attract by such inducements as these any men of eminent ability "?

But is this statement correct? We have not ventured to push our inquiries into the high regions of Downingstreet, or to approach the august abodes of secretaries of state, but we have ascertained the fact as regards the incomes of a set of modest clerks in an humble Government office in the city.

We will take the junior class of this office as it existed about twenty years since, because the clerks then in it have none of them now exceeded the twenty-seven years named by Sir James. This class then consisted of eight persons, and we find those eight now circumstanced as follows:

A-Dismissed.

B-£900 per annum; 23 years' service. C-Dead; income at time of death, £650. D-£500 per annum; 21 years' service. E-£760 per annum; 20 years' service. F-£700 per annum; 20 years' service. G£650 per annum; 19 years' service. H-Dismissed.

This does not show the average income of the men in question, but it does show that the rate of pay has been much higher than that given by Sir James Stephen, as he declares that a clerk would rise to £550, only after twenty-seven years' service-much higher, at least, in the cases of those whose services in the office have been retained. The average income of the officers alluded to above probably exceeded £300 after twenty years' service, and it will have reached £430 by the time they have served twenty-seven years.

It is by no means our intention to assert that an average income of even £430 per annum for the first and best twenty-seven years of a man's working days, with the hope of rising to a maximum of £900 or £1,000 at some period of life between fifty and sixty, is a prospect which will attract the most ambitious, the most promising, and the most gifted. Ambition, high talents, and mental gifts are better paid for in Great Britain. "A strange ambition," says Mr. Waddington, p. 385, "for a double first-class man to aspire to be a subordinate for life . . . and thus to attain, if greatly favoured by fortune, the dignity of chief clerk, possibly on the very day upon which his friend, who stood by his side on the

list of honours, is made a bishop or a judge." We agree with Mr. Waddington that this would be strange; but we wish that the subject should be seen in its true light, and that some just idea of the value of Government appointments should be given, before any decision is come to as to the qualifications to be looked for in the men who are to fill them.

There are many appointments under the Crown, not held necessarily by members of the Government, varying in value from £1000 to £2000 a-year. Such are the places of chairmen of boards; commissioners at the customs, excise, audit, and poor-law officers; permanent and under secretaries in the high Government offices; secretaries and assistant-secretaries at the Post Office, and such like departments; and various other servants of the Crown, who hold what may be called staff appointments. Such situations are at present but seldom allowed to be the reward of official merit. They are filled by men who are sẻlected either on account of some peculiar talent they have shown, or, as is much oftener the case, on account of some political support which they have given sometimes, indeed, by sheer favouritism, We earnestly hope that, in future, civil servants chosen from the ranks of the service, and none but civil servants, may be held as eligible for such appointments. We cannot doubt that men fitting can be found— indeed that the men most fitting will be so found. Moreover, it may be assumed as certain, that the knowledge that such a prospect is held out by the service, will in itself create a body of men fitting for the purpose. In this manner the civil service may be put on something like a par with other professions; some of the promising and gifted, if not of the most ambitious spirits of the age, may be tempted into its ranks. There will, it is true, be no judgeships, no bishoprics, to reward its brighter ornaments; but there will be places sufficiently good to be attractive to genius; there will be situations to be acquired, such as men of talent do covet; and the certainty of a moderate income very early in life will atone for the loss of the higher hopes which the Church and the Bar afford.

There has of late been a great deal of controversy respecting the funds out of which the pensions of superan

nuated clerks are to be paid. It has been allowed that the sums deducted for this purpose from the salaries of the officers in the civil service are more than sufficient; and as the truth of this assertion has not been controverted by Government, although the question of pensions has been under discussion, it may be presumed that the allegation is correct. If so, the junior clerks in the service have very strong ground of complaint. This deduction is, we believe, only paid by clerks appointed since 1831, when a new act of parliament on the subject came into operation. We can acknowledge the justice of calling on men in the civil service to provide themselves for the wants of their old age, as men in other business must do. We quite agree as to the expediency of making such deduction obligatory, and thus forcing those who may die in harness, or who may leave the service, to contribute to the general fund. The deductions are not much felt if paid as a matter of course, but if optional, would not be generally agreed to; and, as a rule, would not be paid by those who would most require assistance in old age. In these respects, we think that the Government has shown a wise discretion; but there can be no doubt the amount of deduction should not exceed by a single pound the sum required for the specified purpose. The measure has not yet come into full operation, and it may have been hitherto impossible to calculate accurately the precise per centage of salary which may be required for the assigned purpose; but if there be a doubt on the subject, the benefit of it should be given to the clerks. The Crown should, under no circumstances, allow itself to make money by deductions from the wages of its servants. When the matter was first mooted, we fully expected to have seen it shown that the five per cent now charged was not more than sufficient for the required object; but as this has not been done, we hope soon to hear that the per centage has been reduced.

