RESOLUTION.

HC Deb 23 February 1877 vol 232 cc899-929

MR. TREVELYAN

, in rising to move— That, in the opinion of this House, the principle of open competition for first appointments, which prevails in the Army and in most of the Public Departments, should be extended to the Foreign Office and the Diplomatic Service, said: Sir, I cannot think that the House will consider this an inappropriate occasion to bring forward a question on which Parliament has never been definitely asked to pronounce itself. The very grandeur of the occurrences which now fill everybody's mind render this Motion the more opportune. Men are never so willing to apply themselves to the reform of any part of our administrative machinery as when their attention has been directed to its working by startling events. The greatest changes which were ever introduced into our military — changes the magnitude of which we all admit, though as to the necessity of some part of them we still differ—were due to the agitation of opinion caused by the Franco-German War of 1870; and therefore, if ever men are likely to turn themselves to a practical consideration of the constitution of our Diplomatic Service, it is at a moment like this, when we are still in the throes of one of the most prolonged and dubious diplomatic campaigns in which Europe ever found herself engaged. And in another respect I cannot but regard myself as singularly fortunate in the period at which this subject comes before the consideration of the House. There was a time—not so long ago—when any proposal to make nomination to the public service depend upon success in an examination was met by the answer which is the most telling in the ears of an English House of Commons—that any such idea was the idea of a doctrinaire. It is not long since, men—with whom I should never venture to compare myself in ability—argued in vain in favour of open competition against adversaries who thought that they had said quite enough in reply when they had pronounced that Parliament had no time to listen to a crotchet. But the events of the last few years have done much—have done everything—to cut the ground from under our opponents, and to put us in the position of advantage which they formerly occupied. During those years there has taken place the greatest change in the personnel of our administration that has ever occurred in any great country in an equal space of time. As lately as 1860 a Select Committee of the House of Commons, while expressing a predilection for the new system, was so apprehensive of moving too fast ahead of public opinion, that they only ventured to recommend its adoption in a limited and guarded form. But when once the idea of appointment by open competition had been fairly presented to the consideration of the public, it grew so rapidly in favour and esteem that by the year 1875, with exceptions which were either very rare or very insignificant, it prevailed throughout the whole extent of our civil and military services;—in the Guards and the Line, in the Engineers, and the Artillery; in the Treasury, the India Office, the War Office, the Admiralty. Everyone who had intellectual, responsible, and highly-paid work to do was henceforward to enter by the gate of merit, and not by the gate of favour. Two or three important Departments—including those to which this Resolution refers—were excepted from this general regulation, and were told, by a strange inconsistency, to regard their exception as a privilege. But they purchased that privilege dearly; for, in order to obtain it they were henceforward classed, not among the most honoured and desirable, but among the least distinguished branches of our public service. The Secretaries of our Embassies and the clerks of the Foreign Office must be content to appear in the same schedule, not with the gentlemen of the Privy Council Office, the Privy Seal Office, and the Treasury not with the officers of Her Majesty's Household Brigade, and the sub-lieutenants of our crack regiments or our scientific corps; but with such honest, though humble, employés as the boatmen and watermen in the Customs; the keepers and woodmen of the Parks; the firelighters, cleaners, and charwomen of the public offices the gasfitter and lamplighter of the Mint; and the stable-boy and laundrymaid in the criminal lunatic asylum at Broadmoor. And the almost universal adoption of open competition has dispensed me from the necessity of employing the most disagreeable line of argument which a Member of Parliament can be driven to use. In old days, those who endeavoured to effect a change in the method of appointing public servants were under the obligation of showing that the existing public servants were not all that they should be. And even if the advocate of such a change was prudent enough to refrain from any invidious reflections, yet the mere fact of his wishing to alter the method of appointing public servants was construed, and not unnaturally construed, into a censure upon the public servants who had been appointed under the old method. Often and often within these walls, and in the public Press, and in private society, I have been met with such remarks as these—"Why do you want to alter a system that has worked well? What do you find amiss with the class of men whom we are now getting? When have they failed in their duty? Are they not as industrious, as zealous, and as capable as the members of any service in the world?" Those were the sort of questions which we had to answer as long as patronage was the rule in the Civil Service, and as long as purchase was the rule in the Army; but now the tables are turned; now the burden of proof rests, not with us, but with our opponents. It is for them to show that the system of appointment which now prevails over nine-tenths of our services is faulty. It is for them to prove that the Indian civilians, the military officers, the departmental officials whom we get now are inferior to those whom we got 10 years ago. And if they fail in this; if, as I think, they repudiate the notion of entertaining so unwelcome and unfounded an idea; then they will be under the necessity of pointing out what the special conditions in the Diplomatic Service are that should exempt it from a system which, for high reasons of public policy, has been introduced into almost every other Department of the State. And, unless it can be shown, with a clearness which I believe it to be impossible to attain, that there is something special in the nature of the case which should forbid us to apply to diplomacy a system which is working excellently everywhere else, I shall confidently ask the House to assent to this Resolution.

