Civil Appointment on a Basis of Competition. In the discussion on the India Bill of 1853, Mr. Macaulay remarked:: It is said, I know, that examinations in Latin, in Greek, and in mathematics, are no tests of what men will prove to be in life. I am perfectly aware that they are not infallible tests; but that they are tests I confidently maintain. Look at every walk of life, at this House, at the other House, at the Bar, at the Bench, at the Church, and see whether it be not true that those who attain bigh distinction in the world were generally men who were distinguished in their academic career. Indeed, s.r, this objection would prove far too much even for those who use it. It would prove that there is no use at all in education. Education would be a mere useless torture, if, at two or three and twenty, a man who had neglected his studies were exactly on a par with a man who had applied himself to them-exactly as likely to perform all the offices of public life with credit to himself and with advantage to society. Whether the English system of education be good or bad is not now the question. Perhaps I may think that too much time is given to the ancient languages and to the abstract sciences. But what then? Whatever be the languages, whatever be the sciences, which it is, in any age or country, the fashion to teach, the persons who become the greatest proficients in those languages and those sciences will generally be the flower of the youth; the most acute, the most industrious, the most ambitious of honorable distinctions. If the Ptolemaic system were taught at Cambridge instead of the Newtonian, the senior wrangler would, neverthe less, be in general a superior man to the wooden spoon. If, instead of learning Greek, we learned the Cherokee, the man who understood the Cherokee best, who made the most correct and melodious Cherokee verses, who comprehended most accurately the effect of the Cherokee particles, would generally be a superior man to him who was destitute of those accomplishments. If astrology were taught at our universities, the young man who cast nativities best would generally turn out a superior man. If alchemy were taught, the young man who showed most activity in the pursuit of the philosopher's stone would generally turn out a superior man. In the discussion on the India Bill of 1853, Mr. Macaulay remarked: There is something plausible in the proposition that you should allow him [the governor-general] to take able men wherever he finds them. But my firm opinion is, that the day on which the Civil Service of India ceases to be a close service will be the beginning of an age of jobbing-the most monstrous, the most extensive, and the most perilous system of abuse in the distribution of patronage that we have ever witnessed. Every governor-general would take out with him, or would soon be followed by, a crowd of nephews, first and second cousins, friends, sons of friends, and political hangers-on; while every steamer arriving from the Red Sea would carry to India some adventurer bearing with him testimonials from people of influence in England. The governorgeneral would have it in his power to distribute residencies, seats at the council board, seats at the revenue board, places of from four thousand to six thousand pounds a year, upon men without the least acquaintance with the character or habits of the natives, and with only such knowledge of the language as would enable them to call for another bottle of pale ale, or desire their attendant to pull the punka faster. In what way could you put a check ou such proceedings? Would you, the House of Commons, control them? Have you been so successful in extirpating nepotism at your own door, and in excluding all abuses from Whitehall and Somerset House, that you should fancy that you could establish purity in countries the situation of which you do not know, and the names of which you can not pronounce? I believe most fully that, instead of purity resulting from that arrangement to India, England itself would soon be tainted; and that before long, when a son or brother of some active member of this House went out to Calcutta, carrying with him a letter of recommenda tion from the prime minister to the governor-general, that letter would be really a bill of exchange drawn on the revenues of India for value received in Parliamentary support in this House. We are not without experience on this point. We have only to look back to those shameful and lamentable years which followed the first establishment of our power in Bengal. If you turn to any poet, satirist, or essayist of those times, you may see in what manner that system of appointment operated. There was a tradition in Calcutta that, during Lord Clive's second administration, a man came out with a strong letter of recommendation from one of the ministers. Lord Clive said in his peculiar way, 'Well, chap, how much do you want? Not being accustomed to be spoken to so plainly, the man replied that he only hoped for some situation in which his services might be useful. That is no answer, chap,' said Lord Clive. 'How much do you want? will a hundred thousand rupees do?' The person replied that he should be delighted if, by laborious service, he could obtain that competence. Lord Clive at once wrote out an order for the sum, and told the applicant to leave India by the ship he came in, and, once back in England, to remain there. I think that the story is very probable, and I also think that India ought to be grateful for the course which Lord Clive pursued; for, though he pillaged the people of Bengal to enrich this lucky adventurer, yet, if the man had received an appointment, they would have been pillaged, and misgoverned as well. Against evils like these there is one security, and, I believe, but one; and that is, that the Civil Service should be kept close. In reference to Lord Ellenborough's opposition to appointment by open competitive examination, Mr. Macaulay observed: If I understand the opinions imputed to that noble lord, he thinks that the proficiency of a young man in those pursuits which constitute a liberal education is not only no indication that he is likely to make a figure in after life, but that it positively raises a presumption that he will be passed by those whom he overcame in these early contests. I understand that the noble lord holds that young men who gain distinction in such pursuits are likely to turn out dullards, utterly unfit for an active career; and I am not sure that the noble lord did not