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have considerable influence; and that a plan which would stimulate the people in some measure to educate themselves would be felt to be quite as legitimate an encouragement for the State to offer as the direct payment of £1,000,000 per annum from the public taxes. Indeed, of the two modes by which the State can induce the people to acquire knowledge, viz.—(1) that of paying for their schooling out of the taxes, and (2) that of supplying them with a motive to pay for it themselves out of their own wages, probably the latter will not be considered either the less legitimate or the less efficacious mode. And one of the chief merits of the Competition System, viewed (as we are entitled to view it) with regard to its educational influences, would be its tendency to prolong the period of education beyond the ordinary school age, and thus happily prevent in many instances an evil which at present involves the absolute waste of much public money, viz., the loss by children, after quitting school, of the greater part of what they may have learned there during their attendance.
As to a supposed inexpediency, on economic grounds, of attracting persons from private to the public service, there can be little doubt that things would soon arrange themselves as regularly and quietly in this branch of employment as they do in every other. Even the allurements of the Gold-fields have now ceased to prevent a sufficient flow of labour into all its ordinary channels; and, in the face of this result, it is impossible to fear that after the experience of a year or two, the less exciting temptations of the Civil Service would occasion a lack of hands in any department of industry. The permanent number of expectants would probably not be much greater than the present plentiful supply; but they would be of a different and a better class—persons who would rely for success upon their own qualifications and not upon political services—persons also whose very training for the competition would facilitate their employment in another sphere of labour, in case they should fail in their endeavours to enter the service of the State. There always will be a certain number of situations to be filled up every year: it is impossible therefore to prevent the existence of a large