Now, Sir, one main reason for moving in this matter is that the systems under which men enter into the Foreign Office and into the Diplomatic Service are now entirely different; and, until those systems are made uniform, it will be impossible to effect that amalgamation of the Two services which the interests of the country imperatively demand. It is of the highest moment that our representatives abroad should possess that general grasp of our National policy as a whole which can only be acquired by familiarity with the daily working of the Foreign Office; and, on the other hand, it is most desirable that the officials who direct our foreign policy at home should have had practical acquaintance at some time or another in their lives with foreign courts, foreign capitals, and foreign countries. In the words of Mr. Morier, our most able Representative at Lisbon, who, at such a crisis as this, I can only wish was employed at one of those courts where the fortunes of Europe are now at stake— It is most important that the Diplomatic Service should be to a certain extent nationalised, and that the Foreign Office should be to a certain extent internationalised. Now, for the Foreign Office, the entrance examination is by what is usually called "limited competition." A certain number of candidates are nominated by the Secretary of State for every vacancy, and a competitive examination is held among those candidates. The number of nominations for each vacancy in old days was limited to three. Lord Granville raised it to seven; and Lord Derby, who knows the value of the competitive system as well as any Member of the Ministry, except perhaps the Chancellor of the Exchequer, raised it to 10. But, meanwhile, the system of appointment to the Diplomatic Service remains one of pure favouritism, tempered by a pass examination. Now, before I proceed to describe that examination, I would beg to remind hon. Members that diplomacy is a profession which calls for certain special acquirement. A really able man, who has had an ordinary general training, may make an excellent official in our Departments at home. But to fulfil the duties of an Ambassador, a Chargé d'Affaires, or a Secretary of Legation, a man must possess certain definite accomplishments. My hon. Friend the Member for the Elgin Burghs has told the House before, and, I hope, will tell us again to-day, that no man can be considered a skilled diplomatist without a complete and well-digested knowledge of International Law, as studied and practised in the Continental Chancelleries. In addition to this, as the very minimum of linguistic proficiency, he should be able to read, to comprehend, and to write the French language as rapidly, and almost as accurately, as his mother tongue. But, Sir, the test examination, as at present constituted, offers no security for the possession by the candidate of even these elementary acquirements. "Most certainly" says Mr. Morier— The amount of knowledge required as regards foreign languages was a limited one, and persons passed the examination who were very far from being able to write French, as I consider that every diplomatic agent should be able to write French; and of that which is certainly the most important portion of a diplomatist's education, International Law, the whole knowledge that was required was a knowledge of the elements of Wheatstone, which could be got up in a fortnight or three weeks. That we have got a body of men who are in the least acquainted with International Law, I am sorry to say, I do not believe. How comes it that we have a test examination which does, not insure in our diplomatists an adequate knowledge of French and International Law, which is as necessary to them as the ability to think on his legs and to distinguish denominational and undenominational education is to a candidate for Parliament? -Why, it comes from this—that the examination is not a competitive examination in which the standard of excellence is always rising, but a pass examination in which, by a natural and inevitable process, the standard of excellence tends to fall. This test examination has gradually so deteriorated, as our very diplomatists candidly acknowledge, that it has almost become equivalent to no test at all. I think," says Mr. Morier, "that it is unsatisfactory, because I think it is a very small and poor kind of examination, and yet it is big enough to make a man who has passed it think that he has an absolute claim on the public service for ever, —an expression which, when put into unofficial language, means that the so-called qualifying examination for our Diplomatic Service is little better than a puerile, and, as far as the nation is concerned, a really disastrous farce. Now the principal objection to resorting to open competition which is ordinarily brought forward is, that there are certain personal qualities requisite in a diplomatist, and that a Secretary of State should have the power of selecting men whom he knows to possess those qualities, and should not be forced to take candidates, whether they happen to be adapted to the Profession or not, exactly in the order in which they come out of a competitive examination. There are various ways of obviating that objection, if objection it is. My hon. Friend the Member for the Elgin Burghs long ago proposed a scheme which attracted much favourable attention at the time. He proposed that a searching examination should be held in the branches of learning special to diplomacy; that the first 12 names should be submitted to the Secretary of State; and that from those names he should fill the vacancies. There is another scheme by which we may obtain the advantages of competition combined with the advantages of personal selection. Hon. Members are aware that, from time to time, the Civil Service Commissioners hold an examination known as Class 1—an examination which is expressly designed to attract men of high intellectual qualifications and good social standing, and the prizes in which are the best paid and most important careers in the public service. I would suggest that the list of successful candidates in this examination should be laid before the Secretary of State, and that he should pick out of it those young men who appear to him to be peculiarly well-qualified for the Diplomatic Profession, and hon. Members need not be afraid that on such a list there will be any lack of men well-fitted for diplomacy. On that point we are not treading in the dark. When first the competition system was introduced into India, it was said that the new Civil Servants would no doubt be very excellent and industrious young men, very well-fitted for the hard routine work of the judicial line of the Service, but that they would be wanting in those more delicate qualities which were essential for success in the Foreign, or as it was called then, the Political Department. We were told—I am almost ashamed to repeat such talk over a period of 20 years—that the Natives of India had a quick eye for a gentleman, and would not pay respect or deference to an official who had gained his position, not by belonging to an old Anglo-Indian family, but by his proficiency in writing Latin hexameters and solving the differential calculus. Such a man, it was said, might make a very good district or Sudder Judge; but if competition wallahs were made residents at Native Courts, our hold on India would not be worth 10 years' purchase. How have those precious predictions been verified? If there is one Department more than another of the Indian Service in which the young men appointed under the new system have obtained brilliant success, it is in the Foreign Department. There is no more important diplomatic post in India than the position of Resident at the Court of Nepaul. It is no light matter to conduct our relations with the most formidable of our Oriental Allies; that nation of warriors who have over and over again proved their fighting qualities at our expense and for our benefit, and who are ruled over by that redoubtable soldier-Minister, who may without exaggeration be described as the Bismarck of the North of India. When our Government wished to lay its hand upon a diplomatist whom they could trust to hold his own with Jung Bahadoor, they selected a gentleman