Before we close our remarks, we would wish to call attention to some of the opinions given by civil servants, in the volume before us. Judging merely from what we have here printed, we doubt whether Mr. Bromley, Sir James Stephen, Mr. Hawes, and Mr. Arbuthnot, would not, between them, have drawn out a plan more

practically feasible than that given to us by the reporters and Mr. Jowett.

Mr. Bromley says (pp. 52, 53), "There are many men in the revenue departments, and in the lower class of offices, who are far more valuable public servants than many men in the higher class of offices; yet they have no power of distinguishing themselves, there being no prizes to contend for. The civil service has much of such talent lying waste, and going to decay. The public interest suffers, and the public become discontented."

Again he says "The service must be made more attractive for superior talent, by throwing open the prizes to the service at large."

In all this we fully agree, as we do in the recommendation which Mr. Bromley makes as to the junior class of Government servants. His (Mr. Jowett's) second class of candidates

... should be excluded altogether from the category of public servants, by being placed on day pay instead of being paid by salary."

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Sir James Stephen holds a very poor opinion of the civil service generally. He thinks that the men now employed are below mediocrity, and that nothing beyond mediocrity can be expected, or is even wanted. In all seriousness," he says, "I think that the man whose name stood half way down the examination-list of merit, would probably make a better clerk than he whose name stood first." We do not quite agree with him in this, and we think that he must have been unfortunate in the clerks that he has had under his control. If he errs, however, he errs on the safer side, and is not so wide of the mark as are Sir Charles Trevelyan and Sir Stafford Northcote, when they talk of the ambitious and the gifted as the natural candidates for Government offices.

Dullness, according to Sir James Stephen, is the lot of the civil service. Alas! is not dullness, that, at least, which Sir James Stephen calls dullness, the lot of the world at large ?

Sir

James has probably lived much among men of talent, and feels acutely the presence of bores; but we believe that he would be forced to admit, that nine men out of ten are bores to him.

"The members of what I have described as the third class," he is still speaking of the shortcomings of clerks, p. 74, usually entered the office at

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the age of eighteen or nineteen, coming directly from school, bringing with them no greater store of information or maturity of mind than usually belongs to a boy of the fifth form, at Eton, Westminster, or Rugby. What they so brought they never afterwards increased by any private study." May not the same thing be said of most other professions? Do officers in the army study after they have received their commissions? Do doctors study anything but physic, lawyers anything but law? The rule of life is that men, when once placed at work, do work in that state of life to which God has called them, but do not care to burden themselves with other toil. There are of course exceptions. The men with whom Sir James has loved to associate have no doubt been found among them. Such men in all professions will rise to the top. That they should be allowed to do so in the civil service is acknowledged by all, and that they have hitherto not been allowed to do so is the great evil which is now to be remedied.

To one observation of Sir James Stephen's we beg to call particular attention. He is speaking of the patronage of the great Government officers, p. 79.

"It is said indeed that they regard it as a burden, not as an advantage. I can only answer, that I never yet served under any Secretary of State who did not at least appear to attach a very high interest indeed to the power of giving such places to his dependents and his friends." We think that this is a blow fairly given to what we cannot but call the humbug of pretending that patronage is not desirable. We all know that it is in a great measure for the sake of patronage that the toils of office are endured; that it is the most valued appanage of high places; that it contributes more than any actual power to the lofty position of the man who dispenses it; that it is, in fact, the greatest privilege of our greatest men. Ministers know that the spirit of the age requires that this great privilege should be curtailed, and therefore the subordinates of ministers, with euphonistic phraseology, speak of patronage as a burden difficult to be borne! We are glad to see such cobwebs swept away by one so well entitled to give an opinion on the matter as Sir James Stephen.

