Thursday 7 March 2013

The Northcote-Trevelyan Report, 1854

‘China's Premier Wen Jiabao promised stable growth, anti-corruption efforts and better welfare provision as he opened an annual session of parliament’ the BBC reports on 5 March 2013. That news item calls to mind that achievements and contributions to human happiness can be overlooked in History. Reports of corruption in China reach British news more and more and news of corruption in Russia, Latin America, Africa, India … the list lengthens, is not infrequent. Corruption can be seen to be as corrosive to the ‘rule of law’ that is as important, it is argued, as representative government in the quality of governance. It was two Englishmen whose civil service reform, the Northcote-Trevelyan Report of 1854, set the benchmark for fair administration. Civil servants were to be appointed on merit, not patronage, and trained and the administrative and policy operations kept separate. These tenets were followed throughout the British Empire over generations. Historians can accept the privilege to reveal ‘quality-of-life’ benefactors from the past.

Contributor: Geoff Williams. Sempringham [ehistory.org.uk] eLearning Office.

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