THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1903. THE PUBLIC SERVICE

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 37, 10 September 1903, Page 17

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1903. THE PUBLIC SERVICE

IN BLLL used to smile in a superior sort of a way at the French nation because he thought it was always ready to go to war r an idea. The sturdy, practical Britisher is as great a glutton as his French neighbor for punishment. He bears bullet-wounds and bayonet-stabs with sunny resignation so long as' they result in some tangible and substantial advantage—in slices of territory,

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spheres of influence, or fresh markets for his pots and pans and cotton goods and crockery ware and iron buckets. - In the domestic politics of most nations, almost as stubborn struggles are commonly waged over place and pelf as over ideas—over principles of rule or methods of administration. The loaves and fishes are fierce subjects of dispute. The ideal method of distributing them

has hardly yet been found. The lack of it was one of the weak spots in Bellamy's ' Looking Backwards,' and it helped to break up every modern Utopia from that of the Shakers to the ill-starred ' New Australia ' in the woods of Paraguay.

Despite New Zealand's advanced ideas in many other respects, its regulations for appointments to, and promotion in, the Civil Service are half a century behind those that are in force across the Tasman Sea in Victoria, and even those that have long prevailed in the fossilised conditions of the British Isles. Our lame and halt provisions in this connection cannot fail to be a source of clamor, protest, ill-feeling, and misrepresentation until they are radically altered. And there is wide scope for improvement and reform. The matter was agitated for a brief space in the House of Representatives las>t week. It took the shape of a proposal for the creation of a Board to deal with all appointments to the Civil Service. This was lost on the ' catch ' division by a slender majority of four votes. The proposal is a good one, so far as it goes. The trouble with it is this— that It does not go far enough. Something more sweeping is required. The needs of the Service demand not merely a proper Board, but a good system for that Board to follow both in the matter of appointments and promotions. Our Public Service Board, when it comes, should be as free from even the suspicion of political ' pull ' or pressure or control as the judges that with cold and passionless neutrality administer justice upon our Bench. But even the best Board working on a faulty or a rotten system is like a soldier with a cracked musket or a rapier of gilded corkwood, or like an artisan with damaged or worthless tools. The system which the proposed Board should be called upon to administer should requre, as a fundamental principle, that (except in the case of known experts in certain branches) all permanent appointments to the Civil Service should be by competitive examination and that alone. The Act of 1886 provides for this. It only needs to be administered and to be made (with the exceptions mentioned) of universal application. 'All appointments to the Civil Service,' says one section of the Act, ' shall be by competitive examination, which shall be held periodically in the chief centres of population, and from the most successful competitiors in the order of their merit shall be selected candidates to fill all vacant cadetships in the Civil Service.' There is a world of pathos in the story of the gallant and battlescarred French subaltern who explained his baldness to the First Napoleon by attributing it to the fact that so many younger men had stepped to positions of high command over his head. This question of promotion in our Public Service is one that demands serious and immediate attention. And no reform can ever be deemed satisfactory or final until it embraces a just and rational scheme which shall place this thorny question of promotion on a right basis and beyond the reach of either friendship, enmity, or caprice.

The whole question of appointments to, and promotion in, the Civil Service is one that affects a large and growing class of our population. But there is no section of the community that has such an interest in a thorough-going and far-reachfng reform as the Catholic body. Till comparatively recent years, admission to the Civil Service of New Zealand was— outside one or two Departments— practically barred against persons who professed the

Catholic faith. Even in this year of grace the old and evil tradition is by no means coffined. Our co-religionists find their way with less hindrance into State employment. But. relatively to the members of other religious denominations, their numbers are small. Worse still : practically the only occupations open to them are those of hard grind and meagre pay. The positions of ease, of command, of comfort, and of sound emolument are almost altogether closed against them, and apparently kept as preserves for the members of more favored creeds or no-creeds. And there are large branches of our Public Service where Catholics are, and have ever been, such

phenomenally ' rare birds ' as to create the suspicion that over the portals of admission thereto might be set the legend that stood over the gates of Bandon in the old days of the Orange ascendency : ' Turk, Jew, or Atheist Welcome here ; but not a Papist.' It would be threshing old straw over again to enlarge upon this subject here. It was dealt with in a sufficiently exhaustive manner in the lengthy series of articles which appeared in our columns during the course of the past year.

In the country's best interest we plead for equal treatment and efficient service. We shall not be content with any scheme but one that makes merit the sole test both for entering and for rising in the employment of the State. We have made no secret of our objection to a system which bears the appearance of discrimination against or in favor of persons because of their religious faith or political convictions, or which might be turned by any party in power into an engine of oppression. But even were the conditions ideal we should regret to see our people press into the Public Service in anything like their proportion to their numbers in the general population of the Colony. We have urged this full many a time. We should dislike a Catholic trend towards the Public Service, because it would be calculated to create and perpetuate a form of helotry among a section of our people, and because it would needlessly and unduly expose them and their children to the moral perils and the physical degeneration that are associated with life in large towns and cities. The real wealth and power of a country does not lie in line-repairing and quill-driving. It lies in the ownership of the soil. A bold peasantry is still its country's pride— its backbone, its first, second, third, and last lines of defence. A country life is, too, the most favorable for the development of those virtues which are the special adornment of the Irish people, who form the great bulk of our Catholic population : It holds forth the highest promise of that increase in our numerical strength which would be a benefit alike to the State and to the Church of God. And for this and for every reason we once more repeat to the young Catholics of New, Zealand our oft-heard cry : • GO ON TEOE LAND ! '