who had entered the Service by open competition. There are hon. Members present who will remember my valued Friend Mr. Wyllie, who, if he had lived, would no doubt have been an ornament to the House. Mr. Wyllie went out to Bombay among the first batch of competitioners, and within 10 years of his entrance into the Service he had for some time the management of the Foreign Department of our Indian Empire, and he so conducted the high duties committed to his charge, that when he died, lie left as well-established a reputation for administrative ability as any man of recent years has acquired at the early age of 35. But he left those behind him who were worthy to succeed him, and the post of Foreign Secretary to the Government of India—a post as highly paid and involving duties almost as critical as those of the Foreign Secretary in our own Cabinet — is occupied at this very moment by a gentleman who only 20 years ago entered the Service by the gate of free competition—that gate which we are told we must not open for fear of having our European Diplomatic Service inundated with men unfit to perform functions exactly similar in kind to those which are performed to admiration by the competition civilians of India. But over and above the graver duties of the diplomatist reference will be made in this discussion to the social qualities which his Profession demands. We shall be told that he has other things to do besides sitting at a desk and penning able and exhaustive Reports; that he should have the manners and tastes of society; that he should be not only a man of the study but a man of the world, with the tact which will enable him to arrive at the secrets of others and the discretion to conceal his own. Those who have been fortunate enough, in India or elsewhere, to reside at a station where a detachment of the Royal Artillery is quartered have long been aware that there are no truer gentlemen and no better companions, in the highest sense of the word, than the members of a Service, appointment to which is the result of open competition. But, in spite of the experience which has long been afforded by our scientific corps, fears are frequently expressed in this House that the substitution of open competition for purchase will lower the social standard of the Guards and the Line. How have those fears been justified? Major General Sir Alfred Hors-ford, the Military Secretary of the Commander-in-Chief, tells us that he expected to find a difference between the officers of the past and the officers of the present, but that he found none whatever. Lieutenant General Sir Lintorn Simmons, the Governor of the Military Academy at Woolwich, speaks quite as strongly on this point. We get," he says, "men who are quite equal in social position to those whom we got before, and who are certainly quite as well, if not better, educated than those that we used to get in former days. And in another place he makes the interesting remark that "those who are higher intellectually are generally so in other respects physically." Among the objectors to open competition there is one class, I frankly own, who try my patience—those who, in defiance of the experience of the Bar, the Army, and of public life, in defiance of their recollections of their own school and College days, maintain that there is a certain incompatibility between bodily and mental vigour, and that young fellows who are quick in the class are slow in the playground. If that is the case in other countries it is not so among us. England is what she is, because in English. men intellectual and physical energy are admirably combined. We libel our countrymen if we divide them off-hand into bookworms and athletes. Mr. Bernard, himself an Indian Civil servant of the old system, speaks very strongly on this point. He says— Every batch of competition men contains a fair proportion of capital cricketers and riders. When we last played 'The Civil Service against the World,' on the Calcutta cricket-ground, only four of us were Haileybury men. One competition-wallah carried out his bat for 130, while another scored over 90 runs. Anyone who knows the playing field—I appeal on this point to the youngest Member of the House (Mr. Sidney Herbert)—is aware that there is no form of athletic exercise which is a severer test of the more manly qualities than the game of football; and in this game, for many years together, the Royal Engineers have been pre-eminent. And who are the Royal Engineers? They are a body of young men, who have been selected by a series of competitive examinations out of a larger body of young men, who have themselves been previously selected by a competition open to the world at large. There are other qualities even more important to the diplomatist than the lighter social aptitudes. It is no small matter that young men who have to uphold the credit of our country among foreign people in great capitals, exposed to serious temptations, and cut off from the protecting influences of home life, shall be men of high character and tried morality. A system of competition is at least as good a test of moral character as a system of patronage. And it is equally certain that a man who has his mind full of worthy interests, and his time occupied by worthy pursuits will have less leisure and less inclination than another for dissipation and frivolity. To quote the Report of the Indian Civil Service Commission of 1854—words in which hon. Members will recognize the hand of a master of the English language— Early superiority in science and literature generally indicates the existence of some qualities which are securities against vice—industry, self-denial, a taste for pleasures not sensual, a laudable desire of honourable distinction, a still more laudable desire to obtain the approbation of friends and relations. We therefore believe that the intellectual test which is about to be established will be found in practice to be also the best moral test which can be devised. The experience of 20 years has amply borne out that fair and well-founded prophecy with regard to the junior members of our Indian Service. If the House affirm my Resolution, I confidently venture on a similar prophecy with regard to the junior members of our Diplomatic Corps. If we want a proof that industry and ability displayed in early life afford at least a rough test that a man possesses the qualities which will make him a useful and successful public servant, we do not need to look beyond these walls. To reach the Cabinet requires the exertion of an amount of tact, of enterprize, of sustained vigour and energy which will carry its possessor to the top of any Profession in the world, and nothing is more remarkable than the large proportion of Cabinet Ministers who distinguished themselves at their schools and their Universities. There has been a Cabinet in which six out of seven University men who had seats in the Lower House were either first-class or double-first-class men. If we turn to the Department of Foreign Affairs there certainly is no reason to make an exception. The present Foreign Secretary is a first-class man from Cambridge, and his most vigorous critic a double-first-class man from Oxford. The most eminent Foreign Ministers of the present century were Mr. Canning and Lord Palmerston. Mr. Canning was probably the most famous schoolboy that ever existed in any country. Lord Palmerston took his privilege as a nobleman, and did not wait for the degree examination; but during the two years that he was at Cambridge, he came out head of St. John's College at the annual examination, and every Cambridge man knows how much that means. The experience of political life, a career the most analogous of all to the Diplomatic Profession, proves that we may confidently extend to that Profession a system of which we have made such wide use in the public Services with such excellent results; and if, as I feel satisfied, such a course enables us to stock the foreign legations with men as able as the Indian Civil Servants, as resolute as our Army officers, and as trustworthy and discreet as our home officials, we may be very sure that we shall never have occasion to regret that we acceded to the present proposition. The hon. Member concluded by moving his Resolution.

