The British Royal Commission on the Civil Service

Extract

Since the day when Queen Victoria gave her reluctant consent to allow her Government to introduce a form of pass examinations as a means of entrance to the public service, there has been at least one grand inquest each generation into the operation of the experiment thus timidly launched. The Playfair Commission (1874-75) looked skeptically upon the system of open competition inaugurated in 1870; the Ridley Commission (1886-90) reflected the growing confidence in merit and in the Upper Division; the MacDonnell Commission (1912-15) faced, without making commitments, the new organized service which had already made itself felt in the Post-Office, and which was destined in the brief era of “new world” psychology after the war to entrench itself firmly in the Whitley councils for the civil service.