The Civil Service.

In an article commenting on the relation of public education to the civil service, the Nation says: "It seems to flow naturally from all this that the state should encourage and stimulate popular education by using places in public service to reward it. In Germany, where great value-some think inordinate value-has long been attached to the higher education, all but the lowest places in the civil service are reserved inexorably for graduates of the universities or gymnasia. In England, in 1870, the establishment of common schools, supported by general taxation, was accompanied by the throwing open of the civil and military service to competitive examination, thus giving the sons of the poorest and humblest men in the country a fair chance of filling places in the government service, which had previously been reserved for the younger sons of the gentry with such rigor that John Bright once called that service "a vast system of out-door relief for the British aristocracy." Indeed, it was said that "in England the opening of the civil and military service, in its influence upon the national education, was equivalent to a hundred thousand scholarships and exhibitions of the most valuable kind."