WI: On Their Own Merits - Stafford Northcote Reforms Government

perfectgeneral

Donor
Monthly Donor
What if 'Northcut' decides (as first lord of the treasury say) that government and cabinet posts should be reformed in the same way as HM's Civil Service?

The Northcote-Trevelyan Report was a document prepared by Stafford H. Northcote and C.E. Trevelyan in 1854 that catalyzed the development of Her Majesty's Civil Service in the United Kingdom due to the influence of the ancient Chinese Imperial Examination. Its formal title was "Report on the Organisation of the Permanent Civil Service, Together with a Letter from the Rev. B. Jowett."
So once the election results are in, the majority party/parties sit competitive entrance exams for government position and further competition for cabinet position. The Prime Minister's power to appoint is limited to candidates that reach the required level. A further examination directly for the posts of Foreign Secretary or Chancellor of the Exchequer reflects the high demands of these positions. The examinations are drawn up and administrated by the Civil Service.

Too late to stop the Crimean War (1853), Second Opium War (1856) or even the Third Ashanti War (1873).

Any candidates after 1876 (Northcote becomes leader in the commons) that might have been 'weeded out' by such an exam system?
 
Last edited:

dead_wolf

Banned
Well, 1854 is the middle of the Crimean War, so Aberdeen isn't likely to push for such a massive reform. And honestly, though it is Aberdeen, I'm not sure he'd push for it even during peacetime. Likewise Palmerston isn't going to want to push the issue either during or after the war. I mean, the question is, in the midst of Victoria era politicking, patronage, corruption, etc., why any ministry would want to limit its own powers and future chances at election by passing such reforms? It'd need to become a public issue first. Civil service is one thing, and cabin ministry heads are another.
 

perfectgeneral

Donor
Monthly Donor
I'm really looking at later in Northcoate's career when he was second Lord of the treasury 1874-1880 (Chancellor of the Exchequer) and then First Lord of the Treasury 1885-1886 (although not Prime Minister, despite holding the purse strings). He had the previous reform experience and lots of political clout. Any time 1876-1880 or 1885-1886 seems possible to me. It might even give him the mechanism to establish his own government - by Royal Appointment?
 

dead_wolf

Banned
Twenty years after the fact seems rather late. Again, it needs to be a public issue to galvanize voters, and therefore MPs, to vote on it. Why would Disraeli, or Salisbury, agree to any plan to limit their own power and that of their party?
 

perfectgeneral

Donor
Monthly Donor
So what sort of public issue brings in a ministerial exam?

Secret ballots came in in 1872.
The High Court and Court of Appeals in 1876.

Institution reform is in the air. An Order in Council would just require Northcote running the statute by the Monarch after which they say 'Approved' and hey presto, it is law. Then the onus would be on Parliament to raise the votes to repeal it throught an Act. That would require explanations to press and voters.

Dead Wolf, it is your objection. Are you saying that it isn't possible or do you have something in mind?
 
Last edited:

dead_wolf

Banned
OK, I don't think you're understanding my point. What you're asking if that the Prime Minister, and his party, give up their power to name who they want to what cabinet position they want. This is a very important power. It lets them reward supporters. It lets them shunt aside internal but important dissenters into less positions which are reward enough to keep them from protesting but aloof enough to keep them out of real control of the mechanisms of government. It allows them to institute inter-party control, as well as a very powerful degree of control over the machinery of the state itself. So why, why, in the world would they ever give any of that up without a large pressing issue forcing them to? "The spirit of reform" isn't enough here.

