Exams for Victorian Age Civil Servants

In historian Niall Ferguson's book Empire he discusses the British rule of India in the Victorian Age. He says that for civil servant jobs, "competition was fierce, so fierce that selection had to be based on perhaps the toughest exams in history." It is worth browsing through the entire examination here.


Some of the Roman History Questions:

I would have liked to have heard the debate...

In 1865, the Governor of Jamaica, Edward Eyre suppressed an uprising know as the Morant Bay Rebellion. In 1866, back in England a committee was formed urging that Governor Eyre be tried for murder. The Jamaica Committee consisted of John Stuart Mill, Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, and Herbert Spencer among others. A rival committee was also set up defending Eyre. It was composed of Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Charles Kingsley, Charles Dickens, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. According to Wikipedia Eyre was twice charged with murder, but the cases never proceeded.  I'm not sure if these two committees ever met, but if they did, I would have liked to have heard that debate.  

Here is a news story from the August 7, 1868 New York Times about the affair.