III The Civil Service Examinations6
I. Historical Sketch
Up to the year 1853, the appointing of Civil Servants lay wholly in the hands of patrons. In 1853, patronage was severely condemned and competitive examination officially recommended, for the first time, in a Report by Sir Stafford Northcote and Sir Charles Trevelyan; but, while the recommendation was taken up in the following year and immediately acted upon in the Indian Civil Service, it was not till very much later that it was fully adopted in the Home Service. The history, indeed, of this last is somewhat peculiar. After the Report already referred to, came an Order of Council, of date May 21, 1855, in which we find it “ordered that all such young men as may be proposed to be appointed to any junior situation in any department of the Civil Service shall, before they are admitted to probation, be examined by or under the Directors of the said Commissioners, and shall receive from them a Certificate of Qualification for such situation”. This order was rigorously carried out by the Commissioners, and, although its absolute requirement was simply that the nominees should pass a certain examination, it, nevertheless, allowed the heads of departments to institute competition if they cared. Accordingly, we find that competition—but limited—was immediately set on foot in several of the offices, and the result led to the following remark in the Report of 1856:—
“We do not think it within our province to discuss the expediency of adopting the principle of open competition as contra-distinguished from examination; but we must remark that, both in the competitive examination for clerkships in our own and in other offices, those who have succeeded in attaining the appointments have appeared to us to possess considerably higher attainments than those who have come in upon simple nomination; and, we may add, that we cannot doubt that if it be adopted as a usual course to nominate several candidates to compete for each vacancy, the expectation of this ordeal will act most beneficially on the education and industry of those young persons who are looking forward to public employment.”
In 1857, a near approach was made to open competition, in the case of four clerkships awarded by the competing examination in the Commissioners’ own establishment. “The fact of the competition was not made public, but was communicated to one or two heads of schools and colleges, and mentioned casually to other persons at various times. The number of competitors who presented themselves was forty-six, of which number, forty-four were actually examined.”
[BEGINNING OF OPEN COMPETITION.]
It was reserved for 1858 to see the first absolutely open competition, in the case of eight writerships in the Office of the Secretary of State for India; and in that year, too, a step in advance was made when the Commissioners in their Report “pointed out the advantage which would result from enlarging the field of competition by substituting, for the plan of nominating three persons only to compete for each vacant situation, the system of nominating a proportionate number of candidates to compete for several appointments at one examination”.
The year 1860 sounded the death-knell of simple pass examination. It was then recommended by a Select Committee of the House of Commons, and the recommendation was adopted, that the competitive method, in its limited form, should be henceforth universally applied to junior situations. This recommendation was at once acted upon in the case of clerkships under the control of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, and others by and by followed; but, as matter of fact, it was never strictly carried out in all its scope and rigour; and as late as 1868 the Commissioners in their Report stated that “the number of situations filled on the competitive method has been comparatively small”. Meanwhile, competitive examination was making way in other quarters.
From 1857, the Commissioners had been in the habit of examining competitively, at the request of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, such candidates as might be nominated for cadetships in the Royal Irish Constabulary; and, in 1861, the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty “threw open to public competition” appointments as apprentices in Her Majesty’s dockyards, and appointments as “engineer students” in the steam factories connected therewith.
In 1870, the end so long aimed at was attained, and by an Order in Council of June 4, open competition was made the only door of entry to the general Civil Service.
In entire contrast with this, as has been already said, was the action in the case of the Indian Civil Service. Here the principle of open competition was adopted from the first, and the examination took a very elevated start, comprising the highest branches of a learned education. These branches were duly specified in a Report drawn up in November, 1854, by a Committee, of which Lord Macaulay was chairman; and, with the exception of Sanskrit and Arabic, they included simply (as might have been expected) the literary and scientific subjects ordinarily taught at the principal seats of general education in the Kingdom. These were:—
English Language and Literature (Composition, History, and General Literature,—to each of which 500 marks were assigned, making a total of 1,500); Greek and Latin (each with 750 marks); French, German, and Italian (valued at 375 marks, respectively); Mathematics, pure and mixed (marks 1,000); Natural and Moral Sciences (each 500); Sanscrit and Arabic (375 each).
[PRINCIPLE OF SELECTION OF SUBJECTS.]
The principle of selection here is clear and obvious. It did not rest upon any doctrine regarding the utility or value of subjects for mental training, but simply upon this, that those subjects already in the field must be accepted, and that (as Mr. Jowett, in his letter to Sir Charles Trevelyan, of January, 1854, put it) “it will not do to frame our examination on any mere theory of education. We must test a young man’s ability by what he knows, not by what we wish him to know.” Indeed, this is explicitly avowed in the Report by the author of the Scheme himself. The Natural Sciences are included, because (it is confessed) “of late years they have been introduced as a part of general education into several of our universities and colleges”: and, as for the Moral Sciences, “those Sciences are, it is well known, much studied both at Oxford and at the Scottish Universities”.
