected. The number of persons employed might be greatly diminished, and at the same time the public be more effectually served, if a proper scale of pay were established. An inquiry was made with respect to the Board of Trade, and the system recommended placed the assistant secretary and senior clerk upon a footing much more satisfactory to themselves. Salaries were raised from a maximum of 600l. to a maximum of 1,000l. a-year; the establishment worked a great deal more efficiently, and a saving of 5,000l. a-year was effected in the expense of that establishment. One word with regard to superannuations. He considered that an enormous fraud was done to the civil service under the head of superannuation. He did trust that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would tell the House what he intended to do on that subject. The civil service had hitherto been pushed aside. But what could be more important than to have an able body of public servants, cheerfully and willingly discharging their duties to the country? The mode in which the superannuation fund was raised and applied was felt to be a grievous and crying injustice. A man 2092 having a salary of 300l. a-year had deducted from it 5 per cent, which he was told was to provide for him a superannuation fund; but when he was superannuated he then found that he had no right to claim one sixpence of the fund to which he had contributed. You called it superannuation, but it was a pension for which they dearly paid. Nay, they were paying far beyond the value of any pension they might derive. They were, in fact, contributing largely towards the expenses of the State. The surplus of their contributions went to pay off the national debt. It had been shown by competent actuaries that the superannuation fund would in less than a century produce interest sufficient to pay all the superannuation allowances; yet there was no reduction made in the percentage, because the surplus was applied by the Government towards the reduction of the national debt. That was a grievous injustice. Government might not be aware of this injustice, but those whom it most concerned felt it to be so; and that feeling would tend to create discontent among a large body of the public service; which feeling would increase until the system was entirely abolished and a provident fund established in its stead. Indeed, it would be much better to sweep away the system altogether, and grant pensions to your public servants according to your own free grace.
MR. LEVESON GOWERsaid, that he must ask the indulgence of the House while he explained in a few words the motive of the vote he was about to give on this question. If the object of the Motion before the House was to secure that all public employment should be given on the score of merit alone, he, for one, entirely concurred in that principle, and had endeavoured during the whole course of his political life to promote it to the best of his ability. And if the Administrative Reform Association pointed out any way of securing that end, he would be willing to give it his support; but what he complained of was, that the members of that association, assuming to represent the commercial classes, and holding themselves out as practical men, had not as yet laid down any practical plan to attain the objects they had in view. In his opinion, it was incumbent upon an association so formed, not only to clearly define the object which it had in view, but at the same time to point out the means by which that object might be attained. 2093 He had read the various speeches made at the meetings of that association, and he had that evening listened with attention to the speech of the hon. Member for Aylesbury; and yet he was not very much enlightened as to the method by which the association proposed to carry out its views. The hon. Member for Aylesbury had alluded to a statement made by a noble relation of his (Lord Granville), that he had relations of nearly every description of politics, and he added, "and this is the way the Government is carried on." Now, if the hon. Gentleman thought that Lord Granville was opposed to the principle of appointing men to public offices on the score of merit, he would remind him of one incident in his life. The only opportunity which Lord Granville had ever had of making a public appointment was when he was Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and, with the sanction of the noble Lord the Member for London, who was then Prime Minister, he gave that appointment to the hon. Member for Aylesbury himself. Was that appointment made from any personal or political motive? Lord Granville was not acquainted with the hon. Gentleman more than having read his books; but having accidentally received from a person in whose judgment he placed reliance, a high character of his ability, energy, and great knowledge of peculiar subjects, he gave him the appointment. He felt, however, bound to say that during the short time Lord Granville was connected with the hon. Member for Aylesbury, he found that the high character he had received of him was fully borne out; but there was one deficiency in the character of the hon. Gentleman, which, perhaps, owing to the shortness of the time he was connected with him, Lord Granville did not discover, and that was his excessive meekness and modesty. The hon. Gentleman seemed to imply that it was through the efforts of himself and his friends that the Order in Council on the subject of a preliminary examination was issued; but had he forgotten that the Government of Lord Aberdeen had, in a Speech from the Throne, announced their intention to reorganise the civil service? He himself attached more weight to an examination before promotion than to an examination before admission; but, at the same time, credit was due to the Government for what had been done, and it was only fair to suppose that they would continue in the same course—a course 2094 which he believed was unparalleled, inasmuch as Government voluntarily deprived themselves of the whole patronage of the civil service;—and yet the administrative reformers seemed to assume that the Government was not anxious to reform the service of the country. He, for his own part, would be glad to see an infusion of the middle classes into the Government of the country, for he entertained a high admiration for the energy, industry, and intelligence of those classes; but there was a tendency in the public mind to look upon men who had no high social position, and who engaged in political life, as mere political adventurers. That was not the fault of the governing powers, but of the public at large. Even in the great popular constituencies it was considered no small claim to their favour that the candidate should say that he did not mean to enter the Government—that he went to Parliament as an independent man, pledging himself, as it were, that he would not join the service of the State. He thought that these things ought to be a little considered, for he believed that in order to bring about real reform there must be as great a change in the feelings of the people as in the actions of the Government. He trusted that he had said enough to prove that he was favourable to administrative reform; still he felt bound to oppose the Motion of his hon. friend, and he did so for two reasons. In the first place, when he read the language of that Resolution, he could not agree to it because he thought that it spoke in a tone of despondency of this country which was most objectionable at this moment, and which the state of the case did not deserve. With the exception of the fact of our being at war—a fact which no one deplored more than himself—he did not believe that the state of England had ever been more satisfactory or sound than at the present moment. His other objection to the Resolution was, that, not pointing out any specific remedy of that which it deplored, it made a most sweeping denunciation of the Government; and, therefore, in his mind it had a tendency to weaken the Government of the country, which, he thought, at this moment, every patriotic man should wish to avoid.
§ MR. PEACOCKEstated that he should support the Amendment of his hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, because it was directed against those influences which 2095 for so long a period of years had been exercised by the Whig Revolution families of this country. For that reason he was willing to adopt the Amendment; but it was upon the distinct understanding that he was thereby condemning the conduct of those Whig Revolution families, and passing a censure upon a Government which had adhered to that system. The history of the reign of the Revolution families, down to the present period, had been the history of national disasters. In the reign of George II. war broke out with Spain. In 1741 Admiral Vernon and General Wentworth failed at Carthagena. The war was concluded by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748. Another war soon afterwards broke out, when England and France quarrelled about the American continent, and France, under Richelieu, took Minorca. The circumstances under which those disasters took place were precisely analogous to the present. Certain Revolution families reigned supreme, merit was neglected, Parliamentary influence was duly considered, and the country enjoyed the inestimable blessing of a Whig Government. At last Lord Chatham was called to power, merit was recognised, and our arms were crowned with success—the Blakeneys, the Byngs, and the Vernons gave way to the Amhersts, the Hawkes, and the Boscawens. But the Chatham Administration passed away, and so the great commoner foretold to his Royal master, there remained nothing for him but to deliver himself hand and band into the hands of the Revolution houses, and the commencement of the ensuing reign was a period of national apathy and of royal servitude. At length another war broke out—the war of American Independence. The melancholy results of that war were but too familiar to every man's mind—suffice it that the names of Howe, Cornwallis, and Burgoyne were indelibly connected with the humiliation of the country. The younger Pitt was then called upon to take the helm of the State,—the mantle of the father had fallen upon the shoulders of the son. With a like destiny, but with a better fortune, he too had to struggle against the oligarchy coalesced against him, supported by a people whom they had misgoverned, and by a Sovereign still smarting under the insults of Grenville and the outrage of Temple. He crushed this oligarchy, who, from that time, struggled to regain their lost ascendancy with varied success; but it remained for the noble 2096 Lord the Member for London to restore the old Whig Revolution families in their ancient supremacy; and in 1846 he formed a Cabinet which united the worst features of the Pelhams with the worst features of the Grenvilles—the weakness and corruption of the one, with the presumption and exclusiveness of the other. And as regards the present Cabinet, it was true that the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton had reduced the noble Lord the Member for London to the place of a subordinate colleague, but the noble Lord the Member for London had taken his revenge, for he had reduced the disciple of Canning to be subordinate to his (Lord John Russell's) system and clique. To such an extent had he done so that, he believed, in the present happy and united Cabinet, with one or two exceptions, there was not a single member of it who could not address each colleague as, "My noble Relative," or, "My right hon. Cousin." They were told that the proposed Amendment was an attack upon the aristocracy. He distinctly asserted that it was no attack upon the aristocracy in the broad, generous, and liberal acceptation of the term. It was no attack upon the gentlemen of England. It might be upon that narrow coterie of Revolution families which sought to confine the Government within the limited circle of their own relations, and to exclude from it the gentry of England, with acres broader and pedigrees more ancient than their own. It was not for the Country party of England, who still regarded the precepts of Bolingbroke, and still preserved unbroken the traditions of Wyndham and of Skippen, to aid to maintain this incompetent clique of Revolution families. We might all entertain a certain amount of qualified respect for these old Revolution houses, who, whilst they arrogated to themselves the divine right of governing the country, still entertain a generous sympathy for the liberties and well being of the people; but what could be said to that modern school of would-be oligarchs who, while they sought to confine the government of the country within the circle of their own relations, affected to look down upon all popular feeling as they looked down upon plebeian merit? Liberals in name, oligarchs in reality, they received no popular sympathy, and could lean upon no popular support, because they themselves had no sympathy with, and placed no confidence in the 2097 people. The hon. Gentleman who had just sat down had told them not to embarrass the Government. He asked, what title had the present Administration to any consideration at their hands? The noble Lord at the head of the Government had announced with a flourish of trumpets that he was going to bring forward a great scheme of administrative reform, and took an unusual mode of defeating the proposition of the hon. Member for Aylesbury, and of detailing his wonderful scheme, which might be summed up in a single unit. He proposed to abolish the Ordnance, which had long since been abolished by public opinion; and to suppress the Master General of the Ordnance, who, by going to the Crimea, had virtually suppressed himself. When the Aberdeen Government was broken up, if there were one subject more than another upon which the nation expressed a united wish, it was that a strong Administration should be formed; but the noble Lord at the head of the Government, however, instead of strengthening it, had thought proper to emasculate it. He had deprived himself of the great administrative talent of the right hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle, of the brilliant eloquence of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford, of the unrivalled ability of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wiltshire; and how had he replaced their loss? Why, the increased strength, the active vigour, the stirring juvenility of the Cabinet, were all concentred in the person of, and represented by, my Lord Panmure. It had been said of the Porteus riots, which shook the supremacy of the British sceptre in Scotland, that their only practical result was to make the fortune of one old washerwoman; and so it might be said that the only practical result of a Parliamentary vote of censure, and of a Ministerial interregnum which deprived the nation of a Government during the space of fourteen days, was to make the fortune of Lord Panmure. Never, perhaps, in the history of the country had a Ministerial collapse been so speedy and so complete, for in the space of some few days a Cabinet of All the Talents had dwindled to a Cabinet of All the Mediocrities. It was not an Administration like that which the country sought; it demanded new men, and it demanded new measures, and did not see why Cabinets, like crops, should be produced out of certain families upon certain fixed and rotatory principle; and it would 2098 never be content now that, for the sake of securing the existence of such a patched-up Cabinet, a Resolution should be rejected which embodied the national wish, and expressed the national feeling.
