not be found to comprise a thorough knowledge of all the ordinary
rules, together with practised and quick skill, my career in life
could not be made at the Post Office. Going down the main stairs
of the building,--stairs which have I believe been now pulled down
to make room for sorters and stampers,--Clayton Freeling told me
not to be too down-hearted. I was myself inclined to think that I
had better go back to the school in Brussels. But nevertheless I
went to work, and under the surveillance of my elder brother made
a beautiful transcript of four or five pages of Gibbon. With a
faltering heart I took these on the next day to the office. With
my caligraphy I was contented, but was certain that I should come
to the ground among the figures. But when I got to "The Grand,"
as we used to call our office in those days, from its site in
St. Martin's le Grand, I was seated at a desk without any further
reference to my competency. No one condescended even to look at my
beautiful penmanship.
That was the way in which candidates for the Civil Service were
examined in my young days. It was at any rate the way in which I
was examined. Since that time there has been a very great change
indeed;--and in some respects a great improvement. But in regard
to the absolute fitness of the young men selected for the public
service, I doubt whether more harm has not been done than good. And
I think that good might have been done without the harm. The rule
of the present day is, that every place shall be open to public
competition, and that it shall be given to the best among the
comers. I object to this, that at present there exists no known
mode of learning who is best, and that the method employed has no
tendency to elicit the best. That method pretends only to decide
who among a certain number of lads will best answer a string of
questions, for the answering of which they are prepared by tutors,
who have sprung up for the purpose since this fashion of election
has been adopted. When it is decided in a family that a boy shall
"try the Civil Service," he is made to undergo a certain amount of
cramming. But such treatment has, I maintain, no connection whatever
with education. The lad is no better fitted after it than he was
before for the future work of his life. But his very success fills
him with false ideas of his own educational standing, and so far
unfits him. And, by the plan now in vogue, it has come to pass that
no one is in truth responsible either for the conduct, the manners,
or even for the character of the youth. The responsibility was
perhaps slight before; but existed, and was on the increase.
There might have been,--in some future time of still increased
wisdom, there yet may be,--a department established to test the
fitness of acolytes without recourse to the dangerous optimism of
competitive choice. I will not say but that there should have been
some one to reject me,--though I will have the hardihood to say
that, had I been so rejected, the Civil Service would have lost
a valuable public servant. This is a statement that will not, I
think, be denied by those who, after I am gone, may remember anything
of my work. Lads, no doubt, should not be admitted who have none of
the small acquirements that are wanted. Our offices should not be
schools in which writing and early lessons in geography, arithmetic,
or French should be learned. But all that could be ascertained
without the perils of competitive examination.
The desire to insure the efficiency of the young men selected, has
not been the only object--perhaps not the chief object--of those
who have yielded in this matter to the arguments of the reformers.
There had arisen in England a system of patronage, under which it
had become gradually necessary for politicians to use their influence
for the purchase of political support. A member of the House of
Commons, holding office, who might chance to have five clerkships
to give away in a year, found himself compelled to distribute them
among those who sent him to the House. In this there was nothing
pleasant to the distributer of patronage. Do away with the system
altogether, and he would have as much chance of support as another.
He bartered his patronage only because another did so also. The
beggings, the refusings, the jealousies, the correspondence, were
simply troublesome. Gentlemen in office were not therefore indisposed
to rid themselves of the care of patronage. I have no doubt their
hands are the cleaner and their hearts are the lighter; but I do
doubt whether the offices are on the whole better manned.
As what I now write will certainly never be read till I am dead, I
may dare to say what no one now does dare to say in print,--though
some of us whisper it occasionally into our friends' ears. There
are places in life which can hardly be well filled except by
"Gentlemen." The word is one the use of which almost subjects one
to ignominy. If I say that a judge should be a gentleman, or a
bishop, I am met with a scornful allusion to "Nature's Gentlemen."
Were I to make such an assertion with reference to the House of
Commons, nothing that I ever said again would receive the slightest
attention. A man in public life could not do himself a greater
injury than by saying in public that the commissions in the army or
navy, or berths in the Civil Service, should be given exclusively
to gentlemen. He would be defied to define the term,--and would
fail should he attempt to do so. But he would know what he meant,
and so very probably would they who defied him. It may be that the
son of a butcher of the village shall become as well fitted for
employments requiring gentle culture as the son of the parson.
Such is often the case. When such is the case, no one has been more
prone to give the butcher's son all the welcome he has merited than
I myself; but the chances are greatly in favour of the parson's son.
The gates of the one class should be open to the other; but neither
to the one class nor to the other can good be done by declaring
that there are no gates, no barrier, no difference. The system of
competitive examination is, I think, based on a supposition that
there is no difference.
I got into my place without any examining. Looking back now, I think
I can see with accuracy what was then the condition of my own mind
and intelligence. Of things to be learned by lessons I knew almost
less than could be supposed possible after the amount of schooling
I had received. I could read neither French, Latin, nor Greek.
I could speak no foreign language,--and I may as well say here as
elsewhere that I never acquired the power of really talking French.
I have been able to order my dinner and take a railway ticket, but
never got much beyond that. Of the merest rudiments of the sciences
I was completely ignorant. My handwriting was in truth wretched. My
spelling was imperfect. There was no subject as to which examination
would have been possible on which I could have gone through an
examination otherwise than disgracefully. And yet I think I knew
more than the average young men of the same rank who began life at
nineteen. I could have given a fuller list of the names of the poets
of all countries, with their subjects and periods,--and probably