← Table of contents
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Cincinnatus" to "Cleruchy", Volume 6, Slice 4

VOLUME VI SLICE IV Cincinnatus to Cleruchy (continued 4)

Reading edition

Such are but a few of the illustrations that might be cited from many fields to suggest that the mind of our generation is becoming receptive to a changed point of view that augurs the coming of a new ethnic era. If one may be permitted to enter very tentatively the field of prophecy, it seems not unlikely that the great revolutionary invention which will close the third period of civilization and usher in a new era is already being evolved. It seems not over-hazardous to predict that the air-ship, in one form or another, is destined to be the mechanism that will give the new impetus to human civilization; that the next era will have as one of its practical ideals the conquest of the air; and that this conquest will become a factor in the final emergence of humanity from the insularity of nationalism to the broad view of cosmopolitanism, towards which, as we have seen, the tendencies of the present era are verging. That the gap to be covered is a vastly wide one no one need be reminded who recalls that the civilized nations of Europe, together with America and Japan, are at present accustomed to spend more than three hundred million pounds each year merely that they may keep armaments in readiness to fly at one another’s throats should occasion arise. Formidable as these armaments now seem, however, the developments of the not very distant future will probably make them quite obsolete; and sooner or later, as science develops yet more deadly implements of destruction, the time must come when communal intelligence will rebel at the suicidal folly of the international attitude that characterized, for example, the opening decade of the 20th century. At some time, after the first period of cosmopolitanism shall be ushered in as a tenth ethnic period, it will come to be recognized that there is a word fraught with fuller meanings even than the word patriotism. That word is humanitarianism. The enlightened generation that realizes the full implications of that word will doubtless marvel that their ancestors of the third period of civilization should have risen up as nations and slaughtered one another by thousands to settle a dispute about a geographical boundary. Such a procedure will appear to have been quite as barbarous as the cannibalistic practices of their yet more remote ancestors, and distinctly less rational, since cannibalism might sometimes save its practiser from starvation, whereas warfare of the civilized type was a purely destructive agency.

Equally obvious must it appear to the cosmopolite of some generation of the future that quality rather than mere numbers must determine the efficiency of any given community. Race suicide will then cease to be a bugbear; and it will no longer be considered rational to keep up the census at the cost of propagating low orders of intelligence, to feed the ranks of paupers, defectives and criminals. On the contrary it will be thought fitting that man should become the conscious arbiter of his own racial destiny to the extent of applying whatever laws of heredity he knows or may acquire in the interests of his own species, as he has long applied them in the case of domesticated animals. The survival and procreation of the unfit will then cease to be a menace to the progress of civilization. It does not follow that all men will be brought to a dead level of equality of body and mind, nor that individual competition will cease; but the average physical mental status of the race will be raised immeasurably through the virtual elimination of that vast company of defectives which to-day constitutes so threatening an obstacle to racial progress. There are millions of men in Europe and America to-day whose whole mental equipment—despite the fact that they have been taught to read and write—is far more closely akin to the average of the Upper Period of Barbarism than to the highest standards of their own time; and these undeveloped or atavistic persons have on the average more offspring than are produced by the more highly cultured and intelligent among their contemporaries. “Race suicide” is thereby prevented, but the progress of civilization is no less surely handicapped. We may well believe that the cosmopolite of the future, aided by science, will find rational means to remedy this strange illogicality. In so doing he will exercise a more consciously purposeful function, and perhaps a more directly potent influence, in determining the line of human progress than he has hitherto attempted to assume, notwithstanding the almost infinitely varied character of the experiments through which he has worked his way from savagery to civilization.

All these considerations tend to define yet more clearly the ultimate goal towards which the progressive civilization of past and present appears to be trending. The contemplation of this goal brings into view the outlines of a vastly Ethical evolution. suggestive evolutionary cycle. For it appears that the social condition of cosmopolite man, so far as the present-day view can predict it, will represent a state of things, magnified to world-dimensions, that was curiously adumbrated by the social system of the earliest savage. At the very beginning of the journey through savagery, mankind, we may well believe, consisted of a limited tribe, representing no great range or variety of capacity, and an almost absolute identity of interests. Thanks to this community of interests,—which was fortified by the recognition of blood-relationship among all members of the tribe,—a principle which we now define as “the greatest ultimate good to the greatest number” found practical, even if unwitting, recognition; and therein lay the germs of all the moral development of the future. But obvious identity of interests could be recognized only so long as the tribe remained very small. So soon as its numbers became large, patent diversities of interest, based on individual selfishness, must appear, to obscure the larger harmony. And as savage man migrated hither and thither, occupying new regions and thus developing new tribes and ultimately a diversity of “races,” all idea of community of interests, as between race and race, must have been absolutely banished. It was the obvious and patent fact that each race was more or less at rivalry, in disharmony, with all the others. In the hard struggle for subsistence, the expansion of one race meant the downfall of another. So far as any principle of “greatest good” remained in evidence, it applied solely to the members of one’s own community, or even to one’s particular phratry or gens.

Barbaric man, thanks to his conquest of animal and vegetable nature, was able to extend the size of the unified community, and hence to develop through diverse and intricate channels the application of the principle of “greatest good” out of which the idea of right and wrong was elaborated. But quite as little as the savage did he think of extending the application of the principle beyond the bounds of his own race. The laws with which he gave expression to his ethical conceptions applied, of necessity, to his own people alone. The gods with which his imagination peopled the world were local in habitat, devoted to the interests of his race only, and at enmity with the gods of rival peoples. As between nation and nation, the only principle of ethics that ever occurred to him was that might makes right. Civilized man for a long time advanced but slowly upon this view of international morality. No Egyptian or Babylonian or Hebrew or Greek or Roman ever hesitated to attack a weaker nation on the ground that it would be wrong to do so. And few indeed are the instances in which even a modern nation has judged an international question on any other basis than that of self-interest. It was not till towards the close of the 19th century that an International Peace Conference gave tangible witness that the idea of fellowship of nations was finding recognition; and in the same recent period history has recorded the first instance of a powerful nation vanquishing a weaker one without attempting to exact at least an “indemnifying” tribute.

But the citizen of the future, if the auguries of the present prove true, will be able to apply principles of right and wrong without reference to national boundaries. He will understand that the interests of the entire human family are, in the last analysis, common interests. The census through which he attempts to estimate “the greatest good of the greatest number” must include, not his own nation merely, but the remotest member of the human race. On this universal basis must be founded that absolute standard of ethics which will determine the relations of cosmopolite man with his fellows. When this ideal is attained, mankind will again represent a single family, as it did in the day when our primeval ancestors first entered on the pathway of progress; but it will be a family whose habitat has been extended from the narrow glade of some tropical forest to the utmost habitable confines of the globe. Each member of this family will be permitted to enjoy the greatest amount of liberty consistent with the like liberty of every other member; but the interests of the few will everywhere be recognized as subservient to the interests of the many, and such recognition of mutual interests will establish the practical criterion for the interpretation of international affairs.

But such an extension of the altruistic principle by no means presupposes the elimination of egoistic impulses—of individualism. On the contrary, we must suppose that man at the highest stages of culture will be, even as was the Progress and efficiency. savage, a seeker after the greatest attainable degree of comfort for the least necessary expenditure of energy. The pursuit of this ideal has been from first to last the ultimate impelling force in nature urging man forward. The only change has been a change in the interpretation of the ideal, an altered estimate as to what manner of things are most worth the purchase-price of toil and self-denial. That the things most worth the having cannot, generally speaking, be secured without such toil and self-denial, is a lesson that began to be inculcated while man was a savage, and that has never ceased to be reiterated generation after generation. It is the final test of progressive civilization that a given effort shall produce a larger and larger modicum of average individual comfort. That is why the great inventions that have increased man’s efficiency as a worker have been the necessary prerequisites to racial progress. Stated otherwise, that is why the industrial factor is everywhere the most powerful factor in civilization; and why the economic interpretation is the most searching interpretation of history at its every stage. It is the basal fact that progress implies increased average working efficiency—a growing ratio between average effort and average achievement—that gives sure warrant for such a prognostication as has just been attempted concerning the future industrial unification of our race. The efforts of civilized man provide him, on the average, with a marvellous range of comforts, as contrasted with those that rewarded the most strenuous efforts of savage or barbarian, to whom present-day necessaries would have been undreamed-of luxuries. But the ideal ratio between effort and result has by no means been achieved; nor will it have been until the inventive brain of man has provided a civilization in which a far higher percentage of citizens will find the life-vocations to which they are best adapted by nature, and in which, therefore, the efforts of the average worker may be directed with such vigour, enthusiasm and interest as can alone make for true efficiency; a civilization adjusted to such an economic balance that the average man may live in reasonable comfort without heart-breaking strain, and yet accumulate a sufficient surplus to ensure ease and serenity for his declining days. Such, seemingly, should be the normal goal of progressive civilization. Doubtless mankind in advancing towards that goal will institute many changes that could by no possibility be foretold, but (to summarize the views just presented) it seems a safe augury from present-day conditions and tendencies that the important lines of progress will include (1) the organic betterment of the race through wise application of the laws of heredity; (2) the lessening of international jealousies and the consequent minimizing of the drain upon communal resources that attends a military régime; and (3) an ever-increasing movement towards the industrial and economic unification of the world.

(H. S. WI.)

