ABSTRACT
The influence of the Civil Service in Great Britain is a comparatively modern phenomenon. When Bagehot made his analysis seventy years ago, he did not even think it necessary to discuss the influence of the officials; and even the interesting treatise of Sir Sidney Low, now just over a generation old, hardly gives them more than a passing notice. Even a committee like the Anderson Committee on Pay showed itself, as its comments on inspection work made clear, quite unaware of the nature of the civil servant's work; and it is a habit with some critics of the Civil Service to move deliberately from ignorance to misrepresentation. The Civil Service, in its modern form, is now some seventy years old; for the essential character that it how possesses was determined when, in 1870, Mr. Gladstone gave effect to the recommendations of the Trevelyan-Northcote Report by establishing Open Competitive Examination as the central highway of entrance to its ranks.
