The Sun.
London, England, 1856-01-18 00:00:00

meeting of the delegates of educational institutions in
connection with the Society of Arts, held at Southamp-
ton. It had been attended by persons of every party,
and there the question of administrative reform was
considered, and by party corporations even it was unani-
mously agreed that every place given as mere patron-
age, of whatsoever political party, was a prize scholar-
ship taken from some one educational institution, stolen
to the detriment of education, and to the injury of the
state, by corrupt influence, and to the waste of the pub-
lic means by inefficient and dear service. He was glad,
therefore, to find it moved for consideration in Manches-
ter as an educational as well as a political question.
At the meeting of delegates, to which he re-
ferred, it was recognised by persons of opposite po-
litical parties, that it would be far better that the post-
man's uniform, or mechanics' service in a Government
dockyard, should designate the fact that the person pes-
sassing it bad gained it by a competitive examination, by
qualifications gained, possibly, in a mechanics' insti-
tute, or as a prize scholar in a diocesan or other school,
than as a mere hanger-on of an electioneering committee.
Now he could state to them that defective and errone-
ous as be and others considered the subject matters of
most of the competitive examinations already instituted
to be—new as were the examiners to the duties—seri-
ously niggard and imperfect as were the means which
were yet allowed to the commissioners, the competitions
had yet been attended with decided success, and great
promise for the future. The first effect of them had
been to display the gross ignorance and almost incredibly
low condition of the great proportion of the candidates
for admission to the public service—of those who, from
the known influence of their supporters, generally mem-
bers of the House of Commons, it was well known would,
in the ordinary course of things, have been permanently
charged upon the departments. The examinations had
more than justified all that had been said by Sir Charles
Trevelyan, Sir Stafford Northcote, by himself, and
other
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demonstrated the ignorance at the least of those official
opponents to the reform of the civil service who had bit-
terly reproached them with having libelled it He be-
lieved that Sir E. Ryan and the other commissioners had
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to the public support. On the mere pass examinations,
for the departmental service, which had been reluctantly'
permitted, more than two-thirds of the candidates coming
from the usual sources had been rejected. Between one
and two hundred rejected candidates complained through
their patrons, the members, that they bad been rejected
on unfair, or recondite, or irrelevant point;, but the re-
jections had been on the commonest and most relevant
elementary points of a common education, and for gross
and scandalous deficiencies. The Government would be
unable to try the appeals on the commissioners' deci-
sions arising, as was foreseen from the expedient of mere
pass or private examinations, and the only means of oh-
viating continued influential complaints would be to
abandon them, and have recourse to open
and public competitive examinations. (Applause.)
Whether in peace or in war, in the civil or for the whole
military service, the abolition of patronage, the sub-
stitution of service and merit, tested by competi-
tive examinations, would be the best securities for eco-
nomy and efficiency. A popular general, Sir De Lacy
Evans, was reported to have said that it took three
campaigns to make an English army efficient. Three
years' expenditure in lives and money then, according
to that military authority, and to the historical evidence
of actual experience, might be taken as the cost of
patronage, of political corruption, of reckless ignorance,
of the want of that training and education by which
foreign forces, made up of inferior military stamina,
are yet made ready in a shorter time or at once. (Ap-
plause.) And yet be did not appear to manifest any
consciousness that any responsibility attaches to him
as a political reformer and public representative in allow-
ing all these sources of waste and insecurity to go on
from year to year, so that at the end of forty years of
enormous expenditure, every military institution was,
according to the declaration of Sir J. Burgoyne, before
the Sebastopol Committee, in an imperfect state ; all this
had been allowed to go on without the attention of the
country being called to the magnitude of the waste and
the danger, and without any one specific measure being
proposed by him, until after disaster, for its preven-
tion. (Hear, hear.) The real fact is, that to object
was one thing—to investigate, to systematise, and elabo-
rate practical measures of amendment was another, re-
quiring labour or qualifications out of the course of com-
mon political agitation. To those who might not see
the bearing of the great question of administrative re-
form, or of the first step, competitive examinations, upon
military efficiency as well as upon the efficiency of the
civil service, he would refer to the fact that the artillery
is the only arm of our service which was proved, accord.
ing to common professional acknowledgment, to be
superior to any other in the field. Now, the ar-
tillery (which is without purchase) owes such superiority
as it at present possessed to the speciality of persons,
tested by such merely pass examinations as have hitherto
been conceded ; and for the artillery as well as the en-
gineers corn petitive examination has been conceded, as Mr.
Heywood had stated, as the proved and acknowledged
means of its further advancement. Why, then, should
not purchase be abolished and competitive examinations
be introduced, as a tried and proved practical means of
improvement, for the cavalry and the line ? Why ? be-
cause the army commissions are a source of political pa-
tronage, distributed to reform members or others of the
House of Commons, as a means of influence, expected
by the local constituencies and supporters. Mr.
