“Did you suggest to him that doing nothing at all was perfectly consistent with good behaviour?”
The Secretary's answer was evasive, and we are forced to the conclusion that he thought Mr. Bushe's position reasonable. It appeared also that though Mr. Bushe performed no duties, he exercised his privilege of sending his letters free. Mr. Bushe might have had a distinguished career in some of the other public offices at that date, and he might have been rewarded with a title on retirement. But even in 1823 he was out of place at the Post Office. It was evidently no place for a gentleman's son.
The clerical establishment of the Post Office consists almost entirely of men and women who have entered the service through open competition. A limited number belong to the Higher Division of the Service, having passed the examination for that body, but the majority of men clerks have entered the service through the Second Division, and if they have attained to higher posts it has been by seniority or merit. Promotion is slow, and while human nature in the higher officials remains in an imperfect state, advancement does not always fall to the most deserving. The conflicting qualifications of seniority and merit have their own times and seasons for application. At one time seniority is emphasised: at another time merit: on the whole the man who possesses both has the best chance.
The Civil Service is not a field which provides scope for a variety of different characters and temperaments. Forty-nine out of fifty posts are of a more or less routine character, and the men who succeed are often those whose minds move with ease in a groove, or they are men who, by long practice and severe discipline, have trained their minds to act with the finish and regularity of a machine. Some of the most successful men in the lower branches of the Service, when promoted to positions where some initiative and diplomacy are required, are obvious failures. The very name “permanent official” is with some people a byword for red-tapeism, obstinacy, circumlocution, and want of imagination, and this is often due to the fact, that owing to their training in the lower branches, many of these men belong to the type who make excellent servants but indifferent masters. Officialism enters into the very tissue of their being. They have allowed it to grow upon them until it has sucked up every trace of healthy variety or originality they may have formerly possessed, and though they be promoted to high places and obtain large salaries, they too often bring the service to discredit in the eyes of the public. It is not because they do not possess sufficient zeal: it is rather because they are righteous overmuch.
Some time ago there was a discussion in the Grand Magazine entitled “The Secret of Success in the Civil Service,” conducted by men such as Sir George Kekewich, Sir Algernon West, Sir Spencer Walpole, Lord Welby, and others. All these men had held high positions in the Service, and their opinions on “the secret” ought to be of some interest to us. But there was no agreement among them. Sir George Kekewich suggested that if you are “socially desirable” everything is open to you. Sir Henry Primrose thought that intelligence is useful, if it is accompanied by good health and industry. Sir Spencer Walpole, with doubtless pleasant recollections of the ways of postal agitators, suggested that a capacity for expressing themselves marks successful Civil Servants. Lord Welby advised perseverance and the patience to wait, while Sir Francis Mowatt recommended trustworthiness and the will to succeed. And he was the only one of the writers to suggest that the confidence of a man's fellows is an important item. His words are wise, and I quote them: “He must determine that his colleagues shall regard him as a good fellow. It is a term not easy to define, but we all know what it means. A good fellow does not give himself airs, is courteous to all he works with or comes in contact with, helps and encourages his juniors, and sets his face against all that he knows to be bad form.” Let us take off our hats to Sir Francis Mowatt. We have no patience with those who talk official platitudes in retirement.
Sir George Kekewich was, however, the only practical man of the whole bunch. He said that “jobbery will never be eliminated from the Civil Service, nor the most efficient men placed at its head, nor the way opened for merit from the very bottom to the very top, until there is established a proper Board of Promotion.”
In a previous number of the same magazine was published a series of explanations of “Success in Literature” by prominent literary men, and it was interesting to notice how candid and genuine and modest were the confessions compared with those of the distinguished Civil Servants. The Civil Servant, even when he is a retired official, seems unable to use his pen without experiencing the necessity to be cautious and commonplace. We can almost hear him saying to himself: “The Civil Service, as we know it, is an organised hypocrisy. But we must not give the show away: we must talk to the public as we used to talk to our subordinates: we must uphold the supremacy of the copybooks.”
As far as I can make out from the admissions of the leading lights of all the professions in this country, the Civil Service is the only career which secures advancement from the very bottom to the very top, as the reward of a simple observance of the law of right and wrong. The lawyer, the artist, the literary man, and the doctor, all admit in these discussions that a certain degree of artfulness, social influence, and eagerness to take advantage of other folks' weakness, are conducive to success in the different professions; it is only when we come to examine the claims of the Civil Service that we find leading authorities unanimous on the point, that stern and unbending uprightness is the sole road to success. It is an astonishing claim, and it almost takes our breath away. The air men breathe in the Civil Service seems too light and rare to support human life. We are on the mountain top when the Civil Service chiefs talk to us. Even the Church confesses to a wise respect for private patronage, and curates are advised to marry into bishops' families. But nothing helps men in the Service except diligent attention to their duties. It was stated by an official witness before a parliamentary commission that there was nothing, except, perhaps, the intervention of a member of Parliament, to prevent a sorter rising to be chief of his Department. The road exists, and to walk along it requires only ability and perseverance. But the most that we can fairly say about such a matter is that the thing is possible, but the immense numbers who make up the Post Office staff render promotion into the higher ranks accessible only for the few. The influences which keep a man down or send him up, irrespective of merit, are as strong in the Post Office as they are in other business undertakings. For one thing, the age limit does not allow sufficient time for the exercise of those qualities of patience and perseverance, which we are told in books on Self-Help are necessary in order to attain our ambitions.
But it is easy to be cynical and to make jokes on the subject of promotion in the Civil Service. The fact remains that in spite of all disadvantages the clerical work of the Post Office is performed in a very efficient manner. There is, perhaps, less wastage of time and force in the Post Office than in any other public institution. And the Post Office clerk has many compensations. He has definite hours of work; he has security for leisure time and security of tenure; he has a good annual holiday; and above all he has the promise of a pension. In some departments his work is extremely interesting; in others it is abominably dull. And good work is always appreciated by his chiefs and by the public. In these commercial days we define the word “appreciation” only in terms of £ s. d.; we are in danger of losing the full meaning of the word. The fact is, every decent man craves for appreciation by his fellows; it is the noblest thing about him; and a man who professes to be superior to this craving, and demands only payment in hard cash, has the experience of centuries against him. For this reason the esprit de corps of the Post Office service is most marked. Lord Rosebery some years ago endeavoured to make “efficiency” a battle-cry for the nation; but so far as the clerical work of the Post Office is concerned he was preaching to the converted. The Post Office man simply smiled as the self-righteous man does in church when he thinks how admirably suited the sermon is to his sinful neighbours. But when self-righteousness is the act of a body and not of an individual it is called esprit de corps, and becomes not a sin but a virtue.
If the high officials of the Post Office have included men who are known in other than Civil Service circles, this is equally true of the clerical establishment. Among them have been authors, artists, sculptors, and musicians. “The extra subject” may or may not help them in their official careers; it certainly enables them to sustain with greater philosophy the routine and the disappointments of office life. Mr. Alfred Parsons, R.A., was a Savings Bank clerk early in his career; so was during many years Mr. W. W. Jacobs, the author of Many Cargoes and Sea Urchins.