MR. GLADSTONESir, upon the present occasion I find myself in the difficulty which I have recently experienced more than once, that while there is an original Motion—and virtually, I presume I may say, an Amendment on that Motion before the House—I am not in a position to give my assent either to the one or to the other; and I will state to the House the reasons why it appears to me that the adoption of either of them would be undesirable. Whether either of them will be adopted it is not for me to say, but if either of them is adopted it will not be the first time during the present Session in which the House has done itself less than justice, considering the state of the country, by clothing its intentions in language of a very ambiguous character, difficult for the country to understand, and not likely to promote the public welfare. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Aylesbury commences his Motion by saying, "That this House views with deep and increasing concern the state of the nation." Now, whatever may be the intention of the hon. Gentleman, I, as a Member of Parliament, am bound strictly to canvass the language which he proposes to put into the mouth of the House of Commons; and, acting on that principle, I am not prepared to say that I view with deep and increasing concern the state of the nation—for it appears to me, on the contrary, that the people of this country, when in circumstances of great difficulty, and at a time when inflammatory and exciting matter is constantly being addressed to them, have shown an admirable self-command, and have maintained an attitude and a position during the present year altogether worthy of the nation. Well, the hon. Gentleman goes on to say that, owing to the prevalence of party and family influence and a blind adherence to routine, great evils have already affected the public service, and still greater disasters are to be anticipated. I am not quite sure what is meant in the Motion of the hon. Member by the term "family influence," but of course I must interpret his Motion with reference, I will not say merely to the speech which he has made in this House, but to speeches which he has addressed to other audiences, and with 2099 reference to the known sentiments of an association, of which the hon. Gentleman is, I apprehend, at the present moment a principal organ. Now, Sir, I think that in speaking of that association I do not go beyond the truth, when I say that there has been in its proceedings a tendency to fasten on the aristocracy of the country, and a peculiar class, known as the privileged class, the responsibility of the deficiencies and the weakness of the public service. I think, therefore, it is only natural to construe the Motion of the hon. Member for Aylesbury as having to a certain degree the same tendency. I am not prepared to join in a proposition of that kind. If this country is more aristocratic, if this House is more aristocratic, in sentiment and feeling than it ought to be, it is not owing to any legal privileges possessed by the aristocracy, nor is it owing to any exclusive legislation; but it is owing partly, perhaps, to the strong prejudices in favour of the aristocracy which pervade all ranks and classes of the community, and I am bound to say it is still more owing to the fact that that aristocracy has been continually recruited from among the very best of the people, and that its history is written in the most glorious pages of the history of the country, and is associated throughout with everything that makes us rejoice in the name of Englishmen. No doubt the hon. Member was justified in stating that that which is known by the name of nepotism is an evil which to a certain extent affects the service; but I do not believe it affects the aristocracy a bit more than it affects any other class; and, consequently, although I agree with the hon. Member in the abstract proposition, and shall be only too happy to see any measure adopted for the purpose of checking that evil, I am not willing to join in a vote which would in my opinion have the effect of deluding the country by leading it to believe that we are prepared to point out that class which is called the aristocracy as the one which is worthy of peculiar censure, and chargeable with the peculiar responsibility of the defects and weaknesses in the working of our constitution. The hon. Member for Aylesbury has said, very fairly, that he likewise glances at the system upon which Governments are organised in this country; that he thinks the choice of persons composing the Government is made somewhat too exclusively, and that a more liberal selection would lead to a more satisfactory management of public affairs. 2100 Now, Sir, I do not at the present moment enter into an inquiry whether this is so or not; but, if it be so, then I venture to say that the persons, the party, the power responsible for that evil is this House itself. Surely, if there is any one thing which more than another ultimately lies in the hands and is under the control of this House, it is the decision of the question what persons shall, and what persons shall not, be Ministers of the Crown; and, if it be true that Cabinets are selected in this country from within the bounds of a restricted circle of families, and that we thus form a narrow class without availing ourselves of the immense wealth of materials which the nation affords to us, then clearly it is the House of Commons, it is the House of Commons mainly, and I must ultimately say, that it is the House of Commons only, which is the cause of the evil; and, therefore, that it does not become the House of Commons to declare pharisaically its lamentations over such a state of things in the face of the country in the form of an abstract Resolution, but it becomes us to go with an Address to the foot of the throne, and there to represent to Her Majesty that her councils are filled with gentlemen too exclusively chosen from a certain rank, and that we must withhold our confidence from them until the composition of the Administration is made more conformable to what we think the public interest; but I cannot but object in the most unqualified terms to the principle of embodying a Resolution of this House in general, abstract, and ambigious language. It is most important for the credit and authority of this House that the people should look upon its Resolutions with respect and reverence, but if they are to look on them with respect and reverence, they must always be Resolutions which carry on the face of them a character strictly practical. If we attempt to deal with general propositions respecting the existence of general evils, with general complaints against classes, and with theoretical opinions, the consequence will be that we shall pay off the people with promises instead of with performances, we shall lose our hold upon their confidence, and, with our hold on their confidence, we shall lose the power of discharging advantageously those functions and duties which the constitution of this country imposes upon us. When I come to the speech of the hon. Member, I most gladly grant that he has not confined himself to abstractions;—I speak now of his Motion, and I take 2101 the declaration to mean that the state of the nation must be viewed with concern because of its present condition, and that "aristocratic influence" has been the main cause of the evils under which we labour. That is a Resolution which binds us, pledges us to nothing; it does not advance us a single step towards a useful object, and, therefore, it is impossible for me to concur in it.
Although the hon. Baronet the Member for Hertfordshire (Sir E. B. Lytton) has not yet addressed the House, I am justified in considering his Amendment as practically before it; and, when I look at the Amendment, I find it begins with a particular recommendation, which is, "That this House recommends to the earliest attention of Her Majesty's Ministers the necessity of a careful revision of our various official establishments." Sir, if we are to enter into a question of that kind, it is rather singular, and not very convenient, that we should adopt that language, and make that recommendation, without taking the slightest notice of the fact, that within the last four or five years there has been in progress, and has been recently completed, a more searching and uniform investigation and revision of the public establishments than I believe has taken place at any previous period of our history. We have on the table at the present moment at least two Blue-books of respectable, and I think more than respectable, dimensions, filled with the results of that investigation and with tables of statistics. I should like to know how many Members of this House have found time and leisure to make themselves really masters of the contents of those Blue-books? They refer to questions of the greatest importance and interest, and indicate in almost every case, a multitude of measures taken for the purpose of revising the official establishments, cutting off unnecessary expenditure, securing the efficient discharge of public duties, and making a better division of business among the departments into which the offices are divided. Under these circumstances, are we justified in simply recommending to the Ministry to do the very thing which they have just done? The hon. Baronet goes on and says that this revision is to be done "with a view to simplify and facilitate the transaction of public business, and by instituting judicious tests of merit, as well as by removing obstructions to its fair promotion and ligitimate rewards, to 2102 secure to the service of the State the largest available proportion of the energy and intelligence for which the people of this country are distinguished." I hope it will not be thought hyper-criticism on my part to say that the compliment at the end of this sentence to the people of this country for the abundance of their energy and intelligence would find a better and more suitable place in one of the eloquent and admirable speeches of the hon. Baronet than in the vote which he proposes to put into the mouth of this House, for I think it is not the custom of this House to embody in its votes a general declaration in the nature of a compliment to the people of this country. My main objection, however, to the proposition of the hon. Baronet is the vague and unmeaning character of the language which he uses. The hon. Baronet talks of the "institution of judicious tests of merit." But what are they? Is he prepared with any specific plan? We are all agreed in the general doctrine that promotion should go by merit, but for us to hold out high-sounding declarations to that effect to the country, without having a very definite idea of our own meaning, and before we are prepared to give any effect to them in a substantive form, would scarcely be honest, as between us and our constituents. We have no right to make professions in the face of the country until we are prepared to fulfil them by our acts, and therefore I ask the hon. Baronet what are the judicious tests which he proposes to institute, and what are the obstructions which he would remove? If you mean nothing, you ought to say nothing, but if you mean something, you ought to say what you do mean, and introduce measures to give effect to the Resolutions you propose to us to adopt?
