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Aram 7,1855.] THE LEADES, 335
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THE REFORM FOR TO-DAY. 2j? public men at...
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WHAT WILL BECOME OF THE MILITIA? The mil...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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The Tory Party. There: Is A Great Appear...
the last infirmity of noble minds . In the second place , having'their acres , their Botten Counties , their game laws , and their parsons , they have got all they want . Their only desire is to preserve their comforts . 3 ? or that purpose they choose or hire a leader , and follow him as Mindly as they can . Their discipline puts to shame the way ward adherents of the "better cause . Even after the unspeakable insult of the Pamherston resolution , the Cannon Balls" to a man voted
confidence in DiSEAEiii , ridiculing his Budget in private all the while . Give this faction the power of the Executive G-overnment , with the example of Louis Napoleon ' s success before them , and his patronage to encourage them , and you will have done your best to endanger the existence of the last great Constitutional Grovernment of Europe . The moment political Jesuitism was triumphant , religious Jesuitism would join it , as any reader of the Guardian may perceive , and the happy union of feudalism and priestcraft would be restored . The dreams of Coningsby
and Sybil made old Superstition feel young . Let us take care that they do not prove true . We have a right to call upon Liberals not to trifle with that sacred trust which England now holds as almost the sole guardian of the liberties of Europe . " We have also a right to call upon them not to disgrace the morality of Liberalism by encouraging a profligate intrigue . Where shall be the reward of sincere and conscientious Liberalism , if those who have borne the burden and heat of the day , whatever may be their short-comings , are to be cast aside for such alliances as these ?
Aram 7,1855.] The Leades, 335
Aram 7 , 1855 . ] THE LEADES , 335
The Reform For To-Day. 2j? Public Men At...
THE REFORM FOR TO-DAY . 2 j ? public men at the present day want a ^ mission , " there is one almost vacant ; although there is a sufficient movement in it ready to be taken up and converted to a useful national purpose . It is Administra- ; tire Beform . The totally disorganised , broken down state of the public service was only exposed in the Crimea ; it existed before , and under the quietude of peace was gradually doing us even more destructive mischief than it has been able to accomplish by the slaughter of British soldiers and the waste of our substance and money in the East . The reforms first assume a practical shape among the officials themselves . Mr . Gladstone
had plans under his notice , though of far too pedantic an order to be of any real utility . One of the projects upon which a considerable amount of printing was expended , consisted in a systematic assorting of every department under fanciful heads , who would nave carried on the reading and writing , the superintendence , the reporting , down even to
the duties of the wardrobe and laundry , with the supernumerary task of reading the public newspapers and getting instruction out of them for the officials ! Even within the civil service , therefore , those benighted wiseacres recognise the fact that the journals are beginning to govern the country . Another plan was thrown out by Sir Charles Tbe-VEiiYAN and Sir Staitobd Nouthoote
after conducting inquiries into several of the public departments with the assistance of gentlemen connected with each of those departments . This also was a literary scheme , the striking part of which consisted in the suggestion that the candidates for admission to the public service should undergo examination in Latin and Greek , French and German , Science abstract and applied , History , and a variety of other accomplishments taught at the best academies and at college . And now there is a new plan developed in a pamphlet entitled Our Government Offices . ( Bidgway . ) This is the best of all . It evidently has in
some degree or other an official source . The writer is practically acquainted with the routine of business in more than one office—a fact which we can avouch from our own observation of the course of business in public departments . At the same time he writes with manifest independence . He has therefore knowledge , no lack of courage to grapple with difficulties , no bondage to an oflicial superior ; but he evidently sees the interest of the public servants as well as of the public in thorough reorganisation .
