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will listen to no modifications,-these are the qualifications which make the successful candidate in a great city. Sobriety, caution, a disposition to listen rather than to speak, a temper ever ready to weigh all sides of a subject, a conviction that there must be something of strength and truth in opinions held tenaciously by able and conscientious opponents, a firm will to run counter, when necessary, to popular impressions and desires, and a power to look to future and secondary and permanent, rather than to immediate and transitory consequences, these are the gifts which mark out the safe and upright ruler of a great empire. How, then, shall popular election ever give us wise statesmen? Is it not probable that we shall have to look for these either out of the pale of the House of Commons altogether, or among those members of it who are least under the control of large and democratic constituencies? This question, however, opens a wide and knotty subject, into which we have no space to enter now.

The chief ministerial cause of bad official appointments is one rarely adverted to, or indeed much believed in; and though mischievous and deplorable enough is not easy of counteraction or escape. Ministers live too much in a charmed circle. Not only is their judgment of men often at fault, but their knowledge of men is habitually limited. Mixing rarely and almost never unreservedly with other classes, they know only those who frequent the same society as themselves. Those with whom they come into daily contact in the transaction of public and private business, and those who are the usual associates of themselves and their compeers, comprise the whole list out of which they are competent to choose. Even among these their judgment is the less likely to be sure and sagacious, inasmuch as they do not always mix with them on equal terms, and as their insight into character has never been deepened and sharpened by closeness of collision or variety of observation. They become intimately acquainted neither with the same large numbers nor the same wide and discrepant range of character as those who belong to a lower rank, and survey life more from its interior and from its level plain. If, conscious that the circle in which they move does not furnish a sufficient supply of the men or the qualities they need, they look outside of it for remedying the deficiency, their search is conducted in a terra incognita: they are obliged to choose their instruments at second-hand; and thus become dependent not so much on their own judgment as on that of the one or two friends to whom they delegate the task of inquiry and selection. A post falls vacant, and the minister knowing no one qualified to fill it ably among his own acquaintances, consults perhaps his

private secretary, or possibly some outside unaristocratic friend. These name some one they are intimate with, or have heard of, and of whose capabilities they have formed a high and possibly erroneous estimate; and the principal has to take his qualifications greatly upon trust. If, indeed, every man whose station or ambition marked him out for a future ministerial career, were, as a needful preliminary preparation, to mix largely and indiscriminately with all classes of his fellow-citizens, to frequent miscellaneous circles, and make acquaintance with circles usually inaccessible to the great, study the characters of those he met with, and note for future use every one of signal ability and fit endowments,-then, by the time he attained high office and held important posts within his gift, his memorandum book would be full of qualified candidates for every vacant place. But how few, indeed, of our public men ever sedulously fulfil this most obvious duty of an aspiring statesman, or even dream of it as an incumbent obligation!

The difficulties which beset the selecting judgment of the actual minister are still further enhanced, whenever an important vacancy occurs, by the multitude of aspirants who come to him with recommendations of the highest character from the highest quarters-absolutely laden with testimonials couched in the strongest language of eulogy, and signed by men whose names should be a guarantee both for the sincerity and the sagacity of their opinions. If the minister himself has no favourite aspirant in his eye, his friends and colleagues are sure to have some one of whose fitness for the vacant post they do not hesitate to speak in terms that scarcely leave a possibility of doubt or choice. So that though suitable and competent men may exist in abundance in the nation, they are in the majority of cases out of sight, out of knowledge, or out of reach; and even were they not, were their claims heard and considered with the purest and most earnest intentions on the part of the minister to do justice and to choose well, yet they would still run the greatest risk of being smothered, lost, or overlaid amid the crowd of candidates equally well spoken of, and more urgently and influentially recommended. It is not two months since we heard a most zealous and conscientious Administrative Reformer, now a minister, declare that he was becoming quite "demoralized" by his short experience of office-so unexpected and insuperable did he find the difficulty of finding "the right man for the right place."

There is another point, however, in respect of which ministers of every party are much to blame-viz., in their insurmountable reluctance to cancel a bad appointment when once its injudiciousness has been made manifest. But even

here candour compels us to admit that much may be pleaded in arrest of judgment, or at least in mitigation of the sentence. In the first place, the reluctance is national rather than ministerial. It is felt by every one, and it pervades every department. We never supersede our clergymen for incapacity, rarely our physician or our lawyer, not readily even our servant or our tradesman. Even merchants shrink from dismissing a slow or stupid clerk unless he be guilty of some actual delinquency. Public posts, once bestowed, are understood to be held for life; and whenever dismissal for incapacity does take place, the sufferer is invariably represented as a martyr or victim, and the courageous minister as a jobber or a tyrant. In the second place, especially in high office, it is not always easy to know whether or not a man has failed, and deserves to be superseded. The public judgment is always hasty, and often erroneous; generally founded on imperfect information, and not seldom the mere echo of some newspaper denunciation. Those most concerned and best qualified to judge perhaps hold an opinion diametrically opposite to that of the country. The country itself frequently changes its opinion when knowledge has increased and passion has subsided. We have a case in point before us now. Two or three months ago the clamour was universal for the recall of Lord Raglan. Every epithet of vituperation was heaped upon his head. His "incapacity" was held to be patent and notorious, and the obstinate and wilful guilt of ministers in retaining him to be undeniable and heinous. The strong testimony borne to his merits by the generals serving under him was little known or little heeded; and the peculiar difficulties in his path were as imperfectly comprehended as his singular tact and patience in surmounting them, or steering through them. Something of all this is beginning to be seen or guessed even by the public, and far more is, and has long been, in the cognizance of those whom sound policy forbids to speak out; and the country is gradually modifying and rescinding its first hasty decision. Now, how wrong it would have been had ministers allowed themselves, in such a case, to be influenced by popular clamour, or made themselves, by an inconsiderate or premature decision, the instruments of national injustice!-In the third place, in important posts, such as governors of colonies or generals of armies, the facility of finding a suitable successor must enter largely into the question as to the recall of the actual holder of the office. Ministers may well be blamed for retaining an unsatisfactory man, where their own judgment, or the voice of the country, or the general consensus of the profession, points unhesitatingly to an unobjectionable substitute. But where it

is uncertain whether, if you change, you may not change for the worse, when no man is called for by the national desire, and when the best informed and most competent judges cannot agree in naming any one indisputably fitter on the whole than the present occupant (as was the case with our much-abused Commander-in-Chief in the Crimea), then it may be wise, and not corrupt or timid

"Rather to bear the ills we know

Than fly to others that we wot not of."

We have thus, at the risk of staggering and displeasing several of our readers, endeavoured to explain why the governing classes of this country are less culpable and corrupt in the matter of public appointments than is currently believed. We must now say in a few words why we do not think the popular remedy for the unquestionable evil would be as certain and effective as is thought. That remedy, as shadowed forth in the resolutions of which Mr. Layard some weeks since gave notice in the House of Commons, is the transference of public employment from the hands of the aristocracy to those of the middle classes. It is alleged that nearly all the functionaries of the state-certainly all the higher functionaries-have been selected from the upper ranks, and that they have proved incompetent or idle; and it is assumed that men of the middle ranks, if appointed to the same posts, would do their work incomparably better. We may admit the greater part of the allegation without being necessarily forced to concede the presumed inference. It is not certain that we have been ill served because we have been served too exclusively by noblemen and gentlemen; and it is not certain that we should be well served merely because we were served by manufacturers and merchants.

Of course it will not for one moment be supposed that we mean to question the proposition laid down by the Administrative Reformers, that all public employments should be assigned to the fittest men who are available, whatever be their social status. That is a truism so obvious that it would be an insult to presume that any one can doubt it, and almost an insult to attempt to prove it. The assumption to which we demur-the broad and favourite assumption of the day-is, that these "fittest men" are indisputably and necessarily not to be found among the aristocracy and gentry, or that fitness or unfitness is a question of rank and class at all. We protest against the exclusive worship or the extravagant laudation of any section of the community, against the depreciation of

the higher class, as against the neglect of the lower: class proscriptions are alike intolerable, whether issued by patrician or plebeian prejudice.

We share to the full in the general admiration for the energy, enterprise, and skill of our men of business and our civil engineers, both in their individual and their associated labours, for their insatiable activity, their indomitable perseverance, their conquering and commanding will. They have carried their genius into every land; they have won trophies in every field.

"Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ?"

We have unbounded confidence in their capacity to surmount all obstacles and to complete all achievements; and we most earnestly desire to see a far larger enlistment of these rare and special qualities in the service of the state. We would have the country served in its highest functions by its ablest workmen. But we wish to moderate excessive expectations by calling attention to a few qualifying considerations which appear to have escaped the general mind. And first, we note too exclusively the cases and enterprises in which our middle classes have succeeded, and leave out of sight those in which they have blundered, or have failed. How many merchants and tradesmen yearly founder, and are trampled down in the mighty thoroughfare of commerce! How many instances of consummate mismanagement and folly, such as make even those of the government departments "whiten in their shade," do our Courts of Bankruptcy every day reveal! How many engineers and projectors ruin themselves or those who aid them in their senseless and abortive enterprises! How many bank directors, railway contractors, and other speculators, waste countless millions before they succeed! How many never succeed at all! Look back only twenty years; reckon up the schemes, the bubbles, the crises, the insane delusions, the inconceivable blunders, which have successively decimated and disgraced our enterprising commercial men since 1836, and say if even official annals ever furnished such an apocalypse of incapacity! It is true that our middle classes generally struggle through-that their undertakings come to good at last. But so do the governing classes: as a whole they get on; as a nation we generally prosper in our national efforts; even in war and organization the second or third year usually redeems the failures and clumsy confusion of the first. And certain we are, that no one who knows the secret history, from the commencement, of the Bank of Manchester, the Thames Tunnel, the Midland, London and North-Western, and Great Western Railways, or the Great Britain steam-ship, will

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