Also, the UK was far from an absolute monarchy. You're summary of British law-making is pretty far off the mark. If Northcote just went to Victoria over the issue, even assuming he'd get an audience unannounced without stating his intention, it's not she could just snap her fingers and make it so, and such a direct approach, blatantly against the traditions of British parliamentarianism and against the rule of Disraeli, or Salbury, would very quickly see him forced out of his own cabinet position.
 

perfectgeneral

Donor
Monthly Donor
I'm going to firm up the hypothetical a bit by saying that Northcote has something drafted while in opposition and brings it to the Queen (Victoria) and reads it to her in 1885. She approves and holds any new government to this stanadard. The WI is about this happening. As fact. What happens once his exam system is applied?
 

perfectgeneral

Donor
Monthly Donor
OK, I don't think you're understanding my point. What you're asking if that the Prime Minister, and his party, give up their power to name who they want to what cabinet position they want. This is a very important power. It lets them reward supporters. It lets them shunt aside internal but important dissenters into less positions which are reward enough to keep them from protesting but aloof enough to keep them out of real control of the mechanisms of government. It allows them to institute inter-party control, as well as a very powerful degree of control over the machinery of the state itself. So why, why, in the world would they ever give any of that up without a large pressing issue forcing them to? "The spirit of reform" isn't enough here.

Also, the UK was far from an absolute monarchy. You're summary of British law-making is pretty far off the mark. If Northcote just went to Victoria over the issue, even assuming he'd get an audience unannounced without stating his intention, it's not she could just snap her fingers and make it so, and such a direct approach, blatantly against the traditions of British parliamentarian-ism and against the rule of Disraeli, or Salisbury, would very quickly see him forced out of his own cabinet position.

By this stage he is not a well man and this would be his parting shot. Orders in Council over issues of Royal Prerogative are perfectly constitutional. It is Her Majesty's Government. The power to hire and fire remains with the PM. They just have to ensure that the candidates are qualified. The greasy pole just got a little more slippery.

Who said he didn't state his intention? The queen would be well acquainted with Stafford Northcote. He pays the wages of the ministers. Would her majesty like her government to be examined as competent? Just to filter out any well connected fools?
 

dead_wolf

Banned
And throw British constitutionalism out the window? In favor of what, I'm quite sure both the liberal and conservative establishment of that period and place, will call "oriental despotism." The last time the British parliament jumped when the monarch said jump was... hell before there was a Britain in a proper sense. Hell, Fox demanded Portland when George III tried to appoint Shelburne and you know what happened? - he got him. No. What you're proposing will play out like this; Northcote will take his idea to Victoria and lay out to her. Victoria is neither stupid nor a fool. She will politely thank him for his charming idea, and after he's left she'll write in her journal about his silly little idea, and that'll be the end of that. My god the outrage that would occur if the Queen of Britain were to actually come out and state she didn't think the parliament and Prime Minister should be able to appoint the government's cabinet ministers but instead it should be ones appointed directly by the Queen after being vetted 'like the Chinese.' And if Northcote brought it before the commons? If it wasn't booed down instantly it'd split the liberals wide open.
 
The reason that Victoria would ignore any such initiative, and I think the fact that it's so obvious is the reason nobody's yet voiced it, is that this goes against the entire tenor of Victorian politics. MPs are generally selected as representatives and not intellectuals, as a single example from Bradford will show. General Thomas Perronet Thompson read Horace when he was six, graduated seventh in his year at Cambridge and was later elected a fellow of Queen's College. He was governor of Sierra Leone at 25,
wrote a Catechism on the Corn Laws which went through 19 editions in 13 years, edited the Westminster Review, and was part of the committee which drew up one of the first drafts of the People's Charter. However, he's defeated at the 1852 election despite being the incumbent: the man who tops the poll is Robert Milligan, a woollen draper who started his career selling draperies door-to-door and has literally no education.

Ministers- even cabinet ministers- are there to devise policy and to answer for it to the country. The civil service are there to implement it and to make sure it works. Indeed, the report which Northcote himself wrote makes it clear that he sees the two in different lights: the civil service are

an efficient body of permanent officers, occupying a position duly subordinate to that of the Ministers who are directly responsible to the Crown and to Parliament, yet possessing sufficient independence, character, ability and experience to be able to advise, assist, and, to some extent, influence, those who are from time to time set over them.

Can you honestly see men like Gladstone, Salisbury, Rosebery, Chamberlain, Harcourt, Balfour, Stanhope, R. Churchill, W.H. Smith, Asquith or Morley being prepared to sit down and take an exam to allow the Civil Service to decide whether they're competent to govern or not?
 

perfectgeneral

Donor
Monthly Donor
And Robert Milligan did what for Britain? This isn't so much a filter for the intellectually bent, more a filter against incompetency. Surely the most influential need to be qualified for the work?

