The Government of England (Vol. I)

by A. Lawrence Lowell

Nomination with a Pass Examination.

There are positions for which no competition is held, but where a single person is nominated subject to an examination to test his competence. Some of these places might very well be open to competition, and, indeed, there are still strange anomalies in various branches of the civil service; the strangest being the fact that the employees of the Education Department are, almost invariably, appointed without any examination at all, and this is true not only of inspectors, whose work requires peculiar qualifications, but even of clerks of the abstractor class. There are, however, positions in the civil service where the technical knowledge or experience needed are really such as to render a competition difficult. Even in manual occupations this is believed to be the case. In the royal dockyards, for example, although the apprentices are recruited by open competition, the artificers are appointed subject to a pass examination touching only their skill in their trade, while the foremen are usually selected by a limited competition which includes something more. Provincial postmasters also form a class by themselves. Until a few years ago they owed their positions to political influence; for long after the members of Parliament had lost all control over other appointments, they retained the power to fill any vacancies that might occur in the postal service within their constituencies, provided, of course, they belonged to the party in power. But this last remnant of parliamentary patronage was abolished in 1896, and provincial postmasters are now appointed on the recommendation of the surveyors of the postal districts.[170:1]

Nomination without Examination.

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

Promotions.

Political influence has not only ceased almost entirely to affect appointments to office, but it has also been very nearly eliminated in the matter of promotion. The struggle on this subject began as early as 1847, and the government has been strong enough to declare that an effort to bring influence to bear will be treated as an offence on the part of the employee; or as the minutes adopted by the Treasury in 1867, and by the Admiralty a couple of years later, ingeniously and forcibly express it, the attempt by a public officer to support his application by any solicitation on the part of members of Parliament, or other persons of influence, "will be treated . . . as an admission on the part of such officer that his case is not good upon its merits."[171:1] These measures seem to have had the desired effect.[171:2]

Why the Civil Service was Easily Freed from Political Influence.

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

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

Pensions.