Authorities.—A list of works dealing with the savage and barbarous periods of human development will be found appended to the article ANTHROPOLOGY. Special reference may here be made to E.B. Tylor’s Early History of Mankind (1865), Primitive Culture (1871) and Anthropology (1881); Lord Avebury’s Prehistoric Times (new edition, 1900) and Origin of Civilization (new edition, 1902); A.H. Keane’s Man Past and Present (1899); and Lewis H. Morgan’s Ancient Society (1877). The earliest attempt at writing a history of civilization which has any value for the 20th-century reader was F. Guizot’s in 1828-1830, a handy English translation by William Hazlitt being included in Bohn’s Standard Library under the title of The History of Civilization. The earlier lectures, delivered at the Old Sorbonne, deal with the general progress of European civilization, whilst the greater part of the work is an account of the growth of civilization in France. Guizot’s attitude is somewhat antiquated, but this book still has usefulness as a storehouse of facts. T.H. Buckle’s famous work, The History of Civilization in England (1857-1861), though only a gigantic unfinished introduction to the author’s proposed enterprise, holds an important place in historical literature on account of the new method which it introduced, and has given birth to a considerable number of valuable books on similar lines, such as Lecky’s History of European Morals (1869) and Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe (1865). J.W. Draper’s History of the Intellectual Development of Europe (1861) undertook, from the American stand-point, “the labour of arranging the evidence offered by the intellectual history of Europe in accordance with physiological principles, so as to illustrate the orderly progress of civilization.” Its objective treatment and wealth of learning still give it great value to the student. Since the third quarter of the 19th century it may be said that all serious historical work has been more or less a history of civilization as displayed in all countries and ages, and a bibliography of the works bearing on the subject would be coextensive with the catalogue of a complete historical library. Special mention, however, may be made of such important and suggestive works as C.H. Pearson’s National Life and Character (1893); Benjamin Kidd’s Social Evolution (1894) and Principles of Western Civilization (1902); Edward Eggleston’s Transit of Civilization (1901); C. Seignobos’s Histoire de la civilisation (1887); C. Faulmann’s Illustrirte Culturgeschichte (1881); G. Ducoudray’s Histoire de la civilisation (1886); J. von Hellwald’s Kulturgeschichte (1896); J. Lippert’s Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit (1886); O. Henne-am-Rhyn’s Die Kultur der Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft (1890); G. Kurth’s Origines de la civilisation moderne (1886), &c. The vast collection of modern works on sociology, from Herbert Spencer onwards, should also be consulted; see bibliography attached to the article Sociology. The historical method on which practically all the articles of the present edition of the Ency. Brit. are planned, makes the whole work itself in essentials the most comprehensive history of civilization in existence.

CIVIL LAW, a phrase which, with its Latin equivalent jus civile, has been used in a great variety of meanings. Jus civile was sometimes used to distinguish that portion of the Roman law which was the proper or ancient law of the city or state of Rome from the jus gentium, or the law common to all the nations comprising the Roman world, which was incorporated with the former through the agency of the praetorian edicts. This historical distinction remained as a permanent principle of division in the body of the Roman law. One of the first propositions of the Institutes of Justinian is the following:—“Jus autem civile vel gentium ita dividitur. Omnes populi qui legibus et moribus reguntur partim suo proprio, partim communi omnium hominum jure utuntur; nam quod quisque populus ipsi sibi jus constituit, id ipsius civitatis proprium est, vocaturque jus civile quasi jus proprium ipsius civitatis. Quod vero naturalis ratio inter omnes homines constituit, id apud omnes peraeque custoditur, vocaturque jus gentium quasi quo jure omnes gentes utuntur.” The jus gentium of this passage is elsewhere identified with jus naturale, so that the distinction comes to be one between civil law and natural or divine law. The municipal or private law of a state is sometimes described as civil law in distinction to public or international law. Again, the municipal law of a state may be divided into civil law and criminal law. The phrase, however, is applied par excellence to the system of law created by the genius of the Roman people, and handed down by them to the nations of the modern world (see Roman Law). The civil law in this sense would be distinguished from the local or national law of modern states. The civil law in this sense is further to be distinguished from that adaptation of its principles to ecclesiastical purposes which is known as the canon law (q.v.).

CIVIL LIST, the English term for the account in which are contained all the expenses immediately applicable to the support of the British sovereign’s household and the honour and dignity of the crown. An annual sum is settled by the British parliament at the beginning of the reign on the sovereign, and is charged on the consolidated fund. But it is only from the reign of William IV. that the sum thus voted has been restricted solely to the personal expenses of the crown. Before his accession many charges properly belonging to the ordinary expenses of government had been placed on the civil list. The history History of the civil list dates from the reign of William and Mary. Before the Revolution no distinction had been made between the expenses of government in time of peace and the expenses relating to the personal dignity and support of the sovereign. The ordinary revenues derived from the hereditary revenues of the crown, and from certain taxes voted for life to the king at the beginning of each reign, were supposed to provide for the support of the sovereign’s dignity and the civil government, as well as for the public defence in time of peace. Any saving made by the king in the expenditure touching the government of the country or its defence would go to swell his privy purse. But with the Revolution a step forward was made towards the establishment of the principle that the expenses relating to the support of the crown should be separated from the ordinary expenses of the state. The evils of the old system under which no appropriation was made of the ordinary revenue granted to the crown for life had been made manifest in the reigns of Charles II. and James II.; it was their control of these large revenues that made them so independent of parliament. Moreover, while the civil government and the defences suffered, the king could use these revenues as he liked. The parliament of William and Mary fixed the revenue of the crown in time of peace at £1,200,000 per annum; of this sum about £700,000 was appropriated towards the “civil list.” But from this the sovereign was to defray the expenses of the civil service and the payment of pensions, as well as the cost of the support of the royal household and his own personal expenses. It was from this that the term “civil list” arose, to distinguish it from the statement of military and naval charges. The revenue voted to meet the civil list consisted of the hereditary revenues of the crown and a part of the excise duties. Certain changes and additions were made in the sources of revenue thus appropriated between the reign of William and Mary and the accession of George III., when a different system was adopted. Generally speaking, however, the sources of revenue remained as settled at the Revolution.

Anne had the same civil list, estimated to produce an annual income of £700,000. During her reign a debt of £1,200,000 was incurred. This debt was paid by parliament and charged on the civil list itself. George I. enjoyed the Anne, George I. and George II. same revenue by parliamentary grant, in addition to an annual sum of £120,000 on the aggregate fund. A debt of £1,000,000 was incurred, and discharged by parliament in the same manner as Anne’s debt had been. To George II. a civil list of £800,000 as a minimum was granted, parliament undertaking to make up any deficiency if the sources of income appropriated to its service fell short of that sum. Thus in 1746 a debt of £456,000 was paid by parliament on the civil list. On the accession of George III. a change was made in the system of the civil list. Hitherto the sources of revenue appropriated George III. to the service of the civil list had been settled on the crown. If these revenues exceeded the sum they were computed to produce annually, the surplus went to the king. George III., however, surrendered the life-interest in the hereditary revenues and the excise duties hitherto voted to defray the civil list expenditure, and any claim to a surplus for a fixed amount. The king still retained other large sources of revenue which were not included in the civil list, and were free from the control of parliament. The revenues from which the civil list had been defrayed were henceforward to be carried into, and made part of, the aggregate fund. In their place a fixed civil list was granted—at first of £723,000 per annum, to be increased to £800,000 on the falling in of certain annuities to members of the royal family. From this £800,000 the king’s household and the honour and dignity of the crown were to be supported, as well as the civil service offices, pensions and other charges still laid on the list.

During the reign of George III. the civil list played an important part in the history of the struggle on the part of the king to establish the royal ascendancy. From the revenue appropriated to its service came a large portion of the money employed by the king in creating places and pensions for his supporters in parliament, and, under the colour of the royal bounty, bribery was practised on a large scale. No limit was set to the amount applicable to the pensions charged on the civil list, so long as the sum granted could meet the demand; and there was no principle on which the grant was regulated. Secret pensions at the king’s pleasure were paid out of it, and in every way the independence of parliament was menaced; and though the more legitimate expenses of the royal household were diminished by the king’s penurious style of living, and though many charges not directly connected with the king’s personal expenditure were removed, the amount was constantly exceeded, and applications were made from time to time to parliament to pay off debts incurred; and thus opportunity was given for criticism. In 1769 a debt of £513,511 was paid off in arrears; and in spite of the demand for accounts and for an inquiry into the cause of the debt, the Indebtedness of civil list. ministry succeeded in securing this vote without granting such information. All attempts to investigate the civil list were successfully resisted, though Lord Chatham went so far as to declare himself convinced that the funds were expended in corrupting members of parliament. Again, in 1777, an application was made to parliament to pay off £618,340 of debts; and in view of the growing discontent Lord North no longer dared to withhold accounts. Yet, in spite of strong opposition and free criticism, not only was the amount voted, but also a further £100,000 per annum, thus raising the civil list to an annual sum of £900,000.