say that it would be wiser to make boxing or cricket a test of fitness than a liberal education. It seems to me that there never was a fact proved by a larger mass of evidence, or a more unvaried experience than this: that men who distinguish themselves in their youth above their contemporaries almost always keep, to the end of their lives, the start which they have gained. This experience is so vast that I should as soon expect to hear any one question it, as to hear it denied that arsenic is poison, or that brandy is intoxicating. Take lown, in any library, the Cambridge calendar. There you have the list of hon ors for a hundred years. Look at the list of wranglers and of junior optimes; and I will venture to say that, for one man who has in after life distinguished himself among the junior optimes, you will find twenty among the wranglers. Take the Oxford calendar, and compare the list of first class men with an equal number of men in the third class. Is not our history full of instances which prove this fact? Look at the Church or the Bar. Look at Parliament, from the time that Parliamentary government began in this country; from the days of Montague and St. John to those of Canning and Peel. Look to India. The ablest man who ever governed India was Warren Hastings, and was he not in the first rank at Westminster? The ablest civil servant I ever knew in India was Sir Charles Metcalfe, and was he not of the first standing at Eton? The most eminent member of the aristocracy who ever governed India was Lord Wellesley. What was his Eton reputation? What was his Oxford reputation? I must also mention-I can not refrain from mentioning-another noble and distinguished governor-general. A few days ago, while the memory of the speech to which I have alluded was still fresh in my mind, I read in the 'Musa Cantabrigienses' a very elegant and classical ode by a young poet of seventeen, which the University of Cambridge rewarded with a gold medal; and with pleasure, not altogether unmingled with pain, I read at the bottom of that composition the name of the Honorable Edward Law, of St. John's College. I saw with pleasure that the name of Lord Ellenborough may be added to the long list of men who, in early youth, have by success in academical studies given the augury of the part which they were afterward to play in public life; and, at the same time, I could not but feel some concern and surprise that a nobleman so honorably distinguished in his youth by attention to those studies should, in his maturer years, have descended to use language respecting them which would have better become the lips of Ensign Northerton, or the captain in Swift's poem, who says. A scholard when first from his college broke loose But at cuffs I was always the cock of the school. If a recollection of his own early triumphs did not restrain the noble earl from using this language, I should have thought that his filial piety would have had that effect. I should have thought that he would have remembered how splendid was the academical career of that great and strong-minded magistrate, the late Lord Ellenborough. It is no answer to say that you can point-as it is desirable that you should be able to point-to two or three men of great powers who, having idled when they were young, stung with remorse and generous shame, have afterward exerted themselves to retrieve lost time. Such exceptions should be noted; for they seem intended to encourage those who, after having thrown away their youth from levity or love of pleasure, may be inclined to throw their manhood after it from despair; but the general rule is, beyond all doubt, that the men who were first in the competition of the schools have been first in the competition of the world. Macaulay clearly explained to the House how a system of competitive examination, by an infallible and self-acting process, maintains, and even raises, the standard of excellence, and how a system of pass examination tends surely and constantly to lower it. He supported his view by a chain of reasoning which has often been employed since, but to which no advocate of the old mode of appointment by private interest has even so much as attempted to reply. He said something against the superstition that proficiency in learning implies a want of energy and force of character; which, like all other superstitions, is cherished only by those who are unwilling to observe facts, are unable to draw deductions. A man who has forced his way to the front of English politics has afforded at least a strong presumption that he can hold his own in practical affairs; and there has been a Cabinet in which six out of the seven ministers in the House of Commons, who had been educated at the English universities, were either first class or double first class men. * His argument ran thus: Under a system of competition every man struggles to do his best; and the consequence is that, without any effort on the part of the examiner, the standard keeps itself up. But the moment that you say to the examiner, not, Shall A or B go to India?' but Here is A. Is he fit to go to India? the question becomes altogether a different one. The examiner's compassion, his good nature, his unwillingness to blast the prospects of a young man, lead him to strain a point in order to let the candidate in if he possibly can. That would be the case even if we suppose the dispensers of patronage left merely to the operation of their own minds; but you would have them subjected to solicitations of a sort which it would be impossible to resist. The father comes with tears in his eyes; the mother writes the most pathetic and heart-breaking letters. Very firm minds have often been shaken by appeals of that sort. But the system of competition allows nothing of the kind. The parent can not come to the examiner and say, 'I now very well that the other boy beat my son ; but please be good enough to say that my son beat the other boy." Macaulay did not vouchsafe more than a passing allusion to the theory that success in study is generally attended by physical weakness and dearth of courage and animal spirits. As if a good place in an examination list were any worse test of a sound constitution than the possession of family or political interest! As if a young fellow who can get the heart out of a book, and concentrate his faculties over a paper of questions, must needs be less able to sit a horse or handle a bat, and, if need be, to lead a forlorn hope or take charge of a famine stricken district, than the son of a person of fashion who has the car of a minister, or the nephew of an influential constituent who owns twenty public-houses in a Parliamentary borough! The Royal Engineers, the select of the select-every one of whom, before he obtains his commission, has run the gantlet of an almost endless series of intellectual contests-for years together could turn out the best foot-ball eleven in the kingdom, and within the last twelvemonth gained a success at cricket absolutely unprecedented in the annals of the game.