It would be out of place in this treatise to discuss the question into
what departments or branches the executive business of government may
most conveniently be divided. In this respect the exigencies of
different governments are different; and there is little probability
that any great mistake will be made in the classification of the
duties when men are willing to begin at the beginning, and do not hold
themselves bound by the series of accidents which, in an old
government like ours, has produced the existing division of the public
business. It may be sufficient to say that the classification of
functionaries should correspond to that of subjects, and that there
should not be several departments independent of one another, to
superintend different parts of the same natural whole, as in our own
military administration down to a recent period, and in a less degree
even at present. Where the object to be attained is single (such as
that of having an efficient army), the authority commissioned to
attend to it should be single likewise. The entire aggregate of means
provided for one end should be under one and the same control and
responsibility. If they are divided among independent authorities, the
means with each of those authorities become ends, and it is the
business of nobody except the head of the government, who has probably
no departmental experience, to take care of the real end. The
different classes of means are not combined and adapted to one another
under the guidance of any leading idea; and while every department
pushes forward its own requirements, regardless of those of the rest,
the purpose of the work is perpetually sacrificed to the work itself.
As a general rule, every executive function, whether superior or
subordinate, should be the appointed duty of some given individual. It
should be apparent to all the world who did every thing, and through
whose default any thing was left undone. Responsibility is null when
nobody knows who is responsible; nor, even when real, can it be
divided without being weakened. To maintain it at its highest, there
must be one person who receives the whole praise of what is well done,
the whole blame of what is ill. There are, however, two modes of
sharing responsibility; by one it is only enfeebled, by the other
absolutely destroyed. It is enfeebled when the concurrence of more
than one functionary is required to the same act. Each one among them
has still a real responsibility; if a wrong has been done, none of
them can say he did not do it; he is as much a participant as an
accomplice is in an offense: if there has been legal criminality, they
may all be punished legally, and their punishment needs not be less
severe than if there had been only one person concerned. But it is not
so with the penalties any more than with the rewards of opinion; these
are always diminished by being shared. Where there has been no
definite legal offense, no corruption or malversation, only an error
or an imprudence, or what may pass for such, every participator has an
excuse to himself and to the world in the fact that other persons are
jointly involved with him. There is hardly any thing, even to
pecuniary dishonesty, for which men will not feel themselves almost
absolved, if those whose duty it was to resist and remonstrate have
failed to do it, still more if they have given a formal assent.
In this case, however, though responsibility is weakened, there still
is responsibility: every one of those implicated has in his individual
capacity assented to, and joined in the act. Things are much worse
when the act itself is only that of a majority--a board deliberating
with closed doors, nobody knowing, or, except in some extreme case,
being ever likely to know, whether an individual member voted for the
act or against it. Responsibility in this case is a mere name.
"Boards," it is happily said by Bentham, "are screens." What "the
Board" does is the act of nobody, and nobody can be made to answer for
it. The Board suffers, even in reputation, only in its collective
character; and no individual member feels this further than his
disposition leads him to identify his own estimation with that of the
body--a feeling often very strong when the body is a permanent one,
and he is wedded to it for better for worse; but the fluctuations of a
modern official career give no time for the formation of such an
_esprit de corps_, which, if it exists at all, exists only in the
obscure ranks of the permanent subordinates. Boards, therefore, are
not a fit instrument for executive business, and are only admissible
in it when, for other reasons, to give full discretionary power to a
single minister would be worse.
On the other hand, it is also a maxim of experience that in the
multitude of councillors there is wisdom, and that a man seldom judges
right, even in his own concerns, still less in those of the public,
when he makes habitual use of no knowledge but his own, or that of
some single adviser. There is no necessary incompatibility between
this principle and the other. It is easy to give the effective power
and the full responsibility to one, providing him when necessary with
advisers, each of whom is responsible only for the opinion he gives.
In general, the head of a department of the executive government is a
mere politician. He may be a good politician, and a man of merit; and,
unless this is usually the case, the government is bad. But his
general capacity, and the knowledge he ought to possess of the general
interests of the country, will not, unless by occasional accident, be
accompanied by adequate, and what may be called professional knowledge
of the department over which he is called to preside. Professional
advisers must therefore be provided for him. Wherever mere experience
and attainments are sufficient--wherever the qualities required in a
professional adviser may possibly be united in a single well-selected
individual (as in the case, for example, of a law officer), one such
person for general purposes, and a staff of clerks to supply knowledge
of details, meet the demands of the case. But, more frequently, it is
not sufficient that the minister should consult some one competent
person, and, when himself not conversant with the subject, act
implicitly on that person's advice. It is often necessary that he
should, not only occasionally, but habitually, listen to a variety of
opinions, and inform his judgment by the discussions among a body of
advisers. This, for example, is emphatically necessary in military and
naval affairs. The military and naval ministers, therefore, and
probably several others, should be provided with a Council, composed,
at least in those two departments, of able and experienced
professional men. As a means of obtaining the best men for the purpose
under every change of administration, they ought to be permanent; by
which I mean that they ought not, like the Lords of the Admiralty, to
be expected to resign with the ministry by whom they were appointed;
but it is a good rule that all who hold high appointments to which
they have risen by selection, and not by the ordinary course of
promotion, should retain their office only for a fixed term, unless
reappointed, as is now the rule with staff appointments in the British
army. This rule renders appointments somewhat less likely to be
jobbed, not being a provision for life, and the same time affords a
means, without affront to any one, of getting rid of those who are
least worth keeping, and bringing in highly qualified persons of
younger standing, for whom there might never be room if death
vacancies, or voluntary resignations were waited for.
The councils should be consultative merely, in this sense, that the
ultimate decision should rest undividedly with the minister himself;
but neither ought they to be looked upon, or to look upon themselves
as ciphers, or as capable of being reduced to such at his pleasure.
The advisers attached to a powerful and perhaps self-willed man ought
to be placed under conditions which make it impossible for them,
without discredit, not to express an opinion, and impossible for him
not to listen to and consider their recommendations, whether he adopts
them or not. The relation which ought to exist between a chief and
this description of advisers is very accurately hit by the
constitution of the Council of the Governor General and those of the
different Presidencies in India. These councils are composed of
persons who have professional knowledge of Indian affairs, which the
governor general and governors usually lack, and which it would not be
desirable to require of them. As a rule, every member of council is
expected to give an opinion, which is of course very often a simple
acquiescence; but if there is a difference of sentiment, it is at the
option of every member, and is the invariable practice, to record the
reasons of his opinion, the governor general, or governor, doing the
same. In ordinary cases the decision is according to the sense of the
majority; the council, therefore, has a substantial part in the
government; but if the governor general, or governor, thinks fit, he
may set aside even their unanimous opinion, recording his reasons. The
result is, that the chief is individually and effectively responsible
for every act of the government. The members of council have only the
responsibility of advisers; but it is always known, from documents
capable of being produced, and which, if called for by Parliament or
public opinion always are produced, what each has advised, and what
reasons he gave for his advice; while, from their dignified position,
and ostensible participation in all acts of government, they have
nearly as strong motives to apply themselves to the public business,
and to form and express a well-considered opinion on every part of it,
as if the whole responsibility rested with themselves.
This mode of conducting the highest class of administrative business
is one of the most successful instances of the adaptation of means to
ends which political history, not hitherto very prolific in works of
skill and contrivance, has yet to show. It is one of the acquisitions
with which the art of politics has been enriched by the experience of
the East India Company's rule; and, like most of the other wise
contrivances by which India has been preserved to this country, and an
amount of good government produced which is truly wonderful
considering the circumstances and the materials, it is probably
destined to perish in the general holocaust which the traditions of
Indian government seem fated to undergo since they have been placed at
the mercy of public ignorance and the presumptuous vanity of political
men. Already an outcry is raised for abolishing the councils as a
superfluous and expensive clog on the wheels of government; while the
clamor has long been urgent, and is daily obtaining more countenance
in the highest quarters, for the abrogation of the professional civil
service, which breeds the men that compose the councils, and the
existence of which is the sole guaranty for their being of any value.
A most important principle of good government in a popular
constitution is that no executive functionaries should be appointed by
popular election, neither by the votes of the people themselves, nor
by those of their representatives. The entire business of government
is skilled employment; the qualifications for the discharge of it are
of that special and professional kind which can not be properly judged
of except by persons who have themselves some share of those
qualifications, or some practical experience of them. The business of
finding the fittest persons to fill public employments--not merely
selecting the best who offer, but looking out for the absolutely best,
and taking note of all fit persons who are met with, that they may be
found when wanted--is very laborious, and requires a delicate as well
as highly conscientious discernment; and as there is no public duty
which is in general so badly performed, so there is none for which it
is of greater importance to enforce the utmost practicable amount of
personal responsibility, by imposing it as a special obligation on
high functionaries in the several departments. All subordinate public
officers who are not appointed by some mode of public competition
should be selected on the direct responsibility of the minister under
whom they serve. The ministers, all but the chief, will naturally be
selected by the chief; and the chief himself, though really designated
by Parliament, should be, in a regal government, officially appointed
by the crown. The functionary who appoints should be the sole person
empowered to remove any subordinate officer who is liable to removal,
which the far greater number ought not to be, except for personal
misconduct, since it would be vain to expect that the body of persons
by whom the whole detail of the public business is transacted, and
whose qualifications are generally of much more importance to the
public than those of the minister himself, will devote themselves to
their profession, and acquire the knowledge and skill on which the
minister must often place entire dependence, if they are liable at any
moment to be turned adrift for no fault, that the minister may gratify
himself, or promote his political interest, by appointing somebody
else.
To the principle which condemns the appointment of executive officers
by popular suffrage, ought the chief of the executive, in a republican
government, to be an exception? Is it a good rule which, in the
American Constitution, provides for the election of the President once
in every four years by the entire people? The question is not free
from difficulty. There is unquestionably some advantage, in a country
like America, where no apprehension needs be entertained of a _coup
d'état_, in making the chief minister constitutionally independent of
the legislative body, and rendering the two great branches of the
government, while equally popular both in their origin and in their
responsibility, an effective check on one another. The plan is in
accordance with that sedulous avoidance of the concentration of great
masses of power in the same hands, which is a marked characteristic of
the American federal Constitution. But the advantage, in this
instance, is purchased at a price above all reasonable estimates of
its value. It seems far better that the chief magistrate in a republic
should be appointed avowedly, as the chief minister in a
constitutional monarchy is virtually, by the representative body. In
the first place, he is certain, when thus appointed, to be a more
eminent man. The party which has the majority in Parliament would
then, as a rule, appoint its own leader, who is always one of the
foremost, and often the very foremost person in political life; while
the President of the United States, since the last survivor of the
founders of the republic disappeared from the scene, is almost always
either an obscure man, or one who has gained any reputation he may
possess in some other field than politics. And this, as I have before
observed, is no accident, but the natural effect of the situation. The
eminent men of a party, in an election extending to the whole country,
are never its most available candidates. All eminent men have made
personal enemies, or, have done something, or at the lowest, professed
some opinion obnoxious to some local or other considerable division of
the community, and likely to tell with fatal effect upon the number of
votes; whereas a man without antecedents, of whom nothing is known but
that he professes the creed of the party, is readily voted for by its
entire strength. Another important consideration is the great mischief
of unintermitted electioneering. When the highest dignity in the state
is to be conferred by popular election once in every few years, the
whole intervening time is spent in what is virtually a canvass.
President, ministers, chiefs of parties, and their followers, are all
electioneerers: the whole community is kept intent on the mere
personalities of politics, and every public question is discussed and
decided with less reference to its merits than to its expected bearing
on the presidential election. If a system had been devised to make
party spirit the ruling principle of action in all public affairs, and
create an inducement not only to make every question a party question,
but to raise questions for the purpose of founding parties upon them,
it would have been difficult to contrive any means better adapted to
the purpose.
I will not affirm that it would at all times and places be desirable
that the head of the executive should be so completely dependent upon
the votes of a representative assembly as the prime minister is in
England, and is without inconvenience. If it were thought best to
avoid this, he might, though appointed by Parliament, hold his office
for a fixed period, independent of a Parliamentary vote, which would
be the American system minus the popular election and its evils. There
is another mode of giving the head of the administration as much
independence of the Legislature as is at all compatible with the
essentials of free government. He never could be unduly dependent on a
vote of Parliament if he had, as the British prime minister
practically has, the power to dissolve the House and appeal to the
people; if, instead of being turned out of office by a hostile vote,
he could only be reduced by it to the alternative of resignation or
dissolution. The power of dissolving Parliament is one which I think
it desirable he should possess, even under the system by which his own
tenure of office is secured to him for a fixed period. There ought not
to be any possibility of that deadlock in politics which would ensue
on a quarrel breaking out between a president and an assembly, neither
of whom, during an interval which might amount to years, would have
any legal means of ridding itself of the other. To get through such a
period without a _coup d'état_ being attempted, on either side or on
both, requires such a combination of the love of liberty and the habit
of self-restraint as very few nations have yet shown themselves
capable of; and though this extremity were avoided, to expect that the
two authorities would not paralyze each other's operations is to
suppose that the political life of the country will always be pervaded
by a spirit of mutual forbearance and compromise, imperturbable by the
passions and excitements of the keenest party struggles. Such a spirit
may exist, but even where it does there is imprudence in trying it too
far.
Other reasons make it desirable that some power in the state (which
can only be the executive) should have the liberty of at any time, and
at discretion, calling a new Parliament. When there is a real doubt
which of two contending parties has the strongest following, it is
important that there should exist a constitutional means of
immediately testing the point and setting it at rest. No other
political topic has a chance of being properly attended to while this
is undecided; and such an interval is mostly an interregnum for
purposes of legislative or administrative improvement, neither party
having sufficient confidence in its strength to attempt things likely
to provoke opposition in any quarter that has either direct or
indirect influence in the pending struggle.
I have not taken account of the case in which the vast power
centralized in the chief magistrate, and the insufficient attachment
of the mass of the people to free institutions, give him a chance of
success in an attempt to subvert the Constitution, and usurp sovereign
power. Where such peril exists, no first magistrate is admissible whom
the Parliament can not, by a single vote, reduce to a private station.
In a state of things holding out any encouragement to that most
audacious and profligate of all breaches of trust, even this
entireness of constitutional dependence is but a weak protection.
Of all officers of government, those in whose appointment any
participation of popular suffrage is the most objectionable are
judicial officers. While there are no functionaries whose special and
professional qualifications the popular judgment is less fitted to
estimate, there are none in whose case absolute impartiality, and
freedom from connection with politicians or sections of politicians,
are of any thing like equal importance. Some thinkers, among others
Mr. Bentham, have been of opinion that, although it is better that
judges should not be appointed by popular election, the people of
their district ought to have the power, after sufficient experience,
of removing them from their trust. It can not be denied that the
irremovability of any public officer to whom great interests are
intrusted is in itself an evil. It is far from desirable that there
should be no means of getting rid of a bad or incompetent judge,
unless for such misconduct as he can be made to answer for in a
criminal court, and that a functionary on whom so much depends should
have the feeling of being free from responsibility except to opinion
and his own conscience. The question however is, whether,
in the peculiar position of a judge, and supposing that all
practicable securities have been taken for an honest appointment,
irresponsibility, except to his own and the public conscience, has
not, on the whole, less tendency to pervert his conduct than
responsibility to the government or to a popular vote. Experience has
long decided this point in the affirmative as regards responsibility
to the executive, and the case is quite equally strong when the
responsibility sought to be enforced is to the suffrages of electors.
Among the good qualities of a popular constituency, those peculiarly
incumbent upon a judge, calmness and impartiality, are not numbered.
Happily, in that intervention of popular suffrage which is essential
to freedom they are not the qualities required. Even the quality of
justice, though necessary to all human beings, and therefore to all
electors, is not the inducement which decides any popular election.
Justice and impartiality are as little wanted for electing a member of
Parliament as they can be in any transaction of men. The electors have
not to award something which either candidate has a right to, nor to
pass judgment on the general merits of the competitors, but to declare
which of them has most of their personal confidence, or best
represents their political convictions. A judge is bound to treat his
political friend, or the person best known to him, exactly as he
treats other people; but it would be a breach of duty, as well as an
absurdity, if an elector did so. No argument can be grounded on the
beneficial effect produced on judges, as on all other functionaries,
by the moral jurisdiction of opinion; for even in this respect, that
which really exercises a useful control over the proceedings of a
judge, when fit for the judicial office, is not (except sometimes in
political cases) the opinion of the community generally, but that of
the only public by whom his conduct or qualifications can be duly
estimated, the bar of his own court. I must not be understood to say
that the participation of the general public in the administration of
justice is of no importance; it is of the greatest; but in what
manner? By the actual discharge of a part of the judicial office in
the capacity of jurymen. This is one of the few cases in politics in
which it is better that the people should act directly and personally
than through their representatives, being almost the only case in
which the errors that a person exercising authority may commit can be
better borne than the consequences of making him responsible for them.
If a judge could be removed from office by a popular vote, whoever was
desirous of supplanting him would make capital for that purpose out of
all his judicial decisions; would carry all of them, as far as he
found practicable, by irregular appeal before a public opinion wholly
incompetent, for want of having heard the case, or from having heard
it without either the precautions or the impartiality belonging to a
judicial hearing; would play upon popular passion and prejudice where
they existed, and take pains to arouse them where they did not. And in
this, if the case were interesting, and he took sufficient trouble, he
would infallibly be successful, unless the judge or his friends
descended into the arena, and made equally powerful appeals on the
other side. Judges would end by feeling that they risked their office
upon every decision they gave in a case susceptible of general
interest, and that it was less essential for them to consider what
decision was just, than what would be most applauded by the public, or
would least admit of insidious misrepresentation. The practice
introduced by some of the new or revised State Constitutions in
America, of submitting judicial officers to periodical popular
re-election, will be found, I apprehend, to be one of the most
dangerous errors ever yet committed by democracy; and, were it not
that the practical good sense which never totally deserts the people
of the United States is said to be producing a reaction, likely in no
long time to lead to the retraction of the error, it might with reason
be regarded as the first great downward step in the degeneration of
modern democratic government.
With regard to that large and important body which constitutes the
permanent strength of the public service, those who do not change with
changes of politics, but remain to aid every minister by their
experience and traditions, inform him by their knowledge of business,
and conduct official details under his general control--those, in
short, who form the class of professional public servants, entering
their profession as others do while young, in the hope of rising
progressively to its higher grades as they advance in life--it is
evidently inadmissible that these should be liable to be turned out,
and deprived of the whole benefit of their previous service, except
for positive, proved, and serious misconduct. Not, of course, such
delinquency only as makes them amenable to the law, but voluntary
neglect of duty, or conduct implying untrustworthiness for the
purposes for which their trust is given them. Since, therefore, unless
in case of personal culpability, there is no way of getting rid of
them except by quartering them on the public as pensioners, it is of
the greatest importance that the appointments should be well made in
the first instance; and it remains to be considered by what mode of
appointment this purpose can best be attained.
In making first appointments, little danger is to be apprehended from
want of special skill and knowledge in the choosers, but much from
partiality, and private or political interest. Being all appointed at
the commencement of manhood, not as having learned, but in order that
they may learn, their profession, the only thing by which the best
candidates can be discriminated is proficiency in the ordinary
branches of liberal education; and this can be ascertained without
difficulty, provided there be the requisite pains and the requisite
impartiality in those who are appointed to inquire into it. Neither
the one nor the other can reasonably be expected from a minister, who
must rely wholly on recommendations, and, however disinterested as to
his personal wishes, never will be proof against the solicitations of
persons who have the power of influencing his own election, or whose
political adherence is important to the ministry to which he belongs.
These considerations have introduced the practice of submitting all
candidates for first appointments to a public examination, conducted
by persons not engaged in politics, and of the same class and quality
with the examiners for honors at the Universities. This would probably
be the best plan under any system; and under our Parliamentary
government it is the only one which affords a chance, I do not say of
honest appointment, but even of abstinence from such as are manifestly
and flagrantly profligate.
It is also absolutely necessary that the examinations should be
competitive, and the appointments given to those who are most
successful. A mere pass examination never, in the long run, does more
than exclude absolute dunces. When the question, in the mind of an
examiner, lies between blighting the prospects of an individual and
performing a duty to the public which, in the particular instance,
seldom appears of first rate importance, and when he is sure to be
bitterly reproached for doing the first, while in general no one will
either know or care whether he has done the latter, the balance,
unless he is a man of very unusual stamp, inclines to the side of
good-nature. A relaxation in one instance establishes a claim to it in
others, which every repetition of indulgence makes it more difficult
to resist; each of these, in succession, becomes a precedent for more,
until the standard of proficiency sinks gradually to something almost
contemptible. Examinations for degrees at the two great Universities
have generally been as slender in their requirements as those for
honors are trying and serious. Where there is no inducement to exceed
a certain minimum, the minimum comes to be the maximum: it becomes the
general practice not to aim at more; and as in every thing there are
some who do not attain all they aim at, however low the standard may
be pitched, there are always several who fall short of it. When, on
the contrary, the appointments are given to those, among a great
number of candidates, who most distinguish themselves, and where the
successful competitors are classed in order of merit, not only each is
stimulated to do his very utmost, but the influence is felt in every
place of liberal education throughout the country. It becomes with
every schoolmaster an object of ambition and an avenue to success to
have furnished pupils who have gained a high place in these
competitions, and there is hardly any other mode in which the state
can do so much to raise the quality of educational institutions
throughout the country. Though the principle of competitive
examinations for public employment is of such recent introduction in
this country, and is still so imperfectly carried out, the Indian
service being as yet nearly the only case in which it exists in its
completeness, a sensible effect has already begun to be produced on
the places of middle-class education, notwithstanding the difficulties
which the principle has encountered from the disgracefully low
existing state of education in the country, which these very
examinations have brought into strong light. So contemptible has the
standard of acquirement been found to be, among the youths who obtain
the nomination from the minister, which entitles them to offer
themselves as candidates, that the competition of such candidates
produces almost a poorer result than would be obtained from a mere
pass examination; for no one would think of fixing the conditions of a
pass examination so low as is actually found sufficient to enable a
young man to surpass his fellow-candidates. Accordingly, it is said
that successive years show on the whole a decline of attainments, less
effort being made, because the results of former examinations have
proved that the exertions then used were greater than would have been
sufficient to attain the object. Partly from this decrease of effort,
and partly because, even at the examinations which do not require a
previous nomination, conscious ignorance reduces the number of
competitors to a mere handful, it has so happened that though there
have always been a few instances of great proficiency, the lower part
of the list of successful candidates represents but a very moderate
amount of acquirement; and we have it on the word of the commissioners
that nearly all who have been unsuccessful have owed their failure to
ignorance, not of the higher branches of instruction, but of its very
humblest elements--spelling and arithmetic.
The outcries which continue to be made against these examinations by
some of the organs of opinion are often, I regret to say, as little
creditable to the good faith as to the good sense of the assailants.
They proceed partly by misrepresentation of the kind of ignorance
which, as a matter of fact, actually leads to failure in the
examinations. They quote with emphasis the most recondite questions
[8] which can be shown to have been ever asked, and make it appear
as if unexceptionable answers to all these were made the _sine quâ
non_ of success. Yet it has been repeated to satiety that such
questions are not put because it is expected of every one that he
should answer them, but in order that whoever is able to do so may
have the means of proving and availing himself of that portion of his
knowledge. It is not as a ground of rejection, but as an additional
means of success, that this opportunity is given. We are then asked
whether the kind of knowledge supposed in this, that, or the other
question, is calculated to be of any use to the candidate after he has
attained his object. People differ greatly in opinion as to what
knowledge is useful. There are persons in existence, and a late
Foreign Secretary of State is one of them, who think English spelling
a useless accomplishment in a diplomatic attaché or a clerk in a
government office. About one thing the objectors seem to be unanimous,
that general mental cultivation is not useful in these employments,
whatever else may be so. If, however (as I presume to think), it is
useful, or if any education at all is useful, it must be tested by the
tests most likely to show whether the candidate possesses it or not.
To ascertain whether he has been well educated, he must be
interrogated in the things which he is likely to know if he has been
well educated, even though not directly pertinent to the work to which
he is to be appointed. Will those who object to his being questioned
in classics and mathematics, tell us what they would have him
questioned in? There seems, however, to be equal objection to
examining him in these, and to examining him in any thing _but_ these.
If the Commissioners--anxious to open a door of admission to those who
have not gone through the routine of a grammar-school, or who make up
for the smallness of their knowledge of what is there taught by
greater knowledge of something else--allow marks to be gained by
proficiency in any other subject of real utility, they are reproached
for that too. Nothing will satisfy the objectors but free admission of
total ignorance.
We are triumphantly told that neither Clive nor Wellington could have
passed the test which is prescribed for an aspirant to an engineer
cadetship; as if, because Clive and Wellington did not do what was not
required of them, they could not have done it if it had been required.
If it be only meant to inform us that it is possible to be a great
general without these things, so it is without many other things which
are very useful to great generals. Alexander the Great had never heard
of Vauban's rules, nor could Julius Cæsar speak French. We are next
informed that book-worms, a term which seems to be held applicable to
whoever has the smallest tincture of book-knowledge, may not be good
at bodily exercises, or have the habits of gentlemen. This is a very
common line of remark with dunces of condition; but, whatever the
dunces may think, they have no monopoly of either gentlemanly habits
or bodily activity. Wherever these are needed, let them be inquired
into and separately provided for, not to the exclusion of mental
qualifications, but in addition. Meanwhile, I am credibly informed
that in the Military Academy at Woolwich the competition cadets are as
superior to those admitted on the old system of nomination in these
respects as in all others; that they learn even their drill more
quickly, as indeed might be expected, for an intelligent person learns
all things sooner than a stupid one; and that in general demeanor they
contrast so favorably with their predecessors, that the authorities of
the institutions are impatient for the day to arrive when the last
remains of the old leaven shall have disappeared from the place. If
this be so, and it is easy to ascertain whether it is so, it is to be
hoped we shall soon have heard for the last time that ignorance is a
better qualification than knowledge for the military, and, _à
fortiori_, for every other profession, or that any one good quality,
however little apparently connected with liberal education, is at all
likely to be promoted by going without it.
Though the first admission to government employment be decided by
competitive examination, it would in most cases be impossible that
subsequent promotion should be so decided; and it seems proper that
this should take place, as it usually does at present, on a mixed
system of seniority and selection. Those whose duties are of a routine
character should rise by seniority to the highest point to which
duties merely of that description can carry them, while those to whom
functions of particular trust, and requiring special capacity, are
confided, should be selected from the body on the discretion of the
chief of the office. And this selection will generally be made
honestly by him if the original appointments take place by open
competition, for under that system his establishment will generally
consist of individuals to whom, but for the official connection, he
would have been a stranger. If among them there be any in whom he, or
his political friends and supporters, take an interest, it will be but
occasionally, and only when to this advantage of connection is added,
as far as the initiatory examination could test it, at least equality
of real merit; and, except when there is a very strong motive to job
these appointments, there is always a strong one to appoint the
fittest person, being the one who gives to his chief the most useful
assistance, saves him most trouble, and helps most to build up that
reputation for good management of public business which necessarily
and properly redound to the credit of the minister, however much the
qualities to which it is immediately owing may be those of his
subordinates.