application to the different branches of the service we have had under consideration, in which the appointments are numerous and competition keen. But the principle has quite lately been extended to nearly the whole English Civil Service, under entirely new conditions, and a protest may here be recorded against the change, before the mischief of the plan has become fully developed. The appointments to be filled up in this way may be roughly divided into two main classes: the one comprising those in the higher public offices, the vacancies in which are comparatively few; and the other and vastly more numerous one, comprising a great variety of posts in various subordinate offices and departments, as to which it may be affirmed that while a very moderate standard of qualification is all that is necessary, men of talent would in most cases be absolutely out of place; that at any rate talent is of minor importance compared with respectability, which is the really essential qualification. Now the popular notion that the extension of the principle of competition is a great triumph of the popular cause, we believe to be a complete mistake. The persons most eager to abolish patronage have been those who possessed it. One reason for the readiness exhibited by ministers to disburden themselves of the load is, no doubt, that which has been often stated, that the dispensers of patronage offend more people than they gratify, a probable truth as regards the relations between a minister sitting for a borough and the supporters who want nominations to the public offices for their sons; but the real cause for the alacrity with which the competitive system has been embraced, is that public men as a rule are simply indifferent to patronage-patronage, that is, which cannot be made applicable to their own immediate friends or relations. A prime minister may appreciate the power of selecting an Indian viceroy from among the members of his government or his personal friends, and to a chancellor or chief justice the privilege of distributing the small posts about his court among sons and nephews whose only qualification consists in having been called to the bar, is no doubt highly relished; but it is not proposed to do away with the power of selection in these cases. Competition is to be applied only to the class of appointments which, from the nature of the case, would have to be bestowed on applicants in whom the donor can have no personal interest, and by this substitution he escapes from the necessity of refusing favours to his friends or constituents, still more of taking the trouble needful for making a proper selection. The effect of filling up the higher departments of the Civil Service by open competition is to reproduce in another form the very evil which the measure was intended to guard against. The charge alleged against the system of nomination by ministers to the public service was, not that it gave an insufficiency of able men for the higher posts of the permanent Civil Service, nor even that the general level of ability was too low. The work to be done by the mass of persons employed in our public offices is not of a sort to need conspicuous ability for its performance, and it is very much more conducive to a healthy tone in the public service that the men of exceptional ability should be found in some sort of relation to the number of posts which demand exceptional ability for their performance, than that the government offices should be crowded with persons too finely organised to be content with the performance of routine work, and all pressing forward for the vacancies in the higher posts. The complaint which used to be made, and made justly, was, that men were occasionally appointed to the public service by nomination who were unfit for any work whatever. Yet this is just what may happen under the system which replaces it. In the attempt to cure one evil another has been produced of equal magnitude. The fact is, that neither mode of appointment provides, of itself, a complete guarantee of fitness. Nomination fails on the score of brains, competition on the score of character; for the sort of testimonial on this head furnished by the candidate's referees, often themselves quite unknown and irresponsible persons, proves nothing as to many essential conditions of character. Among the Irishmen who are now pressing forward in shoals for places in this competition, there is nothing to prevent any number of Fenians or men who are rebels at heart from obtaining places; they have only to keep their political opinions out of the essays they are called on to write at the preliminary examination. Some people may say, why not Fenians as well as anybody else? why should any class of citizens be excluded from the public service so long as they conduct themselves properly? But this is obviously to lay down a false canon. The public service is not something to which the public have any claim, but it is something which those who govern the country are bound in the public interests to maintain in the highest possible efficiency; and this condition will not be satisfied if persons politically disaffected obtain admission to it, or others, as to whose respectability little more is really known than they have not undergone penal servitude. The fact is, the selection of fit persons to serve the State is one of the natural duties incumbent on statesmen, and in this sense the surrender of patronage is simply a form of political cowardice. Nor should there be any difficulty in combining the two needful conditions. By all means have an examination for admission, but let the right to appear at this examination be conferred by nomination. With independent commissioners to enforce them there need be no relaxation of tests; and if it be alleged that pressure would be put on the examiners to pass unfit candidates, and that the task of rejecting the nominees of the Government for particular posts would be too invidious for the commissioners to enforce, the difficulty may be solved in a perfectly simple way. It would be quite easy to arrange that the nominations