The Press.
London, England, 1854-02-25 00:00:00

CIVIL-SERVICE CHANGES.

THE promised reorganisation of the civil
service has, up to this time, rather perplexed
the public than created any definite feeliiig
either of satisfaction or dislike. The scheme
looks large—it sounds plausible—perhaps a
little pedantic—many people think it is only
thrown out to be talked about and withdrawn,
like last year's Education Bill, or Mr. OLIVEIRA'S
motion—some critics go further, and pro-
nounce it a mere crotchet, utterly unpractical,
and which must break down if fairly tried. It
is not in its favour that the whole idea is new
and foreign—new in kind, not in degree—no
extension or development of any institution
actually existing, unless China be taken as a
precedent—but French or German, not Eng-
lish or American, in conception. Many people
have a vague horror at the notion of bureau-
cracy as something connected with passports,
a spy system, a bullying gendarmerie, Austrian
institutions, and military despotism. They
recal their experiences of foreign travel, when,
among a submissive flock of Belgian or Prus-
sian tourists, they were ordered about hither
and thither, their luggage carried off by
force, their passports scrutinised, themselves
searched and cross-questioned, and generally
made to feel their own insignificance, and the
autocratic power of the armed representative
of law. Some instructive impression of this
kind is left on our minds by the very name of
a " bureaucrat." It is a prejudice, perhaps—
for we see the exemplary tameness with which
they submit to these things abroad—but it is
a prejudice in which we all share more or less.
And, as a matter of reason and principle, the
English public object to invest with high or
permanent authority the agents of national
administration. They fear, and rightly fear,
lest the people's servants should become the
people's masters, knowing how plausible a
case may be made out for every usurpation of
authority, and how amnia mak bonis initiis orta
swat. All this is rational and right ; nor can
we blame the jealousy exhibited on this sub-
ject by our " Liberal " contemporaries, although
some of their objections strike us as being
more far-fetched and extravagant than any-
thing in the plan which they profess to criti-
cise. They would find it difficult, for
instance, to explain how an " hereditary
bureaucracy" is to cone out of a system
which, by making literary proficiency the
sole test of fitness, excludes the notion
of patronage or hereditary tenure. And
when we are told that there is danger lest an
intellectual bureaucracy should assume too
great a control over a :•eformed Parliament,
which, from its constitution, must represent
the ignorance as well as the intelligence of the
country, we see in the threatened peril rather
an argument against such reform than a fault
in the proposed administrative change. The
real danger lies in anot%er direction. While
places were given away is matter of private
patronage, public vigilante was always on the
watch against their unnecessary multiplication.
Such multiplication was dreaded, not merely
on account of the increased expenditure which
it involved, but as a possible means of corrup-
tion. Corruption (at least, in any open or
avowed form) being out of the question, less
solicitude will be felt about the number of
small offices created. In fact, their creation
will always be popular with a certain class, as
affording an opening to the educated poor—
to those who look on lodily labour as de-
gradini make their way in

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