year, those qualities which will wear and strengthen with every added but to their quickness, audacity, and absence of nervous sensibility. The slow man, who is plodding, but not prompt or rapid, who will reach his full development at thirty, and will then be worth ten of your more clever and precocious youths, will have simply no chance whatever against his readier rivals. In a word, under the competitive system, work it how you may, in twenty years' time you will not have a man in the Civil Service who was not a quick boy. Now quick boys are well enough in their way, and sometimes turn out useful and solid men; but they are not the sort of employé we most want, and it will be an evil day when the entire Civil Service is filled with such only.' It Another grave practical objection is that the competitive system not only does not give us precisely the men we want, but gives us much cleverer men than we want. It is in the nature of competitive examinations to grow more and more severe. So many candidates come up to the requisite standard, that the standard has to be perpetually raised in order to decide between them. The result is, that the successful men are usually such as would have been sure to make their way in the open professions and the hardier walks of life, and in five cases out of six will be half thrown away in the Civil Service, and will degenerate and grow dissatisfied because they feel themselves thrown away. is a great mistake to imagine that for the rank and file of the Civil Service particularly clever or able men are needed, or would be in place. Nine-tenths of the work in Government offices is routine work and easy work, demanding no superior intellectual powers, and sure to stupify and disgust them where they exist, copying, calculating, drafting, book-keeping, and the like,-which very ordinary men, with a very limited education, can do just as well, if not better, than the ablest and the most instructed. It is, therefore, simply a mistake, and often sheer cruelty as well, to introduce into the service a number of men for whose powers there is no demand, and no adequate field, who cannot expect to reach a position in which their higher capacities can be called into action for ten years at least, and who must pass those intervening years in dull, monotonous, mechanical employments, admirably calculated to demoralise and deaden the keener intellects and the loftier ambitions. It is not that very great ability and very high qualities of character are not sometimes needed, and cannot occasionally be utilised in the permanent service of the Crown, but that the service offers comparatively few positions of this sort, and that only a very small proportion of those who enter can hope to reach Vol. 127.-No. 253. them F them. Speaking generally, and making allowance for these exceptional cases, the routine of Government work does not afford an adequate field for superior abilities or attainments. Neither does it afford any adequate recompense for them. The pay is small, the promotion is slow, the prizes are few, and, compared with those in the open professions, by no means rich. If, therefore, you insist upon maintaining the present system of competitive examinations, common sense and common justice would seem to dictate a considerable increase in the scale of remuneration—a measure, indeed, which is loudly called for on other grounds. Two modifications of our present mode of proceeding in reference to Government appointments would seem to be imperatively required, would meet most of the objections we have mentioned, and would give us a class of Civil Servants at once able, suitable, and contented. In the first place we should effect that division between the intellectual and mechanical branches of employment which has been often recommended. We should have a class of clerks for copying and calculating, writing a good hand, and quick at figures, who might enter at sixteen years of age, rise from 50l. to 2007., and never look to promotion into the higher branch of the service. For these an ordinary commercial or national school education is all that would be requisite, and only a pass examination would be needed. The other class should consist of young men trained by the best education England can afford, desirous of a somewhat easier and surer life than the struggles of the Bar or the medical profession offer, preferring administrative work or conscious of administrative ability, willing to labour sedulously, and determined to rise high. These candidates should be appointed to the intellectual branch of the service; they need not be very numerous, they need never be set to stupefying or dawdling occupation; they might be always hard worked, and we could afford to pay them highly, and to let them rise with comparative rapidity. They might enter between twenty and twenty-five years, and might commence at once on 2007. a year. These there would be no injustice or unwisdom in subjecting to a severe competitive ordeal, because the qualifications we require from them are really superior and unusual. But-and this is the second modification we would introduce-this competitive examination should not be, as now, between three or four nominees for each vacancy as it occurs, by which means the successful candidate for one appointment is often far below the rejected ones for another; but (as we believe was recommended by the present secretary to the Civil Service Commission, a gentleman whose position position and experience as well as his abilities give much weight to his opinion), examination should precede nomination instead of following it. Periodical examinations should be held of all young men aspiring to Government employment, embracing considerable numbers; and to the first fifty (say) of each list, or to those whom the Commissioners certify had reached a certain fixed standard, the Ministerial selection should be confined. By this scheme Ministerial power of appointment, and therefore Ministerial responsibility, would be retained, while at the same time their liberty of choice would be limited to a body of youths every one of whom was competent and worthy of the service, so that it would practically be almost impossible to go wrong. This plan, it seems to us, would secure all the advantages of the competitive system, and evade at the same time nearly all objections to it, and is far preferable to the scheme of entirely open competition which some parties are now advocating, which would be simply putting up all junior Government appointments to public auction, and giving them to the highest bidder, the bidding being in those mental and moral gifts which could best pass muster, or se faire valoir before a Board of Examiners. There are many secondary consequences flowing from this project which will occur spontaneously to the mind; one less obvious is, that it could scarcely fail to create a bureaucracy,— a body of men not holding their places by the gift of the Crown, but having won them for themselves, banded together by a strong esprit de corps, and as distinct and organised as any other profession,—an imperium in imperio, capable, both by passive and active operation, of wielding a power in the State not, we think, contemplated by the promoters of the scheme. Whatever improvements we may ultimately determine to adopt in the mode of selecting our Civil Servants, it is clear that in a very few years they will not be deficient either in experience or ability. The old stagers, who obtained entrance without qualifications and without ordeal, will have died out, and been succeeded by men who have given proof of attainments, ability, and industry, at least. At the same time this renovated staff, trained and proved, will be commanded in chief by Ministers who are indisputably the nation's choice, inasmuch as they are virtually nominated by the popular branch of the Legislature. Under such circumstances there can surely be no danger in enlarging the administrative functions of Government, in throwing more work upon it, in trusting it more fully, and endowing it with ampler powers. Surely, too, this is a line of reform in which both Conservatives and Liberals can consistently combine,-Conservatives, because their principle has always been to increase the strength and authority of Government; Liberals, because, now that the Government truly represents the people, it is obviously the people's best instrument for doing the people's work, and because, now that they choose their rulers, they ought certainly to be able to trust them. ART. III.-1. Travels in the East Indian Archipelago. By Albert S. Bickmore, M. A., &c. London, 1868. 2. The Malay Archipelago: the Land of the Orang-utan and the Bird of Paradise. A narrative of Travel, with Studies of Man and Nature. By A. R. Wallace. London, 1869. HA AD the atlas of an old Greek geographer approached in any degree to the completeness and accuracy of a modern scientific atlas, we should without doubt have found the 'Islands of the Blessed' placed at a very different part of the compass from that Far West, to which their local habitation was popularly assigned by the ancients. Not amidst the waters of the Atlantic, with its mighty tides and fierce tempests-though sunny Madeira offers its health-giving skies, and from over the Mare del Sargasso come spicy breezes, which deceived that grand old sailor, Cristoval Colon, into believing that he had wellnigh circumnavigated the world- but rather in those Eastern Seas, where Nature puts man's language to shame when it tries to describe her beauty, where birds vie in brilliancy with the ruby and the emerald, where Nature scatters her choicest treasures with lavish prodigality, would they have placed their earthly paradise. Somewhere amidst those islands of romance and adventure they might well have imagined the summit of earthly happiness could be attained. Any new work on these lovely regions would have been acceptable. A hearty welcome will be willingly accorded to the two very remarkable and most interesting books which we have placed at the head of this article. The present accomplished director of the Irish Geological Survey, in his valuable account of the expedition of H.M.S. Fly' '*—a work we shall often have occasion to refer to, as it relates to a large portion of the region traversed by Professor Bickmore and Mr. Wallace-complains, with a good deal of reason, that labours of details about reefs and shoals, useful though not brilliant, are all that Cook and the illustrious navigators of old have left for the moderns to aspire to.' Still we * Narrative of the Surveying Voyage of H.M.S. Fly.' By J. Beete Jukes. London, 1847. have only to look at such a map as that in 'Hawksworth's Voyages and the one given by Professor Bickmore, to see how much our knowledge of the Islands of the Pacific is corrected and enlarged as compared with what the activity of the latter part of the eighteenth century, however great, could supply. But no sooner do we turn our attention to the natural history of these regions, than we see what a mighty stride we have made of late years towards perfection, notwithstanding the many rare treasures still waiting the researches of the enterprising naturalist. One feeling strongly impressed on our minds by the perusal of these volumes is that, with respect to those islands of loveliness -'gigantic emeralds set in a sea of silver-the old proverb is startlingly applicable, which tells us that all is not gold that glitters.' First of all-we mention it first, because attention has been so strongly drawn to this subject lately-it is a region of earthquakes. Through the Malay Archipelago passes one of the most extensive volcanic belts in the world, running in an easterly direction from Sumatra to the Banda Islands, and then striking suddenly northwards to the Philippines, a distance altogether of over four thousand miles. The breadth of the belt is about fifty miles, but the number of active and extinct volcanoes can only be reckoned by hundreds, Java alone claiming forty-five. The large islands of Borneo and New Guinea are fortunate enough to lie away from this volcanic belt. Fortunate indeed; for Peru itself and Ecuador cannot surpass the tales of ruin and desolation which have come upon many islands in the Pacific. Nowhere else can be found craters which at all rival in size some of those mentioned by Professor Bickmore. In Java, for instance, is that of Tenger, with a minor axis of three and a half, and a major axis of four and a half miles.' Mr. Jukes thinks it fully five miles in diameter, and adds that the precipitous sides are a thousand to twelve hundred feet deep. The floor of the crater is a plain of black volcanic sand, pretty firmly compacted together, and called by the Malays the Laut Pasar, or Sandy Sea. From this sandy floor rise four cones, where the eruptive force has successively found vent for a time, the greatest being evidently the oldest, and the smallest the present active Bromo, or Brama, from the Sanskrit Brama, the god of fire. The position and relation of this Bromo as compared to the surrounding crater, is exactly analogous to those which exist between Vesuvius and Monte Somma.' Mightier still has been the now ruined crater of Lontar, the most important of the Banda Islands. When perfect, it must Mr. Jukes says 'Bromo is the ceremonial Javanese word for fire, the ordinary word being "guni.' |