The two Motions of the hon. Member for Aylesbury and the hon. Member for Hertfordshire are followed on the paper by the notice of my hon. Friend the Member for Cork (Mr. V. Scully) of which I will say that it appears to me to be perfectly sound in its principle; and it proposes that we should address Her Majesty to modify the order in Council recently issued with respect to examinations in the public service. But it is in no respect necessary to modify the order in Council to give effect to the Motion of the hon. Gentleman: the order in Council does not of itself do any thing either to abolish or to interfere with the rights of nomination; it leaves it perfectly 2103 open to any Government that may be disposed to surrender that right to institute any system of admission that may be devised.
Having objected to the Motion of the hon. Member for Aylesbury and the Amendment of the hon Member for Hertfordshire, it would be invidious in me to confine myself to arguments of objection with regard to a question which has excited such great interest in the public mind, and which is a question, I am willing to admit, of paramount importance. The real truth is, with respect to this subject of administrative reform, that I have viewed the movement with but one regret, which was, that until I heard the speech of the hon. Member for Aylesbury to-night I had scarcely been able to satisfy myself whether the promoters of that reform had formed to themselves any definite and clear view, either of the evils which they meant to assail, or the remedies they proposed to apply. Vagueness and generality have been the characteristics of the most of what we have seen in the public prints with respect to this question. The subject is one to which I always rejoice to see the public mind heartily turned, because you must recollect that with regard to the public service of the country, you have unfailingly at work a set of motives and engines which are unfavourable to the public interest. The principle of nepotism, of promotion by family interest, of jobbing for constituents, and the pursuit of self-interest are perpetual, whereas it is only occasionally that the public mind is turned to the question of the organisation of the public service. No one, therefore, can rejoice more than I shall if the hon. Member for Aylesbury, and those who act with him in this movement, can turn into channels of a practical nature the feeling which has been roused in the country; because I am convinced that if that practical direction can be given to it great good will result.
The hon. Gentleman, in his speech, divided the public service into two parts—the Military Department and the Civil Department, the latter including the diplomatic and consular services. As respects the Military Departments, I followed the speech of the hon. Gentleman with a conviction that he was disposed to do the fullest justice to every one, but with great doubt how far it was possible for us, hearing for the first time the various instances which he detailed, to institute, in the 2104 course of the debate, that searching examination into the merits of each particular case which it is absolutely necessary for us to go through if we mean to build any useful conclusion upon them. The machinery of debate, I think, is hardly sufficient to enable us to investigate the facts which the hon. Member stated as thoroughly and minutely as we must do if we intend to make any use of them. I will content myself, therefore, at present, with expressing a strong conviction that the closer the administration of the army is examined into the more will Lord Hardinge make good his title to be considered a worthy and distinguished friend of Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington. There is no man, I am convinced, less disposed to sacrifice the public interest to any views connected with his own personal and family interest, and none to whom the country is more indebted for his administration of the affairs of the army. As the hon. Gentleman has quoted so many individual cases to us to-night, perhaps I may be allowed to state in turn what has lately come to my knowledge with regard to the conduct of Lord Hardinge. It happened that in three separate instances the sons of clergymen had imbibed a very strong desire to enter into the military profession. In each case their fathers were among the ranks of the poorest clergy; they had no family or political influence to bring to bear; but in two of the cases in which application was made commissions were conferred by Lord Hardinge without purchase and without the intervention of any political influence at all. The third application had only recently been laid before Lord Hardinge, and therefore I cannot say what his decision on it will be. There is another circumstance, too, which has occurred within the last few days and which has some bearing on this debate. Advertisements have recently appeared in the public papers, from which I gather that it is the intention of the noble Lord the Secretary for War to throw open to free and unrestricted competition a very considerable number of appointments in the most important of the various Army Departments—the artillery and engineers. That is a very bold measure on the part of the noble Lord the Secretary for War, but it is one for which he and the noble Lord at the head of the Government deserve great credit. It shows that they are disposed to look fairly into the question whether or not 2105 we can venture to throw perfectly open to public competition the access to the public departments; and there is no doubt that, however difficult such a step may be with regard to the civil service, as respects the Military Departments the difficulties are much greater. I have no hesitation in saying that, as far as the civil departments are concerned, we ought freely and fully to adopt that principle; but the question as regards the military departments is surrounded with difficulties which I am not able to solve. The hon. Member for Dudley (Sir S. Northcote) has scarcely done justice, I think, to the hon. Member for Aylesbury's speech. It appears to me that, so far from having merely recapitulated the evils which he thought existed, without having any clear idea of how they were to be remedied, the hon. Member for Aylesbury stated distinctly that he had arrived at the conclusion that a free competitive examination must be adopted in order to any effectual good. I may, perhaps, be permitted to remind the hon. Gentleman and the House that this question is not now for the first time brought under public notice by the labours of the Administrative Reform Association. The efforts of all Governments for some time past, without distinction or party, have been directed to effecting some improvement in this respect. Immense good has been done from a pure love of right and justice, and an enlightened desire for the promotion of the public interests. In this way, and owing to no pressure from this House, have the revisions of official establishments to which I have alluded been regularly conducted from year to year. When I took office as Chancellor of the Exchequer I found that those revisions had been in steady and rapid progress under the right hon. Gentleman who preceded me. When they were brought to something like completeness, I, on the part of Lord Aberdeen's Government, requested Sir Charles Trevelyan and my hon. Friend (Sir S. Northcote), who had taken a most important part in their detailed examination, to draw up a general Report on the state of the civil service, with a statement of remedies broader and larger in their nature than could conveniently be treated of in the separate Reports of each distinct establishment. The Government of Lord Aberdeen, without pledging itself to the particular details of the Report, advised the Crown to announce to Parliament its intention to make a great change in the 2106 system of admissions to the public service; and although, on account of the pressure of other affairs, I had not the opportunity of officially explaining that measure to this House, yet it was well understood that it involved the entire abandonment of what is called patronage in reference to civil appointments. And here I must say one word in behalf of the aristocracy; because, while I acquit my hon. Friend on this head, there is, nevertheless, a tendency out of doors to mix up the two ideas of corruption and weakness in the public service, and the prevalence of the aristocratic element. Now, I believe that no Cabinet could have been more aristocratically composed than that over which Lord Aberdeen presided. I myself was the only one of the fifteen noblemen and gentlemen who composed it who could not fairly be said to belong to that class, and I may, therefore, speak with more freedom. Yet that Cabinet, so composed and aristocratically formed, conceived and matured a plan for the total surrender of its patronage; and it so happens that while I was the only individual in it who could not be considered as in any manner connected with the aristocracy, I was also the only minister who had no possible claim to the merit of that proposal, for the very simple reason that I had no patronage at all to relinquish; the business of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, under a very wise arrangement, being to cut up other people's patronage—that term, in its ordinary acceptation being inapplicable to the very responsible appoinments which he has to make. It is impossible to say what reception this scheme might have met in this House had it been fairly introduced here for discussion, but our own consciences will, I think, tell us that it would not have been quite so easy to secure its adoption by the representatives of the people, among whom there is a large infusion of the democratic element, as it was to obtain for it the unanimous assent of a Government so constituted as was that of Lord Aberdeen. I believe the principle of patronage can never be wholly eradicated; but all that can be done in that direction the late Cabinet was quite ready to propose if this House should have been resolute enough to agree to it.
