[272] _Second Report of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the Civil Establishments_, 1888, pp. xx and xxv, and q. 19,240, 20,434 and 20,435, 20,370, 20,392 to 20,395, 20,412, 20,434 to 20,438, 20,441, 19,229 and following, 17,245 and following, and 20,398 to 20,404. CHAPTER XV THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, UNDER PRESSURE FROM THE CIVIL SERVICE UNIONS, CURTAILS THE EXECUTIVE'S POWER TO PROMOTE EMPLOYEES ACCORDING TO MERIT The civil service unions oppose promotion by merit, and demand promotion by seniority. Testimony presented before: Select Committee on Civil Services Expenditure, 1873; Select Committee on Post Office, 1876; Royal Commission to inquire into the Civil Establishments, 1888; from statement made in House of Commons, in 1887, by Mr. Raikes, Postmaster General; and before the so-called Tweedmouth Committee, 1897. Instances of intervention by Members of House of Commons on behalf of civil servants who have not been promoted, or are afraid they shall not be promoted. In the matter of promotion, also, the civil servants' unions compel the Members of Parliament to intervene, on behalf of individual employees, in the details of the administration of the several Departments of State. The organized civil service is not content that every man should have an equal chance of promotion, so far as his industry and capacity shall qualify him for advancement; it evinces a marked tendency to demand equal promotion in fact, that is, the elimination of the effects of the natural inequality among men. The House of Commons, in yielding in this matter to the pressure from the organized civil service, is tending to reduce the public service to a dull level of mediocrity, which action at one and the same time impairs the efficiency of the public service and makes the service of the State unattractive to able and ambitious men. In this matter of promotion, the permanent heads of the Departments are hampered also by the unbusinesslike attitude toward the conduct of the public business that characterizes large sections of the newspaper press as well the great mass of the voters. That unbusinesslike frame of mind, in turn, is the outgrowth of that untrained sympathy which makes every one tend to sympathize with the individual, whenever the interest of the individual clashes with that of the State. To illustrate, in 1873, before the Select Committee on Civil Services Expenditure, Sir William H. Stephenson, Chairman of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, stated that in his Department promotion was mainly by seniority in the two lowest classes, to some extent by seniority in the third class, but beyond that entirely by merit. But he hastened to add: "Indeed, if I may judge by the complaints that I have heard out of doors, occasionally in the newspaper press, and elsewhere, the system of promotion by merit is supposed to be carried to rather an excessive extent in the Inland Revenue."[273]