THE CIVIL SERVICE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume X, Issue 58, 9 March 1875, Page 2

THE CIVIL SERVICE.

The O'ago Paily Times writes as follows : — We always feel grateful to anyone who tries to disabuse the ordinary pnrental miud of its untrue notions about the Civil Service. From time to time someone who is capable of massing the undoubted facts of the subject, and successfully generalizing upon them, does succeed in drawing attention to the delusion which forms the stock-in-trade of that gigantic swindle — the Government Service. As a resource for budding boye, as an answer to the question, What shall we do with our lads, the service of the State is not uncommonly regarded as "the great good," the sure recompense of on education above the common. So gently does it steal in upon the paternal mind, with such insidious approach does it pay its addresses, that we are not surprised to find that nine out of every ten parents regard a billet in the Government Service as a very treasure, as affording to their boy the entrance into life which he needed, securing his position and rendering him independent. To those who have examined a little more deeply into the matter, it has long been apparent that to put a boy with any braius at all into the Government service is to consign him to a sort of civil death — to make him as useless a member of society as can well be imagined. Let us see what a Governmeut clerkship means. First, of course, (here is a fair, indeed a considerable rate of pay for a beginner. A merchant's apprentice cleik gets nothing or 10s. per week, while the Government lad gets 203. per week — we beg his pardon, £75 per annum ; it. is more aristocratic to count it by the year. Then the hours are easy, and thenightwoik next to nothing. To go home with his hands in his pockets at halfpast four, being a free /nan with nothing on earth to do, ia certainly a desideratum to most young fellows. And then it is such an eminently aristocratic occupation: the aroma of the Diplomatic and Civil Service at Home hangs round the Coloniul imitation. That service, with dukes for its head, earls for its officers, and even simple knights for its chief clerk, has given a polite linge to the service of Government, even in Honolulu and Fiji, much more in New Zealand. The immediate profit, the tempting idleness, the want of all push and vigor other than pushing a private interest and vigorously tryiog to moke a private party, is tempting in the extreme to the indolent and indifferent among the young men. Mr Simmons, the Head master of the Nelson College, with very great force, lamented the effects upon his school of the habit of continually taking the older boys away, and putting them into the Civil Service. With characteristic peuetratiou he puts his finger upon the weak spot, tbe all-prevailing motive which leJ parents to do this. Boys are really flattening their noses by scores against the window-panes in the Government offices in Wellington, because they think it more gentlemanly to be doing this than weighing out raisins or rolling up flfecee. It is very sad, very degrading indeed to our selfrespect as a community, but we must acknowledge the painiul fact The time is evidently far off in Otago at leust when "it will depend upon a mau's culture whether he has a right to the title" (of gentleman).