The country, I think, is in danger of being misled by a number of feeble and illusory remedies; and when asked what they mean, they generally state remedies of which each is more vague and illusory 2107 than the other. For example, it is asked, "Why don't you examine candidates for public employment as severely as you please?" but at the same time those who say this shrink from the principle of open competition. Now, you cannot examine rigidly without the application of competition. The practice of the Board of Inland Revenue shows the present system in its most favourable form. There the nominating power is lodged outside of the department, and within it lies the power of rejection. The Secretary of the Treasury receives with good humour the recommendations to appointments made by Members of Parliament in favour of their constituents, and then hands them over to the Inland Revenue Board; which, on its part, exercising a free discretion, and adopting the test of a stringent examination, very frequently rejects the candidates. This remark especially applies to that Board while it has been administered by the extremely able men who now sit upon it, than whom no better public servants could be found in this or any other country, be the system what it may, and, let you ransack any private or public establishment you please, I defy you to produce those who can beat them. However, when you have to deal with cases where the chiefs of departments nominate to appointments in their own offices, it is vain to talk of severely testing the qualifications of candidates, because no board of examiners you may name could ever assume such a responsibility. My hon. Friend said he doubted whether the Order in Council recently issued was likely on the whole to tend to the public interest with respect to admissions to the civil service. I rest its defence, in the first place, on the ground that it makes the examinations universally and publicly known. The departmental examinations which now take place, and which vary with the state of each public establishment at particular moments, inflict great hardship upon many individuals, because it is not known that the examinations have to be undergone; or, if known, it is generally supposed that they are not very strict; and if an unfortunate man under those circumstances happens to stumble upon a severe examination and is thrown over, he thinks it rather hard that he should have been entrapped unwarily. The future examinations, however, will be universally known, and will be conducted by persons independent of the department concerned; so that this measure has at 2108 least some elements of good, and though it may fall short of what the public has a right to require, I believe it will correct what may be fairly called bad appointments. But, further, the Order in Council opens the door to every further improvement. There is nothing in it which tends to stereotype the principle of nomination; on the contrary, I firmly believe that that principle will in some cases be materially relaxed by it, and in others altogether abolished. I feel bound to give in my full adhesion to the doctrine of the hon. Member (Mr. Layard), that the admission to the public service should be thrown open; and I do so, first, because I believe all the other remedies that have been suggested are perfectly futile. You have been told to dismiss inefficient men; but all experience, I think, proves that, under a Government like ours, dismissal from the civil service can only be resorted to with effect in cases of the most extreme, most flagrant, and scandalous inefficiency; and if you trust to the exercise of the mere power of dismissal, yon will trust to that which is really no remedy for the evils of which we complain. The noble Lord the Member for Lynn (Lord Stanley) has given an indication of an opinion that public servants ought to have a right of appeal against the heads of departments, and the means of bringing their cases under some sort of judicial trial. If you wished to give the finishing stroke to the public service, and to destroy and utterly paralyse it by allowing those who hold offices to entertain the idea of a vested right being the tenure by which they hold them, you would most completely attain that object by adopting the suggestion of the noble Lord. We hear a great deal said of probation, of division into classes, and the advancement from one grade to another, as remedies for the evils which exist in the civil service. But these remedies are upon the surface alone—they do do not touch the heart and depth of the matter, which is this:—you have human selfishness to deal with, you have to meet that principle which makes men attend to their own interest rather than that of the public, and next to their own interest to that of their families, connexions, friends, and constituents—in fact, to the interest of everybody except to that of the public, which they ought to attend to. That is the principle; and all your petty little peddling as to the details of probation and division into classes, is merely paltering 2109 with the question. The truth is that this division into classes has been already tried; and to those who have a genius for arithmetic nothing can present a more beautiful appearance than the office of a Secretary of State; when the whole establishment is divided into departments—every man rising from one place to the other by an increase of 5l. or 10l. a year—and all is arranged with a nicety and exactitude as if it had been done by the scales of a goldsmith. But all this is nonsense and delusion. The real question differs entirely from this. What is the object we ought really to have in view? I apprehend it is not the question of admission, which I agree is most important—but the real question is—how can you procure promotion by merit? Does it take place at present? It takes place in certain cases, but I am sorry to say that these may be one in fifty or one in a hundred, and are very rare cases indeed, and arise from one or two causes; the merit is either so signal, conspicuous, and undeniable that no man can make it a subject of cavil, or the chief of a department, having more than ordinary resolution and energy, sets his face against all difficulties, and brings his system of promotion by merit into operation. What you want, however, is a good general system; and, I appeal to those who have been and who are heads of departments, what is prejudicial to this? I say that the obstacle is in the opinion of the civil service itself—that the present tone of the civil service is not favourable to promotion by merit, but, on the contrary, is in favour of promotion by seniority. Promotion by merit is not believed in, but is looked upon with distrust, and regarded as a cover for jobbery; and this feeling gives rise to so much inconvenience, that no one hardly ever, and save in a few exceptional cases, attempts to act upon it. The consequence of this is that, although there are many excellent incomparable men in the service, yet a low tone pervades the public service; the quantity of duty performed is small, bad and middling men are overpaid, and therefore the good men are underpaid; and, with an unsatisfactory discharge of duty, you have a state of discontent in the civil service permanent and all but universal. The question, then, is, how can you bring into the civil service a different tone of opinion with respect to promotion by merit? I admit the difficulty of this question; but it seems to me that the indisposition to see men promoted 2110 by merit is mainly due to the present system of admission. Men now get into the service by favour, and it is difficult to make them understand that they are to be promoted by merit; but if you bring them in on merit, then, as a natural consequence, they will entertain the idea that they will get on by merit. But those who receive their appointment from one of twenty causes distinct from merit look upon what they have received, not as remuneration for their duty, but in the nature of a gift in which they have a vested right, and they watch it with the jealousy that men watch their vested rights, and they do not understand being put aside from succession to higher office on account of a man of greater merit, any more than a man would understand giving up his private property to his neighbour because he is a wiser and better man. You must throw open the civil service to all the world, you must obtain for it the best men as far as you can ascertain who the best men are by an examination and by the most rigid scrutiny, and then, whatever other evils you may incur, you give it to be understood that the men who come into the civil service do not receive their appointments by favour, and have not any other right to obtain or hold their places except the right which depends upon efficiency. You will thus change the basis of your system, and by doing so, I, for one, am sanguine that you will substitute for the present opinion that prevails in the civil service, adverse to promotion by merit, a totally different opinion. Men will come on merit and seek only to get on by merit. Then, when you have done your best, you will be far from perfection, but you will, I think, find you have obtained a better system than now prevails.
The hon. Member for Dudley (Sir S. Northcote) and others have alluded to a subject which I think the House should fully consider; namely, the question of superannuation in the civil service. It seems to be considered that the public servants are treated very ungenerously with respect to the superannuation tax. It is a strange anomaly to call by the name of a tax that which I understand was imposed in lieu of a reduction of salary and duties from the time of Lord Grey's Government. A general reduction of salaries was then made; but the right hon. Member for Carlisle determined, in lieu of this, to lay on the civil servants this superannuation tax, to go in discharge not only of the pensions 2111 of those who paid it, but also in relief of the whole charge imposed on the public for pensions. I hope, whenever the House considers this question, that it will bear in mind the danger of passing from one extreme to another. In 1831, there was a great disposition to reduce and cut down all salaries in the civil service; and in 1850, this disposition had become so strong, that the right hon. Gentleman, the Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley), nearly carried a Resolution, by which it would have been determined to reduce at once, and indiscriminately, the salaries of all in the civil service 10 per cent. That Resolution has been forgotten, and we now hear of nothing but the miserable inadequacy of the salaries of the public servants and the shabby treatment that they receive at the hands of the public. I must confess, that as one of the public, I cannot subscribe to that doctrine; but I say that the good servants are underpaid; but that the middling and bad men are overpaid. I do not believe that there is any employer in the country who pays so much in proportion to the service rendered as the public do. Therefore the conclusion which I arrive at is, not that a wholesale increase should be made, as I should regard such a proposition as unreasonable as that formerly made by the right hon. Member for Oxfordshire to reduce the salaries, but that you should endeavour to improve the construction of the civil service, and so to arrange and construct a system of promotion in the service as to secure the maximum of duty which it is capable of performing; and, when you have the proper tests for dividing the good from the bad men, you will have no difficulty in inducing this House to give most liberal remuneration for services rendered.
