As yet few of them have attained positions of this grade, but it must be remembered that they have only recently begun to reach an age when they could be expected to do so. [Sidenote: Their Social Effect.] When the government was considering the introduction of competitive examinations, in 1854, fears were expressed that such a system would result in driving the aristocracy out of the civil service, and replacing it by a lower social class.[164:1] Mr. Gladstone himself did not share that belief. On the contrary, he thought the plan would give to the highly educated class a stronger hold than ever upon the higher positions in the service.[164:2] In this he proved a better prophet than his critics. By far the greater part of the successful competitors for the Class I clerkships now come, as we have seen, from Oxford and Cambridge; and the men educated at those universities are still drawn chiefly from the upper classes, from the aristocracy, the gentry, the sons of clergymen, of lawyers, of doctors, and of rich merchants who have made, or who hope to make, their way into the higher strata of society. Men of more humble extraction go, as a rule, to the provincial colleges. The Civil Service Commissioners have given in some of their annual reports the occupations of the fathers of the successful candidates at the chief open competitions; and while in the case of the joint examination for the Class I clerkships and the Indian Civil Service the list includes no peers, and does include some tradesmen, yet on the whole it consists of persons belonging to the upper and the upper middle class. Thus it has come about that competitive examinations, instead of having a levelling tendency, by throwing the service open to a crowd of quick-witted youths without breeding, has helped to strengthen the hold of the upper classes upon the government, by reserving most of the important posts for men trained in the old aristocratic seats of learning. In this connection it may be observed that the highest positions in the civil service are often held by men of noble blood, and it has sometimes happened that the permanent under-secretary has been a man of higher social position than his political chief. Sir Robert Herbert and Sir Courtenay Boyle, for example, who were recently the permanent heads of the Colonial Office and the Board of Trade, were scions of ancient families in England and Ireland; and the latter had at one time as his political chief Mr. Mundella, who had begun life as a printer's devil.[165:1] [Sidenote: The Second Division Clerkships.]