ice
scale. The examination is competitive; the subjects are handwriting
and spelling, arithmetic, English composition, geography, English
history, French or German. Candidates must be between the ages of 18
and 20. Whether unmarried or widows they must resign on marriage. The
class of girl clerks take the same subjects in a competitive
examination. They must be between the ages of 16 and 18; they serve
only in the Savings Bank department. If competent they can pass on
later to female clerkships. The salaries of the female clerkships
range from L200 to L500 in the higher grade, L55 to L190 in the 2nd
class, whilst girl clerks are paid from L35 to L40, with the chance of
advancement to higher posts.

The "spoils system".

_United States._--Civil service reform, like other great administrative
reforms, began in America in the latter half of the 19th century.
Personal and partisan government, with all the entailed evils of the
patronage system, culminated in Great Britain during the reign of George
III., and was one of the efficient causes of the American revolution.
Trevelyan characterizes the use of patronage to influence legislation,
and the giving of colonial positions as sinecures to the privileged
classes and personal favourites of the administration, by saying, "It
was a system which, as its one achievement of the first order, brought
about the American War, and made England sick, once and for all, of the
very name of personal government." It was natural that the founders of
the new government in America, after breaking away from the
mother-country, should strive to avoid the evils which had in a measure
brought about the revolution. Their intention that the administrative
officers of the government should hold office during good behaviour is
manifest, and was given thorough and practical effect by every
administration during the first forty years of the life of the
government. The constitution fixed no term of office in the executive
branch of the government except those of president and vice-president;
and Madison, the expounder of the constitution, held that the wanton
removal of a meritorious officer was an impeachable offence. Not until
nine years after the passage of the Four Years' Tenure of Office Act in
1820 was there any material departure from this traditional policy of
the government. This act (suggested by an appointing officer who wished
to use the power it gave in order to s