At the time of his coronation King Edward VII created the Imperial Service Order, with the object of recognizing °more fully . . . the faithful and meritorious services rendered to us by members of the Civil Service of the various parts of our Empire? Recipients of the decora tion bear the letters °I. S. 0? after their names. Within recent years the government have in troduced a number of salutary reforms into the complex organization of the Civil Service. New and improved schemes of examination took effect in 1900, 1902 and 1912. A significant change made during 1908 consisted in the grouping of a number of important offices under a scheme of examination intermediate in char acter between the test for Class I clerkships and that for the second division. This plan had been adopted tentatively for junior appoint ments under the Admiralty and the War Office, but is now applied to several other offices and is still being further extended. In 1910 all previous orders relating to admission and con ditions of service were repealed; such provi sions as were then in force were re-enacted with amendments. Power was given to the Civil Service Commissioners, with approval of the Treasury, to ,prescribe the subjects of ex amination, limits of age, etc., for second divi sion clerkships. Compulsory retirement at the age of 65 was made applicable to all Civil Serv ants. A Royal Commission was appointed in 1912 to overhaul the whole institution, includ ing the diplomatic and consular services. After an exhaustive inquiry the Commission published its report in April 1914. One of the sugges tions was the creation of two classes in the General Service — the Administrative and the Clerical. The former would practically coincide with the present Class I clerks. The Clerical Class would be divided into senior and junior sections with salaries of $425 to $1,750 and $250 to $1,000 respectively. It is possible for a com
petition candidate to rise to $12,000 a year. A review of the general results of the competi tions which were held from 1870 to 1913 inclu sive, shows that 46 competitions took place for an aggregate number of 692 clerkships, exclu sive of Assistant-Surveyorships of Taxes. In the 1914 examination Oxford and Cambridge University men secured between them 19 of the 20 posts available in the Home Service, and 42 of the 53 Indian posts. The candidate obtain ing the highest marks— 3,876 out of the 6,000 possible— was a student at Rugby School and Trinity College, Cambridge. The Civil Serv ice Estimates (expenditure) for 1918-19 amounted to $320,148,590 for England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. This also included the Diplomatic and Consular Services, Old Age Pensions, Labor Exchanges, unemployment in surance, education, museums, art galleries, law officers, police, prisons, telegraphs and Pacific cables.
The only book on the whole subject is D. B. Eaton's 'English Civil Service> (1880), a careful record of facts, but written without special knowledge of English conditions. The rise of the Indian civil service is admirably treated in A. L. Lowell's