In 1779, at a time when the expenditure of the country and the national debt had been enormously increased by the American War, the general dissatisfaction found voice in parliament, and the abuses of the civil list were specially singled out for attack. Many petitions were presented to the House of Commons praying for its reduction, and a motion was made in the House of Lords in the same sense, though it was rejected. In 1780 Burke brought forward his scheme of economic reform, but his name was already associated with the growing desire to remedy the evils of the civil list by the publication in 1769 of his pamphlet on “The Causes of the Present Discontent.” In this scheme Burke freely animadverts on the profusion and abuse of the civil list, criticizing the useless and obsolete offices and the offices performed by deputy. In every department he discovers jobbery, waste and peculation. His proposal was that the many offices should be reduced and consolidated, that the pension list should be brought down to a fixed sum of £60,000 per annum, and that pensions should be conferred only to reward merit or fulfil real public charity. All pensions were to be paid at the exchequer. He proposed also that the civil list should be divided into classes, an arrangement which later was carried into effect. In 1780 Burke succeeded in bringing in his Establishment Bill; but though at first it met with considerable support, and was even read a second time, Lord North’s government defeated it in committee. The next year the bill was again introduced into the House of Commons, and Pitt made his first speech in its favour. The bill was, however, lost on the second reading.

In 1782 the Rockingham ministry, pledged to economic reform, came into power; and the Civil List Act 1782 was introduced and carried with the express object of limiting the patronage and influence of ministers, or, in other Civil List Act 1782. words, the ascendancy of the crown over parliament. Not only did the act effect the abolition of a number of useless offices, but it also imposed restraints on the issue of secret service money, and made provision for a more effectual supervision of the royal expenditure. As to the pension list, the annual amount was to be limited to £95,000; no pension to any one person was to exceed £1200, and all pensions were to be paid at the exchequer, thus putting a stop to the secret pensions payable during pleasure. Moreover, pensions were only to be bestowed in the way of royal bounty for persons in distress or as a reward for merit. Another very important change was made by this act: the civil list was divided into classes, and a fixed amount was to be appropriated to each class. The following were the classes:—

1. Pensions and allowances of the royal family.

2. Payment of salaries of lord chancellor, speaker and judges.

3. Salaries of ministers to foreign courts resident at the same.

4. Approved bills of tradesmen, artificers and labourers for any article supplied and work done for His Majesty’s service.

5. Menial servants of the household.

6. Pension list.

7. Salaries of all other places payable out of the civil list revenues.

8. Salaries and pensions of treasurer or commissioners of the treasury and of the chancellor of the exchequer.

Yet debt was still the condition of the civil list down to the end of the reign, in spite of the reforms established by the Rockingham ministry, and notwithstanding the removal from the list of many charges unconnected with the king’s personal expenses. The debts discharged by parliament between 1782, the date of the passing of the Civil List Act, and the end of George III.’s reign, amounted to £2,300,000. In all, during his reign £3,398,061 of debt owing by the civil list was paid off.

With the regency the civil list was increased by £70,000 per annum, and a special grant of £100,000 was settled on the prince regent. In 1816 the annual amount was settled at £1,083,727, including the establishment of the king, now insane; though the civil list was relieved from some annuities payable to the royal family. Nevertheless, the fund still continued charged with such civil expenses as the salaries of judges, ambassadors and officers of state, and with pensions granted for public services. Other reforms were made as regards the definition of the several classes of expenditure, while the expenses of the royal household were henceforth to be audited by a treasury official—the auditor of the civil list. On the accession of George IV. the civil list, freed from the expenses of the late king, was settled at £845,727. On William IV. coming to the throne a sum of £510,000 per annum was fixed for the service of the civil list. The king at the same time surrendered all the sources of revenue enjoyed by his predecessors, apart from the civil list, represented by the hereditary revenues of Scotland—the Irish civil list, the droits of the crown and admiralty, the 4½% duties, the West India duties, and other casual revenues hitherto vested in the crown, and independent of parliament. The revenues of the duchy of Lancaster were still retained by the crown. In return for this surrender and the diminished sum voted, the civil list was relieved from all the charges relating rather to the civil government than to the support of the dignity of the crown and the royal household. The future expenditure was divided into five classes, and a fixed annual sum was appropriated to each class. The pension list was reduced to £75,000. The king resisted an attempt on the part of the select committee to reduce the salaries of the officers of state on the grounds that this touched his prerogative, and the ministry of Earl Grey yielded to his remonstrance.

The civil list of Queen Victoria was settled on the same principles as that of William IV. A considerable reduction was made in the aggregate annual sum voted, from £510,000 to £385,000, and the pension list was Queen Victoria’s civil list. separated from the ordinary civil list. The civil list proper was divided into the following five classes, with a fixed sum appropriated to each:—

Privy purse £60,000

Salaries of household 131,260

Expenses of household 172,500

Royal bounty, &c. 13,200

Unappropriated 8,040

In addition the queen might, on the advice of her ministers, grant pensions up to £1200 per annum, in accordance with a resolution of the House of Commons of February 18th, 1834, “to such persons as have just claims on the royal beneficence or who, by their personal services to the crown, by the performance of duties to the public, or by their useful discoveries in science and attainments in literature and art, have merited the gracious consideration of the sovereign and the gratitude of their country.” The service of these pensions increased the annual sum devoted to support the dignity of the crown and the expenses of the household to about £409,000. The list of pensions must be laid before parliament within thirty days of 20th June. Thus the civil list was reduced in amount, and relieved from the very charges which gave it its name as distinct from the statement of military and naval charges. It now really only dealt with the support of the dignity and honour of the crown and the royal household. The arrangement was most successful, and during the last three reigns there was no application to parliament for the discharge of debts incurred on the civil list.

The death of Queen Victoria rendered it necessary that a renewed provision should be made for the civil list; and King Edward VII., following former precedents, placed unreservedly at the disposal of parliament his hereditary Civil List Act 1901. revenues. A select committee of the House of Commons was appointed to consider the provisions of the civil list for the crown, and to report also on the question of grants for the honourable support and maintenance of Her Majesty the Queen and the members of the royal family. The committee in their conclusions were guided to a considerable extent by the actual civil list expenditure during the last ten years of the last reign, and made certain recommendations which, without undue interference with the sovereign’s personal arrangements, tended towards increased efficiency and economy in the support of the sovereign’s household and the honour and dignity of the crown. On their report was based the Civil List Act 1901, which established the new civil list. The system that the hereditary revenues should as before be paid into the exchequer and be part of the consolidated fund was maintained. The amount payable for the civil list was increased from £385,000 to £470,000. In the application of this sum the number of classes of expenditure to which separate amounts were to be appropriated was increased from five to six. The following was the new arrangement of classes:—1st class, Their Majesties’ privy purse, £110,000; 2nd class, salaries of His Majesty’s household and retired allowances, £125,800; 3rd class, expenses of His Majesty’s household, £193,000; 4th class, works (the interior repair and decoration of Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle), £20,000; 5th class, royal bounty, alms and special services, £13,200; 6th class, unappropriated, £8000. The system relating to civil list pensions, established by the Civil List Act 1837, continued to apply, but the pensions were not regarded as chargeable on the sum paid for the civil list. The committee also advised that the mastership of the Buckhounds should not be continued; and the king, on the advice of his ministers, agreed to accept their recommendation. The maintenance of the royal hunt thus ceased to be a charge on the civil list. The annuities of £20,000 to the prince of Wales, of £10,000 to the princess of Wales, and of £18,000 to His Majesty’s three daughters, were not included in the civil list, though they were conferred by the same act. Other grants made by special acts of parliament to members of the royal family were also excluded from it; these were £6000 to the princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, £6000 to the princess Louise (duchess of Argyll), £25,000 to the duke of Connaught, £6000 to the duchess of Albany, £6000 to the princess Beatrice (Henry of Battenberg), and £3000 to the duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

It may be interesting to compare with the British civil list the corresponding figures in other countries. These are as follows, the figures being those, for convenience, of 1905. Spain, £280,000, exclusive of allowances to members of the royal family; Portugal, Figures in other countries. £97,333, in addition to £1333 to the queen-consort—total grant to the royal family, £116,700; Italy, £602,000, from which was deducted £16,000 for the children of the deceased Prince Amedeo, duke of Aosta, £16,000 to Prince Tommaso, duke of Genoa, and £40,000 to Queen Margherita; Belgium, £140,000; Netherlands, £50,000, with, in addition, £4000 for the maintenance of the royal palaces; Germany, £770,500 (Krondotations Rente), the sovereign also possessing large private property (Kronfideikommiss und Schatullgüter), the revenue from which contributed to the expenditure of the court and the members of the royal family; Denmark, £55,500, in addition to £6600 to the heir-apparent; Norway, £38,888; Sweden, £72,700; Greece, £52,000, which included £4000 each from Great Britain, France and Russia; Austria-Hungary, £941,666, made up of £387,500 as emperor of Austria out of the revenues of Austria, and £554,166 as king of Hungary out of the revenues of Hungary; Japan, £300,000; Rumania, £47,000, in addition to revenues from certain crown lands; Servia, £48,000; Bulgaria, £40,000, besides £30,000 for maintenance of palaces, &c.; Montenegro, £8300; Russia had no civil list, the sovereign having all the revenue from the crown domains (actual amount unknown, but supposed to amount to over £4,000,000); the president of the French Republic had a salary of £24,000 a year, with a further £24,000 for expenses; and the president of the United States had a salary of $50,000 (from 1909, $75,000).

CIVIL SERVICE, the generic name given to the aggregate of all the public servants, or paid civil administrators and clerks, of a state. It is the machinery by which the executive, through the various administrations, carries on the central government of the country.