Mr. Arbuthnot chiefly confines him

self to a gallant defence of the civil service, as it at present exists; and, considering the nature of the attack made, we think the line of defence very fair. He is a gentleman who has been long in office, and who has the interests of the service and of the servants equally at heart; and having himself risen to high position is entitled to a hearing. "I cannot refrain,” he says, pp. 412, 413, "from impressing upon your lordships the fact, that the real practical education of an official man must be within the office." Again, he says 1 ." In all the public departments there is a vast amount of mere routine work, which yet requires attention, ability, and above all, integrity. A very large majority of public servants must be engaged on such occupation, and few can emerge from it to superior situations."

These appear to be truths which have escaped the notice of the reporters and Mr. Jowett. In looking for men of finished education, they have forgotten how much must be learned by the young lad after his appointment; and in looking for ambition and genius, they have forgotten how very little fitting work there is for the employment of these high gifts.

And now one word as to Mr. Chadwick. This gentleman's name has long been familiar to us in some department of the civil service, and from his own statements it appears that he has had much to do. He has passed through his hands, he tells us, the applications of between 1,000 and 2,000 candidates for staff appointments; and he has been employed in regulating the expenditure of between £500,000 and £600,000 per annum! besides much business connected with local (?) dismissals!! but he does not appear at present to be employed in the service. We should like to know whether he has himself encountered dismissal; and if so, whether "local" or otherwise.

Though not so employed, he was invited, among others, to give the Government the benefit of his experience, and he has taken advantage of the invitation. We observe that Mr. Bromley occupies seven pages of this book; Sir James Stephen, nine; Mr. Mill, six; Major Graham, two; the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, seventeen; Sir Thomas Redington, fifteen; Mr. Rowland Hill, four; Mr.

Murdock, five; Mr. Wood, eleven ; Mr. Merivale, seven; Mr. Hawes, sixteen; and Mr. Waddington is able to confine all his wit, all his bitterness, and all his quotations, within twelve. Mr. Chadwick, however, trails himself ruthlessly through ninety-four mortal pages of the most difficult composition that ever was subjected to the understanding of an unfortunate critic.

If Mr. Chadwick had come forward with any plan of his own, the details of which required lengthy expression, we should perhaps have no fair right to complain of the quantity of his remarks, though we might not like the quality of his scheme; but such is not the case. As far as we have been able to ascertain his meaning, he is only intent on giving to the public the result of his own personal experiences, and in recommending that the Govern ment generally should adopt in all its offices those micasures of reform which he adopted with so much satisfaction to himself when employed in the Poor Law Office, and under the Sewerage Commission. He is always telling us what under certain circumstances he, Mr. Chadwick, did; but he tells these things in language so atrociously ungrammatical, so singularly confused, so utterly unintelligible, that it is often impossible to divine the meaning of his paragraphs.

We will give a few morsels taken quite at random :

"Notwithstanding I have presented the two Boards entrusted with an independent power of appointment and discipline, with which I have been connected, as exemplify. ing an advance upon the common condition of the service, I should nevertheless include them as falling short of what is practicable under systematised arrangements on a larger scale."-p. 169.

"The specialities of the civil service, when closely examined, will be found to furnish as cogent reasons for their aggregation under general supervision for the advanement of the specialities themselves. Thus to take the specialities of any department in its accountantship."-p. 174.

We protest that we preserve exactly Mr. Chadwick's punctuation, that we give nothing but full sentences, and

present them in no worse guise than that in which they appear in his own text.

"Commerce and private enterprise, where combinations for service are required, owe their efficiency to the extent to which are shared the results of success with the agency which has most contributed to their production as the efficient enterprise of war is due to its practical treatment as paid work by prize money and reward."-p. 212.

Mr. Hawes gives us, at the end of his paper, a set of imperfect sentences, such as candidates for clerkships at his offices have to put into good English, as one of their preliminary tasks! Would he allow us to recommend to him the above sentence?

