The Government of India Bill of 1853 car ried this proposal into effect, the first open ex amination being held by the India Board in 1855.
Trevelyan and Northcote's report was pre sented in January 1854, and proposed open com petition for the English civil service, and the separation of the service into higher and lower divisions. Gladstone, as Chancellor of the Ex chequer in Lord Aberdeen's government, agreed with the scheme, and civil service reform was promised in the Queen's speech of 1854. Mean while the report had been sent round to a num ber of distinguished educators and adminis trators whose opinions, mostly pessimistic, were published by the government (Reports and Papers, 1854-55). In March 1854 the Crimean War began, which prevented any large reform being undertaken and the scheme was de nounced in the House of Lords, by Lord Malmesbury and others, 13 March 1854, as in consistent with aristocratic government. Reso lutions in the House of Commons in favor of open competition were lost (10 July 1855) and carried 24 April 1856, and in 1857.
In 1.860 a strong select committee inquired into the whole question and reported that their own preference was in favor of open competi tion, but that in order that the government should not go beyond public opinion they recommended the extension of this system of "limited competition" to the civil service gen erally. The evidence taken by the committee showed that some of the older civil servants still objected to the examination system, even under the conditions which had prevailed since 1855, on the ground that it had introduced "a class of men above their work." The recommendations of the Select Commit tee were accepted by the government, and for the next 10 years a competition between at least three nominated candidates took place for each appointment.
The introduction of household suffrage in towns by Disraeli's "Leap in the Dark" Re form Bill (1867) and the defeat of the Con servative party at the election of 1868, altered the whole political position of the civil service question. The existing aristocratic political families felt that their hold on patronage was gone, and were afraid of the results which would follow from the use of patronage by members of Parliament under the pressure of the newly enfranchised voters. The system of open competition for the Indian civil service introduced 15 years before had worked well, and Gladstone was able to publish (4 June 1870), almost without opposition, an Order in Council throwing open to competition most of the government offices. The Foreign Office and
the Home Office (which controls the police) were excepted, owing to a belief that secrecy was better secured by a system of nomination. A few years later (1873) the Home Office was thrown open.
When the post-office took over the tele graphs from the railway companies in 1870 it was found that a few women officiab were at work. These were retained, and since then the number of women civil servants has been in creased.
Gladstone's Order in Council of 1870 still in essentials regulates admission to the English Civil Service, though alterations of name have occurred, such as the substitution of "Second Division" for "Lower Division" in 1890, and changes of salary, status, and examination sub jects.
The system has been worked with a certain amount of elasticity. Men of all ages are from time to time appointed without competition to posts involving special knowledge, and com petitive examination is never used in such cases as a test of qualifications. In some cases, as in the starting by the Liberal government of 1892 95 of the Labor Department of the Board of Trade and the Inquiries Department of the Board of Education, appointments have been given without examination to men from outside, although the work to be done is similar to that done elsewhere by civil servants recruited in the ordinary way. Inspectors are practically never appointed by examination, and the "Ex aminers" of the Board of Education, whose work is practically that of the "first division clerks" in other offices, are appointed by the president of the Board, generally from men who have just distinguished themselves at Oxford or Cambridge. Artisans at the royal dockyards and on other government work are appointed without competitive examination from lists of waiting applicants, and the same method is used for recruiting the police of London (which is under the central government). The younger (second division clerks" are allowed to compete on equal (or slightly more favorable) terms with the outside candidates for first division clerkships, but in no case is competitive exam ination used as the method of selection for pro motion within the service.