British Empire.—The appointments to the civil service until the year 1855 were made by nomination, with an examination not sufficient to form an intellectual or even a physical test. It was only after much consideration and almost years of discussion that the nomination system was abandoned. Various commissions reported on the civil service, and orders in council were issued. Finally in 1855 a qualifying examination of a stringent character was instituted, and in 1870 the principle of open competition was adopted as a general rule. On the report of the Playfair Commission (1876), an order in council was issued dividing the civil service into an upper and lower division. The order in council directed that a lower division should be constituted, and men and boy clerks holding permanent positions replaced the temporary assistants and writers. The “temporary” assistant was not found to be advantageous to the service. In December 1886 a new class of assistant clerks was formed to replace the men copyists. In 1887 the Ridley Commission reported on the civil service establishment. In 1890 two orders in council were issued based on the reports of the Ridley Commission, which sat from 1886 to 1890. The first order constituted what is now known as the second division of the civil service. The second order in council concerned the officers of the 1st class; and provision was made for the possible promotion of the second division clerks to the first division after eight years’ service.

The whole system is under the administration of the civil service commissioners, and power is given to them, with the approval of the treasury, to prescribe the subjects of examination, limits of age, &c. The age is fixed for compulsory retirement at sixty-five. In exceptional cases a prolongation of five years is within the powers of the civil service commissioners. The examination for 1st class clerkships is held concurrently with that of the civil service of India and Eastern cadetships in the colonial service. Candidates can compete for all three or for two. In addition to the intellectual test the candidate must fulfil the conditions of age (22 to 24), must present recommendations as to character, and pass a medical examination. This examination approximates closely to the university type of education. Indeed, there is little chance of success except for candidates who have had a successful university career, and frequently, in addition, special preparation by a private teacher. The subjects include the language and literature of England, France, Germany, Italy, ancient Greece and Rome, Sanskrit and Arabic, mathematics (pure and applied), natural science (chemistry, physics, zoology, &c.), history (English, Greek, Roman and general modern), political economy and economic history, mental and moral philosophy, Roman and English law and political science. The candidate is obliged to reach a certain standard of knowledge in each subject before any marks at all are allowed him. This rule was made to prevent success by mere cramming, and to ensure competent knowledge on the basis of real study.

The maximum scale of the salaries of clerks of Class I. is as follows:—3rd class, £200 a year, increasing by £20 a year to £500; 2nd class, £600, increasing by £25 a year to £800; 1st class, £850, increasing by £50 a year to £1000. Their pensions are fixed by the Superannuation Act 1859, 22 Vict. c. 26:—

“To any person who shall have served ten years and upwards, and under eleven years, an annual allowance of ten-sixtieths of the annual salary and emoluments of his office:

“For eleven years and under twelve years, an annual allowance of eleven-sixtieths of such salary and emoluments:

“And in like manner a further addition to the annual allowance of one-sixtieth in respect of each additional year of such service, until the completion of a period of service of forty years, when the annual allowance of forty-sixtieths may be granted; and no additions shall be made in respect of any service beyond forty years.”

The “ordinary annual holidays allowed to officers” (1st class) “shall not exceed thirty-six week-days during each of their first ten years of service and forty-eight week-days thereafter.” Order in Council, 15th August 1890.

“Within that maximum heads of departments have now, as they have hitherto had, an absolute discretion in fixing the annual leave.”

Sick leave can be granted on full salary for not more than six months, on half-salary for another six months.

The scale of salary for 2nd division clerks begins at £70 a year, increasing by £5 to £100; then £100 a year, increasing by £7, 10s. to £190; and then £190 a year, increasing by £10 to £250. The highest is £300 to £500. Advancement in the 2nd division to the higher ranks depends on merit, not seniority. The ordinary annual holiday of the 2nd division clerks is 14 working days for the first five years, and 21 working days afterwards. They can be allowed sick leave for six months on full pay and six months on half-pay. The subjects of their examination are: (1) handwriting and orthography, including copying MS.; (2) arithmetic; (3) English composition; (4) précis, including indexing and digest of returns; (5) book-keeping and shorthand writing; (6) geography and English history; (7) Latin; (8) French; (9) German; (10) elementary mathematics; (11) inorganic chemistry with elements of physics. Not more than four of the subjects (4) to (11) can be taken. The candidate must be between the ages of 17 and 20. A certain number of the places in the 2nd division were reserved for the candidates from the boy clerks appointed under the old system. The competition is severe, only about one out of every ten candidates being successful. Candidates are allowed a choice of departments subject to the exigencies of the services.

There is also a class of boy copyists who are almost entirely employed in London, a few in Dublin and Edinburgh, and, very seldom, in some provincial towns. The subjects of their examination are: Obligatory—handwriting and orthography, arithmetic and English composition. Optional—(any two of the following): (1) copying MS.; (2) geography; (3) English history; (4) translation from one of the following languages—Latin, French or German; (5) Euclid, bk. i. and ii., and algebra, up to and including simple equations; (6) rudiments of chemistry and physics. Candidates must be between the ages of 15 and 18. They have no claims to superannuation or compensation allowance. Boy copyists are not retained after the age of 20.

Candidates for the civil service of India take the same examination as for 1st class clerkships. Candidates successful in the examination must subsequently spend one year in England. They receive for that year £150 if they elect to live at one of the universities or colleges approved by the secretary of state for India. They are submitted to a final examination in the following subjects—Indian Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, the principal vernacular language of the province to which they are assigned, the Indian Evidence Act (these three subjects are compulsory), either Hindu and Mahommedan Law, or Sanskrit, Arabic or Persian, Burmese (for Burma only). A candidate may not take Arabic or Sanskrit both in the first examination and in the final. They must also pass a thorough examination in riding. On reaching India their salary begins at 400 rupees a month. They may take, as leave, one-fourth of the time on active service in periods strictly limited by regulation. After 25 years’ service (of which 21 must be active service) they can retire on a pension of £1000 a year. The unit of administration is the district. At the head of the district is an executive officer called either collector-magistrate or deputy-commissioner. In most provinces he is responsible to the commissioner, who corresponds directly with the provincial government. The Indian civilian after four years’ probation in both branches of the service is called upon to elect whether he will enter the revenue or judicial department, and this choice as a rule is held to be final for his future work.

Candidates for the Indian Forest Service have to pass a competitive examination, one of the compulsory subjects being German or French. They have also to pass a severe medical examination, especially in their powers of vision and hearing. They must be between the ages of 18 and 22. Successful candidates are required to pass a three years’ course, with a final examination, seven terms of the course at an approved school of forestry, the rest of the time receiving practical instruction in continental European forests. On reaching India they start as assistant conservators at 380 rupees a month. The highest salary, that of inspector-general of forests, in the Indian Forest Service is 2650 rupees a month.

The Indian Police Service is entered by a competitive examination of very much the same kind as for the forest service, except that special subjects such as German and botany are not included. The candidates are limited in age to 19 and 21. They must pass a riding examination. A free passage out is given them. They are allotted as probationers, their wishes being consulted as far as possible as to their province. A probationer receives 300 rupees a month. A district superintendent can rise to 1200 rupees a month, while there are a few posts with a salary of 3000 rupees a month in the police service. The leave and pension in both these departments follow the general rules for Indian services.

The civil service also includes student interpreterships for China, Japan and Siam, and for the Ottoman dominions, Persia, Greece and Morocco. Both these classes of student interpreters are selected by open competition. Their object is to supply the consular service in the above-named countries with persons having a thorough knowledge of the language of the country in which they serve.

In the first case, China, Japan, &c., they learn their language in the country itself, receiving £200 as probationers. Then they become assistants in a consulate. The highest post is that of consul-general. In the case of student interpreters for the Ottoman dominions, Persia, Greece and Morocco, the successful candidates learn their languages at Oxford. Turkish is taught gratuitously, but they pay the usual fees for other languages. At Oxford they receive £200 a year for two years. On leaving Oxford they become assistants under the embassy at Constantinople, the legations at Teheran, Athens or Morocco, or at one of H.B.M. consulates. As assistants they receive £300 a year. The consuls, the highest post to which they can reach, receive in the Levant from £500 to £1600 a year. The civil services of Ceylon, Hong-Kong, the Straits Settlements, and the Malay Peninsula are supplied by the Eastern cadetships. The limits of age for the examination are 18 and 24. The cadets are required to learn the native language of the colony or dependency to which they are assigned. In the case of the Straits Settlements and Malay cadets they may have to learn Chinese or Tamil, as well as the native language. The salaries are: passed cadets, 3500 rupees per annum, gradually increasing until first-class officers receive from 12,000 to 18,000 rupees per annum. They are allowed three months’ vacation on full pay in two years, and leave of absence on half-pay after six years’ service, or before that if urgently needed. They can retire for ill-health after ten years with fifteen-sixtieths of their annual salary. Otherwise they can add one-sixtieth of their annual salary to their pension for every additional year’s service up to thirty-five years’ service.

In spite of the general rule of open competition, there are still a few departments where the system of nomination obtains, accompanied by a severe test of knowledge, either active or implied. Such are the foreign office, British Museum, and board of education.

The employment of women in the civil service has been principally developed in the post office. Women are employed in the post office as female clerks, counter clerks, telegraphists, returners, sorters and post-mistresses all over the United Kingdom. The board of agriculture, the customs and the India office employ women. The department of agriculture, the board of education generally, the local government board, all to a certain extent employ women, whilst in the home office there are an increasing number of women inspectors of workshops and factories.

