THE STAGNANT STATE OF THE CIVIL SERVICE.
WKEN a man joins any profession or calling in this country,— the Bar, the Church, Physic, or Trade,—it is generally considered that he has commenced a career of work, and that his advance- ment depends on himself. His joining the career is not counted a stroke of luck, or the achievement of a final success ; it is con- sidered in its right light as an honourable opportunity, the open- ing of a fair field. Joining the Civil Service is counted quite a different thing. Whether the young lad has attained his post through political influence or through the more honourable means of competition, he is considered to have made a great stroke of good fortune ; he is "provided for life " ; he has got a " snug berth," and one hears little or nothing of work to be done, of ad- vancement depending on himself, or of the career opened to a clever young man. Everything combines to make the Government offices little castles of indolence. There is sure salary ; no possible bankruptcy or failure can affect John Bull's big purse. There is secure posi- tion ; each employe of the Crown has a vested interest in his post, and even if his services should in course of time be found not wanted he receives compensation. Increase of salary is given year by year, or in classes, not according to individual conduct or for increase of work. Promotion is, as a general rule, accorded to seniority ; and it is well known that none but very serious offences will retard promotion or cause dismissal. Here are five powerful causes at work, inducing a general disposition to take things easy in a Government office ; and though there are indi- viduals and offices distinguished for hard work, it is no libel to say that all the offices are notoriously easier as regards work than any private office. The present state of things supplies, therefore, a curious contrast. The young hero of a competitive examination, Who has wasted midnight oil in preparation, who has struggled Manfully with his many rivals, who has been chased up and down through history and geography from the early Phoenicians to the settlement of British Columbia—who is asked to compose essays—to do difficult sums in arithmetic—to write correctly to dictation—to correct letters horribly misspelled— and who issues from the examination-room pale and anxious, finds himself on joining the office thrown into an entirely new ele- Meat. After a rough and perilous passage through the Magel- lan's Straits of the Civil Service Commission he glides into the Pacific Ocean of official life. He thinks that he may now have fo apply some of the knowledge and ability so keenly tested, but he finds his fellow clerks reading the Times, and discussing ear- nestly not the wars of the first but the coming war of the third Napoleon. Any question of " the habits and manners of the natives of Kamstchatka," (such pets in Dean's Yard,) is subordi- nate to the very natural question as to the quality of the pale ale supplied by the next public-house, and no legislation by Justinian, Edward I., or Leopold of Tuscany is one half so interesting as the Superannuation Bill which may cause " old Jones to retire," (there is always an old Jones in every office who ought to but does not retire,) and "give us all a lift.' The actual business of the office is found to be utterly uninteresting ; the clerks never talk of it by choice ; the junior, if too anxious about it, is laughed at and told to wait until he is six months in the office, and when the six months come round he has attained the desired official sang froid. There is nothing strange in all this ; it would be strange were it not so. Government clerks are of no peculiar genus ; nor are they spe- cially unconscientious ; take any set of men—make the surety of their pay, the security of their position, their increase of sa- lary, and their promotion depend on matters foreign to their own behaviour, and you will have the same result. It was thought by the Administrative Reformers that the sole remedy lay in ap- pointing clever young men ; but clever young men under a le- thargic leaden system became as apathetic in official work as the dullest drudge. There were under the old system as there are now many clever men in the service—but without a good system of supervision, without the stimuli which would await them in a profession, they settled down into the easy pace of official progress. The exceptions to this rule are to be found in the higher ranks of the service ; many of the men invested with responsibility and high position work hard and zealously because they are near the fountain head ; they arc near the source of reward and honour, and from being admitted into confidence they feel an interest in the work. Ent from the junior to the middle ranks one finds an apathy as to the office-work, eating away the energy of three-fourths of the service. The young man who, fresh from his laurels in the literary fight, enters his office full of a wish for woh, finds himself gradually demoralized by the absence of industry\ around him and by the knowledge he soon acquires that his Oepart- mental superiors hardly know whether he works or is idW ; that if they know they rarely care, for they are not respongible for him ; and if they cared they could not reward him without stepping out of their way so far that it would requirle some moral courage to face the surprised discontent at the unusua‘ act of i
eel
of this official stagnation at the very age and at the very pert -6 ,
his official career, when he would be most susceptible to go6trin4'
fluences, when he could be trained up as a good clerk, cdalcrbil taught to like his work and to take an interest in his deparikiiiiiP., Many who know our government offices as at present"sriankill- will smile at this rather Utopian picture : but there is notiiNgtinl work done for the State that it should be done slowly and feebly ;‘, all we want is a better organization to call out the energy which.: exists as largely in the Civil Service as in any other profession., Any reform of this kind is especially feasible now that the Civil,' Service Commissioners have secured us the undoubted advantagC of well-educated clerks. meting out rewards and deprivations otherwise than accordin seniority. It is the especial evil of the present system that young man just entering an office is subjected to the bad influ
The question of a remedy presents some difficulty. We mulcts not without large inconvenience and wide confusion for years change the system at once into the vigorous free life of a merchant's office where the clerks are dismissed or promoted without any reason beyond the wishes of the bead managers— where each works with the zeal inspired by the consciousness that he holds his office strictly during his best behaviour and that he has no other claim to his desk. If you entrust such power to the chiefs of Government offices, you should, at the same time, ensure a strict regulated responsibility extending upwards, and a deliberate publicity of all the orders affecting promotions and rewards : and you should, which would be more difficult, supply
Lords and public spirit to your chiefs, and to the ar& of the Treasury to induce them to dismiss Secretaries and Commis- sioners for not making their clerks work better. Without these safeguards your promotion by merit would have many evils. In some cases it would be merely promotion for personal favouritism : in other cases it would be promotion for an ability foreign to the office work, (as where a man in a financial office might be pro- moted for his literary talent,) and in some cases no doubt it would be a conscientious promotion for merit. But in all three classes of cases promotion by merit would cause in many offices a discon- tent among the men passed over which might go far to counter- balance the advantages of rewarding the merit of the man promoted. If such a promotion takes place in a merchant's office there may be discontent in the office, but the men passed over know that even, their inferior position is not secure, and that there will be no ce- remony in dismissing a discontented subordinate. But a civil servant passed over is still permanent ; custom and vested inte- rest and the public jealousy of the authorities make him so, and he may evince his discontent pretty freely by very deliberate idleness. We present these difficulties not as any final argument on the question of promotion by seniority versus promotion by merit, (we may dispose of that whole question another day,) but as showing that it would be a radical and wholesale change not without its evils. The question is whether without this radical change opposed to the traditions and tone of the present service you might not introduce by degrees a wholesome current of fresh life—as in the House of Commons, ventilating the service from below.
In a previous paper the proposed r eform was briefly sketched. It consists mainly in providing that every clerk joining the ser- vice—instead of obtaining at once as he now does a permanent post secure against all chances, unaffected as a general rule by his own conduct, and leading up to promotion by regular steps— should join a staff of junior clerks, expressly employed on trial, and liable to the cessation of their employment at three months' notice—but with the sure hope of advancing to the permanent posts of the office by diligence and good conduct; it being• laid down as an unalterable rule that no one could obtain a permanent clerkship save by serving three years as a temporary clerk. The great reason for this reform is that competitive exami- nations are not a sufficient test of official fitness. The advocates of these examinations vaunt themselves extreme reformers, but we go much further than they ; we accept their test, but demand an- other and more searching test—the best of all tests—a trial in the office itself of the real qualities of the man. A clever fellow may brace himself up for an examination of two or three days and pass it, and yet he may be incurably indolent ; a man may be a • habitual drunkard and yet through a great natural ability or cu- rious resources of learning may pass the examination : these faults, unexposed now, the proposed official ordeal will detect. (As to the supposed guarantee provided by the certificates of moral charac- ter it is known how easy it is for almost any one to obtain such certificates from weak well-meaning persons). There are other habits and belongings, not necessarily immoral, which would. make a man very undesirable as an official : he may be so loaded with debt as to draw a crowd of creditors or bailiffs to the office, or he may through low habits make it a custom to drink ale at. public-houses with the office messengers. (This last case we, know to have occurred ; puzzling the heads of the department how to deal with an offence most injurious to office discipline bat- at hardly vv. thin the scope of official cognisance). All these things and the opposite qualities of really good clerks would be
tested 1 y the term of probation through which under the . new syatem each clerk would have to pass. For the first
three sears of his official career he would find himself on real'. probation—not the present nominal probation where a clerk,' it is foolishly supposed will be dismissed in six montlifif not found competent, but 'a real probation inasmuch as he cannot emerge from the junior class of clerks unless he proves himself fit for a higher post. A. probation depending on the per- sonal firmness of superiors, and having no alternatives but dis- missal or retention, is sure to fall through on account of the na- tural unwillingness of the chiefs to dismiss a young man whom custom has taught to feel secure. But by establishing a proba- tionary class from which none can emerge save the man who shows his special fitness for promotion to the higher class you compel the heads of departments to select the superior men : you give to all of this probationary class an inducement to work and you secure to the young civil servant the certainty that the first three years of his official life will be passed, not dawdling over the Times or discussing rival pale ales, but in trying to win the good will of his superiors, and in fitting himself by self-education for a higher post. We should suggest as we indicated before, that the clerks in this junior class should have two avenues of promotion. (1.) Of every two vacancies one should be at the dis- posal of the heads of the department to be given at their pleasure to any one of the junior clerks irrespective of seniority who had been three years in the office, and who had done his duty en- tirely to their satisfaction, subject to an examination in the branches of official knowledge (bookkeeping or French or composi- tion) likely to be required in his future duties ; the clerk getting fair notice—three or six months—of such intended examination ; for in his attention to his official duties he may not have had time to keep himself quite up to the mark in these matters. (2.) Every second vacancy in the permanent staff should be awarded to the successful competitor in a competitive examination open to all the members of the junior or temporary class in the office—the examination being strictly confined to the branches of know- ledge or kinds of ability likely to be required in the office. By these means you secure two great ends ; you give to all your younger clerks powerful inducements to work hard at their office work ; to execute their orders with zeal ; and to continue by self-culture that education which achieved their entrance into the office. '
Previous page