"If to the several proposed arrangements for engaging in the reorganisation of the ser vice, the direct interests of the majority of persons already employed, and in particular, if to the right of a fair and impartial hear-ing to all proposals of improvement in prac tice, were added a rule for giving to the officer who has prepared them in a practical shape, and who appears to be otherwise duly qualified, a fair share in their execution, powerful stimuli will be given for the advance of the service to its due position.” p. 220.

We have remarked in the course of this article, that the amount of erudi tion required by the reporters for men entering Government offices was, in our opinion, too high; we have also suggested that it may be difficult to find candidates who will, at so early an age, have a sound knowledge of the rules of English composition: never theless we sincerely hope, and think we have a right to expect, that henceforth no one, however young, will be admitted into the service so abominably deficient in this respect as is Mr. Chadwick.

Nor a season passes by without secing numbers of yachts leaving our shores to explore the Fiords of Norway, the blue and tideless Mediterranean, or the sunny isles of the Greeian Archipelago. The flag of an English yacht has waved in the noble bay of San Francisco, in the har bours of Sydney and Hobart Town, on the waters of the Hudson, and even on the muddy Mississippi, where it sweeps past the crescent city of New Orleans. A fondness for novelty and adventure, a craving for excitement, a love of the beautiful, or all these combined, have led our yachtsmen to despise distance and dan. ger, and to roam far and wide over the pathless ocean, in order to gratify their favourite tastes, or to vary the monotony of home life. It is, however, somewhat strange, that whilst long voyages are undertaken to distant lands, the most picturesque scenery on our own shores that of the north-western Highlands of Scotland, equal in beauty and variety to any in the world should be compa ratively neglected. It is true, indeed, that the seas are stormy, the currents rapid, and the navigation intricate; that in some places supplies are difficult to be found, and that the chance of being storm-staid in a Highland loch for a week or a fortnight, sur rounded by sterile mountains half veiled in grey mist, and out of sight of human habitation, affords rather a dreary prospect; but, with a stout vessel, a good sailing-master, and a provident steward, the former class of dangers may be easily avoided; and, by making the cruise during the proper season of the year (the months of June, July, and August), there is not much chance of suffering from the latter contingency. Upon the other hand, how rich are the stores of grandeur and beauty, how great the variety of pleasure which such a cruise discloses. The Orkney islands, some barren and rocky, others green and smiling, divided by long reaches of sea, and full of excellent harbours, such as that of Stromness, with its quaint old town, in full view of the

noble Ward Hill of Hoy, on whose summit, according to tradition, an enchanted carbuncle is sometimes seen shining at midnight the adjacent coast of Scotland, fissured by caves and indented by arms of the sea, above which rise the towering peaks of Ben Hope and Ben Laoghalthe bold headland of Cape Wrath, with its lofty light gleaming over the wild Atlantic. Then, turning southward, the beautiful Loch Laxford, and the coast range of mountains, unrivalled in varied and fantastic outline, stretching for fifty miles from Loch Laxford to Loch Ewe. Of wood there is but little, and that almost all natural; but then, in autumn, how exquisite is the colouring, and how the mountain slopes glow with the mingled hues of the purple heather, the grey rock, the verdant grass, and the rich golden brown of the bracken.

South of Loch Ewe, the scenery of the Scottish coast and of the western islands is better known, and more in the beaten track of tourists and yachtsmen; but, during a three weeks' cruise in the finest season of the year, we did not meet with a single yacht between the Moray Firth and Loch Ewe.

In the summer of 185-, we set sail from Granton Harbour in a cutter yacht of thirty-five tons, manned by a sailing-master and three stout hands, having been occupied for some hours previously in getting below and stowing away an amount of stores which seemed, when piled up upon the deck, as if they would have served for a voyage to Australia. We have no intention of inflicting upon our readers any unbroken narrative, continued from day to day, during the six weeks that our cruise lasted; still less do we deem it necessary to garnish our story with nautical details as to what amount of sail we carried, how often we hove the lead or the log, the exact direction of the wind, or the precise number of fathoms in which we anchored. Our object is simply to give some account of the most interesting places we visited, and the