WORK FOR THE EDUCATED UNEMPLOYED.
AN eminent man who recommends a method in the success of which he has obviously no personal interest ought always to be sure of a hearing. It would be well if this rule could be trusted to apply to Lord Curzon's letter in Monday's Westminster Gazette. Unfortunately, it is not possible to feel any strong assurance on this head. Englishmen are singularly careless on the subject of administrative improvements. The public business is got through somehow, and with that they are content. They will grumble, indeed, at those by. whom it is done, but they seldom ask whose fault it is that the results are unsatisfactory, or whether the simple explanation of our failures is not that we do not take sufficient pains to employ the best men, the men, that is, who are most likely to do that particular work well. Their attention is only arrested when the failure consequent on a wrong appointment can be brought home to one or other political party. Then their interest becomes excitement. But it is aroused not so much by the way in which the work of the country is done as by the circumstance that it is done by men of the wrong party.
Lord Curzon deals with a particular example of this indifference. The Government take a good deal of trouble in the filling up of certain offices, and "owing to the enormous extent of the Empire a larger number of Englishmen are engaged in the art of external govern- ment than• in the whole of the remaining countries in the world." But it is a necessity of the public service that promotion should come reasonably soon, and in order to secure this it is indispensable that retirement at a fixed age should be enforced. A post must be vacated before an appointment can be made to it, and unless, except in cases of a very unusual kind, the rule of retirement were compulsory, we should have a permanent Civil Service in the worst possible sense of the term. But an unfortunate consequence of this rule is that "at a certain time in their lives—usually when their strength is unimpaired—these men return to England, their official careers at an end ; and there is at this or any moment to be found within a three-mile radius of Whitehall a reserve of knowledge, ability, and experience in Imperial and administrative problems unequalled in any other country. What use do we make of this material ? So far as I can see, little or none at all." Most of us will go along with Lord Curzon up to this point. We are accustomed, and rightly accustomed, to think highly of our countrymen's success in ruling great provinces or in mediating between conflicting parties in self-governing Colonies. We see around us a number of men who have carried out great undertakings, or superin- tended with eminent tact and judgment the working of representative institutions. But it never seems to occur to us that the men whom we employ in this way may be capable of other work equally useful, if not equally conspicuous. We allow them to retire into an obscurity which means irritation to them and loss to ourselves, and there as a rule we leavelhem. If such a man "desires to continue to serve his country," he "is driven to become a party politician and to stand for the House of Commons —a sphere in which he seldom excels. The great residue struggle for places on commercial boards, or read occa- sional lectures to learned bodies, or rust in rural in- activity." Naturally, Lord Curzon is inclined to think it "a great reflection on our political system if we can find no place in it for such men."
But is he not a little hard on "our political system "? .We agree with him in thinking it matter for real regret that no plan by which retired officials can continue to give some part of their time to the service of the Stat,e has yet been devised. But it is hardly the fault of this or that system ; it is the fault, rather, of all systems. Under any kind of government a man is chosen for a particular work. He gives up that work, not because he is no longer able to do it, but because a younger man is waiting to take his place, and the interest of the Service demands that he should not be kept waiting too long. There is no other work which can be given to the retiring official. The staff is sufficiently large, and the °oup his retirement left in it is already closed. If it were desired to increase the number of men employed in that particular Department, the natural way would be to begin at the bottom. No doubt there is much other work waiting to be done in the world. But the retiring official may be known for the good performance of the particular work he has just left. It does not follow that he would be equally well suited for work of another kind, and those with whom his appointment would rest may have no means of satisfying themselves on this point. Lord Curzon suggests the extension of the principle of the India Council to other offices ; and this might help us to get rid of the reproach, not of our political system, but of the fact that in administration, as in other things, there are men wanting work, and capable of work, for whom we can find no employment. A Crown Colonies Council, or possibly more than one, might be formed on the lines of the India Council, and on this Council retired Governors might perhaps do good service. We say this rather doubt- fully, because men who are not engaged in the work of actual administration are apt not to take into account all the difficulties by which it is attended. They have not the responsibility of deciding in any given case what shall actually be done. They do but state their opinions to the Minister, and even the consciousness that he is in no way bound to act on them may help to give those opinions rather a speculative character. If,- indeed, it should appear that other offices would get on better if they were modelled on the plan of the India Office, it would be well to ask Parliament to create an expert Council for each of them. But we doubt whether the suggestion will meet with much encouragement from the heads of the offices in question, and unless they were clearly in favour of the plan, it would be extremely unwise to proceed with it. The knowledge that there are men in abundance competent to fill particular offices is not in itself a reason for creating these offices.
There is another and humbler direction in which we should be inclined to look for useful fruit from Lord Curzon's letter. He is concerned chiefly with unemployed ex-Governors, but below them there are plenty of retired Imperial officials of no little capacity who are equally unemployed. We have lost in many ways by the absence of ex-officio members from many public bodies. They supplied sometimes a useful check to local extravagance, sometimes a useful stimulus to local inertness. Why should not their places be supplied by the addition of a small percentage of nominated members to County, District, or Borough Councils, and to Boards of Guardians ? It would not be necessary, it might not even be expedient, that these nominated members should have votes. Their function might simply be to watch the proceedings, to examine the accounts, to give advice when they thought it would be of service, to put on record some criticisms which might enlighten the ratepayers in view of a local election, to inform the proper Department of the Government when there was need of investigation into the finance of a local body. We can hardly suppose that things would have gone quite so far in Poplar or West Ham if such nominated members had 'been present at the Guardians' meetings and cognisant of the Guardians' accounts. If lists were made of retired Civil servants Sin the various county and urban areas throughout the kingdom, it ought not to be difficult for the Government to find the right persons to nominate to these places ; and if they filled them well, as we feel no doubt would be the case, they might be a real benefit to the community. There is another function which we can imagine these retired officials discharging with success. The recent changes in the method of appointing Justices of the Peace will tend, we fear, to diminish the legal knowledge of the county Benches, if not their capacity for judging evidence. The old system assumed that men of estate and position would know enough of the principles of law and evidence to keep them from making mistakes. It was rash to assume this in all cases even then, and it would be still more rash to assume it when there is no longer even an indirect educational qualification demanded of a new Magistrate. Might not care be taken to reinforce the borough and. county Benches by retired ;Imperial adminis- trators ? Men who have had judicial experience in India would be especially useful in this capacity. No doubt many old Anglo-Indians and retired Colonial administrators already find their way to the Bench, but we should like to see their claims to appointment more clearly recognised and regularised.
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