Before the Royal Commission of 1888, appointed to inquire into the Civil Establishments, Sir Thomas H. Farrer, who had been a Member of the Playfair Royal Commission of 1876, and had been Permanent Secretary of the Board of Trade from 1867 to 1886, said: "I should like to say that in the discussion which led [in 1872] to the adoption of Mr. Lowe's [Chancellor of the Exchequer] scheme[278] [for the reform of the civil service] a mistake was often made, and is still made, in supposing that the great evil of the service is jobbery. That is not the case, and I say so with great confidence, having regard to what has been done by Ministers whom I have served of both parties. The real evil of the service is promotion by routine, and not jobbing in the selection for superior places.[279] But make your regulations what you will, the _sine qua non_, to make any regulations work well, is that the men at the head of the different offices shall have discretion, honesty, and courage, and shall not be afraid to put up the good men and to keep the inferior men in their place. I am quite confident from my own experience that it can be done, but I am certain that it can be done only if the men at the head of the offices will take a good deal of trouble about it." Lord Lingen, a Member of the Royal Commission, and a former Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, interpolated: "A good deal of trouble and a good deal of disagreeable interference." Mr. Farrer continued: "It requires tact, because of course you must not put a man up for mere merit. You cannot take a lad of 19 and put him over a man of 30 without a very strong reason; but taking the different sub-heads of the department into counsel; by a little give and take; by care, discretion, and confidence in the perfect honesty with which the thing is done, I believe it can be perfectly well managed.... The key of the whole thing is to put the proper men at the top of the offices." Lord Lingen and Mr. Farrer then went on to state that with every change of the Government of the day, some civil servants who had been passed over, or had some other grievance, made the attempt to have their cases reopened.[280] Sir Charles DuCane, Chairman of the Commissioners of Customs, said: "We promote strictly by merit; we never allow seniority to weigh with us."[281]