The Sun.
London, England, 1865-08-24 00:00:00

GREAT YARMOUTH RACES.-WEDNESDAY.

The Great Yarmouth Nursery Handicap of 5 sous each,
with 50 added, for 2-yr-olds ; winners extra. T.Y.C.
(straigt course). 15 sub; 9of whom pay forfeit.
Mr. S. Rogers's Miss Roland, 9st 11b (inc. 51b extra
(J. Daley 1
Mr. J. Price's Belmontine, 6st 131 b (P Merlin 2
Mr. John Dawson's Rappel de Minuit, 7st (Jas. Smith 3
Mr. T. Last's Master Shutt, 7st 111 b (J. ightingall 4
Betting.-5 to 2on Miss Roland, 3to 1 agst Rappel de
Minuit, 4 to 1 agst Master Shutt, and 10 to 1 agst Bel-
montine. The lot got off in line, but after a few strides
Rappel de Minuit (on the rails) took a slight lead, Master
Shutt, wide on the left, second, the favourite and Bel-
montine last, until nearing the distance, where they joined
the leaders, the lot running abreast to the half distance,
where Rappel retired, and the lead was held by Belmontine
until opposite the enclosure, where ;Miss Roland chal-
lenged him, and heading him in a few strides won cleverly
by half a length, Rappel do Minuit finished a bad third,
Master Shutt last. _ _

__ _..._.
The County Members' Stakes of 5 sous each, with 30 added,
for two and three-yr-olds ; weight for age ; the winner to

be sold for £4O, ece. T.Y.C.
Mr. Gittus's Mortlake, 3 yrs, Bst 101 b (Sayersi 1
Mr. Fleming's Camillus, 3 yrs, Bst 101 b (H. Parry 2
Mr. P. Price's Life Belt, 2 yrs, 7st (J. Smith 3
Betting-2 to lon Camillus, 3to 1 agst Mortlake. Won
easily by a length ; a bad third. The winner was bought
by Mr. Fleming for 52 guineas.
The Innkeepers' Plate (Handicap) of 40 sovs. Three-
quarters of a mile.
Mr. Turner's The Turner, 3 yrs, 6st 41b (in. 61b extra
(Jarvis 1
Mr. Barnes's Benvoglio, 3 yrs, 7st ll lb (Parry 2
Mr. J. Abel's Water Lily, 4 yrs, 7st 61b (Martin 3
Mr. C. Bradley's Antidote, 5 yrs, Bst 121 b (T. Fordham) 4
Betting-7 to 4on Benvoglio, sto 2 agst The Turner, 4
to .1 agst Water Lily. The Turner made all the finning,
and won easily by three lengths ; the same between second
and third; a bad fourth.
The Victoria Gardens Stakes of 5 soya each, with 50

---
added ; weight for age ; selling allowances. One mile.
Mr. Blanton's Goldylocks, 4 yrs (X 100), 9st 41b (Parry) 1
Capt. Machell's Sympathy, 3 yrs (£4O) 7st 91b (Sayers)) 2
Betttin agst Goldylocks, 6 to 4 agst Sympathy,
Mr. Fleming's Camillus, 3 yrs (£10), ist 121 b... Martin 3
Mr. Gittus's Mortlake, 3 yrs (.£4O), ist 91b (car ist 121 b)
(Nightingall) 4
g—Even
4 to 1 agst Mortlake, 10 to 1 agst Camillus. Won in a

canter by ten lengths ; the others beaten off. The winner
was bought in for 175 guineas.
The Beaten Handicap Plate of 20 sovs, T.Y.C., was
won by Master Shutt, Est (Jarvis), beating three others.

It is rmoured that Lord Glasgow's horses will be re-
moved from Milton to T. Dawson's, at Ashgill, iliddleham,
in the course of a few days.