should be in excess of the available appointments, as now obtains with respect to naval cadetships, so as to create a limited competition; and also, that instead of separate nominations being given to every vacancy, the different branches of the public service should be grouped together in appropriate classes, and the vacancies in them filled up periodically, one examination taking the place of many. Thus a minister, instead of nominating to a particular office, would nominate to a branch of the service; it would rest with the nominee to earn his place in it, by passing a creditable examination, and he would have his choice of the appointments available in the order of standing. It would not, therefore, be a case of success or absolute failure, except with regard to those at the bottom of the list, and all the good effects of competition would be secured without its drawbacks. Let us add that a test examination of this sort will fulfil the main object in view-which is not of securing men for the public service who will be most immediately useful, by having undergone a special training for the examination, but men who are likely in the long run to prove the most useful-just in proportion as it is kept free from technicalities, and is confined to the subjects ordinarily comprised in the course of education of the classes from among whom the nominees are selected. A good raw material is of much more value than an inferior article with a polished veneer laid on by a cramming master. A modification in this new mode of appointment to the English Civil Service appears to us to be as urgently needed as that which we have already urged should be introduced with respect to the great body of Indian administrators, because if the opinion of those is worth anything who have the best opportunities of judging, the so-called reform is already producing a distinct degeneration in its character. Open com petition may produce independence, but it also generates other qualities not so admirable. The nominee civil servant had received his appointment as an act of favour, and regarded it as a valuable gift for which he had given no consideration in return. He entered the service, therefore, with feelings of gratitude. With the man who gains his place by competition, on the other hand, there is often a very plainly manifested feeling to regard the matter as a contract to which one party has contributed a valuable commodity-his brains, accompanied by a ready disposition to discover supposed breaches of the spirit of the contract, and generally a carping, discontented habit of mind. This change is to be noticed very plainly in the Indian Civil Service, which now contains an ever-increasing proportion of discontented men, disposed to take an exaggerated estimate of the talents evinced by success in a competition, and to fancy that they have thrown themselves away. Whatever may have been the shortcomings of the civilian of the old school, he at any rate was usually properly impressed with a sense of his good fortune, being quite aware that he would have been puzzled to do as well in any other line, and that in fact the service was his best friend. The same change of feeling is now beginning to make itself apparent in the home Civil Service, where it tends more than any other cause to produce that deterioration in the public spirit of the body which those who have good opportunities of judging perceive and deplore. Yet the remedy is plain and simple. If the considerations we have offered are of any value, it should be possible to retain all that is good in competition while weeding the system of the more patent defects which now deface it. We submit that to carry this out would constitute a real administrative reform, not unworthy the attention of any statesman of our time. ART. III. 1. SоHм: Das Verhältniss von Staat und Kirche. Tübingen: 1873. 2. Die Grenzen zwischen Kirche und Staat. Von Dr. E. FRIEDBERG. Tübingen: 1872. 3. Staat und Kirche. Betrachtungen zur Lage Deutschlands in der Gegenwart. Von F. FABRI. Gotha: 1872. 4. Die Stellung der deutschen Staatsregierungen gegenüber den Beschlüssen des Vatikanischen Concils. Von P. HINSCHIUS. Berlin: 1871. 5. Der Katholicismus und der moderne Staat. Berlin: 1873. 6. Die preussischen Kirchengesetze. Herausgegeben von R. HOEINGHAUS. 1873. IF in the brilliant circle of princes and statesmen assembled at the Congress of Vienna, any one had ventured to suggest that before two generations should have passed away, the question of the relation of Church and State would stand foremost among great public interests, such a prophecy would probably have been met by the incredulous smile of those who then ruled the destinies of Europe. The philosophy of 1815 considered the struggle between Church and State as a thing of the past, it looked down with a feeling approaching contempt upon the dogmatic quarrels of former ages, and, proud of its enlightened belief in God, virtue, and immortality, assured the world that the old leaven of religious controversy had lost its force. The mighty stream of the Reformation seemed to have run to waste in the sands of a shallow rationalism, whilst only the living brooklets of dissenting communities bore witness to the force of the Gospel; and the Roman Catholic Church, which had opposed to Protestantism a bold and not unsuccessful resistance, seemed by its long duration to be itself exhausted. It had been unable to prevent the encroachments of absolute rulers such as Joseph II., Pombal, and Miranda upon its domain; it had been compelled to destroy its own most powerful instrument, the order of the Jesuits; it had been hopelessly overwhelmed by the French Revolution, and owed its restoration merely to the good-will of Napoleon, whilst he held the Pope in chains and sent the noblest members of the Church to Vincennes. How could such a Church become dangerous to a powerful modern State? Why should the members of the Congress be afraid to restore the temporal power of the Chief of that Church, who had preferred captivity to obeying Napoleon's imperious command to declare war against |