Amendment proposed, To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "in the opinion of this House, the principle of open competition for first appointments, which prevails in the Army and in most of the Public Departments, should be extended to the Foreign Office and the Diplomatic Service," — (Mr. Trevelyan,) —instead thereof.

MR. BOURKE

said, that although it was his duty to ask the House to negative the Resolution of the hon. Gentleman, he was fortunate enough to be able to concur in much that had fallen from him in the course of his speech. He agreed with him in the admiration which he had expressed for the Leaders of that House, whether they sat behind him or on the Bench opposite, and in the opinion that the present was not an inopportune moment to bring forward his Motion, seeing how much good work, honestly performed by its valuable public servants, the Foreign Office had recently produced. He also concurred with the hon. Gentleman in thinking that the question was one which ought not to be decided on grounds of privilege, but solely upon the consideration whether the course he proposed was calculated to contribute to the efficiency of the public service. He, moreover, entirely went with him in the eulogium which he had passed on the Indian Civil Service, for he knew nothing more likely to induce a man to pay regard to public duty, or more likely to arouse the enthusiasm of those who took a high view of public duty, so much as the contemplation of the careers of those who had distinguished themselves in that great service, of the working of which he had been so fortunate as to have seen himself a good deal. He must, however, point out to the House that there was no analogy between the Diplomatic Service and the clerkships in the Foreign Office and the great Indian Service, for the reason that the Civil Service of India was in reality composed of an enormous body of men; but the point here was, whether there was or not sufficient reason to show that the special duties to be performed by the Diplomatic Service could be performed. only by persons possessing special qualifications for that office. With regard to the Indian Service, the selection must be made from an enormous number of persons, and when they wanted to get a special duty performed of a diplomatic character in India it was not easy to find in the Civil Service of India, a man for that particular class of duty that could be sent to perform it. The whole of the question raised by the hon. Gentleman had been, he might add, considered a few years ago by a Committee upstairs. They stated in their Report— That the admission of members into the Diplomatic Service by nomination on a test examination was a plan of which the Committee approved, and, without expressing any opinion at all as to the merits of the system of open competitive examination, they think the present plan preferable to it for this class of public servants. That was the opinion arrived at by a very able Committee of that House after a very long inquiry. He wished, in the next place, to call attention to the fact that the Motion before the House resolved itself into two branches, one relating to the Diplomatic Service and the other to Foreign Office clerkships, and how, he would ask, were men admitted into the Diplomatic Service? They were a certain extent admitted by selection by the Secretary of State, but they were afterwards subjected to an examination which was well calculated, he thought, to test the elementary knowledge of persons at that time of life, and from what he had read and seen of the Civil Service he thought it was very desirable that persons who entered the Civil Service should be well grounded in that elementary knowledge. They were, in the first place, tried in orthography, handwriting, and prècis writing. They must satisfy the examiners that they were well grounded in the Latin grammar, and that they could parse a portion of some good Latin author. They must show an acquaintance with the first four rules of arithmetic, the first book of Euclid, and have a general knowledge of geography as well as of French grammar, and be able to converse fluently in the French language, and translate correctly from French into English and from English into French. They were also tested as to their general knowledge of the constitutional history of England, acquired from Blackstone's Commentaries and Hallam's Constitutional History, and must have a general knowledge of the political history of Europe and of the United States, as well as of political economy, while they must further give evidence of general intelligence. Now, he was not going to say that that was a very severe examination, but it was one which he contended was well qualified to give an adequate test of the intellectual capacity of those who wished to enter the public service. He would also remind the House that there was another rule under which a man might, after a time, subject himself to an examination in public law, and that, as a matter of fact, a great number of those who had entered the Diplomatic Service had undergone that examination, and many of them had passed it very creditably. But, after all, the great question was, what was it which the country wanted in the Diplomatic Service? He did not suppose any hon. Member would deny that England ought to be represented at the Courts of Europe by persons who were entitled to the designation of gentleman, although lie was not, of course, so foolish as to contend that gentlemanlike conduct had much to do with either birth or wealth. He was at the same time of opinion that it would be generally admitted that those by whom the country was represented abroad ought to be persons of good manners and with cultivated minds. He also thought it would be granted that they ought to be fitted for the society of those among whom they were likely to live and move. A diplomatic servant ought, besides, to be a man with whom the Minister under whom he happened to be placed could be on terms of friendship and confidence, and one whom he could introduce to those with whom he mixed in foreign capitals. It was, above all, in his opinion, necessary that our diplomatists, especially the young among the number, should be received at the Courts at which they resided with every mark of cordiality and respect, and he did not think any Minister could ask a foreigner to receive a person into his society unless he was a man with whom he himself could live on similar terms. Such were the qualifications which seemed to him to be necessary for our young diplomatists, and nobody, he thought, could have read the Report of the Civil Service Commission without being prepared to admit that these qualifications could not be guaranteed by means of a competitive examination. There was another qualification for the Diplomatic Service which was also of great importance, and that was that unless the House was prepared to add £31,000 or £32,000 a-year to the Estimates, it was absolutely necessary that a young diplomatist should have a private income of £400 or £500 a-year; because the pay they received for many years would not allow them to live in any capital without that private income. The hon. Gentleman had informed the House how much a young diplomatist was paid. In reality for the first two years he got nothing, after that he received £150 a-year; and he might consider himself very fortunate if at the end of five or six years he received £400, and very much more fortunate still if at the end of 16 or 17 years he received £700 a-year. That was a state of things which it was absolutely necessary, he maintained, to take into consideration when it was proposed to apply the competitive system to diplomacy. Now, as certain authorities had been alluded to by the hon. Gentleman, he would, if the House would allow him, quote one or Two on the subject of a change of system. The first authority to which he should refer was quoted by the hon. Member who had just sat down. Mr. Morier used these words with regard to the Diplomatic Service— I think that if anybody took the trouble of looking at the Red Book, and of inquiring about who the persons are, he would find that the Diplomatic Service was exceedingly fairly made up. You might call it a geological section of English society; you would find in it certain names of great families; you would find the names of families who have within recent years become connected with the House of Lords for public services; you would find the names of great mercantile houses; you would find old official names, I mean those of persons connected with the public service for a good many generations; you would find the names of eminent physicians; you would find the sons of solicitors and attorneys; you would find as complete a microcosm of English society as in any other profession whatever. I have not gone carefully through the list, but that is my own impression, certainly, and I think anyone could substantiate it by going through the list. In answer to the question whether it would be wise to lower the position of our Representatives if other countries did not do the same, Mr. Morier said— Most decidedly it would not. There is no use denying that people are very much influenced by these external forms; and, as I said, social status and position are more