avowed the fact to the students, he could not reconcile himself
to the elevating of one man upon the humiliation of all the rest. In a
strain more befitting a civilized age, he urged upon his hearers the
pursuit of excellence as such, without involving as a necessary
accompaniment the supplanting or throwing down of other men. He probably
did not sufficiently guard himself against a fallacy of Relativity; for
excellence is purely comparative; it subsists upon inferior grades of
attainment: still, there are many modes of it shared in by a great
number, and not confined to one or a few.]

* * * * *

III.

THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS[6]

1. HISTORICAL SKETCH.

Up to the year 1853, the appointing of Civil Servants lay wholly in the
hands of patrons. In 1853, patronage was severely condemned and
competitive examination officially recommended, for the first time, in a
Report by Sir Stafford Northcote and Sir Charles Trevelyan; but, while
the recommendation was taken up in the following year and immediately
acted upon in the Indian Civil Service, it was not till very much later
that it was fully adopted in the Home Service. The history, indeed, of
this last is somewhat peculiar. After the Report already referred to,
came an Order of Council, of date May 21, 1855, in which we find it
"ordered that all such young men as may be proposed to be appointed to
any junior situation in any department of the Civil Service shall,
before they are admitted to probation, be examined by or under the
Directors of the said Commissioners, and shall receive from them a
Certificate of Qualification for such situation". This order was
rigorously carried out by the Commissioners, and, although its absolute
requirement was simply that the nominees should pass a certain
examination, it, nevertheless, allowed the heads of departments to
institute competition if they cared. Accordingly, we find that
competition--_but limited_--was immediately set on foot in several of
the offices, and the result led to the following remark in the Report of
1856:--

"We do not think it within our province to discuss the expediency of
adopting the principle of open competition as contra-distinguished from
examination; but we must remark that, both in the competitive
examination for clerkships in our own and in other offices, those who
have succeeded in attaining the appointments have appeared to us to
possess considerably