ees were partially tested by qualifying examination and periods of
probation. The eminent men who held what were called the staff
appointments in the service--the Merivales, Taylors, Farrers--were
introduced from without, with the obvious implication that either the
civil service trained up within its own ranks a poor breed, or else that
the meritorious men were discouraged and kept back by the sight of
prizes falling to outsiders. Mr. Gladstone was not slow to point out
that the existing system if it brought eminent men in, had driven men
like Manning and Spedding out. What patronage meant is forcibly
described in a private memorandum of a leading reformer, preserved by
Mr. Gladstone among his papers on this subject. 'The existing corps of
civil servants,' says the writer, 'do not like the new plan, because the
introduction of well-educated, active men, will force them to bestir
themselves, and because they cannot hope to get their own ill-educated
sons appointed under the new system. _The old established political
families habitually batten on the public patronage_--their sons
legitimate and illegitimate, their relatives and dependents of every
degree, are provided for by the score. Besides the adventuring
disreputable class of members of parliament, who make God knows what use
of the patronage, a large number of borough members are mainly dependent
upon it for their seats. What, for instance, are the members to do who
have been sent down by the patronage secretary to contest boroughs in
the interest of the government, and who are pledged twenty deep to their
constituents?'

The foreign office had undergone, some years before, a thorough
reconstruction by Lord Palmerston, who, though very cool to
constitutional reform, was assiduous and exacting in the forms of public
business, not least so in the vital matter of a strong, plain, bold
handwriting. Revision had been attempted in various departments before
Mr. Gladstone went to the exchequer, and a spirit of improvement was in
the air. Lowe, beginning his official career as one of the secretaries
of the board of control, had procured the insertion in the India bill of
1853 of a provision throwing open the great service of India to
competition for all British-born subjects, and he was a vigorous
advocate of a general extension of the principle.[327] It was the
conditions common to all the public establishments that called for
revision, and the foundations for reform were