good service and bide his time, even for promoting the interests he has at heart, until the turn of the political wheel at home or abroad gives him the power efficiently to help them.

In addition to the many requisites indicated, he must, almost above all, be without vanity; for in the diplomatic service, more than in others, vanity is the source of all incapacity. Diplomacy demands great discrimination in dealing with men; now, in dealing with men, the vain man is always the man dealt with— at least the most unsafe of dealers.

Men combining so many qualifications are not easily to be obtained. When they exist, they are not always the relatives of Cabinet Ministers,-not members of White's,-not even always of the Traveller's. Their qualities must be developed and find exercise in their youth. When a diplomatic agent has once had the opportunity of proving himself a good public servant, our Government has generally shown itself glad enough to employ him, has perhaps found it difficult not to do so: but it has almost invariably been favour, or at the best, accident, not discrimination, judicious selection, or even fair promotion, which has in the first instance given him the chance of displaying his powers. Yet men who have not been specially trained for the duties rarely make good diplomatic agents. The late Lord Granville, among those of recent years, is the only exception which rises to the pen; and he had the advantage of being schooled in the confidence of Canning. Assuredly my Lords Durham, Clanricarde, and Normanby, scarcely came up to the standard indicated. Wyse, Shiel, even the late Lord Lyons and Charles Murray, though the two last named more nearly approached it, do not contradict the assertion; while the far superior qualities of Heytesbury, Lamb, Stratford - Canning, Hudson, and, to a certain degree, the present Lord Cowley, go far to confirm it; for each of these was brought up in, or early introduced into, the service. Even for a special mission, save on a mere object of parade, it is doubtful whether a regularly trained agent, if, as he ought to be, a man of capacity, is not a superior instrument: Lord John Russell and Mr. Gladstone did not do much, at least, to shake our impression in favour of trained diplomatists at Vienna and Corfu! In truth, it requires an early and intimate conversance with foreign men, things, and modes of thinking, to deal well with the former, and surely to measure and appreciate the latter; to acquire the tolerance for differences of action as well as thought-the freedom from narrow English prejudices-which, without the slightest sacrifice of important principle, is requisite in an English representative to fulfil properly his functions.

There is undoubtedly a danger that such pliability may de

generate into an undue cosmopolitanism,-to an indifference to the healthy influences of home modes of thought and action; but there is little fear of this at any time with the Englishman. He is all too apt, wherever he may go, to encircle himself with a hedge of English prejudices which impede his appreciation of what is superior or valuable in the form of civilisation around him. Moreover, this danger is easily met by making allowance for it in the training of the agent. In the early part of his career he should be employed nearly as much at home as abroad; in the later part, perhaps, by some modification of the French system of having a certain number of men en disponibilité, he might be given the opportunity of reinspiring himself at the source of English life.

The Diplomatic Service, from a variety of causes not necessary to enumerate, is perhaps the only one restricted to selection from, not the exclusive, but the upper classes properly so called. No one should be allowed to enter it before the age of twenty-one, nor till he has by a bona fide examination, competitive or other, shown that, in addition to the best university education of the day, he is thoroughly conversant with European history, master of two Continental languages, and cognisant of the broad principles of public law, this last rather to open up his mind to the kind of questions with which it will have to deal, than as likely to afford him much practical assistance in dealing with them. Once admitted into the service, he ought, up to a certain point in his career, to exchange his duty abroad with that in the Foreign Office at home; and when he has attained the rank of Secretary of Legation, to be drafted permanently into the home or foreign service, according to fitness or preference. To make this interchange of duties beneficial to both services, that of the Foreign Office ought to be in some important respects remodeled. In fact, up to a certain point, the home and foreign branches of the service ought to be identical. The great mass of the copying drudgery of the Foreign Office ought to be done, as in other offices, indeed in a portion of itself, by regular copying clerks, leaving the head-work to be done by fewer and better-trained men, whom a higher education and proper circulation abroad have fitted for higher duties, instead of the whole staff of clerks at least running the risk, as at present, of having their intellects positively deadened by years of mere copying. However efficient the staff of the Foreign Office may be, and undoubtedly in many respects is, it can be no disparagement to it to suggest that its service would be far more valuable if its members entered it only at an age when they could by some possibility have acquired a good general education, and afterwards, by some years of well-regulated in

terchange of home and foreign service, have superadded other qualifications for their special duties.

Until very recently, with very few exceptions, and those testifying to the value of the change suggested, the Foreign Office clerk entered the office about seventeen or eighteen, and simply copied, docketed, and entered, his way up to the head of a department, with no time afforded by the really great amount of drudgery to which he is subjected for any thing like self-culture. Now we believe he enters rather later, and undergoes some kind of entrance examination; but the other disadvantages of the position remain the same.

Another important change required in the Office is the appointment of a legal secretary of its own to sift and decide upon an infinity of questions now always referred in an undigested form to the "Law Officers of the Crown;" and when such as still require the farther weight of their opinion, to put the questions to be decided in the form of a proper case before them. At present, as such questions arise, bundles of papers are sent home by the Missions abroad; these are simply transmitted to the law officers, to be in course of time by them returned to the Office and retransmitted back to the Mission which sent them, with an opinion on which frequently, if not generally, it is impossible to act: and after, sometimes, years of referring and bandying about of this opinion, the Minister (not unfrequently his not immediate successor) is authorised to compromise the matter in a practical manner, which he ought to have been empowered to do much more advantageously at once.