I beseech the House to recollect that this question of administrative reform, is one which demands serious consideration. For my own part, I must confess my unfeigned satisfaction that the circumstances of the present time, and that the feeling which prevails out of doors and, perhaps in this House, is likely to be turned into that direction which my hon. Friend has tonight endeavoured to turn it. It is very easy to show the difficulty of attaining anything like perfection in this case, and we may hear that the constitution of the country and the safety of the monarchy require this system of patronage. I have no doubt as to whether the constitution of the country or the safety of the monarchy depends 2112 upon this or that system; but I have great doubts as to whether this system of patronage really contributes to the strength of the Executive Government. I perfectly believe, that at the present moment the weakness of the Executive Government, and not its strength—evils which we had had for a length of time to complain of—is owing to this system of patronage. If we want a proof of the truth of this proposition, I should say we may find it in the great number of unsettled legislative questions produced and reproduced in the form of one Bill and another Bill, then abandoned year after year, and never seeming to come nearer to a conclusion. I confess that, though we have proofs that the condition of the Executive Government is such as requires strengthening, I very greatly doubt that it is to be strengthened by patronage; and, if it were to be so strengthened, I certainly should deeply regret the maintenance of such a system for the purpose of strengthening the Executive Government, for it is otherwise a system of almost unmixed evil. I do not wish to raise expectations that may not be fulfilled, and I grant that you cannot get altogether rid of the system; for, though the plan of free competition and examination may be adopted with regard to young men of eighteen or twenty years of age, it cannot be adopted in respect to persons in the later periods of life. You cannot make use of it to determine who should be advanced to the higher offices of the public service; but at the period of life I have just mentioned it is applicable, and it is at that point that patronage does the most mischief, because, then it is exercised most irresponsibly. It is not when appointments are made to offices of an elevation which dignify them in the public eyes that the mischief is done, because then questions are raised in this House as to the propriety of those appointments. We have had to-night, for instance, a particular appointment discussed by the hon. Member for Dudley (Sir S. Northcote) with reference to the Board of Trade, with which department that hon. Member was long connected—namely, the appointment to the headship of the Statistical Department; and, therefore, with respect to, the appointments to the higher offices we, have responsibility; but with respect to the first admissions to the public service there is no responsibility whatever. With respect to the men who find their way into the Customs, the Board of Inland Revenue, the Post Office, or even into the. 2113 Secretaries of State's offices, into the Treasury, and into all the administrative offices about London, nobody knows or cares who they are. You may appoint the most indifferent persons, and in a great number of instances the most indifferent persons are appointed. The getting rid of that system would, in my opinion, be an immense relief and blessing to the country; and would effect a great deal for public economy, for one result would be that, while the public servants would be much better paid, there would be fewer of them, and the sum which would be paid for better service would be smaller than that which is now paid for worse service. The abolition of the system I refer to would also do much for public education, and would thus afford a great relief to those who are now perplexed with the three problems before the House on the subject of education, none of which hardly constitutes a fit solution of the difficulty. I do not believe that it is in the wit of man to devise a plan for the promotion of education so effective and powerful as the throwing open of the civil service. It would do much for public economy, education, and for the efficiency of the public service, and also for the public virtue of the country. We all feel in this House that the position in which Members now stand with reference to their constituents in connection with this matter of patronage is not altogether satisfactory. Perhaps no person in the House feels this, I may say, less than myself, because my constituents are not in the condition of becoming applicants for these situations. But if it be true, as regards the position of Members of this House, that a change in this respect is desirable, much more true is it with respect to that class of persons throughout the country who subsist on hopes deferred. I do not think that anything can be more unsatisfactory in society than the existence of a class of expectants, and that there should be, when an office is to be given away, ten or twenty people all putting every means in motion to get possession of it. The multitude of candidates does not one whit increase the number of offices obtainable; but the vague idea that offices can be obtained through interest, leads to an indefinite multiplication of applicants, and keeps a large class of men in a state fatal to the exercise of their energies and to the growth of a manly character. I trust, therefore, that this House may be disposed to give a serious 2114 attention to this subject; and, though it is impossible for me, on account of the reasons I have stated, to support the Motion of the hon. Member for Aylesbury, and though I feel it would be presumptuous in me to give an opinion on that portion of the hon. Member's speech relating to the military departments, with respect to which I have little experience, and should, therefore, not wish to pronounce a hasty opinion, yet, as respects all the hon. Gentleman has said in regard to the diplomatic, consular, and civil services, I have listened to what fell from him with the greatest interest, and I heartily wish him "God speed" on his way; and I am sure that, if he shall be able to bring about the change, the nature of which I have ventured to indicate, he will confer a lasting benefit upon his country.
§
SIR BULWER LYTTON rose to move the Amendment of which he had given notice—
That this House recommends to the earliest attention of Her Majesty's Ministers the necessity of a careful revision of our various official establishments, with a view to simplify and facilitate the transaction of public business, and, by instituting judicious tests of merit, as well as by removing obstructions to its fair promotion and legitimate rewards, to secure to the service of the State the largest available proportion of the energy and intelligence for which the people of this country are distinguished"—
and said, Sir, I think there has been no question in our time which contains on the one hand a proposition in itself more just and reasonable, and which, on the other hand, is encumbered by more dangerous exaggeration than that popular demand which this Motion submits to the consideration of the House. That when the failure of our departments connected with war, after a forty years' peace, compelled us to turn our eyes to our various establishments with a more rigid scrutiny, we should find a great deal that is obsolete in principle, or cumbersome in detail, and that when we so find it, we should desire to improve and simplify both the mechanism and its operation, is natural enough; but that we should suddenly pervert a matter of business, to which all men might fairly bring their collective experience and dispassionate intelligence into an irritating inflammatory attack upon particular classes, seems to me a very grave misfortune—so grave that I think in the first instance we should try and see what are the causes which have given to a demand, natural and harmless in itself, such sinister and alarming tendencies. Now, it
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is very important to look at the date in which the cry for administrative reform took the shape which it has now assumed. It was almost immediately after the accession of the noble Viscount to the place that he now holds. There had been great calamities and diasters in the due provision for an army in which the country felt the deepest interest. Parliament, rightly or wrongly, laid the main fault upon certain Members of the late Government. This idea was sanctioned by the opinion of the noble Lord the Member for London, who had implied, first to the Chief Minister and then to the House of Commons, that things would come right if one of his colleagues, the noble Viscount, took the administration of the war out of the hands of another of his colleagues—the Duke of Newcastle. The people shared in that belief; they thought that whatever defects there might be in the system—however blundering and incapable minor officials might have been—a Minister of greater vigour would much more promptly remedy the defects and replace the offenders than they could do by any irregular efforts of their own. They saw in the noble Viscount the personification of their own energy and freedom. He came into his present office backed by a popular enthusiasm almost unequalled since 1757, when the first William Pitt entered on his famous war Administration. Up to the time of the noble Lord's accession to office not a word was said out of doors on Administrative Deform; in that sense which it has now assumed. About two weeks afterwards the whole country rang with that cry. Why? Because the noble Viscount had disappointed the expectations of the country. At the very commencement he seemed to prove that he wanted that decision of character, that firm reliance on his own judgment, and that penetrative foresight which are the primary qualities that the people demand in a public man on whom, for the moment, they confer a virtual dictatorship. The Motion for the inquiry into the state of our army, which had been carried by so large a majority, was, the noble Viscount himself frankly said, "the main difficulty that stared him in the face;" yet, so little had been his foresight, that he had not even arranged with his colleagues beforehand what course to pursue with regard to that inquiry, and so little was his decision that he had not even made up his own mind on the subject. At first he proposed to rescind the vote to which he owed his elevation and compared
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himself, with a curious infelicity of illustration, to Richard II., who, as history tells us, had indeed appeased the mob by promising to be their leader—but for the sole object of drawing them away from their immediate object and revoking every promise he had made. Finding the House neither coaxed by his blandishments nor convinced by his illustration, the noble Lord suddenly turned round, and jauntily stepped into that terrible breach of the constitution, leaving three of his colleagues on the other side of the wall. The noble Lord thus lost popularity by his injudicious resistance, and then impaired the respect which belongs to manly firmness by the levity of his subsequent acquiescence. Now the people have quick instincts in discovering whether their favourites are thoroughly in earnest. They do not go by actions alone, but also by words. There are times when words are things. For instance, Lord Chatham's first military expedition against Rochfort had been a notable failure, yet the public unanimously acquitted him because they felt that the failure did not arise from his want of earnestness and vigour; and there was something in Lord Chatham's language, his tone, and moral bearing which induced them to wait with confidence for the full development of his designs. But from the very first day of the noble Viscount's accession, he led the public to believe—no doubt erroneously—that he was unduly trifling with the solemnity which they attached to the occasion, and he met that impatient grief which complained of national disaster, and feared even national discredit with an air that might remind us much more of Lord North than Lord Chatham. There is another consideration here which is most important, when we seek to ascertain the causes for whatever is dangerous and embarrassing in the popular demand which this Motion submits to us; and On this head I put one question to the noble Lord's most partial supporters. Did they not welcome his accession to the head of affairs Upon the supposition that his Government would proffer a striking contrast to that of the Ministry he succeeded, or rather reconstructed? That was the belief to which the noble Lord owed his elevation. What was, then, the surprise of the public when the noble Viscount's new Minister of War, Lord Panmure, declared, in his inaugural speech, that "his anxious desire" was—what? to contrast by his vigour all previous lethargy? No—"to
