All who care for the best traditions of our Civil
Service will hear with regret of the resignation of Sir Bernard Mallet, the Registrar-General. Though he has not elected to belong to the new class of Civil servant, and has never studied the arts and crafts of self-advertisement, and again has not arrogated to himself the functions which belong to the Parliamentary Chief, he has done excellent public work. By maintaining the highest traditions of the English Civil Service, to which he and his family have belonged for four generations, he earned the nation's gratitude. It is 120 years ago since Mr. Pitt appointed Sir Bernard Mallet's grandfather, the son of Mallet du Pan, the greatest of all the journalists and publicists of the epoch of the French Revolution, to a post in the Civil Service— that of Secretary to the Board of Audit—a poet which he occupied for forty years. Since 1800 there has been a complete continuity of service from father to eon. Mr. Mallet, born a citizen of the Republics of Dense and Geneva, became a naturalized Englishman. His son, the late Sir Lewis Mallet, also entered the Civil Service and did admirable work tired at the Board of Trade and then at the Indian Office. Sir Lewis Mallet may be described as one of our chief Civil servants during the period when their influence was greatest,.
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