PARLIAMENT

Evening Star, Issue 20029, 21 November 1928, Page 2

PARLIAMENT

" FOUNDATION OF ENfiLAND ” WORK OF CIVjl SERVICE The Right Hull. 11. A. L. libber, principal and director of studies ot tho City ot Loudon vacation course for teachers, in tho course of his opening address on ‘Tho Foundations of England.’ winch is reported verbatim in the Teachers’ World,’ alluding to the Civil Service, said;— “ There is certainly no institution of which we have more reason to bo proud, and yet, unlike Parliament, which is very old, dating back to the thirteenth century, the Civil Service is extremely new. There was hardly anything of the kind in the eighteenth century. “Business was then comparatively slender in volume, and only such as Ministers who were assisted by their own private- secretaries were able to discharge; but then, with tho industrial revolution, government became more complicated. “ There were more things to do, a larger population to consider, and all kinds of now problems began to press upon the attention of the Government, and so by degrees in tho course of tho nineteenth century a suitable number of offices were set up in Whitehall for the assistance of Ministers in the discharge of their administrative functions; and when, m 1856, by a momentous decision admission to the Civil Service was made conditional upon the passing of a competitive examination, and not as hitherto upon patronage, the Government was enabled to draw into its service the ablest men turned out by the British universities. “We can hardlv exaggerate tho importance of this body of skilled, experienced, and impartial public servants for the conduct of national affairs. While Ministers come and go tho Civil servants remain, accumulating knowledge, preserving tradition, exorcising a steadying and formative influences through all tho changes ana convulsions ol English parliamentary life.

:< The result is that the experiment of transferring power from a class which has hitherto used it to a new class, is divested of many of its dangers. The Civil Service is able to keep the keel of national policy steady am! to supply to every new batch of Ministers the best that it lias of counsel and experience. “In the matter of social deference wo are ns conservative as any nation in the world The rich are rifled by Parliament, but in society treated with infinite consideration,” said Mi Fisbej towards the close of his address. “ Our social gradations are so numerous and delicate that while most people ape tin. manners of the class just above them, there are few so poor as to bo deprived ol the luxury of look iug down upon a fellow human being. The respect paid, to a peer in his own neighbourhood is in striking contrast to the slender measuio of political authority which lie is permitted to ex crciso.

“ With the abolition of the rottei boroughs, the repca. of the game laws, and the Passing ot the Parliament Act, the principal obstacles to the popularity of the peerage are removed. The British aristocracy, dethroned as tyrants, are preserved as pets. “Despite the advances of democracy the social deference paid to rank i.surprising in its strength and persist ence. The critic describes us as a nation of snobt. The historian ask;, whether snobbishness, though a vice, may not he after all connected with some of the fundamental virtues of the race, the recognition of the superiority, the sense of social cohesion, ami the presence ot an active spirit of ambition, even in placid natures and vulgar minds. “If we ask what the true foundations of England are the answer is, first, a good climate ana a central geographical position, and, second, a national character, active rather than contemplative, moderate in its passions, gonial, fond of amusement, singularly free from envy and rancour and the sentiment of revenge, respectful of social differences, _ adventurous, sensitive to the code of public duty, and with that underlying seriousness without which no great achievement ' -possible. It is upon the soil of such a character that parliamentary institutions, the great gift of Britain' to the w'orld, have flourished.”