necessary to an English agent than to any other, because they afford him the only means of acknowledging a great number of international courtesies which he is perpetually receiving, and of requiting the trouble of a great many persons, both official and non-official, to whose services the present system of reports forces him to have recourse. Again, Mr. Otway, who was a Member of that House, said— I think that diplomacy is a profession requiring very peculiar qualities in its members, and that open competition would not enable you to arrive at the fact of the existence of those qualities in the individuals who might successfully compete at the examination. Mr. Otway added that he was aware of no test in the way of competition by which a man's manners could be ascertained. Lord Clarendon was examined by the Committee, and gave very strong evidence in the same direction. His Lordship said— I think that the Diplomatic Service is a very peculiar one, and you must look to a little more than a man's mere knowledge of French or German; you must look to his complete respectability and to his fitness for forming a member of the Minister's family; that is what an Attaché ought, at all events, to be fit for. I do not see that there would be any more advantage in open competition than there is under the present system. There is not the least distinction now of classes or otherwise. Anybody that wishes his son to enter the diplomatic profession will not meet with any difficulties of that nature; but I think that if you had open competition you would be liable to lower the standard which you want in the Diplomatic Service. Lord Clarendon had given a great deal of consideration to the matter, and he arrived at the conclusion that an alteration of the existing system would be injurious to the public service. Mr. Walrond, who was an advocate for open competition under certain circumstances, gave evidence of the same kind. Then there was another reason why this system should not be altered. If the Service were made a competitive one, it must necessarily be a close one, and although there was a general desire that persons in the Diplomatic Service should be promoted to higher posts, he did not think that anyone would deny that it was expedient that the door should not be absolutely closed against persons who were particularly fitted for certain posts on certain emergencies. He need only mention the name of one of the last persons who was appointed to a high diplomatic post and who had not previously been in the Service. Mr. Layard was appointed our Minister in Spain; he had been in that country for several years; and no one could say that any disadvantage had arisen from the appointment of that gentleman. With regard to the system which had been suggested by the hon. Member for the Border Burghs, he understood it to be very much the same as that proposed by the lion. Member for the Elgin Burghs. The great disadvantage of that system was that when 12 names were laid before the Secretary of State and one person was selected, the 11 others must be very dissatisfied. Their position was altogether different from that of persons who went up under the Foreign Office system, because when people had passed a public competitive examination without any selection, they did no doubt attain certain vested rights, and considered themselves to be in a position which other persons had not reached. This circumstance was pointed out in the Report of the Committee presided over by the right hon. Member opposite. With regard to the Foreign Office, the first question that presented itself was—What does the public want? The hon. Member who introduced this subject had very properly suggested that it was extremely desirable in the public interests that there should be an interchange of duties between the junior members of the Diplomatic Service and the clerks in the Foreign Office. In making that suggestion the hon. Member was carrying out the recommendation of the Committee appointed by that House in 1851. If, however, there was to be such an interchange it was necessary that clerks in the Foreign Office should possess the same qualifications as young diplomatists. How were Foreign Office clerks admitted now? They were admitted in the first place to examination, and the usual number sent out to compete for one place was from 6 to 10. The Secretary of State took a certain number of candidates and sent them up to compete for the place. With regard to this system, Mr. Scoones said— The system of nomination has not been abandoned for Foreign Office clerkships, but inasmuch as it is usual to call upon eight or nine candidates—I have known instances of as many as 14 being called—whose names are entered on the Foreign Secretary's patronage list to compete for each vacancy, all chance of jobbery has been removed, while the Minister himself becomes virtually responsible for the clerk he has indirectly appointed to his Department; and I still think that for some few Departments of the public service the system of extensive nomination combined, with competition, is eminently desirable. There was another reason why this system should not be altered. Persons who were anxious to enter the Foreign Office were now willing, in consideration of the position they held there, to go into it at a lower salary than they would receive in other offices. When a man entered the Foreign Office he received only £100 per annum, and on an average he was obliged to spend two years and a half before he got more than £120, and six or seven years before he got £250 a-year, and he must then be a very lucky man at the end of 20 years to get £700 a-year. If the system were made competitive it would certainly be necessary to raise the salaries. It was said, however, that the difficulty might be met by dividing the clerks at the Foreign Office into two classes, as was done in some other Offices, one for the intellectual work and another for the copying work. This system would not be suitable for the Foreign Office, where all the business was of the most confidential character. The deciphering of telegrams, and even the mechanical duty of copying despatches, were confidential. Now, it often happened in the Foreign Office that the whole strength of the Department was employed when there was a pressure of business, but at other times, when there was no pressure, the clerks could give their time to mechanical duties, such as copying and registering. Therefore, if there were two kinds of clerks, many of them would be idle during a great portion of their time. It must be remembered that the Diplomatic Service and the Foreign Office were the depositaries not only of our own secrets, but of the secrets of other nations, who would not communicate with us freely, while our relations with them might be endangered, unless the men were regarded as trustworthy. Upon the whole, he thought that those who were best acquainted with the present system would be of opinion that it worked very well. In the preparation of the recent Blue Books many of the Foreign Office clerks had worked for 15 or 16 hours a-day with the utmost cheerfulness and alacrity. There was an esprit de corps among them which was extremely advantageous to the public service, and he believed that the public would be great losers if a different class of persons were introduced. As one proof of the way in which the work was done, he might mention that, of 65,000 letters received and sent last year, he did not believe there was one arrear. In fact, in the Foreign Office arrears were unknown, for all letters were answered within a few hours of their receipt. One word about expenses. He had compared the system existing in some offices where copying clerks were introduced, and the result of the comparison was much in favour of the Foreign Office. In the Colonial Office 15 junior clerks cost £2,900; in the Foreign Office 15 junior clerks cost £2,300 a-year, showing a saving of £600 a-year in the item of junior clerks. Even if a saving could be shown, it might be dearly bought by reduced efficiency in a system which now worked well. The House had an opportunity of judging of the way in which the work was performed by observing at the end of the despatches lately printed the compliment paid by Lord Salisbury to the Foreign Office clerks who accompanied him on his mission to Constantinople, and who performed, not ordinary duties, but diplomatic duties requiring great ability, tact, and assiduity. He doubted whether there were many offices in other countries which could supply at a few days' notice men to perform duties of this kind without inconvenience to the public service. On all these grounds he hoped the House would not agree to the Motion. It was a proposal often before made in the House; and it had received the consideration of a Committee upstairs, and been rejected. The duties performed required diplomatic tact, linguistic accomplishments, social merit, and trustworthy qualities. Was it wise to disturb a system which had received the approbation of the high authorities he had quoted, of the Civil Service Commissioners, of the most distinguished of the gentlemen who prepared candidates for the Civil Service, and last, not least, the warmest approval of every Secretary of State who had been at the Foreign Office for the last 15 years.