In 1881 the postmaster-general took a decided step in favour of female employment, and with the consent of the treasury instituted female clerkships. Female clerks do not come in contact with the public. Their duties are purely clerical, and entirely in the accountant-general’s department at the savings bank. Their leave is one month per annum; their pension is on the ordinary civil service scale. The examination is competitive; the subjects are handwriting and spelling, arithmetic, English composition, geography, English history, French or German. Candidates must be between the ages of 18 and 20. Whether unmarried or widows they must resign on marriage. The class of girl clerks take the same subjects in a competitive examination. They must be between the ages of 16 and 18; they serve only in the Savings Bank department. If competent they can pass on later to female clerkships. The salaries of the female clerkships range from £200 to £500 in the higher grade, £55 to £190 in the 2nd class, whilst girl clerks are paid from £35 to £40, with the chance of advancement to higher posts.

United States.—Civil service reform, like other great administrative reforms, began in America in the latter half of the 19th century. Personal and partisan government, with all the entailed evils of the patronage system, culminated in Great Britain during the reign of George III., and was one of the efficient causes of the American revolution. Trevelyan characterizes the use of patronage to influence legislation, and the giving of colonial positions as sinecures to the privileged classes and personal favourites of the administration, by saying, “It was a system which, as its one achievement of the first order, brought about the American War, and made England sick, once and for all, of the very name of personal government.” It was natural that the founders of the new government in America, after breaking away from the mother-country, should strive to avoid the evils which had in a measure brought about the revolution. Their intention that the administrative officers of the government should hold office during good behaviour is manifest, and was given thorough and practical effect by every administration during the first forty years of the life of the government. The constitution fixed no term of office in the executive branch of the government except those of president and vice-president; and Madison, the expounder of the constitution, held that the wanton removal of a meritorious officer was an impeachable offence. Not until nine years after the passage of the Four Years’ Tenure of Office Act in 1820 was there any material departure from this traditional policy of the government. This act (suggested by an appointing officer who wished to use the power it gave in order to secure his own nomination for the presidency, and passed without debate and apparently without any adequate conception of its full effect) opened the doors of the service to all the evils of the “spoils system.” The foremost statesmen of the time were not slow to perceive the baleful possibilities of this legislation, Jefferson,1 Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Benton and many others being recorded as condemning and deploring it in the strongest terms. The transition to the “spoils system” was not, however, immediate, and for the next nine years the practice of reappointing all meritorious officers was practically universal; but in 1829 this practice ceased, and the act of 1820 lent the sanction of law to the system of The “spoils system”. proscriptions which followed, which was a practical application of the theory that “to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy.” In 1836 the provisions of this law, which had at first been confined mainly to officers connected with the collection of revenue, were extended to include also all postmasters receiving a compensation of $1000 per annum or more. It rapidly became the practice to regard all these four years’ tenure offices as agencies not so much for the transaction of the public business as for the advancement of political ends. The revenue service from being used for political purposes merely came to be used for corrupt purposes as well, with the result that in one administration frauds were practised upon the government to the extent of $75,000,000. The corrupting influences permeated the whole body politic. Political retainers were selected for appointment not on account of their ability to do certain work but because they were followers of certain politicians; these “public servants” acknowledged no obligation except to those politicians, and their public duties, if not entirely disregarded, were negligently and inefficiently performed. Thus grew a saturnalia of spoils and corruption which culminated in the assassination of a president.

Acute conditions, not theories, give rise to reforms. In the congressional election of November 1882, following the assassination of President Garfield as an incident in the operation of the spoils system, the voice of the people commanding reform was unmistakable. Congress assembled in December 1882, and during the same month a bill looking to the improvement of the civil service, which had been pending in the Senate for nearly two years, was finally taken up and considered by that body. In the debate upon this bill its advocates declared that it would “vastly improve the whole civil service of the country,” which they characterized as being at that time “inefficient, expensive and extravagant, and in many instances corrupt.”2 Law of 1883. This bill passed the Senate on the 27th of December 1882, and the House on the 4th of January 1883, and was signed by the president on the 16th of January 1883, coming into full operation on the 16th of July 1883. It is now the national civil service law. The fundamental principles of this law are:—(1) selection by competitive examination for all appointments to the “classified service,” with a period of probationary service before absolute appointment; (2) apportionment among the states and territories, according to population, of all appointments in the departmental service at Washington; (3) freedom of all the employees of the government from any necessity to contribute to political campaign funds or to render political services. For putting these principles into effect the Civil Service Commission was created, and penalties were imposed for the solicitation or collection from government employees of contributions for political purposes, and for the use of official positions in coercing political action. The commission, in addition to its regular duties of aiding in the preparation of civil service rules, of regulating and holding examinations, and certifying the results thereof for use in making appointments, and of keeping records of all changes in the service, was given authority to investigate and report upon any violations of the act or rules. The “classified” service to which the act applies has grown, by the action of successive presidents in progressively including various branches of tne service within it, from 13,924 positions in 1883 to some 80,000 (in round numbers) in 1900, constituting about 40% of the entire civil service of the government and including practically all positions above the grade of mere labourer or workman to which appointment is not made directly by the president with the consent of the Senate.3 A very large class to which the act is expressly applicable, and which has been partly brought within its provisions by executive action, is that of fourth-class postmasters, of whom there are between 70,000 and 80,000 (about 15,000 classified in 1909).

In order to provide registers of eligibles for the various grades of positions in the classified service, the United States Civil Service Commission holds annually throughout the country about 300 different kinds of examinations. In the work of preparing these examinations and of marking the papers of competitors in them the commission is authorized by law to avail itself, in addition to its own corps of trained men, of the services of the scientific and other experts in the various executive departments. In the work of holding the examinations it is aided by about 1300 local boards of examiners, which are its local representatives throughout the country and are located at the principal post offices, custom houses and other government offices, being composed of three or more Federal employees in those offices. About 50,000 persons annually compete in these examinations, and about 10,000 of those who are successful receive appointments through regular certification. Persons thus appointed, however, must serve six months “on probation” before their appointment can be made absolute. At the end of this probation, if his service has not been satisfactory, the appointee is simply dropped; and the fact that less than 1% of those appointed prove thus deficient on trial is high testimony to the practical nature of the examinations held by the commission, and to their aptness for securing persons qualified for all classes of positions.

The effects of the Civil Service Act within the scope of its actual operation have amply justified the hopes and promises of its advocates. After its passage, absentee holders of lucrative appointments were required to report for duty or to sever their connexion with the service. Improved methods were adopted in the departments, and superfluous and useless work was no longer devised in order to provide a show of employment and a locus standi for the parasites upon the public service. Individual clerks were required, and by reason of the new conditions were enabled, to do more and better work; and this, coupled with the increase in efficiency in the service on account of new blood coming in through the examinations, made possible an actual decrease in the force required in many offices, notwithstanding the natural growth in the amount of work to be done.4 Experience proves that the desire to create new and unnecessary positions was in direct proportion to the power to control them, for where the act has taken away this power of control the desire had disappeared naturally. There is no longer any desire on the part of heads of departments to increase the number or salaries of classified positions which would fall by law within the civil service rules and be subject to competitive examinations. Thus the promises of improvement and economy in the service have been fulfilled.

The chief drawback to the full success of the act within its intended scope of operation has been the withholding of certain positions in the service from the application of the vital principle of competition. The Civil Service Act contemplated no exceptions, within the limits to which it was made applicable, to the general principle of competition upon merit for entrance to the service. In framing the first civil service rules, however, in 1883, the president, yielding to the pressure of the heads of some of the departments, and against the urgent protest of the Civil Service Commission, excepted from the requirement of examination large numbers of positions in the higher grades of the service, chiefly fiduciary and administrative positions such as cashiers, chief clerks and chiefs of division. These positions being thus continued under the absolute control of the appointing officer, the effect of their exception from examination was to retain just that much of the old or “spoils” system within the nominal jurisdiction of the new or “merit” system. Even more: under the old system, while appointments from the outside had been made regardless of fitness, still those appointments had been made in the lower grades, the higher positions being filled by promotion within the service, usually of the most competent, but under the new system with its exceptions, while appointments to the lower grades were filled on the basis of merit, the pressure for spoils at each change of administration forced inexperienced, political or personal favourites in at the top. This blocked promotions and demoralized the service. Thus, while the general effect of the act was to limit very greatly the number of vicious appointments, at the same time the effect of these exceptions was to confine them to the upper grades, where the demoralizing effect of each upon the service would be a maximum. By constant efforts the Civil Service Commission succeeded in having position after position withdrawn from this excepted class, until by the action of the president, on the 6th of May 1896, it was finally reduced almost to a minimum. By subsequent presidential action, however, on the 29th of May 1899, the excepted class was again greatly extended.5

A further obstacle to the complete success of the merit system, and one which prevents the carrying forward of the reform to the extent to which it has been carried in Great Britain, is inherent in the Civil Service Act itself. All postmasters who receive compensation of $1000 or more per annum, and all collectors of customs and collectors of internal revenue, are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and are therefore, by express provision of the act, not “required to be classified.” The universal practice of treating these offices as political agencies instead of as administrative business offices is therefore not limited by the act. Such officers are active in political work throughout the country, and their official position adds greatly to their power to affect the political prospects of the leaders in their districts. Accordingly the Senate, from being, as originally intended, merely a confirming body as to these officers, has become in a large measure, actually if not formally, a nominating body, and holds with tenacity to the power thus acquired by the individual senators. Thorough civil service reform requires that these positions also, and all those of fourth-class postmasters (partly classified by order of 1st Dec. 1908), be made subject to the merit system, for in them is the real remaining stronghold of the spoils system. Even though all their subordinates be appointed through examination, it will be impossible to carry the reform to ultimate and complete success so long as the officers in charge are appointed mainly for political reasons and are changed with every change of administration.

The purpose of the act to protect the individual employees in the service from the rapacity of the “political barons” has been measurably, if not completely, successful. The power given the Civil Service Commission, to investigate and report upon violations of the law, has been used to bring to light such abuses as the levying of political contributions, and to set the machinery of the law in motion against them. While comparatively few actual prosecutions have been brought about, and although the penalties imposed by the act for this offence have been but seldom inflicted, still the publicity given to all such cases by the commission’s investigations has had a wholesome deterrent effect. Before the passage of the act, positions were as a general rule held upon a well-understood lease-tenure, the political contributions for them being as securely and as certainly collected as any rent. Now, however, it can be said that these forced contributions have almost entirely disappeared. The efforts which are still made to collect political funds from government employees in evasion of the law are limited in the main to persuasion to make “voluntary” contributions, and it has been possible so to limit and obstruct these efforts that their practical effect upon the character of the service is now very small.

The same evils that the Federal Civil Service Act was designed to remedy exist to a large degree in many of the state governments, and are especially aggravated in the administration of the local governments of some of the larger State examination. cities. The chief, if not the only, test of fitness for office in many cases has been party loyalty, honesty and capacity being seldom more than secondary considerations. The result has been the fostering of dishonesty and extravagance, which have brought weakness and gross corruption into the administration of the local governments. In consequence of this there has been a constantly growing tendency, among the more intelligent class of citizens, to demand that honest business methods be applied to local public service, and that appointments be made on the basis of intelligence and capacity, rather than of party allegiance. The movement for the reform of the civil service of cities is going hand in hand with the movement for general municipal reform, those reformers regarding the merit system of appointments as not merely the necessary and only safe bulwark to preserve the results of their labours, but also as the most efficient means for bringing about other reforms. Hence civil service reform is given a leading position in all programmes for the reform of state and municipal governments. This has undoubtedly been due, in the first instance, at least, to the success which attended the application of the merit system to the Federal service, municipal and state legislation following in the wake of the national civil service law. In New York an act similar to the Federal Civil Service Act was passed on the 4th of May 1883, and in 1894 the principles of the merit system were introduced by an amendment into the state constitution, and made applicable to cities and villages as well. In Massachusetts an act was passed on the 3rd of June 1884 which in its general features was based upon the Federal act and the New York act. Similar laws were passed in Illinois and Wisconsin in 1895, and in New Jersey in 1908; the laws provide for the adoption of the merit system in state and municipal government. In New Orleans, La., and in Seattle, Wash., the merit system was introduced by an amendment to the city charter in 1896. The same result was accomplished by New Haven, Conn., in 1897, and by San Francisco, Cal., in 1899. In still other cities the principles of the merit system have been enacted into law, in some cases applying to the entire service and in others to only a part of it.

The application of the merit system to state and municipal governments has proved successful wherever it has been given a fair trial.6 As experience has fostered public confidence in the system, and at the same time shown those features of the law which are most vulnerable, and the best means for fortifying them, numerous and important improvements upon the pioneer act applying to the Federal service have been introduced in the more recent legislation. This is particularly true of the acts now in force in New York (passed in 1899) and in Chicago. The power of the commission to enforce these acts is materially greater than the power possessed by the Federal commission. In making investigations they are not confined to taking the testimony of voluntary witnesses, but may administer oaths, and compel testimony and the production of books and papers where necessary; and in taking action they are not confined to the making of a report of the findings in their investigations, but may themselves, in many cases, take final judicial action. Further than this, the payment of salaries is made dependent upon the certificate of the commission that the appointments of the recipients were made in accordance with the civil service law and rules. Thus these commissions have absolute power to prevent irregular or illegal appointments by refractory appointing officers. Their powers being so much greater than those of the national commission, their action can be much more drastic in most cases, and they can go more directly to the heart of an existing abuse, and apply more quickly and effectually the needed remedy.

Upon the termination of the Spanish-American War, the necessity for the extension of the principles of the merit system to the new territories, the responsibility for whose government the results of this war had thrown upon the United States, was realized. By the acts providing for civil government in Porto Rico (April 12th, 1900) and Hawaii (April 30th, 1900), the provisions of the Civil Service Act and Rules were applied to those islands. Under this legislation the classification applies to all positions which are analogous to positions in the Federal service, those which correspond to positions in the municipal and state governments being considered as local in character, and not included in the classification.

On the 19th of September 1900 the United States Philippine Commission passed an act “for the establishment and maintenance of an efficient and honest civil service in the Philippine Islands.” This act, in its general features, is based upon the national civil service law, but includes also a number of the stronger points to be found in the state and municipal law mentioned above. Among these are the power given the civil service board to administer oaths, summon witnesses, and require the production of official records; and the power to stop payment of salaries to persons illegally appointed. Promotions are determined by competitive examinations, and are made throughout the service, as there are no excepted positions. A just right of preference in local appointments is given to natives. The president of the Philippine commission in introducing this bill said: “The purpose of the United States government ... in these islands is to secure for the Filipino people as honest and as efficient a government as may be possible.... It is the hope of the commission to make it possible for one entering the lowest ranks to reach the highest, under a tenure based solely upon merit.” Judging by past experience it is believed that this law is well adapted to accomplish the purpose above stated.

For fuller information upon the details of the present workings of the merit system in the Federal service, recourse should be had to the publications of the U.S. Civil Service Commission, which are to be found in the public libraries in all the principal cities in the United States, or which may be had free of charge upon application to the commission. The Manual of Examinations, published semi-annually, gives full information as to the character of the examinations held by the commission, together with the schedule of dates and places for the holding of those examinations. The Annual Reports of the commission contain full statistics of the results of its work, together with comprehensive statements as to the difficulties encountered in enforcing the law, and the means used to overcome them. In the Fifteenth Report, pp. 443-485, will be found a very valuable historical compilation from original sources, upon the “practice of the presidents in appointments and removals in the executive civil service, from 1789 to 1883.” In the same report, pp. 511-517, is a somewhat comprehensive bibliography of “civil service” in periodical literature in the 19th century, brought down to the end of 1898. See also C.R. Fish, The Civil Service and the Patronage (New York, 1905).

In most European countries the civil service is recruited on much the same lines as in the United Kingdom and the United States, that is, either by examination or by nomination or by both. In some cases the examination is purely competitive, in other cases, as in France, holders of university degrees get special privileges, such as being put at the head of the list, or going up a certain number of places; or, as in Germany, many departmental posts are filled by nomination, combined with the results of general examinations, either at school or university. In the publications of the United States Department of Labour and Commerce for 1904-1905 will be found brief details of the systems adopted by the various foreign countries for appointing their civil service employees.

CIVITA CASTELLANA (anc. Falerii, q.v.), a town and episcopal see of the province of Rome, 45 m. by rail from the city of Rome (the station is 5 m. N.E. of the town). Population (1901) 5265. The cathedral of S. Maria possesses a fine portico, erected in 1210 by Laurentius Romanus, his son Jacobus and his grandson Cosmas, in the cosmatesque style, with ancient columns and mosaic decorations: the interior was modernized in the 18th century, but has some fragments of cosmatesque ornamentation. The citadel was erected by Pope Alexander VI. from the designs of Antonio da Sangallo the elder, and enlarged by Julius II. and Leo X. The lofty bridge by which the town is approached belongs to the 18th century. Mount Soracte lies about 6 m. to the south-east.

CIVITA VECCHIA, a seaport town and episcopal see of Italy, in the province of Rome, 50 m. N.W. by rail and 35 m. direct from the city of Rome. Pop. (1871) 8143; (1901) 17,589. It is the ancient Centum Cellae, founded by Trajan. Interesting descriptions of it are given by Pliny the Younger (Epist. vi. 31) and Rutilius Namat. i. 237. The modern harbour works rest on the ancient foundations, and near it the cemetery of detachments of the Classes Misenensis and Ravennas has been found (Corp. Inscr. Lat. vol. xi., Berlin, 1888, pp. 3520 seq.). Remains of an aqueduct and other Roman buildings are preserved; the imperial family had a villa here. Procopius mentions it in the 6th century as a strong and populous place, but it was destroyed in 813 by the Saracens. Leo IV. erected a new city for the inhabitants on the site where they had taken refuge, about 8 m. N.N.E. of Civita Vecchia towards the hills, near La Farnesina, where its ruins may still be seen; the city walls and some of the streets and buildings may be traced, and an inscription (which must have stood over one of the city gates) recording its foundation has been discovered. It continued to exist under the name Cencelle as a feudal castle until the 15th century. In the meantime, however, the inhabitants returned to the old town by the shore in 889 and rebuilt it, giving it the name Civitas Vetus, the modern Civita Vecchia (see O. Marucchi in Nuovo Bullettino di archeologia cristiana, vi., 1900, p. 195 seq.). In 1508 Pope Julius II. began the construction of the castle from the designs of Bramante, Michelangelo being responsible for the addition of the central tower. It is considered by Burckhardt the finest building of its kind. Pius IV. added a convict prison. The arsenal was built by Alexander VII. and designed by Bernini. Civita Vecchia was the chief port of the Papal State and has still a considerable trade. There are cement factories in the town, and calcium carbide is an important article of export. The principal imports are coal, cattle for the home markets, and fire-bricks from the United Kingdom. Three miles N.E. were the Aquae Tauri, warm springs, now known as Bagni della Ferrata: considerable remains of the Roman baths are still preserved. About 1 m. W. of these are other hot springs, those of the Ficoncella, also known in Roman times.

CLACKMANNAN, the county town of Clackmannanshire, Scotland. Pop. 1505. It lies near the north bank of the Forth, 2 m. E. of Alloa, with two stations on the North British railway. Among the public buildings are the parish church, the tower of which, standing on a commanding eminence, is a conspicuous landmark. Clackmannan Tower is now a picturesque ruin, but at one time played an important part in Scottish history, and was the seat of a lineal descendant of the Bruce family after the failure of the male line. The old market cross still exists, and close to it stands the stone that gives the town its name (Gaelic, clach, stone; Manann, the name of the district). A large spinning-mill and coalpits lend a modern touch in singular contrast with the quaint, old-world aspect of the place. About 1 m. to the S.E. is Kennet House, the seat of Lord Balfour of Burleigh, another member of the Bruce family.

CLACKMANNANSHIRE, the smallest county in Scotland, bounded S.W. by the Forth, W. by Stirlingshire, N.N.E. and N.W. by Perthshire, and E. by Fifeshire. It has an area of 35,160 acres, or about 55 sq. m. An elevated ridge starting on the west, runs through the middle of the county, widening gradually till it reaches the eastern boundary, and skirting the alluvial or carse lands in the valleys of the Forth and Devon. Still farther to the N. the Ochil hills form a picturesque feature in the landscape, having their generally verdant surface broken by bold projecting rocks and deeply indented ravines. The principal summits are within the limits of the shire, among them Ben Cleuch (2363 ft.), King’s Seat (2111 ft.), Whitewisp (2110 ft.), the Law (above Tillicoultry, 2094 ft.) and Blairdenon (2072 ft.), on the northern slope, in which the river Devon takes its rise. The rivers of importance are the Devon and the Black or South Devon. The former, noted in the upper parts for its romantic scenery and its excellent trout-fishing, runs through the county near the base of the Ochils, and falls into the Forth at the village of Cambus, after a winding course of 33 m., although as the crow flies its source is only 5¼ m. distant. The Black Devon, rising in the Cleish Hills, flows westwards in a direction nearly parallel to that of the Devon, and falls into the Forth near Clackmannan. It supplies motive power to numbers of mills and collieries; and its whole course is over coal strata. The Forth is navigable as far as it forms the boundary of the county, and ships of 500 tons burden run up as far as Alloa. The only lake is Gartmorn, 1 m. long by about 1⁄3 of a mile broad, which has been dammed in order to furnish water to Alloa and power to mills. The Ochils are noted for the number of their glens. Though these are mostly small, they are well wooded and picturesque, and those at Menstrie, Alva, Tillicoultry and Dollar are particularly beautiful.

Geology.—This county is divided geologically into two areas, the boundary line skirting the southern margin of the Ochils and running westwards from a point north of Dollar by Alva in the direction of Airthrev in Stirlingshire. The northern portion forms part of the volcanic range of the Ochils which belongs to the Old Red Sandstone period, and consists of a great succession of lavas—basalts and andesites—with intercalations of tuff and agglomerate. As the rocks dip gently towards the north and form the highest ground in the county they must reach a great thickness. They are pierced by small intrusive masses of diorite, north of Tillicoultry House. The well-marked feature running E. and W. along the southern base of the Ochils indicates a line of fault or dislocation which abruptly truncates the Lower Old Red volcanic rocks and brings down an important development of Carboniferous strata occupying the southern part of the county. These belong mainly to the Coal-measures and comprise a number of valuable coal-seams which have been extensively worked. The Clackmannan field is the northern continuation of the great Lanarkshire basin which extends northwards by Slamannan, Falkirk and the Carron Ironworks to Alloa. Along the eastern margin between Cairnmuir and Brucefield the underlying Millstone Grit, consisting mainly of false-bedded sandstones, comes to the surface. Close to the river Devon south of Dollar the Vicars Bridge Limestone, which there marks the top of the Carboniferous Limestone series, rises from beneath the Millstone Grit. The structure of the Clackmannan field is interesting. The strata are arranged in synclinal form, the highest seams being found near the Devon ironworks, and they are traversed by a series of parallel east and west faults each with a downthrow to the south, whereby the coals are repeated and the field extended. During mining operations evidence has been obtained of the existence of a buried river-channel, filled with boulder clay and stratified deposits along the course of the Devon, which extends below the present sea-level and points to greater elevation of the land in pre-glacial time. An excellent example of a dolerite dyke trending slightly north of west occurs in the north part of the county where it traverses the volcanic rocks of Lower Old Red Sandstone age.

Industries.—The soil is generally productive and well cultivated, though the greater part of the elevated range which is interposed between the carse lands on the Forth and the vale of Devon at the base of the Ochils on the north consists of inferior soils, often lying upon an impervious clay. Oats are the chief crop, but wheat and barley are profitably grown. Sheep-farming is successfully pursued, the Ochils affording excellent pasturage, and cattle, pigs and horses are also raised. There is a small tract of moorland in the east, called the Forest, bounded on its northern margin by the Black Devon. Iron-ore (haematite), copper, silver, lead, cobalt and arsenic have all been discovered in small quantity in the Ochils, between Alva and Dollar. Ironstone—found either in beds, or in oblate balls embedded in slaty clay, and yielded from 25 to 30% of iron—is mined for the Devon iron-works, near Clackmannan. Coal has been mined for a long period. The strata which compose the field are varieties of sandstone, shale, fire-clay and argillaceous ironstone. There is a heavy continuous output of coal at the mines at Sauchie, Fishcross, Coalsnaughton, Devonside, Clackmannan and other pits. The spinning-mills at Alloa, Tillicoultry and Alva are always busy, Alloa yarns and fingering being widely famous. The distilleries at Glenochil and Carsebridge and the breweries in Alloa and Cambus do a large export business. The minor trades include glass-blowing, pottery, coopering, tanning, iron-founding, electrical apparatus making, ship-building and paper-making.

The north British railway serves the whole county, while the Caledonian has access to Alloa.

Population and Government.—The population was 33,140 in 1891 and 32,029 in 1901, when 170 persons spoke Gaelic and English and one person Gaelic only. The county unites with Kinross-shire in returning one member to parliament. Clackmannan (pop. 1505) is the county town, but Alloa (14,458), Alva (4624), and Tillicoultry (3338) take precedence in population and trade. Menstrie (pop. 898) near Alloa has a large furniture factory and the great distillery of Glenochil. To the north-east of Alloa is the thriving mining village of Sauchie. Clackmannan forms a sheriffdom with Stirling and Dumbarton shires, and a sheriff-substitute sits at Alloa. Most of the schools in the shire are under school-board control, but there are a few voluntary schools, besides an exceptionally well-equipped technical school in Alloa and a well-known academy at Dollar.

See James Wallace, The Sheriffdom of Clackmannan: a Sketch of its History (Edinburgh, 1890); D. Beveridge, Between the Ochils and the Forth (Edinburgh, 1888); John Crawford, Memorials of Alloa (1885); William Gibson, Reminiscences of Dollar, Tillicoultry,

CLACTON-ON-SEA, a watering-place in the Harwich parliamentary division of Essex, England; 71 m. E.N.E. from London by a branch from Colchester of the Great Eastern railway; served also by steamers from London in the summer months. Pop. of urban district (1901) 7456. Clay cliffs of slight altitude rise from the sandy beach and face south-eastward. In the neighbourhood, however, marshes fringe the shore. The church of Great Clacton, at the village 1½ m. inland, is Norman and later, and of considerable interest. Clacton is provided with a pier, promenade and marine parade; and is the seat of various convalescent and other homes.

CLADEL, LÉON (1835-1892), French novelist, was born at Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne) on the 13th of March 1835. The son of an artisan, he studied law at Toulouse and became a solicitor’s clerk in Paris. He made a reputation in a limited circle by his first book, Les Martyrs ridicules (1862), a novel for which Charles Baudelaire, whose literary disciple Cladel was, wrote a preface. He then returned to his native district of Quercy, where he produced a series of pictures of peasant life in Eral le dompteur (1865), Le Nommé Qouael (1868) and other volumes. Returning to Paris he published the two novels which are generally acknowledged as his best work, Le Bouscassié (1869) and La Fête votive de Saint Bartholomée Porte-glaive (1872). Une Maudite (1876) was judged dangerous to the public morals and cost its author a month’s imprisonment. Other works by Cladel are Les Va-nu-pieds (1873), a volume of short stories; N’a qu’un œil (1882), Urbains et ruraux (1884), Gueux de marque (1887), and the posthumous Juive errante (1897). He died at Sèvres on the 20th of July 1892.

See La Vie de Léon Cladel (Paris, 1905), by his daughter Judith Cladel, containing also an article on Cladel by Edmond Picard, a complete list of his works, and of the critical articles on his work.

