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PREFACE.

As the national mind has been long waking to the expediency of superseding the old system of patronage, by which the Ministry used to dispose of almost all situations in the Civil Service of the Crown, it appeared to me to be neither uninteresting nor unprofitable to place upon record in these pages a brief account of the labours of the Civil Service Commissioners, and of the results hitherto attained, and at the same time to afford a useful Guide to those who may desire to offer themselves as Candidates for public appointments.

It is much to be feared that, in spite of all the force which the public press has brought to bear upon the subject, the old system of nomination still practically retains much of its baneful influence, and that the regulation by which, in most branches, Candidates have still

first to be nominated by some Minister of the Crown, acts as a serious obstacle to the real interests of the nation, by excluding ambitious spirits who do not boast of aristocratic connections. Such the author of this little work has found to be the case in more than one Department; and he trusts that the press and the educated classes at large will never relax their efforts at improvement, until the Civil Service is fairly thrown open to all the subjects of the Crown who can show themselves, before a competent tribunal, fit to become servants of Her Majesty in one or other of our public Departments. Our scholarships and fellowships have been thrown open to unlimited public competition, both at Oxford and Cambridge, and with marked success; and there can surely be no valid reason why a movement which has common sense on its side, and has proved so valuable on the banks of the Isis and the Cam, should be quietly ignored or set aside at Westminster as unsuited to the age in which our lot is cast.

17, CHURCH ROW, HAMPSTEAD,

May 26, 1860.

E. W.

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