The Sun.
London, England, 1862-03-24 00:00:00

COMPETITIVE E.XANINATIONS.

The utility of Competitive Examinations has now
been so generally recognised that comparatively
little interest attaches to statistics on the subject.

We are unwilling, however, to allow the Seventh
Report of the Civil Service Commissioners to pass
without notice, inasmuch as it furnishes incidental

information on one or two points which were

brought prominently forward at earlier periods of
the controversy. Perhaps at this time of day it
would be unnecessary to do more than recite the
objections which were once urged against the
scheme, of filling public appointments, not by favour,
but according to the merits of the candidates.
Some refuted themselves, others were obviously as

applicable to the old system as to the new one, while
those which appeared to carry greater weight have
since been pretty well disposed of. We were told
that these prizemen -would be so conceited with
their success as to be insubordinate and impractica-

ble, though it was obvious that, if this argument was
valid in the case of the Civil Service, it was valid in
all cases. Promotion for merit's sake should be
eschewed, not only in Government offices, but in all
other departments and professions, and advancement
should be confined exclusively to the undeserving,
who, being conscious of their unworthiness and
want of claims, might be grateful for favour and
obedient accordingly. It was said, again, that no
managers of a private establishment would put the
places of their clerks up to competition, though it
ought to have been remembered that in a private
establishment self-interest supplied motives for
vigilance and inquiry which were lacking in public
departments. We were further told that the quali-

ties most desirable in a candidate did not admit o
certification ; but, if that was the truth, the patron
was just as helpless as the examiner, and there was,
at any rate, nothing lost. More plausible objec-
tions, however, were taken on moral grounds. It
was alleged that a candidate might be a proficient
in all the branches of learning required, and might
yet be impeachable in respect of character. A
clever but dissolute man, for whose integrity no
one would vouch, might be thrust into the public
service, to the great detriment of the State; or
a weak and sickly youth, exhausted by excessive
study and precocious development, might be
charged with duties for which he was practically
unfit. Of course, it was easy to reply that these
objections also were applicable to both systems
alike, and that a patron was as likely to over-
look disqualifications, as an Examiner, and, in-
deed, more so, since his decision was notoriously
based upon favour. In some way or other, how-
ever, it was believed or pretended that Examiners
either would not or could not take cognisance
of these collateral qualifications, and that whereas
a patron would be able to survey the whole case, an
examiner would confine, himself to book learning
only. We need only turn to the report before us to
see the fallacy of these assumptions. To what ex-
tent the test is applied in the case of competition
for particular situations we are not informed, but
that health and character can be inquired into, and
that this inquisition has been effectually made is
clear from some brief statistics given concerning
non-competitive examinations for certificates only.
Of the whole number of applicants for these
diplomas since 1855, upwards of 10,000 received
certificates, while nearly 3,000 (2,733) failed to
obtain them. But of these 2,733 rejections, it ap-
pears that 287—that is more than 10 per cent.—
were based on defects of health or character. The
Commissioners even add some remarks upon the
subject. " The task, they say, "of inquiring into
the character of candidates is by no means an easy
one, and cannot bo satisiactorily performed with-
out the most confidential intercourse between those
on whom the duty of deciding is imposed." There
is no doubt of this ; but would the task have been
any easier when it was performed by a patron ?
Most readers know the difficulty attending all
inquiries into character. It seems so hard to stand
in the way of any candidate for employment that
testimonials are seldom refused, and bad characters
rarely given. We should infer, indeed, from the
words of the Commissioners, that they have been
rather successful than otherwise in. obtaining
this kind of evidence, since they seem
desirous of defending themselves against
the charge of severity. " Although," they
say, "it is our anxious desire to do justice to the
candidate, we feel that the State has a right to the
service of persons to whom lie reasonable suspicion
attaches, and that the Order in Council which re-
quires proof, satisfactory to us, of the good charac-
ter of the candidate, rests upon the soundest princi-
ple." We need not add our assent to these proposi-
tions,
withone class of candidates can be done with all,
and that if the State can thus gain the services not
only of well-educated men, but of men to whom
" no reasonable suspicion attaches," the competitive
system must be answering its purpose at every
point.
Another well-known objection to these examina-
tions was based upon the details of the examinations
themselves. Certain critics took the questions
proposed, applied them to the actual duties of the
situations competed for, and turned the scheme
into ridicule by contrasting the qualifications ex-
pected with the every-day work of the office. The
simple truth was that, if there was any fault at all
in this point, it rested, not with the system of ex-
amination, but with our system of education. A
test of knowledge can only be applied with reference
to presumed instruction. What examinations test is
proficiency—that is to say, attainment of knowledge
deliberately sought. The best scholar is he who
has made the greatest progress in the studies of the
school, and it is in these studies only that his pro-
gress can be tried. If the examiners did anything
absurd in asking a candidate for a clerkship to
answer questions in history and geography, the
absurdity was commenced in the schools where his-
tory and geography were taught. If these studies
are utterly useless in the work of every-day life, they
should never have been pursued. The Examiners,
in short, simply took the ordinary branches of learn-
ing as taught in schools, and inquired into the
progress which the candidates had severally made.
It was a perfectly reasonable conclusion that the
lad who by his intellect or his industry had done
best at school would do best afterwards, and that
if he possessed the greatest amount of the in for-
mation usually communicated, he possessed the
greatest amount of the knowledge generally found
useful. The Commissioners, however, distinctly
show in their last report that their attention is
also fixed upon
the special qualifications which par-
ticular offices may require, and we select the ex-
ample of the Indian Civil Service 11S one of the most
important.
The systom of Compeiitive Eznininations was