MR. GRANT DUFF

said, he did not think that the arguments of his hon. Friend the Member for the Border Burghs had been fully answered by the hon. Gentleman opposite. It was not enough to say, or even to prove, that the Diplomatic Service as it now stood was good. What should be proved, if his hon. Friend was to be successfully answered, was that it was not probable it would be made better by following the course now recommended. In so small a service we could not afford to have any inefficient or half-efficient members. It should be treated as a corps d'élite, in which, while the greatest subordination prevailed, there should be, in the estimation of the world without, nothing but officers. It was desirable that every Embassy and every Mission should be a centre of the best possible English influence, and that every member of an Embassy or Mission should in consequence be as good a specimen of a man of his time of life as England could produce. Of course there were obvious difficulties in the way of throwing the Diplomatic Service open as the Indian Civil Service was thrown open, though such difficulties appeared stronger to others than they did to him; but if the Diplomatic were as 'open as the Indian Service the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Bourke) might take comfort in the fact that a property qualification was necessary, as no young man in his senses would think of entering the Diplomatic Service unless he had an independent income of £400 or £500. His hon. Friend (Mr. Tre- velyan) had said he would be satisfied with a proposal which he (Mr. Grant Duff) made to the Committee in 1861, and which was of a sufficiently guarded character. The proposal was that once a-year there should be held an examination at which any number of persons might present themselves, that out of these 12, or any smaller number, should be selected, and that their names should be certified to the Secretary of State, who would appoint, on his own responsibility, those whom he pleased. He was not, however, wedded to that plan; and he thought those who sat near him would be satisfied for the present if the Government were to assimilate the plan for entering the Diplomatic Service to that for the Foreign Office. The plan which he had proposed in 1861 would leave great power and great responsibility in the hands in which they should be left, those, namely, of the Foreign Secretary. It might be said that there would not be sufficient inducement for young men to go in for the examination if success in it were merely to put them in the position of being eligible for the Diplomatic Service. But if the examination were judiciously arranged so as to test not the mere ordinary acquirements of our schools and colleges, but all those acquirements which a wise head of an Embassy would wish to be possessed by his subordination; if, further, care were taken to associate with the Civil Service Commissioners for the purposes of this examination statesmen and diplomatists of high rank, the mere fact of being successful in it would be a very considerable help in life to many young men. In this wealthy country nothing could be more convenient to parents who did not require to send their eldest sons into professions, and who were at the same time unwilling that they should be idlers, than to have an examination like this. Then a father might say to his son—"You cannot do better than go in for this examination. If you succeed you may have a chance of entering the Diplomatic career, one of the best careers a young man of spirit and ability can enter; and even if you are not selected you will pass into the world having had your mind turned to subjects of the greatest importance, and stamped by the State as a man of vigour and ability." It was not possible to exercise too much care in the filling up of the Diplomatic Service. There were some who said that the days of diplomacy were at an end, but he entertained a very different opinion. He believed the really great days of that great profession, whose business was to bring to every nation that which was best in every other, and whose noble mission was to preach "peace and good will to men," were only beginning.

EARL PERCY

said, that if there was one point more than another on which he differed from the hon. Gentleman who had introduced this subject, it was that contained in the concluding passage of his speech. The hon. Member said that the men who ruled in this country, and who occupied high positions in the Legislature, were men who would have been successful in competitive examinations of the kind to which his speech referred. This, however, was a mere assertion, and a very slight inquiry as to facts would show that the contrary was the case, and that many men who had taken prominent positions in Parliamentary life and in the government of the country would not have succeeded in competitive examinations on subjects such as were now made the basis of examination for candidates wishful to enter the service of the country. The hon. Member also referred to persons who, he said, divided the so-called educated classes among their fellow-countrymen into two sections, the one consisting of the athletes and the other of bookworms. For his part, he had never heard of anyone who thus divided their countrymen, but he had heard it stated that the system of cram as distinguished from learning was not a system calculated to secure the possession of that bodily vigour and those mental acquirements which were necessary to render a man efficient in the service of his country. He believed the system of open competition was one that crammed the mind with a certain number of facts which were retained for a brief period and then probably forgotten, and that it did often sacrifice the physical powers without leading to the mental development so much desired. It was all very well to insist upon a high qualifying examination for appointments in the public service; but he thought some attention should be paid to the effect upon the community at large of the education which was held to be necessary in order to secure appointments, and upon those candidates who had not the good fortune to succeed. It was not an education likely to fit men for useful work in any direction other than that for which they had been cramming, and in cases of failure was calculated to create an increasing class of discontented men who had spent much time and money in acquiring a vast amount of learning, which had, by reason of their failure, been rendered practically valueless. He was no advocate of the old system of patronage; its days were gone, and it was as idle to talk of reviving that system as it was to talk of bringing back the system of purchase in the Army. But while they could not think of reverting to patronage, the question ought to be considered whether they had substituted a better system. What they were doing was this—they were training, daily and hourly, an enormous number of energetic men who, if they succeeded in acquiring a mass of knowledge which often was not that which qualified them best for the post they sought to occupy, would have presented to them a means of livelihood barely sufficient to enable them to retain their position. Their sole object would, therefore, be to try to supplement the income they received by incomes from other sources. The tendency of that state of things would be, in his opinion, to create a large discontented class of educated men, who, he feared, might constitute a dangerous element in any community.

SIR GEORGE BOWYER

rejoiced that the Government showed no disposition to extend the system of competitive examination. He thought, however, that the time had come at which it was important to revise the whole system of examination for entry into the public service, so as to secure such examinations as were best calculated to test the fitness of candidates to perform the duties of the posts to which they aspired. For instance, he saw no reason why a candidate for the position of under housemaid in a Government office should be compelled to pass a competitive examination in literary subjects, or why a young man wishing to obtain a commission in a Cavalry regiment should be expected to possess a critical knowledge of Chaucer's poems. What was the use in examining a man who was a candi- date for a commission in the Army in the works of Scott, Dickens, and Tupper? Some men had a peculiar talent for examination. A man might be very learned in the subject of examination, and yet appear to be inferior to one who had only a smattering of knowledge of it. Lord Chesterfield mentioned in his "Letters" that a debate was held in the House of Lords on a subject connected with astronomy. Lord Burlington, who was a very learned astronomer, spoke, and his speech made a great impression, until Lord Chesterfield, who knew nothing of the subject, but had got up a few points, addressed the House, and his speech created such a sensation that nobody spoke of anything else. The subjects to be examined in ought to relate to the particular duties required to be performed, and he hoped the whole subject would be thoroughly re-considered before the system was extended.