THE CLAXTON CASE.—It has been decided to reopen this
disputed case, and it will be gone into on the opening day
at Doncaster.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Tnreg.—The Civil Service Commissioners have
outlived the controversy which arose when they were
first appointed, and we receive their annual report
as a valuable record of work done, but not as a
storehouse whence arguments are to be drawn for
and against the system they superintend. Public
opinion has pretty well decided that the commis-
sioners discharge a very useful function in the body
politic, and that their services are neither so ines-
timable as some zealots appeared to believe, nor so
dangerous as their enemies loudly asserted. The
commissioners have saved the inferior branches of
the public service from the corrupt and corrupting
influence of patronage, and if they have done no
more they would deserve to be maintained. They
have not filled Whitehall or Somerset-house with
men of genius, and it is not easy to believe that any
machinery could be devised to secure such a result ;
but as the result itself would be undesirable if it
were possible we may acquiesce in this failure. The
commissioners do, however, exclude the ignorant
and incompetent from the public service, and there
is no reason to think that in excluding them men
capable of rendering the State good service are also
shut out. In an age of universal education we are
incredulous of the suggestion that the genius which
could save an empire at a crisis in its fate, or could
frame laws for the government of a score of different
races, will be found unable to satisfy examiners in
the first elements of knowledge. The best proof of
the success of the Civil Service Commission in win-
ning approval is found in the constantly increasing
support which it receives from the other public offices.
The annual reports of the commissioners always con-
tain a good deal of correspondence between them-
selves and the heads of the otherbranches of the home
service, and whoever will look over the reports of a
few years will be struck with the difference of tone in
these communications. At first the new commission
had to hold its own against powers jealous of its
existence and resentful of the control which it j
exercised over them. The heads of Departments
did not care to see their patronage diminished, and
were alternately scornful and sullen in their letters
to the Commission ; while the Commissioners, put
upon their dignity, were inclined to be imperious in
their claims to attention. All this is changed. We
now find the most friendly conferences between
these rival powers. Official chiefs perpetually make
suggestions for augmenting the sphere of operations
of the Commission ; they ask the advice of the
Commissioners upon the qualifications which should
be required in candidates for appointments, and
sometimes they appear desirous of transferring to
the Commissioners the whole duty of filling up
vacant clerkships. It must be confessed, however,
that the notion of throwing open the home service
to strictly competitive examinations does not gain
ground. The experiment which Lord Stanley made
six years ago, when Secretary of State for India,
has never been repeated. It will be remembered
that on that occasion an open competition for eight
copying-clerkships in the India-office attracted
more than two hundred competitors to an examina-
tion in Willis's Rooms. We believe that the eight
clerks who were chosen as most distinguished in the
examination have proved excellent servants, but the
revelation of the numbers ready to compete for
appointments has deterred other heads of Offices
from following up the plan. The mere labour of
carrying it out was enormous, the effect of repeated
examinations of such a character upon the hopes
and plans of the youth of the country is of doubtful
value, and it was, after all, not certain that the
best clerks would be secured by the application of
purely literary tests. The existing plan of nomi-
nating several candidates for each appointment,
when faithfully carried out, is a sufficient guarantee
that the successful competitor shall possess sufficient
knowledge and intelligence for his post, while it
furnishes some scope to the persons having the
power of nomination to secure those qualities
of character which cannot be detected from the
answers to a written paper of questions. It is in
the management of the India Civil Service Exami-
nations that the conduct of the Commission is most
sharply canvassed. It cannot be denied that the
results of tho examinations have not corresponded
to the hopes of those who first instituted them. It
was thought that the flower of the universities would
eagerly compete for appointments in the Indian
service, but, in fact, they have treated them as not
worth trying for. The college tutors are unanimous
in saying that, in the absence of some special and
exceptional reason, their best men will not go in for
the examination. If a man wants to get married
