ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM ASSOCIATION'S FIRST BILL.
AFIER a long silence, the Administrative Reformers have reap- peered with an address that has the tone of men who mean to con- centrate their energies upon practical measures, and it is accom- panied by their first project of legislation in the form of an actual bill. The will of the people upon the subject of Administrative Reform, they say, must be declared without room for doubt in the next session of Parliament ; and the Association fasten upon their first work in a measure " to purge Parliament from the corruption of place-hunting," by taking the patronage of appointments to the civil departments from.the Treasury, and reposing it in a Commis- sion of a limited number under the Crown. The Commissioners are to hold examinations-throughout the country, open to all citi- zens who may choose to apply ; through that channel, and none other, shall the post of junior clerk be attained. This projeot is a beginning which is likely to attract a considerable amount of pub- lic approbation; we have .to consider, however, whether it is likely to fulfil that expectation, or to create that kind of movement which would call forth the largest amount of political energy in its support. The system of patronage has undermined the independence of Parliament, even since corrupt Parliaments were professedly ended by the Reform Act; and the announcement of several Members that they intend to discontinue their visits to the Treasury to canvass patronage •for their constituents, shows at once that the evil is practically mischievous and that there is a decided reaction against it. Indeed, the movement of the Members suggests a question whether the object cannot be attained without a bill; whether publkc opinion, operating not less upon Government than upon Members, will- not continue that improvement which has y•commenced. By the declarations of Members who have avowed their intention of being no longer the instrument for in- voking that.patronage which places the House of Commons at the command of-the Treasury, we are reminded that the corruption does not begin either with the Treasury or with the Members, but with the constituencies; and a bill for controlling the Treasury and the House of Commons alone would do comparatively little ' towards purging that body which is really the depository of the political disease—the constituencies.
. We turn then to the bill to see what it is-made of. It professes to be a statute for regulating the appointment.of clerks in the Civil Service; and it authorizes her Majesty to appoint three competent persons as a Board of Examiners. The Examiners are to deter- mine in -what subjects candidates for civil employment shall be ex- ' amined,so as to ascertain their general qualifications for the service ' at large, and special qualifications for the particular departments. The attainments of candidates are to be indicated by marks; and after the examination, the best of the candidates are to receive the appointment in succession according to the number of marks that they have obtained. The bill provides that no officer under the act shall-sit in Parliament.
So far the arrangement appears to be calculated to prevent the corruption of Members or the corrupt action of the Treasury. The authors of the bill admit that no human institutions can work per- 1 featly, and that their plan may be open to question. That the Commissioners =themselves might be corrupted—that plans might be devised for evading all rules—that local examinations might be managed—are objections of less force than the general remark, that, the real corruption lying in-the constituent body, we cannot hope to drive it out of the public departments, or out of the politi- cal action of the country, so long as the body of the people, hold- ing the franchise or possessing local influence, are guided by low instead of high motives. The most important objection in.the scheme is indicated by the I fourteenth clause—
"Provided always, that nothing in this act contained shall alter or affect the powers of any head of any office or department, or other person, to regu- late the duties and promotions of clerks therein, or their suspension or dia- missal therefrom."
How far this would be effectual in checking the tendency of the bill unduly to contract the power of the heads of the departments over their subordinates we cannot tell. Before we -can judge of the measure, also, we need to be informed what would be its pro- bable operition in giving to the civil servants who entered through a competitive examination a certain vested right in -their posts ? If the representatives of the middle classes throughout the country should enter the public departments as a matter of right conse- quent upon a certain scholastic success, the tenure of the junior clerks would be very -different from that of servants in the or- dinary sense of the word. No statutable powers retained or created for the superior officers would give that power over their subordinates which is essential to complete discipline ; and, besides the possibility that subordinates holding their posts through an independent authority might be very little pliant and obedient in the hands of their superiors, there is the further contingency that such a method of appointing the sub- ordinate members for the public departments throughout the country would create a distinct official class, strengthened in its tenure by the very independence which such a constitution secures, and therefore having interests and rights separated at once • from the superior Government and from the body of the people. In a somewhat different way an official class has been created, in Germany ; and the tendency to bureaucratic government has been noticed by all visitors of the German states, as tending to bring about the present corrupt condition of the government at large. What we. see there is a class government in its most concentrated. form—that is, not the government of one class by another, but the creation of a class in whom the government is vested ex officio, and whose tenure, interests, and corporate feelings, are distinct from those of the governed.
These, we say, are considerations which have to be weighed with reference to the bill laid before the public by the Administrative Reformers. They suggest to us the question, whether, in proceed- ing at once to legislation, the Administrative Reformers are not guilty of an anachronism, and are not anticipating one branch of their functions to the neglect of another, which is at present mare important. Several leaders of their body have made distinct charges of maladministration against the public departments ; but as yet we have had no tangible and substantial evidence upon the subject. We have had debates in Parliament, more or less favour- able to one side or the other, upon the whole rather leaving the Administrative Reformers at a disadvantage. We have had ex- tracts from old blue books, and other publications bearing upon the inefficient organization of the public departments, but not a single attempt to anatomize any one of these impugned departments. This is the first business. If the Civil Service is corrupt, badly organized, in indifferent repair, let us know the evil exactly as it is. There is the.proper instrument for tearing open any institutions what- ever, in " the grand inquest of the nation "—the House of Com- mons. If a prima. facie charge can be made against a public department, trial is the process which the traditions of this coun- try, the forms of our institutions, and the national feeling, will perfectly support. We want to know the evil—to anatomize it, tear it open, and lay it bare to the public view, before we can de- sign the remedy or legislate. No doubt, when bad methods of administration are exposed, it greatly assists to direct the inquiry and to stimulate exertion if better methods of conducting the same business be pointed out by way of illustration: but if the reformer hastens to the business of putting his illustrations as mature enactments, he incurs the threefold danger of making sug- gestions which can be anticipated by those already in office, who can thus make his interference apparently nugatory—of proposing arrangements which will not work so well as the adaptations of the men whom he intends to discredit ; and by dictating the con- ditions under which official people must conduct their affairs, he limits their responsibility proportionately, and gives them the right of pleading in excuse for maladministration, that they are crippled by the restraints upon theit authority. The first thing we want, then, is the anatomy of the public departments, or of one of them as a sample. Publics opinion would completely sup- port the Administrative Reformers in that preliminary process, and from the inquiry the form of legislation would naturally spring.