The civil service constitutes an army scattered over the face of the United Kingdom . It comprises 16 , 000 persons . This force , however , may be divided into two classes about equal " in number—one whose duties are of a purely mechanical order , and the other whose duties require some degree of mental capacity , even in the lowest ranks , while in the highest the members rise to the government of an empire . This army , be it
remembered , really has to govern the Empire , for it has practically to conduct all the affairs of the United Kingdom and its dependencies . The first object in forming such a corps would be to arrange it so that there should be some unity in its proceedings ; that the individuals composing it should , by promotion or transfer , be stationed at the posts for which they were most suited ; that a special capacity , coupled with judgment , should secure to a man his passing from one rank to another ; and that those should rise to the chief commands who
best understand the business in its details and in its whole . The actual arrangement , however , is exactly the reverse . There is no Unity in the Service . — " Particular offices may be controlled without vigour or . even ability , may be underhanded , or may want the services of clerks with peculiar qualifications , but there is no correspondence betwee n them and other departments to ascertain whether means of supplying the deficiencies may not be 3 bund jwithin the limits of the service itself ; one department , although located side by side with another , does not know of what it coninstancesand
sists . In particular , more especially during the present pressure , the heads of an overburdened office have borrowed clerks from other offices with some partial advantage to the augmented department , and with , in many instances , a serious loss to the office from which the officials are removed . The correspondence and intercourse between offices are so partial that the opportunities for co-operation in this way must be very rare . ( The evil is sometimes partially remedied by personal friendliness between superiors in the respective-offices ; buteven in these cases , self-convenience is too often considered by heads of departments , and the fact is lost sight of , that the public service is not injured , but often benefited by the removal of a superior clerk from for
one department to another . ) It may happen , instance , that w hile department A , already hardworked , is obliged at a loss to give the assistance of an able accountant to department B , there are in departments G and H accountants of great ability applied to tasks of very little difficulty and very slight importance ; but such men are unknown , and though originally men of energy and ability , often fall into common routine clerks , from the fact of no prospect being open to them for distinguishing themselves . This instance may serve to illustrate a thousand cases where departments possess men of peculiar qualifications urgently required in some other department , the head of which has no means of knowing the quarters in which the most appropriate assistance is lying comparatively unused . "
A man is put into the service in a particular place , he may rise a little—but very slowly ; may ultimately retire on pensionif he lives long enough ; but , he is not expected to do his work well , he is not liable to punishment even for flagrant neglects , he has no hope , no fear ; and the consequence is , that if ho can write a given number of letters —just enough to pass muster—or a given number of entries in the book , he may whistle " Peter Dick , " loll about the office , or go to spend the day at Gravesend , and everything will bo " kept quiet" for him . Tho officer above him can neither order him , fiuo ' hun , reward him , nor put him under arrest , as a superior officer can in the army .
The civil literature compiled every year by the public servants would form tons upon tons of manuscript : the clerks labour as if their sole business were to create those tons ; but there is no effective report upon the business done , or upon the clerks who do it . The literary business is the most cumbersome of the impedimenta to a modern army : the sword has to wait upon the scribbling of the pen ; but it is the Civil Service that makes its duties consist in writing . " Who is responsible for this state o £ things ? The ofiicial chiefs who go in and out of the Cabinet and carry with them their assistant Undersecretaries — these are the men who
have to use the public departments , who are responsible for them to the country ; but absorbed with Parliamentary business , engaged in receiving calls , carried off by court ceremonies , and thoroughly occupied with the social and personal engagements of their own class , they have no time to learn what the public departments are , or how they are going on . They are masters who only visit their estates late in the day ; and as the custom of impeachment has become an antiquity , no responsibility is enforced upon these " responsible political statesmen . " The case is the same as if in a place of business the
clerks in the different rooms had no coramucation with each other , the heads of the firm only called occasionally to keep up an appearance of giving orders , and the business went on by its own weight , drifting away with the tides of time . This is not a metaphor , it is the actual state of the public departments of this country ; and when we go to fight the enemy , we find our worst enemies are our civil servants . " We have 16 , 000 such enemies in . the land , mostly very well-intentioned people , but , by the organisation of the department , enrolled , as a band of traitors , to frustrate the public work by undertaking it and preventing its
execution . The author of " Our Government Offices " sketches a plan for reversing all these bad conditions—consolidating the whole service ; giving to each man rank and promotion in the service , without reference to his merely departmental opportunities ; facilitating his transfer from one office to another , where he would be more \ iseful ; rendering him liable to penalties , but opening to him . reward and advancement ; and-in shorty enabling hin \ to
earn as much as he can , and the public to get out of him as much as he can give . Now this reform may be said to have originated within the public service , or from knowledge acquired there . " What has the public done as yet to reform its own servants ? Nothing . It takes almost as little attention to the subject as the political ministers of the Crown , or the House of Commons do ; and then we have traders in Parliament , journalists in the papers , local politicians at jmblic meetings , complaining that they cannot get business done in the public departments !
What Will Become Of The Militia? The Mil...
WHAT WILL BECOME OF THE MILITIA ? The militia are » melting : away ! " Raised at great expense , trained with considerable care , and in many cases with considerable success , many of the embodied regiments are rapidly becoming disembodied , non-existent , or shorn of two-thirds of their strength . in tho military
Like so many of our efforts line we have managed to make tins militia experiment no exception to tho run of failures . & o » r Governments have ¦ hod a hand . 111 the creation of the militia . Lord John Rubsku . s Government was shipwrecked on this subject ; then ca . no Lprd DKiuiir . ^ With Lord Palmers-ton ' s assistance Lord Dbrby contrived to got tho act of , 1852 through the Parliament .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), April 7, 1855, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_07041855/page/13/
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