Into the details of Macaulay’s interesting Report, I need not here enter. Room, however, must be found for one quotation. It deals with the distribution of marks, and is both characteristic and puts the matter in small compass. “It will be necessary,” says the writer, “that a certain number of marks should be assigned to each subject, and that the place of a candidate should be determined by the sum total of the marks which he has gained. The marks ought, we conceive, to be distributed among the subjects of examination in such a manner that no part of the kingdom, and no class of schools, shall exclusively furnish servants to the East India Company. It would be grossly unjust, for example, to the great academical institutions of England, not to allow skill in Greek and Latin versification to have a considerable share in determining the issue of the competition. Skill in Greek and Latin versification has, indeed, no direct tendency to form a judge, a financier, or a diplomatist. But the youth who does best what all the ablest and most ambitious youths about him are trying to do well will generally prove a superior man; nor can we doubt that an accomplishment by which Fox and Canning, Grenville and Wellesley, Mansfield and Tenterden first distinguished themselves above their fellows, indicates powers of mind, which, properly trained and directed, may do great service to the State. On the other hand, we must remember that in the north of this island the art of metrical composition in the ancient languages is very little cultivated, and that men so eminent as Dugald Stewart, Horner, Jeffrey, and Mackintosh, would probably have been quite unable to write a good copy of Latin alcaics, or to translate ten lines of Shakspeare into Greek iambics. We wish to see such a system of examination established as shall not exclude from the service of the East India Company either a Mackintosh or a Tenterden, either a Canning or a Horner.”
[ORIGINAL SCHEME FOR THE INDIA SERVICE.]
Now, reverting to Macaulay’s Table of Subjects as above exhibited, I may observe that, till quite recently, no very serious alterations were ever made upon it. The scale of marks, indeed, was altered more than once, and sometimes Sanskrit and Arabic were struck off, and Jurisprudence and Political Economy put in their stead; but, if we except the exclusion of Political Philosophy in 1858, at the desire of the present Lord Derby, from the Moral Science branch, the list remained, till Lord Salisbury’s late innovation, to all intents and purposes what it was at the beginning. Here, for instance, is the prescription for 1875:—
MAKES
English Composition
History of England, including that of the laws
and constitution
English Language and Literature
Language, literature, and history of Greece
Rome
France
Germany
Italy
Mathematics, pure and mixed 1,250
Natural Sciences, that is, (1) chemistry, including
heat; (2) electricity and magnetism; (3) geology
and mineralogy; (4) zoology; (5) botany 1,000
*** The total (1,000) marks may be obtained by adequate proficiency in any two or more of the five branches of science included under this head.
Moral Sciences, that is, logic, mental and
moral philosophy
Sanskrit, language and literature
Arabic, language and literature
But Lord Salisbury’s changes have been great and sweeping. They are probably in keeping with the restriction of the competitor’s age to “over 17 under 19”; but, if so, they serve only to shew all the more conclusively that the restriction is a mistake. A scheme that distributes marks on anything but a rational and intelligent system; a scheme that excludes the Natural History Sciences, mineralogy and Geology, as well as Psychology and Moral Philosophy from its scope altogether; a scheme that prescribes only Elements and Outlines of such important subjects as Natural Science (Chemistry, Electricity and Magnetism, &c.) and Political Economy—stands self-condemned. But, to do it justice, let us produce the Table in extenso:—
MAKES.
English Composition
History of England, including a period selected
by the candidate
English Literature including books selected by
the candidate
Greek
Latin
French
German
Italian
Mathematics, pure and mixed 1,000
Natural Science, that is, the Elements of any
two of the following Sciences viz.:—
Chemistry, 500; Electricity and Magnetism,
300; Experimental Laws of Heat and Light,
300; Mechanical Philosophy, with Outlines
of Astronomy, 300.
Logic
Elements of Political Economy
Sanskrit
Arabic
Further remarks are reserved for the sequel. Meanwhile, I give the scheme advocated by myself in the present Essay:—
GENERAL SCIENCES:—
Mathematics
Natural Philosophy
Chemistry
Biology, as physiology
Mental Science
SPECIAL OR CONCRETE SCIENCES:— Mineralogy } Botany } each 250 Zoology } or 300 Geology }
As a substitute for language, literature, and philosophy
of Greece, Rome, France, Germany, and Italy:—
Greece—Institutions and History
Literature
Rome—Institutions and History
Literature
France—Literature
Germany—Literature
Italy—Literature
Modern History 1,000