early in life he enters himself for examination, but
if he has no desire to rush into matrimony he tries
his chance at home. In 1864, out of 219 competi-
tors, 39 came from Oxford and Cambridge, but out
of the 40 successful candidates only 4 came from
the two universities. Oxford sent in 20 candidates,
and three were successful ; Cambridge sent in 19,
and only ono was successful. The reduction of the
maximum limit of age from 23 to 22 has had some-
thing to do with the falling off of university candi-
dates ; and as the ago is next year to be reduced to
21, it may be expected that the competitors from
the old universities will still further decline in num-
ber. But the great reason for the disinclination of
the best university men to compete for the Indian
Civil Service lies in the prizes in the universities
themselves. The abolition of preferences for loca-
lity and kindred, the partial removal of the necessity
of taking orders as a qualification for holding a
fellowship, and the establishment of minor scholar-
' ships, have made a university career far more of a
certainty than it was a few years since. A lad who
gets a minor scholarship before entering the uni-
versity, and when he goes there takes a good place
in his college, and quickly becomes a foundation
scholar, can tell with some certainty whether he
will obtain a Fellowship or not, and a Fellow-
ship with hopes of professional advancement at
home outweighs all the attractions of an Indian
career. The Irish and Scotch Universities and
London University, having no such prizes of their
own to offer their best students, furnish a somewhat
larger number of successful competitors, but out of I
the 40 selected last year 17 had not been educated
in any university. The comparative absence of
University men from the list of successful candi-
dates does not, however, show that the system is a
failure. The working of it is somewhat different
from that anticipated by its projectors, but it is not
therefore bad. The truth is that the Indian Civil
Service Examination is forming with considerable
success a University of its own. A lad who enters
as a competitor goes through a complete course of
instruction. As no fee is demanded from candidates
he is sent in as soon as he has passed his seventeenth
birthday to see what the examination is like. The
next year or year after he tries again with faint hope
of success, but if his aggregate marks show a satis-
factory advance and give promise of success in the
future he goes in again a third time the next year
and wins. The examinations to which he has been
subjected are so many trials of strength, which have
served to convince him of his weakness, and in the
intervals he has been busy at work in the operation
called by its detractors " cramming," but which
deserves the name neither more nor less than the
reading a man does with his Tutor before going
into the Schools or the Senate House. As long as
the examination in the Indian Civil Service is so con-
ducted that success in it can only be attained by
good honest work, it does not seem very material
whether the candidate has been trained on the banks
of the Isis, the Cam, or the Thames. The detailed
statistics of the marks published in the Report of the
Civil Service Commission show that this is the case.
Most of the successful candidates get their appoint-
ments by obtaining a large proportion of marks in a
few subjects. Eminence in any one branch, combined
with a fair knowledge of one or two more, will com-
mand success. In the last examination the Com-
missioners made an alteration in their mode of
marking, which will still more effectually secure
this result. Hitherto they have not allowed any
marks obtained by a candidate to be counted, unless
they exceeded a fixed proportion of full marks.
Thus, in Latin, where 750 are full marks, no can-
didate could get credit for any knowledge who did
not obtain at least one-sixth, or 125 marks. If,
however, he got 125 marks or more, he scored them
all. The Commission have resolved henceforth to
allow a candidate credit only for the number of
marks he gets in excess of the maximum, which
will obviously be a more effectual discouragement
to smatterers, as well as more just between the
competitors. Mathematics are, however, excepted
from this rule, because the Commissioners consider
that in mathematics there is no such thing as smat-
tering. How far they may be right in this excep-
tion we do not venture to say, but the effect of the
rule cannot but be salutary. It will prevent can-
didates from getting appointments through a slight
knowledge of many subjects, and it will repress
what is rarely successful, but is still the bane of all
examinations, " cramming." •
POST.--Mr. Bright, it is said, is about to visit
America, and all Englishmen must be glad to hear
it. He is going to see with his own eyes a country
which he has always trumpeted as the country of
the best governed people in the world. He has
told us in eloquent terms how free the United States
have ever been from national debt, how lightly each

