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motive? And what are the 'practical tests' to be? Are we to let loose our army of 'qualified' persons on some Public Department, like the apprentices of a country dentist among the farmers on a market day? Let us recognise facts. Let us reduce our examinations in number if possible, let us carefully select our examiners, pay them well, and give them as much time as we can. But do not let us talk of abolishing or revolutionising competition. It is part and parcel of our democratic Constitution, and must stand or fall with it.

HAROLD ARTHUR PERRY.

III.

To the EDITOR of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

SIR,-Your new departure and crusade against competitive examinations seems to me to have a very lame and impotent following.

Let me state the following facts, which should go far to disprove your case.

I have been successful in two open competitions: the appointments were for the Indian and Home Services, with 1,000l. and 500l. per annum respectively-the highest ever given direct in open competition.

I trust it will not be misunderstood when I say that I am the only person who has gained Two open competitions, and I claim therefore a right to speak in the defence of the system.

Because, firstly, I left a small London day-school at fourteen years of age, and taught myself all I know after that in the evenings and anyhow; but I never had an hour's coaching' or 'cramming' from any one, and I was so poor that I never had the slightest interest or influence used in my favour in my life, and I did not even get a nomination for an appointment, which is simply a mockery of a fair and open competition.

I think it physically and mentally impossible to 'cram' as it is called, with a ten days' memory,' &c. &c., ad nauseam, because the mind of my fellow man is not like the liver of a goose, and it is mere abuse to detract from the merit of the successful competitors by such clipped-foxtail kind of argument-for the other foxes will have none of it. The jibes and sneers of the whole genus of Tite Barnacles will not prove a crammed man to be rammed so intellectually tight that he incontinently busts up' as soon as the cram ceases, and that they, the ever-victorious Tite Barnacles, are better men than those selected by competition, in consequence of adhering to the Red Tape Office with all the tenacity due to their low scale of intellectual vitality, and to the low jobbery and backstairs patronage by which they crawled into their ten-to-four sinecures.

Dickens might well have called the creatures the O'Mac Tite Barnacles-because the electoral difficulties in Celtic districts of the

Disunited Kingdom of Lesser Britain have filled our services with Celtic O'Macs of a type that the nation will regret in the hour of need when no English need apply.

To be brief, however, let me add a remedy for all the objections to the system of Competition v. Patronage, viz. let the examiners themselves be selected by OPEN competition.

Then we shall no more hear the laments of those who cannot 'wub two ideales togevah,' and who call it cramming' if any one else scores higher than they do in examinations. I am too busy to go into the self-evident deductions from the foregoing.

I will, however, add this farewell shot, with advice to those who have gained open competitions, viz.: Directly you are appointed, resign. You will then be able, with your proved abilities, to make a ! much better position for yourself out of her Majesty's Services than is them. Verb. sap. Verb. sap. To say nothing of the very unfair conditions of the life, the O'Macs will make it hot for the average Englishmantoo hot to hold him, in fact.

Let him rather try and get up a company entitled England for Englishmen, Unlimited.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
H. TEMPLE HUMPHREY,

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Bute.

Mem. Inst. C.E.

The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot undertake
to return unaccepted MSS.

INDEX TO VOL. XXIV.

The titles of articles are printed in italics.

ADY

BRY

DY (Mrs. Henry), Jean-François Banting cure, the, 200

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-

Barnett (Rev. Samuel A.), A Scheme
for the Unemployed, 753-763
Belief and Conduct, 372-389

Belief, Sins of, and Sins of Unbelief
548-568

Bent (J. Theodore), What St. John saw
on Patmos, 813-821

Beothuks, the, of Newfoundland, 899-918
Blackwood (Sir Arthur), The Public
Offices-from Within, 276-281

Blaine (Mr.), his 'Twenty Years of
Congress,' 274-275

cause of his defeat in the Presidential
contest of 1881, 785--786

Blake (Sir Henry), nomination of, to
the governorship of Queensland, 891-
892

Blake (Lady), The Beothuks of New-
foundland, 899-918

Board schools, reports of the commis-
sioners on, 871-874

Boccaccio and Chaucer, 347-348

The Cry for Useless Knowledge, 653- Boulanger (General), 474-475
668

Armstrong, Lord, and Technical Edu-

cation, 325-333

-effect of his popularity on Germany,
803-804

Brazil, Liberating the Slaves in, 94-105

Arnold (Edwin Lester), The Future of Brewster (Sir David), on lighthouse il-

English Tobacco, 569–575
Artillery, our deficiency in, 111-112
Australian Lesson, an, 393–409

ADEN-POWELL (Sir George),
Selecting Colonial Governors, 891–

898

lumination, quoted, 80

Brienne, Comte de, the Memoirs of the,
686-702

Brooks (Dr. Phillips) on the Chautauqua
College, quoted, 496

Brown (Professor Colin) on Gaelic
labour-songs, quoted, 239

Bryce (General Lloyd S), Socialism

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through American Spectacles, 315- Conduct, Belief and, 372-389

324

Buddhism, 119-135

Buddhism in Japan, 855

Buildings, Public, in London, 703-718
Bullet-playing, a Scotch game, 370
Burne-Jones (Mr.), pictures of, 38
Bury (Mlle. Blaze de), The Real Ma-
dame de Pompadour, 207-226

Co-operative Stores for Ireland, 410-418
Copleston (Dr.), Buddhism, 119-135
County Councils, Local Government

and, in France, 136-144

Court of High Commission, origin of,
773

Crackanthorpe (Montague), The Future
of the Unionists, 719-726

Crawfurd (Oswald), Slavery in East
Central Africa, 439-450

YABINET revelations, the rule regard- Cry for Technical Education, the Vague,

CABINE

ing, 454-455

Cadenas, the word, explanation of, 694
Calhoun (John C.), American statesman,
266-269

California, a Mountain Vineyard in,
251-261

Canada and the United States, 786-788
Canteens, regimental, 828-829
Cardwell (Lord), breakdown of his cen-
tralisation scheme, 108-110
Carey (Dr. William), anecdote of, 15
Cecil (Lord Eustace), The Curse of the
War Office, 106–118

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45-52

- for Useless Knowledge, the, 653-668

DAN

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ANTE, transfusions from, in Chaucer,
348-350

Davos, health resort, 57-59

Dawson (Sir William), on St. John's
vision at Patmos, quoted, 814

Death, the First-born Son of, 576-578
Democracy, character of the, 83-84
Democracy and Party, 227-237
Demoniac possession, the belief in, 584-
589

Detaille (M.), his picture of the 'Dream,'
40-41

Devils, forms for the casting out of, 580-
594

D'Israeli (Isaac), on songs for the people,
quoted, 238

Chautauqua Reading Circle, the, 487- Doyle (Dr. Conan), The Geographical

500

Christianity, what is left of? 282-300
Christianity, relation of, to morality,
373-389

Church of England, Queen Elizabeth and
the, 764-784

Churches, who owns the? 145-160
Cleveland (President) and his Message
to Congress on the Fisheries question,
786-788

Clifford (Edward), The First-born Son
of Death, 576-578

Colliery life in Scotland, 360-371
Colomb (Sir J. C. R.), The Naval
Manœuvres, 595–604

Colombo (Bishop of), see Copleston
(Dr.)

Colonial Governors, Selecting, 891-898
Competition, evil results of, to the
working classes, 85-86

– fallacy of Socialism regarding, 320-
321

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