Up to the year 1853, the appointing of Civil Servants lay wholly in the hands of patrons. In 1853, patronage was severely condemned and competitive examination officially recommended, for the first time, in a Report by Sir Stafford Northcote and Sir Charles Trevelyan; but, while the recommendation was taken up in the following year and immediately acted upon in the Indian Civil Service, it was not till very much later that it was fully adopted in the Home Service. The history, indeed, of this last is somewhat peculiar. After the Report already referred to, came an Order of Council, of date May 21, 1855, in which we find it "ordered that all such young men as may be proposed to be appointed to any junior situation in any department of the Civil Service shall, before they are admitted to probation, be examined by or under the Directors of the said Commissioners, and shall receive from them a Certificate of Qualification for such situation". This order was rigorously carried out by the Commissioners, and, although its absolute requirement was simply that the nominees should pass a certain examination, it, nevertheless, allowed the heads of departments to institute competition if they cared. Accordingly, we find that competition—but limited—was immediately set on foot in several of the offices, and the result led to the following remark in the Report of 1856:—

"We do not think it within our province to discuss the expediency of adopting the principle of open competition as contra-distinguished from examination; but we must remark that, both in the competitive examination for clerkships in our own and in other offices, those who have succeeded in attaining the appointments have appeared to us to possess considerably higher attainments than those who have come in upon simple nomination; and, we may add, that we cannot doubt that if it be adopted as a usual course to nominate several candidates to compete for each vacancy, the expectation of this ordeal will act most beneficially on the education and industry of those young persons who are looking forward to public employment."

In 1857, a near approach was made to open competition, in the case of four clerkships awarded by the competing examination in the Commissioners' own establishment. "The fact of the competition was not made public, but was communicated to one or two heads of schools and colleges, and mentioned casually to other persons at various times. The number of competitors who presented themselves was forty-six, of which number, forty-four were actually examined."

[BEGINNING OF OPEN COMPETITION.]

It was reserved for 1858 to see the first absolutely open competition, in the case of eight writerships in the Office of the Secretary of State for India; and in that year, too, a step in advance was made when the Commissioners in their Report "pointed out the advantage which would result from enlarging the field of competition by substituting, for the plan of nominating three persons only to compete for each vacant situation, the system of nominating a proportionate number of candidates to compete for several appointments at one examination".

The year 1860 sounded the death-knell of simple pass examination. It was then recommended by a Select Committee of the House of Commons, and the recommendation was adopted, that the competitive method, in its limited form, should be henceforth universally applied to junior situations. This recommendation was at once acted upon in the case of clerkships under the control of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, and others by and by followed; but, as matter of fact, it was never strictly carried out in all its scope and rigour; and as late as 1868 the Commissioners in their Report stated that "the number of situations filled on the competitive method has been comparatively small". Meanwhile, competitive examination was making way in other quarters.

From 1857, the Commissioners had been in the habit of examining competitively, at the request of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, such candidates as might be nominated for cadetships in the Royal Irish Constabulary; and, in 1861, the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty "threw open to public competition" appointments as apprentices in Her Majesty's dockyards, and appointments as "engineer students" in the steam factories connected therewith.

In 1870, the end so long aimed at was attained, and by an Order in Council of June 4, open competition was made the only door of entry to the general Civil Service.

In entire contrast with this, as has been already said, was the action in the case of the Indian Civil Service. Here the principle of open competition was adopted from the first, and the examination took a very elevated start, comprising the highest branches of a learned education. These branches were duly specified in a Report drawn up in November, 1854, by a Committee, of which Lord Macaulay was chairman; and, with the exception of Sanskrit and Arabic, they included simply (as might have been expected) the literary and scientific subjects ordinarily taught at the principal seats of general education in the Kingdom. These were:—

English Language and Literature (Composition, History, and General Literature,—to each of which 500 marks were assigned, making a total of 1,500); Greek and Latin (each with 750 marks); French, German, and Italian (valued at 375 marks, respectively); Mathematics, pure and mixed (marks 1,000); Natural and Moral Sciences (each 500); Sanscrit and Arabic (375 each).