* But special examples are not needed in order to confute the proposition that vigor of mind necessarily, or even frequently, goes with feebleness of body. It is not in deference to such sophistry as this that the fathers of Great Britain will ever surrender what is now the acknowledged birthright of their sons—the privilege of doing their country's work, and eating their country's bread, if only, in a fair and open trial, they can win for themselves the right to be placed on the roll of their country's servants. Before he sat down, Macaulay had shown how little faith his opponents themselves had in their own arguments. The noble lord,' he said, 'is of opinion that by encouraging natives to study the arts and learning of Europe we are preparing the way for the destruction of our power in India. I am utterly at a loss to understand how, while contemning education when it is given to Europeans, he should regard it with dread when it is given to natives. This training, we are told, makes a European into a book-worm, a twaddler, a man unfit for the active duties of life; but give the same education to the Hindoo, and it arms him with such an accession of intellectual strength, that an established government, with an army of two hundred and fifty thousand men, backed by the whole military and naval force of England, are to go down inevitably before its irresistible power.' *The match in question was played on the 20th and 21st of August, 1875, against an eleven of I Zinguri. Eight wickets of the Royal Engineers fell for an average of more than ninety runs a wicket; and this stupendous score was made against good bowling und excellent fielding Strictures on American Institutions-Jefferson. In 1857, Mr. Macaulay addressed to Henry S. Randall of Homer, N. Y., two letters, from which the following extracts are taken, suggested by a letter of Mr. Randall accompanying a presentation copy of his Life of Thomas Jefferson : Mr. Jefferson is not one of my heroes, and I can not reckon him among the benefactors of mankind. I readily admit that his intention was good, and his abilities considerable. I am perfectly aware of the immense progress which your country has made and is making in population and wealth. But I see no reason to believe that your progress would have been less rapid, that your laboring people would have been worse fed or clothed or taught, if your government had been conducted on the principles of Washington and Hamilton. Nay, you will, I am sure, acknowledge that the progress which you are now making is only a continuation of the progress which you have been making ever since the middle of the seventeenth century, and that the blessings which you now enjoy were enjoyed by your forefathers who were loyal subjects of the kings of England. The contrast between the laborer of New York and the laborer of Europe is not stronger now than it was when New York was governed by noblemen and gentlemen commissioned under the English great seal. And there are at this moment dependencies of the English crown in which all the phenomena which you attribute to purely democratical institutions may be seen in the highest perfection. The colony of Victoria, in Australia, was planted only twenty years ago. The population is now, I suppose, near a million. The revenue is enormous, near five millions sterling, and raised without any murmuring. The wages of labor are higher than they are even with you. Immense sums are expended on education. And this is a province governed by the delegate of a hereditary sovereign. It therefore seems to me quite clear that the facts which you cite to prove the excellence of purely democratic institutions ought to be ascribed not to those institutions, but to causes which operated in America long before your Declaration of Independence, and which are still operating in many parts of the British empire. You will perceive, therefore, that I do not propose, as you thought, to sacrifice the interests of the present generation to those of remote generations. It would, indeed, be absurd in a nation to part with institutions to which it is indebted for immense present prosperity from an apprehension that, after the lapse of a century, those institutions may be found to produce mischief. But I do not admit that the prosperity which your country enjoys arises from those parts of your polity which may be called, in an especial manner, Jeffersonian. Those parts of your polity already produce bad effects, and will, unless I am greatly mistaken, produce fatal effects if they shall last till North America has two hundred inhabitants to the square mile. I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both. In Europe, where the population is dense, the effect of such institutions would be almost instantaneous. What happened lately in France is an example. In 1848, a pure democracy was established there. During a short time there was reason to expect a general spoilation, a national bankruptcy, a new partition of the soil, a maximum of prices, a ruinous load of taxation laid on the rich for the purpose of supporting the poor in idleness. Such a system would, in twenty years, have made France as poor and barbarous as the France of the Carlovingians. Happily the danger was averted; and now there is a despotism, a silent tribune, an enslaved press. Liberty is gone, but civilization has been saved. I have not the smallest doubt that, if we had a purely democratic government here, the effect would be the same. Either the poor would plunder the rich, and civilization would perish, or order and prosperity would be saved by a strong military government, and liberty would perish. You may think that your country enjoys an exemption from these evils. I will frankly own to you that I am of a very different opinion. Your fate I believe to be certain, though it is deferred by a physical As long as you have a boundless extent of fertile and unoccupied land, your laboring population will be far more at ease than the laboring population cause. |