Note 369 — Chapter XVII · The Spirit of the Civil Service
Reading edition
Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, July 16, 1897, p. 352. Mr. R. W. Hanbury, Financial Secretary to the Treasury and representing the Postmaster General: “But there were in the senior class certain men who, owing to the fact that they had been promoted by seniority without passing any examination, were not quite up to the normal average of the senior class.”
The reader will note that in 1890 no effort was made to remove the men not up to the standard of the senior class. The Government had to await the retirement or the death of the incompetent men.