But not the French alone have adopted the competitive system. In England, all whose traditions are aristocratical, where promotion in the army has so long been made by patronage and by purchase, the sturdy common sense of the nation has pushed away the obstructions that have blocked up the avenues to the army, and have opened them to merit, come from what quarter it may. In the commencement of the Crimean war, the English people were shocked at the evident inferiority of their army to the French. Their officers did not know how to take care of their men, or how to fight them. And although in the end British pluck and British persistence vindicated themselves as they always have and always will, it was not till thousands of lives had been sacrificed that might have been saved under a better system. No French officer would have permitted that memorable charge at Balaklava, which was as remarkable for the stupidity that ordered it as for the valor that executed it, and which has been sung in verses nearly as bad as the generalship which they celebrate. After the war, the English Government, with the practical good sense which usually distinguishes it, came, without difficulty, to the conclusion that merit was better than family in officering the army, and that it was more desirable to put its epaulets upon the shoulder of those who could take care of the men and lead them properly than upon those who could trace their descent to the Conqueror, or whose uncles could return members of Parliament. Accordingly, the Royal Military Academy, which had been filled, as ours is, by patronage, was thrown open to public competition. On this subject I quote from the very interesting and valuable report of the Visitors of the Military Academy in 1863:
The same principle was applied to appointments and promotion in the new regiments called for by the exigencies of the great war in which England found herself engaged.
Subjects, time, and place of examination were officially made known throughout the kingdom, and commissions to conduct the examinations were appointed, composed of men of good common sense, military officers, and eminent practical teachers and educators. The results, as stated in a debate in Parliament five years later, on extending this principle to all public schools, and all appointments and promotions in every department of the public service, were as follows: in the competitive examinations for admission to the Royal Military Academy candidates from all classes of society appeared—sons of merchants, attorneys, clergymen, mechanics, and noblemen, and among the successful competitors every class was represented. Among the number was the son of a mechanic in the arsenal at Woolwich, and the son of an earl who was at that time a cabinet minister—the graduates of national schools, and the students of Eton, and other great public schools.
On this point Mr. Edward Chadwick, in a report before the National Social Science Association, at Cambridge in 1862, says:
“Out of an average three hundred patronage-appointed cadets at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, for officers of engineers and the artillery, during the five years preceding the adoption of the principle of open competition for admission to the Academy, there were fifty who were, after long and indulgent trial and with a due regard to influential parents and patrons, dismissed for hopeless incapacity for the service of those scientific corps. During the five subsequent years, which have been years of the open-competition principle, there has not been one dismissed for incapacity. Moreover, the general standard of capacity has been advanced. An eminent professor of this university, who has taught as well under the patronage as under the competitive system at that Academy, declares that the quality of mind of the average of the cadets has been improved by the competition, so much so that he considers that the present average quality of the mind of cadets there, though the sorts of attainment are different, has been brought up to the average of the first-class men of this (Cambridge) university, which of itself is a great gain. Another result, the opposite to that which was confidently predicted by the opponents to the principle, has been that the average physical power or bodily strength, instead of being diminished, is advanced beyond the average of their predecessors.”
I read this also from the same report:
Another result of immense importance to the educational interests of Great Britain has followed the introduction of these open competitive examinations for appointments to the military and naval schools, to the East India service, as well as to fill vacancies in the principal clerkships in the war, admiralty, ordnance, and home departments of the Government. A stimulus of the most healthy and powerful kind, worth more than millions of pecuniary endowment, has been given to all the great schools of the country, including the universities of England, Scotland, and Ireland. As soon as it was known that candidates, graduates of Trinity College, Dublin, had succeeded over competitors from Oxford and Edinburg in obtaining valuable appointments in the East India service, the professors in the latter universities began to look to their laurels. As soon as it was known to the master of any important school that some of his leading pupils might compete in these examinations, and that his own reputation as a teacher depended in a measure on the success or failure of these pupils, he had a new motive to impart the most vigorous and thorough training.
Such has been the result in France and in England. We are not without examples at home. The competitive system has been tried in repeated instances here in the appointments both to the Military and the Naval Academy. Several Representatives in Congress, with a conscientious sense of the responsibility resting upon them, have given their patronage to the result of general competition, among them the gentleman who so ably represented, in the last Congress, the district in which I live. The results have been most satisfactory. Here, again, I will quote from the report of the Board of Visitors for 1863:
The principle itself, of selection by merit, either in the mode of public examination or of careful and searching inquiry by competent and impartial educators designated for this purpose by the parties to whom custom, and not law, had assigned the grave responsibility of nominating candidates, has been voluntarily applied in several Congressional districts. Not a cadet known to have been thus selected and appointed has ever broken down from want of vigor of body or mind, or failed to reach and maintain an honorable position on the merit-roll of the Academy; and to this careful selection by those who felt the responsibility of the privilege accorded to them is the country indebted for its most eminent and useful officers.
The same report makes some observations on another point: