Anthony Trollope: Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

St. Martin's le Grand, I was seated at a desk without any further

reference to my competency. No one condescended even to look at my

beautiful penmanship.

That was the way in which candidates for the Civil Service were

examined in my young days. It was at any rate the way in which I

was examined. Since that time there has been a very great change

indeed;--and in some respects a great improvement. But in regard

to the absolute fitness of the young men selected for the public

service, I doubt whether more harm has not been done than good. And

I think that good might have been done without the harm. The rule

of the present day is, that every place shall be open to public

competition, and that it shall be given to the best among the

comers. I object to this, that at present there exists no known

mode of learning who is best, and that the method employed has no

tendency to elicit the best. That method pretends only to decide

who among a certain number of lads will best answer a string of

questions, for the answering of which they are prepared by tutors,

who have sprung up for the purpose since this fashion of election

has been adopted. When it is decided in a family that a boy shall

"try the Civil Service," he is made to undergo a certain amount of

cramming. But such treatment has, I maintain, no connection whatever

with education. The lad is no better fitted after it than he was

before for the future work of his life. But his very success fills

him with false ideas of his own educational standing, and so far

unfits him. And, by the plan now in vogue, it has come to pass that

no one is in truth responsible either for the conduct, the manners,

or even for the character of the youth. The responsibility was

perhaps slight before; but existed, and was on the increase.

There might have been,--in some future time of still increased

wisdom, there yet may be,--a department established to test the

fitness of acolytes without recourse to the dangerous optimism of

competitive choice. I will not say but that there should have been

some one to reject me,--though I will have the hardihood to say

that, had I been so rejected, the Civil Service would have lost

a valuable public servant. This is a statement that will not, I

think, be denied by those who, after I am gone, may remember anything

of my work. Lads, no doubt, should not be admitted who have none of

the small acquirements that are wanted. Our offices should not be

schools in which writing and early lessons in geography, arithmetic,

or French should be learned. But all that could be ascertained

without the perils of competitive examination.

The desire to insure the efficiency of the young men selected, has

not been the only object--perhaps not the chief object--of those

who have yielded in this matter to the arguments of the reformers.

There had arisen in England a system of patronage, under which it

had become gradually necessary for politicians to use their influence

for the purchase of political support. A member of the House of

Commons, holding office, who might chance to have five clerkships

to give away in a year, found himself compelled to distribute them

among those who sent him to the House. In this there was nothing

pleasant to the distributer of patronage. Do away with the system

altogether, and he would have as much chance of support as another.

He bartered his patronage only because another did so also. The

beggings, the refusings, the jealousies, the correspondence, were

simply troublesome. Gentlemen in office were not therefore indisposed

to rid themselves of the care of patronage. I have no doubt their

hands are the cleaner and their hearts are the lighter; but I do

doubt whether the offices are on the whole better manned.

As what I now write will certainly never be read till I am dead, I

may dare to say what no one now does dare to say in print,--though

some of us whisper it occasionally into our friends' ears. There

are places in life which can hardly be well filled except by

"Gentlemen." The word is one the use of which almost subjects one

to ignominy. If I say that a judge should be a gentleman, or a

bishop, I am met with a scornful allusion to "Nature's Gentlemen."

Were I to make such an assertion with reference to the House of

Commons, nothing that I ever said again would receive the slightest

attention. A man in public life could not do himself a greater

injury than by saying in public that the commissions in the army or

navy, or berths in the Civil Service, should be given exclusively

to gentlemen. He would be defied to define the term,--and would

fail should he attempt to do so. But he would know what he meant,

and so very probably would they who defied him. It may be that the

son of a butcher of the village shall become as well fitted for

employments requiring gentle culture as the son of the parson.

Such is often the case. When such is the case, no one has been more

prone to give the butcher's son all the welcome he has merited than

I myself; but the chances are greatly in favour of the parson's son.

The gates of the one class should be open to the other; but neither

to the one class nor to the other can good be done by declaring

that there are no gates, no barrier, no difference. The system of

competitive examination is, I think, based on a supposition that

there is no difference.

I got into my place without any examining. Looking back now, I think

I can see with accuracy what was then the condition of my own mind

and intelligence. Of things to be learned by lessons I knew almost

less than could be supposed possible after the amount of schooling

I had received. I could read neither French, Latin, nor Greek.

I could speak no foreign language,--and I may as well say here as

elsewhere that I never acquired the power of really talking French.

I have been able to order my dinner and take a railway ticket, but

never got much beyond that. Of the merest rudiments of the sciences

I was completely ignorant. My handwriting was in truth wretched. My

spelling was imperfect. There was no subject as to which examination

would have been possible on which I could have gone through an

examination otherwise than disgracefully. And yet I think I knew

more than the average young men of the same rank who began life at

nineteen. I could have given a fuller list of the names of the poets

of all countries, with their subjects and periods,--and probably

of historians,--than many others; and had, perhaps, a more accurate

idea of the manner in which my own country was governed. I knew the

names of all the Bishops, all the Judges, all the Heads of Colleges,

and all the Cabinet Ministers,--not a very useful knowledge indeed,

but one that had not been acquired without other matter which was

more useful. I had read Shakespeare and Byron and Scott, and could

talk about them. The music of the Miltonic line was familiar to

me. I had already made up my mind that Pride and Prejudice was the

best novel in the English language,--a palm which I only partially

withdrew after a second reading of Ivanhoe, and did not completely

bestow elsewhere till Esmond was written. And though I would

occasionally break down in my spelling, I could write a letter. If

I had a thing to say, I could so say it in written words that the

readers should know what I meant,--a power which is by no means