MR. LYON PLAYFAIR

observed, that the question was now brought within very narrow limits. The noble Lord the Member for North Northumberland admitted that it was now impossible that patronage could be restored, and that competition must rule admission to the public service. In that opinion he quite concurred. The public service ought, he maintained, to be the inheritance of the whole nation. Gradually, as had been stated, the Foreign Office was extending the system of open competition with respect to the appointment of clerks; but the question was whether the mode of appointment in that office might not be still further assimilated, as well as in the Diplomatic Service, to the practice prevailing in the other offices. His hon. Friend the Member for the Border Burghs recommended that there should be selection after competition, instead of before, and that was precisely what the Report of the Civil Service Enquiry Commission recommended for the whole Civil Service, although the suggestion did not meet the approval of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of London (Mr. Lowe). The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had, however, given effect well and bravely to many, but not yet to all, of the recommendations of the Commissioners. They recommended the combination of the principle of selection with that of open competition—the opening of all the offices of the public service to competition, with a statement against the names of the successful competitors of their more special and higher qualifications, with a view to their selection for the discharge of particular duties. The hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs read out a list of the subjects of examination for entry into the Diplomatic Service, and one of these was general intelligence, and he added that it was important to consider the manners of the men to be appointed. But surely the objection urged by the hon. Gentleman was not very important, since, in his (Mr. Playfair's) opinion, it was much easier to ascertain whether a young man was possessed of well-bred manners than to ascertain whether he was possessed of general intelligence. He was glad to observe from the list read by the hon. Gentleman that more regard was had than was heretofore the case to modern languages—a fact which he thought could not fail to give a wholesome stimulus to education. The Foreign Office was in the matter of widening the area of competition making satisfactory progress, and if the hon. Gentleman had been in a position to state that the same principles would be applied to the Diplomatic Service, his hon. Friend would not, he thought, ask the House to express its opinion by dividing. What they desired was that all the offices of the public service should be thrown open, so that they might become the inheritance of all, and not of a few. The Under Secretary had stated that open competition would prevent such a man as Mr. Layard being secured for the public service, but ho must remind him that the Civil Service regulations abroad provided that, whenever outside the public service a man showed a particular aptitude for any particular branch of it, he could be introduced into it. The Act of Parliament itself provided for that, and therefore there need be no apprehension that by extending the system of competition to the Diplomatic Service they would shut out of it such men as Mr. Layard.

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

said, he had been an advocate from a very early date of the principle of open competition. He had never seen reason to doubt that the grounds on which the father of his hon. Friend opposite and himself (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) had advocated that system were sound and firm grounds. At the same time, having for many years followed the working of the system, he felt it was a subject with which it was necessary to deal with care and caution, and in a manner which should be more or less tentative. They had seen a very great advance made in this matter. Many prejudices which had been entertained against the competitive system had been dispelled by its working and the light of experience; and although he did not say that all had been entirely removed, yet he believed that the feeling of the country had very much advanced, and that a great deal more was known upon the subject than was the case 15 or 16 years ago. He was bound to admit that to a very great extent the system advocated by his hon. Friend had worked well. At the same time, there could be no doubt that some inconvenience had been experienced in the carrying of it out, and in proof of that he need not go further than to refer to a Report of the Commission of which his right hon. Friend who had just spoken, and who had rendered such valuable service on the Commission the year before last, was Chairman. In that Report the Commission pointed out some of the drawbacks and disadvantages which attended a system of pure open competition for all classes of the service. The Commissioners recommended various changes in the organization of the service. Some of those changes, though simple in their character, were not of small magnitude. The Government had adopted some of the recommendations with regard to the second division of the Civil Service; but in reference to the upper division of the Service, they felt some difficulty in adopting the scheme precisely as proposed by his right hon. Friend. It was found exceedingly difficult to lay down a general rule once for all which would be applicable to all the divisions of the public service. It was easy to lay down a rule applicable to the great mass of the Civil Service represented by the Lower Divisions; but it was much more difficult to lay down a single rule for appointing Civil Servants to every kind of office in which the circumstances and the conditions might be entirely different. No general rule could be laid down for the whole of the Service, and if any of the public offices offered pecu- liar difficulties in the way of an unbending rule it was the Foreign Office. He would set aside some of the arguments used, such as, for example, that competitive examinations were not to be trusted to produce the kind of men who were wanted for these higher offices. He believed that, as a general rule, if the examinations were conducted properly and under due safeguards, they were quite as likely to get a good class of men in that way as in any other. There were, however, peculiar difficulties in the way of getting the class of men whom they wanted for the Diplomatic Service. With respect to the clerkships in the Foreign Office, everyone was disposed to agree that they now stood in this matter of open competition in a very fair position. There was no man in the present Government, nor indeed in the public service, who was more ready to acknowledge the abstract merits of the system of open competition than his noble Friend Lord Derby. He had contended for that system under greater discouragements than existed at present, and he had done a great deal to develop it. Successive Governments in laying down a system of limited competition for Foreign Office clerkships, the successful candidates in which were selected, not from motives of favouritism, but with a sincere desire to get the men who were most suitable, had done well on the whole in the present state of things. But, then, it was asked why that which was good for the Foreign Office clerkships should not also be good for the Diplomatic Service, and the House was asked to begin with the unpaid Attachés. Now, he saw considerable special difficulties, one of which had been glanced at by the noble Earl (Earl Percy), and also by his hon. Friend the Under Secretary — namely, that they had to deal with young men who, during the earlier period of their service, were expected to maintain a good position and live a life of no little expense upon salaries inadequate to support it, and who were consequently expected to have some means of their own. But if this class of appointments were thrown open to competition, he doubted whether the proper class of men would be induced to come forward. They were not the class who would offer themselves in a competition in which they would be likely to be thrown aside, and they would proba- My withdraw and devote themselves to other walks of life. In that case there would be a difficulty, which indeed beset the whole of the upper part of the Civil Service. If they determined to select the men by open competition, who were to carry on the upper part of the Civil Service, and if they made that competition severe, it would require considerable time for preparation, and a great number of the men they would like to attract, finding themselves uncertain of success and not being able to afford to wait, would throw up their chance and enter other professions. They had not yet had sufficient experience of the new system, which was inaugurated by the other side of the House in 1870, and in which the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Lowe) took an active part. For some time after the new system was introduced very few vacancies occurred in the higher departments of the Civil Service, because the offices in that class were being reduced, and it was only now that they were beginning to call for candidates for the highest class of clerkships. At the present moment there was going to be a competition in the Colonial Office for clerkships of the highest class, and it would be expedient, before they proceeded to deal with so delicate a matter, to see what the effect of that competition would be and what class of men it produced. This was a subject, he would not say of urgent, but still of great importance. They were all agreed on the principle that the best men ought to be obtained, and that the Civil Service ought not to be regarded as a mere field for patronage. Tile best means of providing these men was, however, a matter of great delicacy. His hon. Friend might take comfort from the assurance that the present Government were not insensible to the desirableness of doing all in their power to obtain the best class of men for the public service. It was, however, inexpedient to tie them by any Resolution of this kind. He believed that, on the whole, the Government had done a great deal to improve the upper part of the public service. It was in a good and healthy condition, and to show their desire to improve the service he would remind the House that one of their first acts was to appoint a Commission. He hoped that his hon. Friend would be satisfied with the discussion he had raised; but if he pressed the matter to a division he should find it necessary to vote against him, not because he had any doubt of the general soundness of the principle of competition, but because the Government were not in a position to push it as far at the present moment as his hon. Friend desired.