member of the commonwealth is taxed, how admi-
rably universal suffrage works, how excellent are
those creedless schools supported at the public ex-
pense, how equally the good things of this life are
shared by a people free from the tyranny of a
grasping aristocracy, how devoted all Americans are
to their constitution, how perfectly that constitution
works, and how easily it rectifies its position
when violent storms of political passion rise and
rage. In short, everything that is good in social
life, in politics, in morals, in religion, in states-
manship, in legislation, in law, in diplomacy, with
all else that is perfect, out of heaven, is, according
to his speeches, to be found in the United States,
and is a legitimate fruit of American institutions.
Having proclaimed these great praises on high in
most of the large towns in England, and having
diligently taught the doctrine that the evils endured
by the poor of this country are due to the absence
of republican government and of universal suffrage,
and having boldly laid at the door of the aristo-
cracy nearly all the ills that flesh is heir to, he has
succeeded in doing America two services—he has
belauded her citizens, which is always pleasing to
them ; and he has disparaged his own country,
which is very gratifying to American jealousy. In
gratitude for these services President Johnson—
who, as everybody knows, is a highly educated and
polished gentleman, of whose friendship and society
a leading Englishman with republican sympathies
cannot but be proud—has invited, or is said to have
invited, the member for Birmingham to pay a visit
to America, and to see for himself how admirably
those institutions work whose praises have been the
themes of his declamation on so many English plat-
forms. We may assume that these journals are
correct which say that Mr. Bright has accepted the
invitation ; and, if that be so, he will soon be on his
way to New York in a frigate sent by the President
for that purpose. It is piteous to think what he
will have to go through. Americans positively tor-
ture those whom they delight to honour. Ten thou-
sand people will insist on shaking his hand. He
will have to stand up for six hours at a stretch, and
be talked to by every free and independent Yankee
who may have the impudence to covet that honour.
He will have—but this will not be so trying to him
as the other—to make a speech at every turn, and
to answer interminable questions on English politics.
He will be dinnered, and feted, and serenaded, and
balled, and theatred, and operaed, and tea-gardened,
and sherry-cobblered, till the doctor interferes, and
puts up a poster to certify that it is not in human
nature to stand any more. It is not difficult, after
our experience of Mr. Bright at home, to predict the
burden of his speeches when in the very heart of
the great Republic. How his capacious breast will
throb and heave when he finds himself, for the first
time in his life, in the presence of people that are
not downtrodden ! How eloquently will he con-
trast the happy condition of the working classes in
the New World with the misery of those left behind
in the Old. Of course there is no squalor in New
York : no dirty streets, no defective drainage ; no
unhealthy habitations for the poor ; in fact, no poor
at all, no vice, no neglected children. All will be
very perfect there. The lowest of the low are not
very low ; indeed, they are better off than those
poor craftsmen at Birmingham who, in spite of all
their exertions, cannot earn more than from 8 to 12
dols. a week, and therefore are naturally objects of
great commiseration. If all that Mr. Bright has
told us in his provincial orations be true, he will
find all people on an agreeable level—high and low,
rich and poor—one with another. No artificial
distinctions. Those rich merchants and that shoddy
aristocracy, and that rich petroleolic circle of whom
we have heard so much, will prove to be the most
meek and condescending of men ; no pride about
them as about our nobility ; and they do not grind
the faces of the poor after the manner of English
landed gentry. And all the productive classes.--
for men must work even in that heaven-gifted land
—will prove to be very gentle, and very well edu-
cated, and very well clothed, and domiciled in very
comfortable houses, invery pleasant spots beautifully
drained and watered, and they will ,be very polite
thonh perfectly independent ; and they will be so
courteous to their black brethren, vgilio, as they truly
say—by way of pretext for the late civil war—are
as entitled to freedom as the rest of mankind ; and
the places of worship will be very full, and the
schools very excellent, and the Sundaymost devoutly
observed ; and the charitable institutions will be so
flourishing, and the sick so carefully tended by
pastoral service and affection. Good manners will
prevail in every rank of life, forbearance and cour-
tesy rule every dispute and chasten every argument.
There will be no gobbling of victuals, no chewing
of quids, no spitting on the carpets ; none, in fact,
of the coarseness of unenfranchised English people.
And there will be no disproportion of the sexes caused
by wasting war, and no terrible aggregate of widows
and orphan children ; none, in short, of the ills of
mistaken government. All will be perfect. Perfect
constitution, perfect citizens, perfect laws, perfect
social habits, perfect President, perfect exchequer,
perfect unity and peace throughout the common-
wealth ; and all because every man has a vote. Who
that contemplates the charming prospect so soon
to be realised by Mr. Bright—always supposing his
eulogies of America to be correct—can forbear
wishing that he, too, had had an invitation to go
in a frigate at the expense of the Republic to. that
political Utopia ? And who that has a heart does
not sympathise with those involuntary pangs which
the hon. member for Birmingham must feel when
he recalls the thought of the miserably lost people
of his native country, whose much-endured life is
daily vexed by poverty that is uncheered, labour
that is unrepaid, and an empty show of political
security, social comfort, and peaceful possession of
the little that is their own? How eloquently will
he contrast his afflicted countrymen with his pros-
perous hosts ! How earnestly will he draw out the
sympathies of the happy Yankee towards the Eng-
lish victims of the feudal system, ground down by
wealthy squires, taxed for an Established Church,
and legislated for by a Parliament that obstinately
refuses to be reformed. Our good wishes go with
Mr. Bright. We admire his eloquence, we believe
his honesty, but we distrust his information, and
make a large allowance for his prejudices. The
President of the United States could not have done
our gifted Radical a greater service than he has
done by inviting him to see with his eyes those
things of which he has so often drawn such bright
imaginary pictures. We hope he will find it con-
venient to go to Virginia, Carolina, and Tennessee.