CHAP. VIII] THE CIVIL SERVICE 351 
Assistant-Postmaster an administrative one, still that does 
not interfere with the general principle, and the creation of 
a few posts exempt from Civil Service conditions of entry is 
not common, and has very recent and not very clearly 
justified precedents in England. 
It cannot be said in Australia any more than in this 
country, that the difficulty of resisting the demands of civil 
servants when they exist in large bodies has been successfully 
met. In the case of the railways, the difficulties of the Civil 
Service plus the question of the pressureof the public as regards 
railway rates, has led to the entrusting of the railways to com- 
missioners, who hold for a term of years by a statutory tenure 
and can only be removed by Parliament. A commission was 
set up first in Victoria in 1884, then by South Australia in 
1887, then by New South Wales and Queensland in 1888, and 
finally, after a strike which brought about the resignation of 
the general manager, by Western Australia in 1902. The 
original commissions consisted of three members save in 
Western Australia, but there were difficulties and friction, so 
that the number is now only onein Queensland ; of the three in 
New South Wales one has, since 1906, authority over the other 
two; and in South Australia there is one who is advised by a 
board of three, the engineer-in-chief, general traffic manager, 
and the locomotive engineer, and in cases of difference between 
him and the board the minister must decide. In Victoria, after 
several years’ trial of a single control, three commissioners 
were appointed in 1903 after the railway strike of that year. 
The strike resulted also in the extraordinary device of dis- 
franchising for the ordinary constituencies the railwaymen 
and other civil servants, and in requiring them to vote for 
members of their own,! an arrangement which was changed 
in 1906, when the old system was re-introduced. 
1 See Act No. 1864, ss. 25-9; one member was elected to the Council 
by both sets of men, and one by each set separately for the Assembly, and 
members of the Service were eligible as members. The provisions were 
repealed by Act No. 2075. For the Civil Service in New South Wales, see 
the Acts of 1902 as amended by Act No. 25 of 1910. See for further 
information the Commonwealth ¥ ear Book, and for the railways, The Govern. 
ment of South Africa, ii. 131-8; for New Zealand, the Official Year Book.