I can see how grandees might say qualifying would be beneath them, but would they really refuse a post in government rather then take a test? The same test as every other contender for a post? With the queen having no say in the test or the result?

So we are stuck with lions led by donkeys. I don't think the political resistance has been assessed correctly, but if you would rather refute than speculate then that is that.
 
Last edited:
And Robert Milligan did what for Britain? This isn't so much a filter for the intellectually bent, more a filter against incompetency. Surely the most influential need to be qualified for the work?
Well, for a start he founded a bank, a drapery and a stuff manufacturing firm; he was at the heart of the anti-Corn Law League and helped to deliver Lord Morpeth a walk-over in the largest constituency outside London; as the first mayor of Bradford he led a thousand special constables armed with cutlasses to suppress a Chartist riot; and after starting out in life owning nothing but the clothes on his back and a leather knapsack he left a personal estate valued at £120,000 and a warehouse in Bradford with a mile of mahogany counters. But I'd suppose you'd say he hadn't properly proved his ability to organise, administer and run anything because he hadn't passed an exam set by civil service Oxbridge classics graduates.

but if you would rather refute than speculate then that is that.
I'm just pointing out why this is completely implausible in the context of the timeframe you set. As it happens, I can quite easily see a situation in Britain where you have ministerial examinations: it just requires a POD far beyond Northcote waking up one day with a wizard scheme for completely reshaping the British constitution and Queen Victoria responding with "eh, why not". The reason I'm refuting rather than speculating is because you've so far shown nothing but hostility to the idea that your suggestion is anything less than entirely feasible.
 

dead_wolf

Banned
Not just eh, why not; Victoria would have to be actively looking for a way to get herself shunted even more under parliament's control. I mean this is Queen Victoria - she had to fight tooth and nail against having her personal maids change with each new government, and iirc she lost that battle.

Victoria would never put her seal to it, it'd never get out of the commons, the lords would certainly have absolutely nothing to do with it, and even if, by some ASB, it did pass, the very next government would repeal it immediately.
 

perfectgeneral

Donor
Monthly Donor
You are not. You are deconstructing the premis with no interest in discussing an alternative to history. Your position is reactionary. Eat up, trolls, these are the last scraps.
 
The WI is about this happening. As fact.
If you decide you want to lock down the terms of debate, don't be surprised when people start knocking holes in your POD. Particularly when it's as badly thought out as this one. Complaints about the qualification of ministers is more a 21st century phenomenon than a 19th century one.

A monarch is useful when he gives an effectual and beneficial guidance to his Ministers. But these Ministers are sure to be among the ablest men of their time. They will have had to conduct the business of Parliament so as to satisfy it; they will have to speak so as to satisfy it. The two together cannot be done save by a man of very great and varied ability. The exercise of the two gifts is sure to teach a man much of the world; and if it did not, a Parliamentary leader has to pass through a magnificent training before he becomes a leader. He has to gain a seat in Parliament; to gain the ear of Parliament; to gain the confidence of Parliament; to gain the confidence of his colleagues. No one can achieve these—no one, still more, can both achieve them and retain them—without a singular ability, nicely trained in the varied detail of life. (Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution, 1867)

It's a shame, because the broad question of "how might Britain have ended up with ministerial exams" has a lot of scope for discussion. It might focus on how you reverse the trend of anti-intellectualism in British culture, ending the "gentleman's fourth" and making aristocrats value their education as much as their ability on the hunting field, so that examinations are a natural part of life and the Commons naturally defer to the most intellectual among their number. You might reach back even earlier, suggesting the Commons placing an outright ban on MPs holding offices of profit under the Crown and using examinations and approvals of appointments as a way of controlling the executive. Certainly more interesting than picking one out of five years for Northcote to launch his harebrained scheme and speculating about which Victorian political figures might not have understood the gerundive well enough to pass.
 
Last edited:
Top