CONSULAR REFORM: PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION.
Tuz repeated exposures of bad management in the Consular de- partment, which have recently been made, encourage a hope that some general interest may be awakened to the question how the evil is to be prevented in future.
Among other suggestions it has been thrown out that the most effective precaution would be to appoint no one to the Consular
office who has not been bred to the business, and given proofs of ability to discharge its duties. Lord PALMERSTON attempted, in the debate upon Mr. DISRAELI'S motion, to discountenance the proposal by representing it as impracticable : "There is," he is re- ported to have said, "no education for a Consul : there can by no possibility be any specific education for such an office, because the duties vary according to the place and country in which the Consul has to act, and from time to time according to the circumstances under which he may be placed."
The reasoning is curious. By the same argument, Lord PAL- MERSTON might have proved that there can be no specific education for any of the liberal professions whatever. There can be no spe- cific education for Engineer or Artillery officers, because their duties "vary according to the place and country in which they have to act." There can be no specific education for civil engineers, for the same reason. There can be no specific education for divines or medical men, because their duties vary "from time to time ac- cording to the circumstances under which they may be placed." There can be no specific education for lawyers, because their duties vary with the varying circumstances of every case in which they are engaged.
Professional education consists of two parts—the general or preparatory, and the special or practical. The former consists in the general instruction received by young men in those branches of knowledge which render them conversant with the extent and nature of their future duties, and exercise those mental faculties most in request in their profession. This part embraces the languages, in all liberal professions ; history and moral and intel- lectual science, with the lawyer and divine ; chemistry and mathe- matics, with the civil and military engineer ; chemistry and the different branches of natural history, with the physician. The special part of professional education consists in making the young man, prepared by a good general education, .rise by degrees from the practical discharge of the simpler and easier duties of his pro- fession to the more delicate and complicated. The soldier has to fight his way up from the post of subaltern to the higher com- mands ; the lawyer advances through the grades of junior and senior counsel to the bench ; the clergymen is a curate, then a rector or vicar, then a prebend, and lastly, if his good fortune or deserts bring him so far, a bishop. The sailor must have served as midshipman and lieutenant, and have passed his examinations, before he is intrusted with the command of a ship. By such arrange- ments a tolerable guarantee is afforded that the duties of these pro- fessions shall be discharged by competent persons. Is it or is it not possible to obtain a similar guarantee in the case of persons appointed to fill the important office of Consul ? The only things requisite to render professional education possible, are the existence of a profession, the existence of a body of duties which the con- venience or necessities of society have led it to intrust to the discharge of a class, and the recurrence of demands for the ser- vices of this class so frequent and regular that a numerous body may educate themselves to the employment, certain that there will always be employment for them. The Consular establishment of England is extensive and per- manent; and if it be not considered sufficiently so to encourage plenty of young men to study with the view of following it, there are other branches of the public service for which the same gene- ral or preliminary education might with advantage be demanded. The general information required in a Consul embraces—an ac- quaintance with statistics, and the theory of commerce ; a know- ledge of mercantile law, the law of nations, and public or consti- tutional law ; and a mastery of the leading languages of Europe and Asia. The same preliminary knowledge is required in candi- dates for entering the Diplomatic career ; and would be advan- tageous in all appointed:to clerkships in the various Government offices at home. The public service would be much benefited if testimonials of having gone through such a preliminary course of study and stood an examination to show how far they had profited by it were demanded from all for whom application is made for appointments in the public offices, or in the Consular or Diplo- matic establishments. The number of officials required in these departments requires annually so extensive a supply of recruits, that young men of promise would study with a view to the career of public employment, as they now study with a view to be ad- mitted into the Church, the medical and legal professions' and the Engineers and Artillery. In all the German States, such course of preliminary study is required in those who seek employment in the Government bureaus; and in this country the East India Com- pany has set a similar example.
What we have called the special part of professional education —the appointment of the candidate first to subordinate and then gradually to more and more important offices—is equally prac- ticable, and is the only arrangement by which good public ser- vants can be secured. Let men feel that by discharging well and faithfully duties of inferior importance they are sure to earn pro- motion, you give them a motive to be painstaking and active ; and by doing this, you take the only possible means of training efficient Consuls or any thing else. The best general education can only furnish as it were the raw material of the physician, lawyer, soldier, or diplomatist : it is the practice of his profession that must make him. The way to train good public servants, is to open up to them a possible field of high promotion, with a certainty that good conduct alone can command it. This field of promotion may be extended by leaving open the possibility of being transferred from one department of the Civil service of Government to another. The functions of the Consul and the Diplomatist are incompatible. the Consul injures his usefulness if he interferes with politics; and the Diplomatist has enough of business in baud without taking upon him the routine duties of the Consulate. But the same kind of knowledge and the same talents which fit a man for the one office are those which qualify him for the other. The Diplomatist would often act with more intelligence and success if he possessed knowledge which can only be acquired by having at some time or other acted as a Consul. On the other hand, a more respectable class of Consuls will be insured if they are taught to feel that their office, if less important than that of a Charge d'Affaires, is so in degree only, not in kind. With this view, the recognition of such a series of grades in the public service as the following might be productive of advantage—first, Clerks in the principal Govern- ment offices, and Attaches to the different Legations ; second, Consuls ; third, Charges d'Affaires, and other high Diplomatic officials. In each of the inferior grades opportunities would be obtained of acquiring the practical knowledge of business that qualifies for the grade above it, and of showing whether the occu- pant possessed the abilities entitling him to promotion. So far from Lord PeLmaasroies assertion, "there is no educa- tion for a Consul," being true, such an education is the only pos- sible basis for reform in our Consular and Diplomatic establish- ments, that shall combine the necessary efficiency with the ne- cessary economy.
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