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do away with the impression on the public mind that his predecessor had neglected, or rather had not carried out to the fullest extent the interests of the army committed to his charge!"Carried out to the fullest extent the interests of an army at that instant rotting away from disease, which was without food, without shelter, without clothing, and with hospitals in a state that made humanity shudder! Why, if this were the fact—if in Lord Panmure's opinion the Duke of Newcastle had carried out to the fullest extent the interests of the army, why on earth did you change the Duke of Newcastle for Lord Panmure? Sir, in all other respects, the public were disposed to do justice to the Duke of Newcastle; his own touching defence had secured to him much respect and sympathy. All dispassionate men were willing to acknowledge his humanity, his application, his honesty of intention, to hope that be would serve his country hereafter in some other department. The only fault they found in him was that fault which placed the noble Viscount where he is—namely, that for some cause or another the Duke of Newcastle had not carried out the interests of the army. And when my Lord Panmure openly declared that this belief was a mistake, and that, in fact, he meant to follow in the steps of his predecessor—and when, simultaneously, the language and bearing of the noble Viscount destroyed all the previous enthusiasm in his favour—then suddenly broke out this cry—the middle class rose up and said, "It is no use trusting to Ministers, one set is as bad as another; the affairs of the country at a time when its very existence may be at stake are managed by the conventional courtesies of a drawing-room clique; we must make a sweeping change, not in Ministers, but in the whole system of administration, and take the functions of a trifling and effeminate Executive into our own uncompromising hands." That, Sir, was the mode in which this cry arose, and for all that is dangerous in the cry the noble Viscount is thus responsible. Then, indeed, when the country was roused into resentment, when public meetings threatened to take the whole matter out of their hands, then, but not till then, the Government seemed to be dimly conscious that something more was expected from them than pleasant jokes and flattering epitaphs upon the defunct predecessors they had slain and
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buried, and the noble Viscount rose to avert the gathering storm—by what? by an announcement of official arrangements recommended by a Committee of the House more than twenty years ago—pressed last year by the right hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, but pressed vainly, on the Cabinet of which the noble Viscount had been one of the leading Members, and improving in no particular upon such reforms as we should equally have had if Lord Aberdeen had been still at the head of affairs and the Duke of Newcastle still Minister of War. Well, then, I pause to put this direct question to the noble Viscount and his colleagues—did you reconstruct yourselves into a new Government only to carry out the projects and measures of the last one? If so, how deeply has the noble Lord the Member for London injured the Duke of Newcastle, and how egregiously have you duped the expectations of the people! If, on the other hand, you tell me, "No, we came in to contrast the late Government with improvements and ideas of our own," I ask you what is meant by these grateful eulogies on the Duke of Newcastle, and I entreat you to distinguish your improvements and your ideas from those which the Duke of Newcastle was forbidden to develope by the denunciation of his own colleague! Thus, Sir, the Government at length produced the mouse that their own mountain had not conceived. And do you think that these stale and plagiarised reforms, embodying not one proof of inventive sagacity, not one original conception, and, strange to say, leaving that department which the noble Viscount himself declared had the most broken down, I mean the Commissariat, precisely the department in which all reforms are indefinitely postponed—do you think that these will suffice to silence the new cry which is startling the country and threatening to usurp altogether our constitutional powers of legislation? It is not enough that the late Government launched us into a war without any definite plan or adequate preparation, but you—not Lord Aberdeen's Cabinet—you, the noble Viscount's Government, have exposed us to a far worse danger from the vague and restless discontent, which an appearance of trifling and frivolity has engendered, than we have to apprehend from all the armaments of Russia. We have cause, indeed, to be thankful to Providence for our late successes;
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for what would have been the consequences to our whole political and social system if some serious defeat to our arms, some indelible stain upon our national honour, had, in the ferment of public feeling, been suddenly added to the minor calamities of barren victories and wasted valour? Dou you not see, in the direction which this movement for administrative reform has unhappily taken, the germs of danger to something more important than the existence of any individual Government, something more deeply rooted into our system than aristocratical ascendancy? The danger is to the fundamental principles of representative institutions. I do not think that those who are now so fiercely agitating against the influences of party and of Parliament are aware of the logical consequences to which their agitation may lead. I am sure the hon. Member for Aylesbury is not, or he would be the first to condemn what he now approves. Talk thus loosely, yet thus fiercely, against the influences of party! The influences of party are the sinews of freedom. Party and freedom are twins, united at the birth by a ligament which is nourished from the lifeblood of both, and if you divide the ligament you kill the twins. Oh, yes, without the influences of party you might, indeed, have able and efficient men in your bureaux—England will never want such men under any system; but you will have exchanged the nerve and muscle of popular government for the clockwork machinery which belongs to despotism. But, Sir, to judge by the language out of doors, it is not meant to clear away the obstacles that beset the career of a clerk in a public office—no, it is meant to make the Queen's Government, make the Ministers of the nation, independent of the influences of party,—in other words, of the opinions of Parliament. That is the only way in which I can interpret the language we hear out of doors—that there must be an entirely new administration of the country perfectly free from the influences of party—why, Sir, if it is meant that the Crown is to appoint to the higher offices of State, free from the influences of party and from the opinions of Parliament, the Crown would become as absolute as it was in the time of the Tudors; and, if these agitators against Parliament say, "Oh, no, we do not mean that; we mean that the people are to dictate to the Crown, according to their ideas of merit,
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who are to be the Ministers of State, through other channels than Parliamentary parties, through patriotic associations and audiences accustomed plausu gaudere theatri." I tell them that they would root out the durable institutions of liberty to make room for the deadly ephemerals of Jacobin clubs. But if they say, "Oh, no—we mean neither one nor the other," what do they mean—they who are attacking Parliament—except to bring Parliament into contempt and to trust the chance of a substitute to the lottery of revolutions? But let the House inquire if the Government is not in some degree responsible for the loud cry which has been raised against family patronage and party influence? Can you deny that it has ever been the peculiar characteristic of the Whigs when in office to concentrate power as much as possible within their own narrow and exclusive coteries, and to make a marked distinction between the great body of their supporters and the highbred materials from which they construct their Cabinets? So far as that goes, I think the hon. Member for Aylesbury has proved his case. Your Cabinets have been one colossal instance of family patronage. You trace your map of office as the Chinese trace the map of the world. The Chinese draw a square; in that square they describe a circle, which fills up all the space except the four little corners. The circle is the Celestial Empire of China, and the four little corners are assigned to the miserable remnants of mankind. So when you come into power you describe round Downing Street your circle; in that circle you place the sacred family of Whigs—that is the Celestial Empire; and to the four little corners you banish the herd of your supporters. Now it is because ever since the Whigs came into office, more than twenty years ago, the public have seen this exclusive principle, this preference of family connections, applied to the more conspicuous departments of the State, that therefore now, when national disasters tend to magnify every abuse, and some abstract cause is to be found for every grievance, there has risen up this cry against the governing classes, and a persuasion, which I do you the justice to say is much exaggerated, that you apply the same system of favouritism to all the ramifications of official power and distinction. The belief is exaggeration
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is dangerous; it tends to shake the basis of our social system, but for that exaggeration and for that danger you are responsible, because in the composition of your Cabinets you have, one after another, installed a combination of families and privileged houses like a sacred caste, and have contrived to sour, to chill, and to alienate the energy, the intellect, the enthusiasm of that class of your supporters in whom the people can recognise their own hardy children; while you mortify the pride of a numerous gentry with birth as ancient as your own, but who happen not to be allied to your houses, nor partially naturalised to your coterie by having been disciplined in its drawing-rooms. Sir, I will grant most readily that the noble Viscount, in seeking to form the materials of his Government, was much less to blame for family exclusiveness than Whig Ministers have been before him. I believe that he did honestly desire to extend the range of selection. In the selection, for instance, of a right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Horsman) to the important post of Chief Secretary for Ireland—a post which requires the union of courtesy and firmness, of ready powers in debate, with comprehensive knowledge of mankind—the noble Viscount has, to my mind, been most fortunate and judicious. But parties, like kings, are punished for the faults of their predecessors; and what the people resent is this, that the very nature of the party, or rather the coterie, which the noble Lord represents, has compelled him still, notwithstanding a few exceptions, to retain in the map of his Cabinet that general preponderance of the old Celestial Empire which is out of all reasonable proportion to the rest of the world. At the bottom of all this agitation that which I see most clearly is this—that the public are tired of Governments purely Whig, and that, sooner or later, the doom of that oligarchy will be sealed. Long ago Mr. Burke said, "The Whigs had never a majority in the country, but they obtained their ascendancy by dextrous management." We know in our time what that management has been; it consists in saying to the Radicals," Support us, or you will let in those horrible Tories;" and in whispering to us Conservatives, "Bear with us, or those horrible Radicals will upset the country." I think that device is new pretty well worn out. Well, then, I distinguish between the dangerous elements which have been
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added to the question of administrative reform and the reform itself. For the dangerous elements I arraign the Government—for the reform I am a cordial advocate. You must, as soon as possible, take this question out of the hands of agitators, and turn it to safe directions in the hands of statesmen. Exactly a parallel case arose towards the end of the American war, when the cry throughout the country was for economical reform, coupled with an attack on the power of the Crown; now the cry is for administrative reform, coupled with an attack upon the predominance of the aristocracy. In both instances the country felt that its resources had been wasted, and feared its character was tarnished; it sought to trace the causes to a tangible origin, and in both instances believed it found that origin in the abuse of patronage. By a timely—and, because timely, a moderate reform—the Rocking ham Administration contented the people and averted all danger from the Crown. By the same means, though I hope the reform will be more extensive, you may again content the people and relieve the aristocracy from unmerited censure.
Sir, it is not my intention at present to touch at all upon the vast but intricate question of military reform. I am convinced that you will do much better to keep that question apart from the administrative reform connected with the civil service, and entertain it in a different debate, and it is to the civil service that I shall confine myself. Sir, the elaborate and able speech of the hon. Member for Aylesbury, has saved me from inflicting on you quotations from the Reports of our various offices, which Reports I have studied with great care. Those Reports allow us to take it for granted that administrative reform is imperatively necessary, since there is not one of those offices in which that reform is not urgently enforced by those who are the best judges of it; and I shall content myself with this short extract from the Report on our general civil service:—
All who have had occasion to examine its constitution with care, have felt that its organisation is far from perfect, and that its amendment is deserving the most careful attention. It would be natural to expect that so important a profession would attract into its ranks the ablest and 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
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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.