Heywood himself would have proved an exception
to other reform members if he had not been ap-
plied to from constituents for commissions and ob-
tained them, in common with others, and, as a matter
of course, in ignorance on his part as to whether those
for whom the commission had been obtained possessed
the first qualification of command over others, which has
not been displayed in common scenes of barrack life,
namely, command over themselves. It must be far
more satisfactory to him to see the qualifications in
question tested by a competent examination. It must
he more satisfactory to him to see a commission obtained
by a pupil of the Owen's College, of Manchester, of
which be is a trustee ; to see the tuition is the practi-
cal sciences taught in that institution, and, possibly, in
the mathematical or other classes of this institution,
tested by competition with the pupils trained at Oxford
and Cambridge, to be satisfied that lives and the in-
terests of the country hail been placed under a high order
of intelligence, calculated for leadership in peace as well
as in war. (Applause.) The bulk of the constituents ought
not to be satisfied without this measure, and those of
them who take an especial interest in the educational in-
stitutions ought especially to come forward to correct the
bias or the indifference of those who, as party or political
leaders, participate in the patronage and the corruption
which are the source of weakness and oppressive changes.
Whilst speaking of the responsibility attaching to poli-
tical reformers for failures, to propose specific measures
for the prevention of the failures experienced, and claim-
ing to administrative reform, and above all to official
administrative reformers, the first elementary step, it
was due to advert to others, civilians, to whom a similar
responsibility may be proved to attach. Thus— before
the war there were two committees of Parliamentary
investigation—the committee on the Ordnance estimates,
and the committee on the civil salaries, before which,
in those unsound branches of the public service, the seed
plots of future waste and disaster were displayed. Now
if any one would look over the reports and the exami-
nabions before those two committees, and consider what
has been displayed since the war! by the more conspi-
cuous trial of the branches of service then submitted for
investigation ; if they would from what has since'tran-
spired consider what ought then to have been found and
provided against ; if they will see what ought to have
tiepin elicited and proposed by reforming members, some-
thing of the failure of qualities, great in ordinary political
agitation, they would give him credit when he said
that if ho were to deal with them in the ordinary course
of such agitation, he might establish in these two com-
mittees a case of imbecility or of political corruption
against one at least of their oven representatives ; but ho
did not so put it. He put it as showing how much the
subject of administrative reform was out of the ordinary
track of political discussion, and how much active sup-
port was particularly needed from those who usually
took little part in them, but were interested in the re-
form and progress of educational institutions. One cause
of disaster during the war appeared from the evidence to
have been the want of knowledge of the resources and
position of the enemy. As displayed on the committee
of inquiry, our first proceedings in relation to the Crimea
were immense gropings in the dark, and at vast hazards.
Now, for much of this state of ignorance the consular as
well as the diplomatic service was surely responsible,
if net for preceding information available for the war,
for the want of means of getting it ; and from our con-
suls, especially from our wider commercial relations,
more should be expected than from those of any other
country. Of the difference between the information de-
rivable from our service, particularly in the East, and that
derivable from the French service there, he had himself
means of judging, in consequence of the part he had
with his colleagues to take in the sanitary
congress for
the abolition of the impediments to commerce by qua-
rantines. He could not more strongly describe the
deficiencies of our service than by repeating statements
made to him by eminent and competent members of that
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source
as that in the military se
The people of Manchester must have seen the
commercial affairs as well as the political affairs of Eng-
land, the business of an important foreign port, entrusted
to the hands of Beau Brummel. Members of the con-
sular service, Englishmen who travel, would indicate to
you later minor diplomatic or consular appointments, if
not so conspicuous,
.really no batter in character. What
are the ordinary political doctrines as to such an appoint-
ment as that which he had indicated ? The evil is that the
patronage is Tory, it should be Wbig, said one; that it is
aristocratical, said another, and it should be democratical.
The remedy of one of their members on the Civil Sa-
laries Committee, and Mr. Hume's remedy would have
been to have reduced Beau Brnmmell's salary. Nut
that measure would scarcely have given to the Beau
Bruenrnells the qualities most required, those which in-
sure efficiency. On examining the qualities required in
a consul, for the promotion of the commercial intercourse
and affairs of a country—not to speak of its political
affairs—and trying the market value of such qualities
even in Manchester, it would, he (Mr. Chadwick) appre-
hended, be found that higher rather than lower pay-
ments were needed. With our neighbours the French,
in whatsoever foreign country a Frenchman is, the
French Consul must be his notary, his advocate, his
adviser in affairs of difficulty, and stand in the
stead of the legal and administrative institutions of
France. The French have profited by the experience
of the deficiencies of their consular service, and have
found that the qualities required can be insured by a
training tested by examinations, and no one can now be
made a consul of France who has not obtained some de-