CLAFLIN, HORACE BRIGHAM (1811-1885), American merchant, was born in Milford, Massachusetts, on the 18th of December 1811. He was educated at Milford Academy, became a clerk in his father’s store in Milford, and in 1831, with his brother Aaron and his brother-in-law Samuel Daniels, succeeded to his father’s business. In 1832 the firm opened a branch store in Worcester, Mass., and in 1833 Horace B. Claflin and Daniels secured the sole control of this establishment and restricted their dealing to dry goods. In 1843 Claflin removed to New York City and became a member of the firm of Bulkley & Claflin, wholesale dry goods merchants. In 1851 and in 1864 the firm was reorganized, being designated in these respective years as Claflin, Mellin & Company and H.B. Claflin & Company. Under Claflin’s management the business increased so rapidly that the sales for a time after 1865 probably exceeded those of any other mercantile house in the world. Though the firm was temporarily embarrassed at the beginning of the Civil War, on account of its large business interests in the South, and during the financial panic of 1873, the promptness with which Mr Claflin met these crises and paid every dollar of his liabilities greatly increased his reputation for business ability and integrity. He died at Fordham, New York, on the 14th of November 1885.

CLAIRAULT (or Clairaut), ALEXIS CLAUDE (1713-1765), French mathematician, was born on the 13th or 7th of May 1713, at Paris, where his father was a teacher of mathematics. Under his father’s tuition he made such rapid progress in mathematical studies that in his thirteenth year he read before the French Academy an account of the properties of four curves which he had then discovered. When only sixteen he finished a treatise, Recherches sur les courbes à double courbure, which, on its publication in 1731, procured his admission into the Academy of Sciences, although even then he was below the legal age. In 1736, together with Pierre Louis Maupertuis, he took part in the expedition to Lapland, which was undertaken for the purpose of estimating a degree of the meridian, and on his return he published his treatise Théorie de la figure de la terre (1743). In this work he promulgated the theorem, known as “Clairault’s theorem,” which connects the gravity at points on the surface of a rotating ellipsoid with the compression and the centrifugal force at the equator (see Earth, Figure of the). He obtained an ingenious approximate solution of the problem of the three bodies; in 1750 he gained the prize of the St Petersburg Academy for his essay Théorie de la lune; and in 1759 he calculated the perihelion of Halley’s comet. He also detected singular solutions in differential equations of the first order, and of the second and higher degrees. Clairault died at Paris, on the 17th of May 1765.

CLAIRON, LA (1723-1803), French actress, whose real name was Claire Joseph Hippolyte Leris, was born at Condé sur l’Escaut, Hainaut, on the 25th of January 1723, the natural daughter of an army sergeant. In 1736 she made her first stage appearance at the Comédie Italienne, in a small part in Marivaux’s Île des esclaves. After several years in the provinces she returned to Paris. Her life, meanwhile, had been decidedly irregular, even if not to the degree indicated by the libellous pamphlet Histoire de la demoiselle Cronel, dite Frétillon, actrice de la Comédie de Rouen, écrite par elle-même (The Hague, 1746), or to be inferred from the disingenuousness of her own Mémoires d’Hippolyte Clairon (1798); and she had great difficulty in obtaining an order to make her début at the Comédie Française. Succeeding, however, at last, she had the courage to select the title-rôle of Phèdre (1743), and she obtained a veritable triumph. During her twenty-two years at this theatre, dividing the honours with her rival Mlle Dumesnil, she filled many of the classical rôles of tragedy, and created a great number of parts in the plays of Voltaire, Marmontel, Saurin, de Belloy and others. She retired in 1766, and trained pupils for the stage, among them Mlle Raucourt. Goldsmith called Mlle Clairon “the most perfect female figure I have ever seen on any stage” (The Bee, 2nd No.); and Garrick, while recognizing her unwillingness or inability to make use of the inspiration of the instant, admitted that “she has everything that art and a good understanding with great natural spirit can give her.”

CLAIRVAUX, a village of north-eastern France, in the department of Aube, 40 m. E.S.E. of Troyes on the Eastern railway to Belfort. Clairvaux (Clara Vallis) is situated in the valley of the Aube on the eastern border of the Forest of Clairvaux. Its celebrity is due to the abbey founded in 1115 by St Bernard, which became the centre of the Cistercian order. The buildings (see Abbey) belong for the most part to the 18th century, but there is a large storehouse which dates from the 12th century. The abbey, suppressed at the Revolution, now serves as a prison, containing on an average 800 inmates, who are employed in agricultural and industrial occupations. Clairvaux has iron-works of some importance.

CLAIRVOYANCE (Fr. for “clear-seeing”), a technical term in psychical research, properly equivalent to lucidity, a supernormal power of obtaining knowledge in which no part is played by (a) the ordinary processes of sense-perception or (b) supernormal communication with other intelligences, incarnate, or discarnate. The word is also used, sometimes qualified by the word telepathic, to mean the power of gaining supernormal knowledge from the mind of another (see Telepathy). It is further commonly used by spiritualists to mean the power of seeing spirit forms, or, more vaguely, of discovering facts by some supernormal means.

Lucidity.—Few experiments have been made to test the existence of this faculty. If communications from discarnate minds are regarded as possible, there are no means of distinguishing facts obtained in this way from facts obtained by independent clairvoyance. In practice no evidence has been obtained pointing to the possession by a discarnate spirit of knowledge not possessed by any living person (see Medium). As explanation of the few successful experiments in independent clairvoyance we have the choice of three explanations: (1) lucidity; (2) telepathy from living persons; (3) hyperaesthesia. The second possibility was overlooked in Richet’s diagram experiments; it cannot be assumed that a picture put into an envelope and not consciously recalled has been in reality forgotten. Similarly the clairvoyant diagnosis of diseases may depend on knowledge gained telepathically from the patient, who may be subliminally aware of diseased states of the body. The most elaborate experiments are by Prof. Richet with a hypnotized subject who succeeded in naming twelve cards out of sixty-eight. But no precautions were taken against hyperaesthesia further than enclosing the card in a second envelope. There is a power possessed by a certain number of people, of naming a card drawn by them or held in the hand face downwards, so that there is no normal knowledge of its suit and number. Few thorough trials have been made; but it seems to point to some kind of hyperaesthesia rather than to clairvoyance; in the Richet experiments even if the envelopes excluded hyperaesthesia of touch on the part of the medium, there may have been subliminal knowledge on Prof. Richet’s part of the card which he put in the envelope. The experience known as the déjà vu has sometimes been explained as due to clairvoyance.

Telepathic Clairvoyance.—For a discussion of this see Telepathy and Crystal-gazing. It may be noted here that some curious relation seems to exist between apparently telepathic acquisition of knowledge and the arrival of a letter, newspaper, &c, from which the same knowledge could be directly gained. We are confronted with a similar problem in attempting an explanation of the power of mediums to state correctly facts relating to objects placed in their hands. Of a somewhat different character is retrocognition (q.v.), where the knowledge in many cases, if telepathic, must be derived from a discarnate mind.

Clairvoyance, as a term of spiritualism, with its correlative clairaudience, is the name given to the power of seeing and hearing discarnate spirits of dead relatives and others, with whom the living are said to be surrounded. More vaguely it includes the power of gaining knowledge, either through the spirit world or by means of psychometry (i.e. the supernormal acquisition of knowledge about owners of objects, writers of letters, &c). Some evidence for these latter powers has been accumulated by the Society for Psychical Research, but in many cases the piecing together of normally acquired knowledge, together with shrewd guessing, suffices to explain the facts, especially where the investigator has had no special training for his task.

See Richet, Experimentelle Studien (1891); also in Proc. S.P.R. vi. 66. For a criticism see N.W. Thomas, Thought Transference, pp. 44-48. For Clairvoyance in general see F.W.H. Myers, Human Personality, and in Proc. S.P.R. xi. 334 et seq. For a criticism of the evidence see Mrs Sidgwick in Proc. S.P.R. vii. 30, 356.

(N. W. T.)

CLAMECY, a town of central France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Nièvre, at the confluence of the Yonne and Beuvron and on the Canal du Nivernais, 46 m. N.N.E. of Nevers on the Paris-Lyon railway. Pop. (1906) 4455. Its principal building is the church of St Martin, which dates chiefly from the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. The tower and façade are of the 16th century. The chevet, which is surrounded by an aisle, is rectangular—a feature found in few French churches. Of the old castle of the counts of Nevers, vaulted cellars alone remain. A church in the suburb of Bethlehem, dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, now serves as part of an hotel. The public institutions include the sub-prefecture, tribunals of first instance and of commerce and a communal college. Among the industrial establishments are saw-mills, fulling-mills and flour-mills, tanneries and manufactories of boots and shoes and chemicals; and there is considerable trade in wine and cattle and in wood and charcoal, which is conveyed principally to Paris, by way of the Yonne.

In the early middle ages Clamecy belonged to the abbey of St Julian at Auxerre; in the 11th century it passed to the counts of Nevers, one of whom, Hervé, enfranchised the inhabitants in 1213. After the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1188, Clamecy became the seat of the bishops of Bethlehem, who till the Revolution resided in the hospital of Panthenor, bequeathed by William IV., count of Nevers. On the coup d’état of 1851 an insurrection broke out in the town, and was repressed by the new authorities with great severity.

Notes in this chapter

Explore with AITake your curiosity a little further.

Reading settings