No doubt, even from a bad system good men are evolved, sometimes out of its very defects, and, with a good one, many bad men will be found. Nevertheless, with some such changes as those indicated, a good choice will be secured. To give us the full benefit of the change, must still lie with the Foreign Secretary of the day; but he will have less excuse for making a bad selection, at least for seeing no merit save in his kinsfolk and acquaintance. He ought to make it part of his duty quietly to ascertain who are the most capable men at his command,—and they are not always those who, when at home, are either hanging about the Office, or contriving to keep themselves continually before him in "society;" unhesitatingly to recall any incapable or disreputable agent, however excellent his connexions; and to see that some kind of discipline among the junior portion of the service is maintained. Hitherto whether a Secretary or an Attaché has taken his share of the necessary, but often irksome, duty of a chancellerie, has depended pretty much on his own good sense and feeling: more than one good-natured chief has been left to copy, not only his own despatches, but their enclosures

and translations; and such a thing as a young gentleman being reported on as incapable or inattentive has been almost unknown. Such discipline might be easily enforced without any detraction from the mutual confidence and affection that generally distinguishes the members of our Missions from those of other governments.

Let the Foreign Secretary but show honesty and discrimination in their promotion and selection, and prove himself capable of directing, appreciating, and supporting them, and he will be served as the Minister of no other country can possibly be served.*

Postscript. While the foregoing article was actually in the press, the last discussion in the House of Commons on the affairs of Italy was bearing out in a remarkable manner some of the remarks contained in it.

Lord John Russell's almost childish hankerings after his little pet scheme of Italian duality, and impolitic professions of attachment to Austria north of the Alps, with Mr. Gladstone's almost unconditional committal of his Government to its support, are far more alarming than the impotent howls of the few ultramontane members, or even the unwise disclosure of their predilections by the leaders of opposition. They open up a vista of future errors and inconsistencies, and show that even the younger among our regular stagers are as incapable of forgetting and of learning any thing as the powdered Pigtails of the French Restoration. It is clear that, unless the common sense of the public interposes, the game is again going to be put into the hands of Louis Napoleon, possibly with a subsequent reaction against his policy, but not until we have been involved in a course discreditable to ourselves, and detrimental to the real interests of those very governments we shall be attempting to defend.

ART. III.-NATIONAL EDUCATION.

Reports and Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education, with Appendices, from 1856 to 1860.

A QUARTER of a century has passed by since the Estimates for the Civil Service first contained a grant for the purpose of national education. That modest vote of 20,000l. has rolled up by a steady annual increase, until in the Estimates for the last year

Throughout this article no reference has been made to the Consular service, which is kept almost entirely distinct from the superior Diplomatic service: many of the remarks, however, might apply equally to it, The Consular body contains many able and most valuable servants, and, although there are difficulties in the way, it is a question whether these two branches of our foreign service might not be more blended together with benefit to both.

or two it has been approaching the large sum of 800,0007. on the public education of Great Britain.

These figures might well claim the attention of the tax-payer, even if the object of the vote were not of itself sufficiently important to be interesting to every intelligent Englishman. But in fact there can be no question of much greater moment than this, how those who have been appointed trustees of public funds, to be spent in aiding public education, have acquitted themselves of the trust. For in this case it is not a mere question of economy,-whether or not the work actually done might be done at less expense; but it is also a question of results,whether or not what is done is worth doing. A question this which digs down to the very root of the system, and asks whether there is any unsoundness there.

That the whole subject of popular education has been exciting far more interest than has formerly been the case during the last few years, must be well known to our readers. It is not very long since a debate on the Estimates was made the occasion of a fierce attack upon the present system, under the leadership of Mr. Edward Baines; while Lord Brougham's exertions to bring middle-class schools under inspection, and more recently Dr. Guthrie's crusade on behalf of ragged-schools, are no slight testimony in its favour. Among all the signs of awakened interest, however, perhaps none are so satisfactory or so important as those given by Government itself. Two Commissioners have been appointed, as our readers are probably aware: one to inquire into the general state of popular education in this country, the other to report upon its condition in some parts of the Continent. It seems, therefore, to be a fitting time in which to offer a few remarks upon the present results of state education in Great Britain,— for the vexed question of Irish education requires separate treatment, with the view of estimating some of its advantages, and of pointing out a few defects in matters of detail, which, we believe, militate in some degree against its success.

Before entering upon our inquiry, we must premise that there are two points in which the working of the system has been found to differ from the theory upon which it was founded. That theory is, that, by helping those who try to help themselves, the public money is most usefully and deservedly bestowed. This seems to be, theoretically, the best possible way in which a state can interfere in the education of free citizens; and, supposing that poverty were the only hindrance to the spread of knowledge, a system founded on this theory could hardly fail in due time to succeed, provided the help given were sufficient and the machinery good. But unfortunately this condition of success does not exist. The persons directly helped are not the