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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
It is surprising that while there is a considerable literature dealing with the reform of the civil service from the time of Burke to the setting up of the Civil Service Commission in 1855, very little attention has been paid to the final stages of reform following the introduction of open competition in 1870. Yet it was in this period that patronage ceased to be of importance and the modern civil service developed. The Order in Council of 4 June 1870 which made open competition the normal method of entry to the civil service enormously reduced the scope of patronage, but it did not kill it immediately. Right up to the First World War remnants of the old system lingered in most departments, although by then a lavish system of honours and subsidies from the party funds had displaced the most objectionable forms of political patronage. The purpose of this article is to give some indication
1 To keep the subject within manageable compass I have excluded from consideration the ecclesiastical and legal patronage of the Treasury ministers and the routine official patronage of the Permanent Secretary. There is a good deal of miscellaneous information about the survival of patronage in other departments in the reports and minutes of evidence of the Playfair, Ridley, and MacDonnell Commissions on the civil service.
2 The full text was printed by Professor Edward, Hughes in Public Administration, xxxiii (1955). 305–6.Google Scholar
3 B[ritish] M[useum] Add. MSS. 44348, fo. 106.
4 T[reasury] P[apers], T 1/7653 A and T 1/7448 A, 75/3819. Disraeli’s struggle to assert the First Lord’s supremacy was not confined to the Treasury. In 1877, for instance, he disputed the right of the President of the Board of Trade to nominate Railway Commissioners (Childe-Pemberton, W. S., [Life of] Lord Norton (1909), 232–3).Google Scholar
5 T. P., T 1/7670 A. Dyke’s private secretary provided a useful gloss: ‘On the occurrence of a vacancy, a proposal comes in say from the Admiralty—you receive applications from Members of Parliament urging the claims of some Gentleman for the appointment: you write and promise to discuss the matter with the First Lord of the Admiralty—but in the meanwhile the office has been reorganised and Treasury approval given (without your knowledge) and the. First Lord of the Admiralty tells you so when he sees you, and is surprized that having written officially to the Treasury you know nothing about it.’
6 Algernon West reports that Disraeli told Sir William Stephenson, Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue, à propos of vacancies on the Board: ‘These appointments should be considered not as official promotions but as political prizes.’ Nonetheless, Disraeli gave West (a Liberal) the Deputy Chairmanship (A. West, Recollections 1832 to 1886, 2nd edn. (1899), ii, 78).
7 The twenty offices were: Permanent Secretary of the Treasury, Comptroller and Auditor General, Secretary of the Office of Works, Registrar-General, Civil Service Commissioner, and the Commissioners of Charities, Customs, Inland Revenue, and Woods and Forests. The Prime Minister did not always select the candidates for vacancies in these offices himself, but the final decision as to who was to be appointed rested with him. In the discussion of appointments after 1869 I have disregarded internal promotions from the rank of Commissioner to the Chairmanship or Deputy Chairmanship of a Board. I am indebted to the Secretary of the Charity Commission for details of appointments to the Charity Commission.
8 On the Conservative side W. H. Smith (First Lord, 1887–91) was particularly firm in his refusal to contemplate political appointments.
9 Anstie was appointed by Gladstone to give the Nonconformists a representative on the Charity Commission. Colchester, once private secretary to the 14th Earl of Derby, was one of Disraeli’s last appointees. Young was a singularly unsuccessful Liberal candidate who had made a name for himself as a Cambridge don and a member of Royal Commissions.
10 For the ‘private secretary scandal’ see Robert, Moses, The Civil Service of Great Britain (New York, 1914), 197–9. Three Blue Books of 1912–13 (Sessional Papers 454, 455, and 528) contain lists of all civil servants above the very lowest levels appointed without examination between 1895 and 1913.Google Scholar
11 Gorst to Dyke, 19 Nov. 1874 (from the Disraeli Papers at Hughenden by courtesy of the National Trust).
12 The number of governorships offered to men with the right qualifications was sometimes remarkably large (cp. Childe-Pemberton, Lord Norton, 238, 246 and Sir Herbert, Maxwell, Evening Memories (1932), 183–5). In the Salisbury Papers there is an interesting note from a private secretary to Lord Salisbury: ‘I find that Akers Douglas is somewhat disappointed that Lord Knutsford [Colonial Secretary] shd. not have consulted him before filling up N. Zealand: and he hopes he may be allowed to recommend someone when Hamilton leaves Tasmania’ (9 Feb. 1892).Google Scholar
13 Such appointments were those of George Anderson, M.P. as Master of the Mint at Melbourne in 1885, C. N. Warton, M.P. as Attorney-General of Western Australia in 1886, and W. R. M. Davies, M.P. as Attorney-General of the Bahamas in 1898.
14 A. M. Brookfield, Annals of a Chequered Life (1930), ch. xxxviii, gives an interesting account of the negotiations leading to the appointment.
