CONSULAR REFORM: PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION.

New Zealand Colonist and Port Nicholson Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 60, 24 February 1843, Page 4

CONSULAR REFORM: PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION.

The repeated exposures of had management in the Consular department, which have recently been made, encourage a hope that some general interest may be awakened to the ques- , tion how the evil is to be prevented in future. Among other suggestions, it has been thrown out that the most effective precaution would be to appoint no one to the Consular office who lias not been bred to the. business, and given proofs of ability to discharge its duties, f jord Palmerston attempted, in the debate upon Mr. DTsraeli’s motion, to discountenance the proposal bv representing it as impracticable : “ There is,” he is reported to have said, “ no education for a Consul: there can by no possibility be any specific education for such an office, because the duties vary according to the place and country in which the Consul has to act, and from time to time according to the circumstances under which he may be placed.” The reasoning is curious. By the same argument, Lord Palmerston might have proved that there can be no specific education for any of the liberal professions whatever. There can he no specilic education for Engineer or Artillery officers, because their duties “ vary according to the place and oountry in which they have to act.” There can be no specifie education for civil engineers, for the same reason. There can be no specific education for divines or medical men, because their duties vary “ from time to time according to the circumstances under which they may be placed.’ There can he no specific education for lawyers, because their duties vary with the varying circumstances of every case in which they are engaged. Pi ofessional education consists of two parts — the general or preparatory, and the special or practical. The former consists in the general instruction received by young men in those branches of knowledge which render them conversant with the extent and nature of their future duties, and exercise those mental faculties most in request in their profession. This part embraces the languages, in all liberal professions; history and moral intellectual science, with the lawyer and divine ; chemistry and mathematics, with the civil and military engineer; chemistry and the different branches of natural history, with the physician. The special part of professional education consists in making the young man, prepared by a good education, rise by degrees from the practical discharge of the simpler and easier duties of his profession to the more delicate and complicated. The soldier has to fight his way up from the post of subaltern to the higher commands ; the lawyer advances through the grades of junior and senior counsel to the bench; the clergyman is a curate, then a rector or vicar, then a prebend, and lastly, if his good fortune or deserts bring him so far, a bishop. The sailor must have served as midshipman and lieutenant, and have passed his examinations, before he is intrusted with the command of a ship. By such arrangements a tolerable guarantee is afforded that the duties of these professions shall be discharged by competent persons. Is it or is it not possible to obtain a similar guarantee in the case of persons appointed to fill the important office of Consul ? The only things requisite to render professional education possible, are the existence of a profession, the existence of a body of duties which the convenience or necessities of society have led it to intrust to the discharge of a class, and the recurrence of demands for the services of this class so frequent and regular, that a numerous body may educate themselves to the employment certain that there will always be employment for them. The Consular establishment of England is extensive and permanent; and if it be not considered sufficiently so to encourage young men to study with a view of following it, there are other branches of the public service for which the same general or preliminary education might with advantage be demanded. The general information required in a Consul embraces —an acquaintance with statistics, and the theory of commerce ; a knowledge of mercantile law, the law of nations, and public or constitutional law; and a mastery of the leading languages of Europe and Asia. The same preliminary knowledge is required in candidates for entering the Diplomatic career ; and would be advantageous in all appointed to clerkships in the various Government offices at home. The public service would he much benefitted if testimonials of having gone through such a preliminary course of study, and stood an examination to show how far they had profited by it. were demanded from all for whom application is made for appointments in the public offices, or in the Consular or diplomatic establishments. The number of officials required in these departments requires annually so extensive a supply of recruits, that young men of promise would study with a view to the career of public employment, as they now. study with a view to be admitted into the Church, the medical and legal professions, and the Engineers and Artillery. In all the German States, such a course of preliminary study is required in those who seek employment in the, Government bureaus; and in this country the East India Company has set a similar example. What we have called the special part of professional education-—the appointment .of the candidate first to subordinate and then gradu-

I affv to more and more important offices —is equally practicable, and is the only arrangement by which good public servants can be secured. Let men feel that by discharging well and faithfully duties of inferior importance they are sure to earn promotion, you give them a motive to be painstaking and active ; and by doing this, you take the only possible means of training efficient Consuls or any thing else. The best general education can only furnish as it were the raw material of the physician, lawyer, soldier, or diplomatist: it is the practice of his profession that must make him. The way to train good public servants, is to open up to them a possible field of high promotion, with a certainty that good conduct alone can command it. This field of promotion may be extended by leaving open the possibility of being transferred from one department of the Civil service of Government to another. The functions of the Consul and the Diplomatist are incompatible, the Consul injures bis usefulness if he interferes with politics; and the diplomatist has enough of business in hand without taking upon him the routine duties of the Consulate. But the same kind of knowledge and the same talents which fit a man for the one office are those which qualify him for the other. The Diplomatist would often act with more intelligence and success if he possessed knowledge which can only be acquired by having at some time, or other acted as a Consul. On the other hand, a more respectable class of Consuls will be insured if they are taught to feel that their office, if less important than that of a Chargd d’Affaires, is so in degree only, not in kind. With this view, the recot nition of such a series of grades in the public service as the following might be productive of advantage —first, Clerks in the Principal Government offices, and Attaches to the different Legations; second, Consuls; third, Charges d’Affaires, and other high Diplomatic officials, In each of the inferior grades opportunities would be obtained of acquiring the practical knowledge of business that qualifies for the grade above it, and of showing whether the occupant possessed the abilities entitling him to promotion. So far from Lord Palmerston’s assertion, “ there is no education for a Consul,” being true, such an education is the only possible basis for reform in our Consular and Diplomatic establishments, that shall combine the necessary efficiency with the necessary economy.