I have made a short summary of the principal reforms suggested for the existing imperfections. They are, the establishment of a primary, and pf, perhaps, periodical examinations, and those for the highest situations should be on a level with the highest description of education; a more judicious regulation of the principle applied to salaries; the adoption of honorary rewards and distinctions; the bestowal of all the places and prizes in the service on those who belong to it; accountability by records of individual and reports of departmental service; and, in short, the general regulation, not only that merit should be the rule for promotion, but that there should be legitimate occasions to test that merit, and increased facilities for its rise. In looking over all the evidence on the subject, and weighing all the objections made to these recommendations, I have convinced myself that the reforms proposed by the various Commissions are sound and judicious, but that they require a vigour the Government have not yet shown in arranging the details into a systematic whole, and an honest determination, not yet evinced, to encourage the workings of such reforms, and a generous vigilance of Ministers in the discernment of merit in their own departments. We shall be told that the Government have done much, and are doing still more, in the way of amendment and reform. I will tell the Government why I am not satisfied to rest simply on that declaration. In the first place, I cannot compliment the right hon. Member for the University of Oxford on his share in the Order in Council. I think your mode of examination under that Order a
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complete evasion of all the real questions, at issue. The objects sought by the Committee on the Reorganisation of the Civil Service, and by all genuine reformers of that service, are to obtain the largest available amount of energy and intelligence; first, by fair competition, and next, by all professional inducements. Now, I say that your Order in Council frustrates, these objects. By that Order in Council you did not widen the range of candidates. You may have improved the examinations to a certain extent, but you still retain that which reformers specially desire to correct throughout the whole civil service—the character of a close borough: and you do not increase the inducements to candidates of talent to enter the service, by assuring them of professional rewards; for the Order in Council enables the chiefs of departments to nominate persons to office who have not been in the Civil Service, and who have been distinguished only in other pursuits, without undergoing any examination whatever. On the one hand you invite men to submit themselves to a severe examination, and, on the other hand, you prepare them to have men who have never been in the public service set over their heads. Thus, I say, that by this Order in Council you sanction the two worst abuses of which all your official reports complain. When I look at the minutes of answers made by the heads of departments to the reports on their own offices, I see in them nothing more than a servile acquiescence in detached suggestions, without the slightest indication that those great officers of State have mastered the subject for themselves, without one original conception or proof of constructive faculty; while they all exhibit the same indolent and desultory spirit, and affect to deliberate when in reality they only dawdle. Now, this is precisely what object to. I would rather you left things alone. You cast a slur on what exists without being prepared to replace it. You strip off the roof and let in the rain, not only before a new covering is ready, but while you are still undecided whether you will use slates or tiles. This is one of the cases in which reform ought not to be slothful and vacillating, but prompt and decisive, because as a long as you leave the public servants of any department uncertain what is to become of them, you deprive them of all energy and good-heart. I believe that one reason of the Duke of Newcastle's failure
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was, that you placed him at the head of establishments which lay effete and paralysed under sentence of death. Hesitating reforms unsettle; decided reforms reconstruct. And I am convinced also that any general rules you may adopt to excite emulation and encourage merit should be applied simultaneously to all establishments, and that the reform in one should not be contrasted by the abuse in others. For instance, what could be so unwise, at a time when the eyes of the public are fixed on you with so keen a scrutiny, as to announce a very proper but a very rigid examination for the vacancies in the senior practical class at Woolwich Academy, and proclaim in the newspapers of the very same day that three of the best places in the public service, that of Director-General of Stores, Director-General of Contracts, Assistant-General of the Army Clothing Department, were bestowed upon gentlemen who, whatever their merit, are less connected with those departments than they are with yourselves, and therefore appear to the uninstructed public audacious specimens of that very favouritism which your reforms affect to abolish? Let me again impress upon you that it is not enough to subject young candidates to a rigorous examination, to decoy into the public service the rising energy and talent of the country, unless you set before them all the lawful prizes of the profession, and convince them that not one such prize shall be abstracted from their ambition, and bestowed upon gentlemen who, however able, are not connected with the service. If the public service is to be really a profession, it ought to be as monstrous to give one of the great prizes in that service to a man who has not been actively distinguished in it, as it would be to give a clever lawyer the colonelcy of a regiment, or a gallant officer the Mastership of the Bolls. I am more alarmed than I can well express at the state of things out of doors, and I am most desirous, for the sake of satisfying the country, and allaying all disaffection, that the Ministry should frame a scheme which they can openly bring before this House, and so inform the country exactly what they are doing, and intend to do.
Sir, I cannot vote for the Motion of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Aylesbury—not, he may he sure, from disrespect to himself, but because, looking at his Motion in connection with its supporters out of doors, I cannot sanction an 2126 influence quite apart from the question of Administrative Reform, which I conscientiously believe to be unsound in principle and perilous in the consequences to which they would lead. But I am desirous, not only for my own sake, but that of many gentlemen on both sides of the House, to Save an occasion of recording our votes in favour of the simple question of Administrative Reform. For this reason I have not framed the Amendment I propose in a party spirit; my remarks may have been under that influence; my Amendment shall be free from it. My hon. Friend (Mr. Layard) has referred to a lovely passage in Tasso, and says that I would smear the bowl with sweets that the child may swallow the medicine. No; I present the. medicine as it is. He adulterates the medicine with the bitterness of unnecessary gall. Not the least dangerous part of the agitation out of doors, which it was scarcely worthy of a distinguished Member of Parliament and a distinguished scholar to countenance, is the attempt of certain persons to disparage the character of this House. Acting as I do, with a minority, it might be more consistent with the passions of party to connive at that depreciation, and insinuate that it is the fault of the tribunal when we cannot carry our cause. But I say, from the bottom of my heart, that the longer I have lived, and the more familiar I have become with books or with mankind, the more deeply the patriotic spirit and the intellectual eminence of this House of Commons are impressed on my convictions. And during my experience of more than twenty years in the records of your proceedings I can recall no time in which this House was ever more worthy of the confidence and respect of the country, whether for the ability, which by all sections of opinion has been displayed, or, as I solemnly Relieve, for the personal incorruptibility of its Members as a body, or for that zeal for the welfare of the country which, whether you have assailed or supported Ministers, posterity will acknowledge to have been your prevailing motive. It is not at such a time that a mere form of words which some of us cannot accept, should alienate the affections of the people from, this palladium of their liberties; and in order that every Member, no matter what his politics or party, who cannot accept the Motion now before us, may have the opportunity of recording a vote which he can vindicate to his constituents and justify 2127 to his conscience, I submit to you this proposition, which you will pardon for its temperance if it obtains the object of conciliating your approval.
§ Amendment proposed, to leave out from the word "House" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "recommends to the earliest attention of Her Majesty's Ministers the necessity of a careful revision of our various Official Establishments with a view to simplify and facilitate the transaction of public business, and, by instituting judicious tests of merit, as well as by removing obstructions to its fair promotion and legitimate rewards, to secure to the service of the State the largest available proportion of the energy and intelligence for which the people of this Country are distinguished," instead thereof.
§ Question proposed. "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
§ MR. LABOUCHERE rose to make an explanation with reference to an appointment which had been referred to in the course of the evening, and for which he was responsible, viz., the appointment of Mr. Fonblanque to the statistical department. That was an office which had never been considered an object of fair ambition by any party, but had always been filled up by some one brought into the office, and not by any one already in the office. When Mr. Porter was appointed to the Board of Trade, he undoubtedly expressed an opinion that the clerk at the head of the Statistical Department was competent to discharge the duties of Statistical Secretary under his (Mr. Porter's) superintendence. There was no doubt of the fitness of the gentleman he recommended, but he (Mr. Labouchere) looked into the question in the most scrutinising manner, and thought it would not be right to appoint this gentleman; bad he done so, he should have fallen into the mistake that was so much complained of, of sacrificing merit to routine. He was alone responsible for the appointment of Mr. Fonblanque, who had given his attention to statistics for many years, and who had always discharged his duties in a perfectly satisfactory manner. He (Mr. Labouchere) took the opportunity of reducing the salary from 1000l. to 800l. a year; and it gave him great pleasure to give the appointment to a man of great literary eminence and unblemished private character.
§ SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTEsaid, 2128 that the right hon. Gentleman had fallen into a mistake into which he would not have fallen had he heard his speech. He had not said one word against the fitness of Mr. Fonblanque for the office to which he had been appointed. He had only referred to that appointment as an illustration of the system (which he would condemn) of appointing to high offices persons who were not connected with the civil service.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERSir, I rejoice that the hon. Member for Aylesbury has, by a distinct and substantive Motion, brought the question of administrative reform under the specific consideration and review of the House. The question of administrative reform, as the hon. Baronet who has just addressed the House has justly remarked, has assumed dimensions of great importance and has justly occupied a large portion of public attention. It is an easy and convenient practice, for an association of gentlemen who agree together in opinion upon some important subject, to collect a public meeting to which the audience are admitted by ticket, and in which means are taken to insure unanimity in the persons addressing the meeting as well as in the audience collected to hear the speakers. But when a question of this sort is brought under the consideration of Parliament, it necessarily undergoes examination by persons of different sentiments. The House of Commons represents all classes and the opinions and sentiments of the entire community, and it is certain that no important question of this sort which may be brought under the consideration of Parliament can escape a close and searching investigation. The Motion which the hon. Member for Aylesbury has brought forward, embodies the subject of administrative reform; but it is, at the same time, a vote of want of confidence in Her Majesty's Government. In one respect, I think, the remarks of my right hon. Friend (Mr. Gladstone) on this Motion were not wholly borne out by the character of the Motion, which he described as a mere abstract resolution that could lead to no practical result. Now, if this Resolution should be adopted by a majority of this House, it would have at least this practical result, that it would lead to the resignation of the present Government. That, Sir, is, at all events, a practical result, and it justifies the hon. Member for Aylesbury in submitting the Resolution to 2129 the House. It is distinctly a vote of want of confidence in the Government, and it is the second Motion of this character that has been submitted to this House within the last fortnight. The previous Motion was founded upon the subject of war and peace and the negotiations at Vienna; the present Motion is founded upon the question of administrative reform. It is unnecessary for me to refer to the principle that has been laid down by all writers on free Governments as to the importance of maintaining the distinction between the executive and legislative branches of the Government. So long as a popular assembly exists in a free country there must be a distinction between the executive and the legislative authority, and the executive must be entrusted with certain duties which the legislative authority is incapable of discharging. The executive is entitled to demand of the legislative assembly that it should either impart to them their confidence, or should by a distinct vote withdraw it; but that it should not from time to time bring forward Motions of want of confidence, by which the course of proceeding of the executive may be rendered uncertain and insecure; and they have a right to ask either that Parliament will afford them its distinct confidence, or that, if it refuses to do so, it will at once give them its decisive opposition. The Motion submitted to the House by the hon. Member for Aylesbury asserts that "merit and efficiency have been sacrificed in public appointments to party influences." Now, without going over the ground which has already been so ably gone over during the debate, I would ask whether it is possible in any popular Government altogether to exempt the appointments to administrative offices from party and political considerations? If we look to the example of the United States, we shall find that the system of party and political influences in administrative appointments is carried to a much greater extent than it has ever been carried in this country. When a political party in the United States succeeds to power, it sweeps away not only those officers who stand at the head of departments, and who in this country hold a political character, but it also removes all those officers in subordinate situations who in this country survive all the changes of Administration. Another allegation contained in the Resolution of the hon. Member for Aylesbury is, that merit and efficiency in public appointments are sacrificed 2130 to family influences. I think it will hardly be maintained, even in public meetings called to discuss this subject, that persons should be excluded from public offices simply upon the ground of their connection, by hereditary descent, with the peerage. If it be an honour for the Crown to confer a peerage for military, civil, or diplomatic services rendered to the country, can it be supposed that any disqualification should at any time arise from connection or relationship with the person so honoured? It has always been the pride of this country that the aristocracy is so united with the other classes of the community that no distinct line can be drawn between them, and that in the Commons' House of Parliament and in all public employments a career is open to all without any distinction. It would appear from the argument of the hon. Member for Aylesbury that he supposes that the practice of appointing peers to high offices in the State has increased rather than diminished of late years; but a very superficial acquaintance with history and with the Administrations of the country at the end of the last and the beginning of the present century will show that the larger proportion of important offices in the State has been at all times filled by members of the aristocracy. When Mr. Pitt, after his remarkable triumph over the Coalition Government of Lord North and Mr. Fox, entered upon office and commenced his long Administration, he alone, in this House, sustained a great struggle against a coalition which united all the Parliamentary talents of the House of Commons, and he was unsupported by a single commoner in his Cabinet. That example proves in a remarkable manner the extent to which the Administrations of that day were formed almost exclusively of the aristocracy. The hon. Member for Aylesbury further attributes the misfortunes which have arisen in the conduct of the war to the sacrifice of merit and efficiency in the public appointments, and to "a blind adherence to routine." It is undoubtedly true that a blind adherence to routine is inconsistent with the proper discharge of administrative duties; but, nevertheless, a routine, or established system of practice, is necessary to the transaction of the business of the Government. I may ask, how could the business of this House be transacted if it were not for an adherence to routine? How could the business of the various courts of law be 2131 transacted if there were not a regular established system in existence? It is true, that if persons are sent suddenly to a distant shore to command an expedition such as that which is now in the Crimea, unforeseen circumstances may render a blind adherence to routine inconsistent with the proper discharge of administrative duties. But, at the same time, it is scarcely reasonable to expect of persons who have been trained all their lives in the ordinary performace of military or civil duties that, when they are suddenly placed in new and unforeseen circumstances, they should exhibit a genius which is the rare gift of a small number of persons, and should show in a novel and trying position those great abilities which under the most favourable circumstances, are seldom exhibited. For these reasons I am unable to assent to the Motion of the hon. Member for Aylesbury.
With regard to the Amendment of the hon. Baronet opposite, I will only remark that, if it were to be construed by the plain, simple, and straightforward meaning of the words used, and were not to be governed by the speech of the hon. Baronet, I could see no difficulty in accepting it. At the same time, I may be permitted to say that the necessity of a careful revision of our various official establishments, to which he wishes to pledge the House, is not, as has been remarked by my right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford, justified by any omission on the part of the present or of previous Governments to carry that revision into effect. With the permission of the House, I will briefly call their attention to the steps which have already been taken for the revision of some of the principal departments of the Government. In the year 1848 a revision of the Home Department took place at the time my right hon. Friend, who is now Home Secretary (Sir G. Grey) was at the head of that department. I was myself Under Secretary for the department, and a revision took place after a careful examination, in which Sir Charles Trevelyan, then Assistant Secretary to the Treasury, assisted, and the result was the introduction of various reforms. In the year 1849 a revision of the department of the Treasury took place; after a careful examination, conducted by Sir Charles Trevelyan and Mr. Gibson Craig, certain reforms, were introduced. In the same year a similar investigation was made into the Colonial Office with a 2132 similar result; and in 1852, under the Government of Lord Derby, an investigation was made with regard to the Chief Secretary's Office, Dublin; the Irish Office, London; the Privy Council Office, Dublin; and the Fines and Penalties Office, Dublin. Since that time there has been a revision of the War Office, of the Board of Trade, of the Poor Law Board, of the Privy Council Office, and of the Committee of Privy Council on Education; of the Colonial Land and Emigration Office, of the Copyhold Enclosure and Tithes Commission, of the Board of Ordnance, of the Office of Works, of the Post Office, and of the Office of the Registrar General. In all those cases extensive reforms have been the consequence. It will be in the recollection of the House that important reform has likewise taken place in the constitution of the Indian service, and a change has been made in the examination of candidates for that service. A consolidation of the War Department has likewise been recently introduced. The, examples which I have quoted show that although the adoption of the Amendment of the hon. Baronet is perfectly consistent with the course which not only the present but former Governments have pursued, it is not needed for the purpose of stimulating them to revise the public departments, but that, on the contrary, they have already, of their own free will, pursued the very course now pressed upon them. With regard to the institution of tests, I will refer to the Order in Council, the origin of which has been explained by my right hon. Friend the Member for the University, and the provisions of which have been canvassed by several Members who have addressed the House. It is not my purpose to discuss at present the question whether the plan which that Order embodies sufficiently remedies all the evils which are said to exist in the present system, or whether it will be desirable to introduce into this country for the first time a system of admitting an unlimited number of candidates without the nomination of the head of any department. I will only remark that this Order in Council provides a great additional security for merit in administrative appointments beyond that which now exists. A regular examination, conducted under the superintendence of a board of persons who are independent of each department and unconnected with the heads of those departments, affords a greater security than has ever hitherto existed for 2133 the exclusion of unfit persons from the service of the Crown. Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to ulterior measures which it may be thought prudent or wise to adopt, surely it cannot be denied that the provisions of the Order, which has recently been brought into force for the first time, afford a guarantee for the merit of persons appointed in the different public departments, inasmuch as by prescribing a certain amount of qualification they will prevent any one from entering the service of the Crown who does not possess that requisite degree of attainments. I cannot but think that the Order in Council to which I have referred gives a practical proof of the efforts made by Her Majesty's Government for securing the efficiency of administrative departments, and goes much further in that direction than any of the very general recommendations which are offered at meetings out of doors. I will not trouble the House any further upon the subject. I will only state my conviction that so far as any measures for the advancement of the cause of administrative reform are concerned, the measures adopted by Her Majesty's Government go as far as it is in the power of any one to embody practically the suggestions which have been made. With respect to ulterior measures, I may add that they remain open to further consideration, and that their adoption can only take place after careful and anxious consideration."
§ VISCOUNT GODERICH moved the adjournment of the debate.
§ Motion made, and Question put, "That the Debate be now adjourned."
§ The House divided:—Ayes 240; Noes 29: Majority 211.
§ Debate adjourned till Monday next.