The looking over and marking the performances of the candidates engaged the attention of the Assistant Examiners for eighteen days, and it was not until Feb. 11 that we were able to declare the successful competitors.

A further interval of nearly three weeks was necessary for inquiry into the health and character of these successful competitors, and for examining them in the extra subjects which they voluntarily proposed.

At the close of this interval we granted our certificates, so that it will be perceived that from the commencement of the examination until the final grant of the certificates a period of six weeks has been required.

To this has to be added a reasonable time antecedent to the examination in order to give due notice of the examination, to enable the candidates to inform us of their intention to compete and to send us prima facie evidences of age, health, and character, and to give us the opportunity of making proper arrangements for conducting the examination. Such reasonable time can hardly be estimated at less than three weeks.

We have carefully considered whether any means can be devised of relieving the public of some of the unavoidable expense incurred in such large competitions, and of lessening the duration of the proceedings, and we are disposed to think that this may be accomplished by requiring each of the candidates in any such unrestricted competition to pay such small fee as may appear reasonable.

These fees would probably be found sufficient to defray the greater part of the extra expense caused by the examination, and they would produce the further advantage of relieving the competition from a considerable number of manifestly incompetent candidates, who from their want of ability and deficient acquirements only swell the number of competitors without having the smallest chance of success. We believe that if this fee were established the gross number of competitors would be considerably reduced, so as materially to diminish the time and expense requisite for ascertaining the results of the examination.

In closing this report, we cannot deny ourselves the satisfaction of expressing our sense of the services and assistance which have been rendered to us as well in the official portion of our duties as in those which relate especially to the actual examination from those whom we have been authorized to select and employ for those purposes.

Both our correspondence and the labour incidental to the examinations have been greatly increased in consequence of the Indian Civil Service examinations, and the competition for home writerships which we have described, and it has required no small amount not only of energy, but of persevering industry, in our secretary, register, and clerks, and in our permanent examiners, to enable us to state that at the moment of our completing this Report there is not a single item of arrear in the business of the office or in the examination of the candidates; and with regard

to our permanent examiners and to the various learned and accomplished persons who have assisted us in the Indian and other extra examinations, we gratefully acknowledge the intelligence and judgment displayed in the questions which they have set, and the conscientious care with which they have examined and weighed the performances of the candidates, before submitting them to us for our final decision.

All which we humbly submit to Your Majesty's most gracious consideration.

Witness our hands and seals, this fifteenth day of April One thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine.

EDWARD RYAN. (L.S)

JOHN GEORGE SHAW LEFEVRE. (L.S.)

APPENDIX I.

STATISTICAL TABLES, &c.

relating to the HOME CIVIL SERVICE.

A. Limits of age prescribed for the various Departments.

B. Subjects of examination.

C. No. of nominations, &c. for each Department in the year 1858.

D. Ditto compared with the number in 1857.

E. No. of competitions held in 1858.

F. No. of bonorary certificates granted for each subject.

G1. Causes of rejection.

G2.

Do.

(Summary Table.)

H. Marks obtained in the competitions of 1858.

I. Marks obtained in the open competition for writerships at the India House. K. Residences of competitors for

L. Social position of

do.

M.

do.

do.

do.

do.

R.

S. Referees as to the character of do.

T. Social and educational position of first hundred competitors for writerships

at the India House.

List of certificated candidates.

List of honorary certificates.

TABLE A.-LIMITS of AGE prescribed for ADMISSION to the various CIVIL DEPARTMENTS.

Departments not mentioned in this Table have at present no fixed regulations as to the age of officers on admission.

Note.-It must be understood that alterations may at any time be made.

Except in the case of persons temporarily employed who may be nominated if under 30, provided they were under 25 when first temporarily employed.

+ Unless the candidate shall, at the time of his nomination, be acting as a Supplementary Clerk on the Establishment.

For candidates who have been previously in the Public Service the maximum limit shall be considered as extended to five years beyond the ordinary limit, provided the candidate was, when he first entered the Service, under the maximum limit fixed for the situation to which he seeks admittance, and has since served continuously.

§ An extra Clerk would not be ineligible on the score of age for an appointment on the Establishment up to the age of 35 years, provided that he had been admitted as an extra clerk before the age of 25, and had since served continuously.