15 The Duchy patronage was not infrequently discussed in the House of Commons. Its administration is described in Edith Fowler, H., Life of Lord Wolverhampton (1912), 500–2.Google Scholar
16 J. J. Reid, Liberal organizer in Scotland, was appointed Queen’s and Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer for Scotland by Lord Richard Grosvenor in 1881, and was succeeded in the office by his Conservative counterpart, Reginald Macleod, in 1889. W. G. Ellison-Macartney, M.P. was appointed Deputy Master of the Mint in 1903. And E. J. Soares, M.P. was appointed Assistant Comptroller of the National Debt Office in 1911.
17 There were many complaints like Lord R. Grosvenor’s in 1882: ‘Every Irishman without a single exception always jobs’ (B.M. Add. MSS. 44315, fo. 87).
18 [Cd. 7832], 79. H.C. (1914–16), xii, 85.
19 There are accounts of two of Chamberlain’s appointments, those at Bolton (Winder, T. H., A Life’s Adventure, privately printed, 1921, 70–87) and Sheffield (Bagshawe Papers, Bag. C. 778 (11), Sheffield Central Library).Google Scholar
20 There is a considerable correspondence on the subject in the Salisbury Papers now at Christ Church, Oxford (by courtesy of the Marquess of Salisbury), and the Akers-Douglas Papers until recently in the possession of Viscount Chilston (who was kind enough to lend them to the present writer) and now in the Kent Record Office, but not yet generally available.
21 Middleton, T., History of Hyde (Hyde, 1932), 280.Google Scholar
22 His staff consisted of an unofficial and one or two official private secretaries, a superintendent and assistant superintendent of messengers, seven messengers mainly used in the Whips’ Office, and such clerical assistants as he could borrow or chose to employ at his own expense. The expenses of the office were met before 1886 out of the £10,000 Civil List Secret Service Money, which was entirely at the disposal of the Patronage Secretary. This fund was abolished in 1886 and the salaries were then charged to the Treasury Estimates (T.P.T 1/8287 B).
23 All postmasterships worth less than £120 a year in England or £100 a year in Scotland or Ireland were in his gift. Those above these levels were in the gift of the P.M.G. In 1895 there were 13,407 posts in the gift of the Patronage Secretary in England, 1864 in Scotland, and 2603 in Ireland (4 Hansard, xxx, 1125).
24 There is a list of these offices in the contemporary Guide to Employment in the Civil Service.
25 The main references to this subject are in 3 Hansard, cccx, 1102–3, 3 Hansard, cccxxiv, 552–3, 4 Hansard, ciii, 360–1, and 4 Hansard, clxxxiv, 445.
26 4 Hansard, xxx, 1124–5.
27 3 Hansard, ccxxxix, 215–16. There was, of course, no reason why recommendations should not be sent direct to the Treasury: cp. 3 Hansard, ccxvi, 270.
28 Report of the Committee on the Customs Waterguard Service and the Customs Watchers [Cd. 6290], p. 6. H.C. (1912–13), xvii, 652.
29 3 Hansard, ccxxxix, 216.
30 Ibid.. col. 215.
31 4 Hansard, xxx, 1131–2.
32 5 Hansard, xl, 314.
33 3 Hansard, ccxxxix, 212–15.
34 Ibid.. cols. 216–17.
35 Raikes, the P.M.G., at first declined to accept the proffered nominations, ‘not because I have any doubt of the ability of the Department to select proper persons for the situations in question, but because of the pressure, whether purely local, or political, or both combined, which will inevitably be brought to bear upon myself and upon succeeding Postmasters General’ (T.P., TI/8301 C, 12284/87). Post Office medical appointments seem already to have been transferred to the P.M.G. (3 Hansard, cccxi, 1268).
36 4 Hansard, xxx, 1118—34. There was no legal impediment to the transfer since the system of appointment had developed gradually over the previous century.
37 The acceptance of nominations was finally ended by Sydney Buxton because of the enormous number of recommendations received from Liberal M.P.s after the general election of 1906, when the number received grew from 60 or 70 a month to between 300 and 400 (4 Hansard, clix, 397, and 4 Hansard, clxx, 640–1).
38 For instance the Customs’ House boatmen in 1898 (4 Hansard, lv, 1229).
39 [Cd. 6290], p. 3. H.C. (1912–13), XVII, 649. There were at the time 1563 men in the preventive service.
40 ‘Members who are inundated with applications for these appointments will be glad to know that, with the approval of the Prime Minister, I am taking steps to waive, in the public interest, the patronage attached to my office, and to transfer the work to suitable permanent officials directly in touch with the requirements of the service’ (5 Hansard, xl, 314).
41 5 Hansard, xliii, 1736; see also 5 Hansard, lxiii, 1427.
42 This is a part-time appointment tenable for five years. The last appointment was made in 1957. I am indebted to the Clerk of the Board for details of the composition of the Board.