MR. LOWE

begged to remind the right hon. Gentleman that it was Lord Granville, and not Lord Derby, who inaugurated the system of open competition at the Foreign Office. He begged, moreover, to remark that the present Government had given rather an uncomfortable instance of their views on this subject by abolishing competition for the Royal Navy. He wished to say a word on the question raised by his right hon. Friend (Mr. Playfair), which was whether selection should precede or follow competition. His right hon. Friend was of opinion that selection should follow competition, that a number of persons should be invited to compete for a vacancy, that the best men should be selected, but that it should be carefully concealed which were the best men, and that then the heads of Departments should choose from the men who had succeeded. So that it might happen that those who had most distinguished themselves in the competition would never get any place at all in the Civil Service. Nothing would more deter the class of men they wished to attract than that their success should be concealed, and that they should see men who had failed to distinguish themselves in the examination selected by the officers of the Department in preference to themselves, so that it might well happen that the ablest men got no appointment after all. He trusted that there was no danger of so fatal an error being adopted by the Government. With regard to the vote he should give, if the Resolution were pressed to a division, he had no objection to see the clerkships of the Foreign Office placed on the same footing as the rest, and he very much regretted that the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not see his way to make any change in the direction indicated by the Resolution. He said he doubted whether young men of means would enter upon an open competition for the Diplomatic Service; but why a young man worth £400 or £500 a-year should not have the laudable ambition of entering a Service in which he might better himself, and even make his £400 or £500 ten times that amount, he could not understand. He could not imagine anything more pernicious or more deadening to all noble ambition than to assume that these young men would not desire to obtain a position in which they could so greatly distinguish themselves. He believed that the present was an expensive plan of obtaining candidates for the Diplomatic Service, and that the public lost more than they gained by it. Such a system, if adopted in the Civil Service, would be most ruinous, and he believed that it was not a good thing for the Diplomatic Service to go begging for young men to enter it, instead of paying them properly. The real objection to the proposal was that a number of men might get appointments in virtue of their superior qualifications, and might be totally unable to defray the expenses inevitable in the position they would hold. That appeared to him to be a conclusive objection to the adoption of unlimited competition. What could be done with men who obtained such appointments and were unable to fulfil the conditions on which they were given? Therefore, although he should regret to do anything which would have the semblance of opposing the principle of competition, he should be most reluctantly compelled to abstain from voting for the Amendment, and he hoped it would be considered that the reasons which would induce him to take such a course must be very strong indeed. Why could not the proposal be accepted that the Secretary of State should select, out of the persons willing to enter the Diplomatic Service, those as to whom he could easily ascertain that they possessed the necessary pecuniary qualifications to enable them to discharge the duties of these positions. When he had done that there might be competition to determine who were the best men among those selected. Nothing could surely be more reasonable than that. A competition should not be followed by the Secretary of State selecting whoever he liked. No man who respected himself would ever enter into a competition, if he knew that, though he might prove himself superior to others, he was still liable to be set aside. That would be the way to eliminate from the Service the very men whom it was most desirable to secure. What he (Mr. Lowe) suggested was done by the Foreign Office in the case of the Foreign Office clerkships; those who had the greatest ability being chosen by competition from those who had pecuniary and other qualifications. A good deal had been said with reference to the qualifications for these offices. It had been said the men ought to have good manners, and that they ought to have money, that they ought to be well-connected, and so on; but he heard nothing about their having any brains, and that, after all, was a matter of some importance. He sincerely hoped the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to whom they were indebted for having done so much for this great question of competition would re-consider the question, and that he would either find some better argument in support of his position than the one he had just adduced, or see his way to doing an enormous benefit to the public service of this country, by placing the competition for Diplomatic Service on similar lines to those which had been laid down in connection with the Foreign Office clerkships.

SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFF

said, he desired to point out that there were many persons whom, from their education, it would be most desirable to introduce into the Diplomatic Service, but who might not be able to hold their own against University men and others in public competition. Take, for example, the son of some Ambassador who might have resided with his father at every Court in Europe, and knew the whole history and traditions of diplomacy. Nevertheless he might not, perhaps, be able to succeed in a contest upon certain subjects to which special attention had been devoted by others, though able to pass a test examination. With regard to the Foreign Office itself, it was most desirable that the Secretary of State should be responsible for the appointments of those who were to serve in it. The Foreign Office was not like the Treasury, Colonial, or any other office of which the confidential work was an exception. Nearly all the work in it was of the most confidential character. An important despatch, for instance, might at that very moment have arrived on the Eastern Question. A copy of the document would have to be made without delay for every Ambassador; and nearly every clerk in the Foreign Office, however junior, would have more or less to do with the copying of it. From this it would be seen that every young man in the office must have the fullest confidence reposed in him from the very first; and any breach of that confidence must manifestly be very damaging to the public service. So far as he knew, however, no such breach had ever occurred. But it was clearly essential that every young man entering the Foreign Office should be known to the Secretary of State, who should be responsible for his fitness. He opposed the Motion, the adoption of which must be detrimental to the public interest.

CAPTAIN NOLAN

said, that the Resolution of the hon. Member for the Border Burghs only affirmed the principle of open competition, but did not refer to any particular mode in which that principle might be applied. The introduction of the principle into the Artillery had not produced the anomalies that had been anticipated; at the same time precaution should be taken that the persons appointed should have sufficient means to support their position. It was generally found that the men who passed the highest examinations were the best men in all other respects.

Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

The House divided:—Ayes 159; Noes 112: Majority 47.

Main Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair."