What is a "Permanent" Civil Service? 309 vides may, in exceptional cases wherein it becomes urgently necessary to abolish an appointment, be granted to the individual injuriously deprived of such appointment; and it is scarcely conceivable that the wise, humane, and far-sighted men, under whose superintendence the Act was framed, had any intention of providing a power whereby the fever of retrenchment at all costs might, in times when that epidemic should rage, deprive of office numbers of men engaged with a reasonable assurance that their services were to be permanent. It is true that the clause may be interpreted as implying that all establishments are merely tentative, and that every one adopting the Civil Service as a profession must be prepared for his appointment, or, indeed, the whole class of appointments to which his belongs, to be at any moment found redundant and obstructive. Such a view, however, would be altogether fallacious; and the clause, doubtless, contemplated exceptional cases only, and did not contemplate the possibility of an executive so weak as to be unable to see sufficiently ahead to frame an establishment that should be, substantially, serviceable for the needs of the State during the lifetime of an average generation. If it be otherwise, then the idea of "permanent service" is altogether delusive; and it is necessary that the meaning of the clause should be made far more distinctly understood than it is at present by the public from whose ranks the Civil Service is recruited. The service would certainly not be sought, as an employment, with the same eagerness as it is now, if the public generally understood that the tenure of office is dependent on the idiosyncrasies of Governments for the time being or the caprice of heads of departments,-that no man's appointment was safe from abolition at a moment's notice for the sake of giving it to some one else under a different name! We suspect that the enormous retrenchments and changes made of late in the Civil Service have not been effected without stretching the clause in question far beyond its veritable meaning and original intention, and thus throwing on numerous individuals a sudden injury which the law never contemplated, as well as burdening the nation with a charge for superannuation* of servants whose places it may be found needful to refill. And we recur to the position that it is now The Act of 1859 provides for the recall of pensioned servants, if wanted, on peril of losing their pensions; but the Pensions Commutation Act provides a means whereby this contingency may be effectually avoided. The man who has commuted his pension for a lump sum, and spent it, is a difficult subject for compulsory return to the duties from which he has been discharged. more than ever of urgent importance to have a clear understanding about all such matters. The Government has given to one immense department of the Civil Service a power of combination that is not as yet estimated at a tithe of its real extent, either by the Government, the public, or the component members of the Department itself. The classes of the community who subsist by working for hire are everywhere gaining a fuller consideration for their necessities and demands by the modern method of co-operation; and a general Civil Service strike is by no means an inconceivable thing nowa-days. Indeed, we have shown that, in that branch of the Service that is perhaps most intimately connected with the general work-a-day comfort of the people at large, the power of co-operation has been enormously raised by the deliberate act of the Government, an act certainly sanctioned by the general voice of the people, and by reason. It remains to see what moderation this great public servant will show in the exercise of the new power thus got for its own personal advantage; but it requires no great foresight to discern that the proportion of moderation shown by the servant will be mainly influenced by the treatment it receives. The first necessity in such a compact as that between the State and its servants is a well defined understanding; and we have seen that, however good an understanding has been supposed to exist since 1859, certain points are, by virtue of application, getting rather hazy just now. In regard to the Post Office and its annexed telegraphs, the sooner this haze is dissipated the better for the country's prospects of still getting its letters and its telegrams with that regularity and despatch which are at present so conducive to its comfort, and so astonishing to nations who have not yet arrived at the same development in matters postal and telegraphic. Lord Elgin and Sir Henry Lawrence. 311 ART. III.—1. Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of 2. The Life of Sir Henry Lawrence, K.C.B. By the late 1872. ENGLAND has been styled the "mother of free nations." This title is well deserved. The parent State whose offspring enjoy the freedom possessed by her descendants in America and Australia has some right to a distinction than which there is none higher. But it must be remembered that not all England's children are free, not all are fit for freedom. As in the family, the members which have not come to man's estate are still under tutors and governors, so is it in this great family of colonies. They vary in their political development no less than in their superficial area. Between Heligoland, with its circumference of less than three miles, and India, with its more than a million square miles of area-between that little narrow island in the Northern Sea, with its steep and crumbling cliffs, and that great Empire in the East, with its vast reaches of sandy plain, its giant rivers, and its mighty mountain ranges-there is scarcely a greater difference than there is between the parliamentary institutions of Australia and the military dictatorship which prevails in Malta and Gibraltar. This wide diversity of government gives scope for many varieties of governors. Happily, the times of Clive and Hastings are gone by. The conqueror whose life is spent in warfare, and whose reputation is made by adding province to province, and kingdom to kingdom, has no longer any representative among us. But though there is no more need of him, there is room for rulers of almost every other type. Between the heroic defender of Kars, who now keeps watch over the narrow strait that separates Europe from Africa, to the nobleman who reigns but does not govern at Melbourne, there is a very wide range. There is room here for every variety of temperament; there is opportunity for the display of the most dissimilar gifts. The heaven-born governor will do well in any capacity. He will be equally capable of ruling with a rod of iron and of being the courteous innocuous lay figure who represents the very limited monarchy established in this country. No country in the world offers such opportunities for acquiring the art of government as the British Empire does; no country has such illustrious names on its roll of proconsuls and viceroys as that Empire has. It is a grand vocation to be the chief minister of England, to lead the first and greatest legislative assembly in the world: but the responsibility which attaches to that leadership is in a large measure divided with the leader's colleagues. Moreover, so far as his ordinary duties are concerned, there is nothing in the position of an English premier which differs materially from that of a premier in any other constitutional country. But there is one duty laid upon him which is almost unique. From these narrow islands he has to send forth men fit to govern the indolent negroes of Jamaica, the energetic back-woodsmen of Canada, the pushing and radical citizens of modern Melbourne, the conservative and Mahometan citizens of ancient Delhi, the almost unexplored and wholly undeveloped mountain tracts of British Columbia, and the densely peopled settlements in China, which were as populous in the days when woad-stained Britons ran wild in the woods of England, as they are in these days when the descendants of those same Britons rule over an Empire on which the sun never sets. Woe to the minister who makes a wrong choice; woe still more to the country for whom the wrong ruler is chosen. It is hardly too much to say that India would have been lost to us fifteen years ago if some of the governors that have ruled our colonies had governed India then. Happily these failures have been the exception. England is a country fertile in rulers, for in England men learn to rule themselves. Moreover, her numerous colonies are like the classes of a large school. The highest class of all is reserved as the most splendid of all prizes, and is bestowed upon the man who has given proofs of his fitness in a humbler sphere. The representative of the Empress of Hindostan must have something more than high birth, or long ancestry, or political connections to qualify him. Either as a statesman at home, or as a governor in some smaller dependency, he must have shown that he possesses some of the qualities which constitute a ruler of men, an avaş ǎvôpŵv before he is entrusted with the welfare of a hundred millions of the human race. On the present occasion we have to deal with two of England's rulers whose careers were in most respects very dissimilar, though in some they were strikingly alike. The dissimilarity was in the details, the likeness was in the character of their careers. Lord Elgin was a member of the House of Commons, a member of the House of Lords, a Cabinet Minister, Governor of Jamaica, Governor of Canada, twice Envoy to China, Envoy also to Japan, and finally Viceroy of India. Sir Henry Lawrence, except during childhood and the years when he was being educated in England, spent his life (with holiday intervals of a few months) in India. While Lord Elgin was a civilian who occasionally had to take part in military expeditions, Sir Henry Lawrence was a soldier who had, through a large portion of his career, to rule as a civilian. Both were devoted to their work; both died in harness. Both have left reputations for great sagacity, firmness, resolution, and yet humanity and benevolence. For a brief time they were working together to the same end, though unknown to and far apart from each other. It was Lord Elgin's self-renunciation which made him postpone the work which he had been sent out to do in China, and which prompted him to send to Lucknow the troops that should have accompanied him to Canton. It was in Lucknow that the heroic Lawrence was beleaguered and died. Subsequently Sir Wm. Peel, the heroic leader of the Naval Brigade, sent word, "tell Lord Elgin that it was the Chinese expedition that relieved Lucknow." At this point the lives of the two men of whom we have to speak touched for a brief minute. It was but for a minute. Lawrence perished early in the rebellion, Elgin survived it six years. Yet even when the grave lay between them there was contact. Lawrence the designated temporary Governor General of India was one of that heroic band who made it possible for Elgin to become Viceroy of India. James, eighth Earl of Elgin and twelfth Earl of Kincardine, was born in London, on July 20, 1811. He was descended from "Robert the Bruce;" his father was some time ambassador at Constantinople, and is known to us in connection with the "Elgin marbles," which he sent from Greece, and for the sending of which he incurred the wrath and the satire of Lord Byron. The Lord Elgin of whom we have to speak was fortunate in his mother and in his elder sister, who after the death of their parent became a second mother |