A term originally applied to the part of the service of the East India Company carried on by the covenanted servants who did not belong to the Army or Navy (cf. SERVICE). Now: a collective term for all the non-warlike branches of the public administrative service of the state, including the diplomatic intercourse, the working of the post office and telegraphs, the educational institutions controlled by the state, and the collection of the revenue, etc. Also, the body of servants of the state employed in any of these departments. Often attrib. as in Civil Service Commissioners; Civil Service Supply Association and the like. Civil Servant, a member of the Civil Service.
c. 1785. Caraccioli, Life of Clive, III. 164. A considerable sum is said to have been contributed privately by gentlemen in the civil service, in aid of the military cause.
1800. Ld. Wellesley (title), Notes on the necessity of a special collegiate training of Civil Servants.
1833. Asiatic Jrnl., X. 324. The two branches of the Indian service, civil and military.
1844. H. H. Wilson, Brit. India, III. 520. Mr. Hutchinson was in the Civil Service of the Company, Commercial Resident at Anjengo.
1845. Stocqueler, Handbk. Brit. India (1854), 44. To assist the Supreme Government of India … a highly-educated civil service, consisting of some hundreds of members, is placed at its disposal.
1861. Sat. Rev., 27 July, 90/1. When a civil servant’s mind has reached the stage of subacute discontent which has not quite strength enough to develope into resignation.
1863. Fawcett, Pol. Econ., II. x. (1876), 259. At the Civil Service Store in the Haymarket.
1864. E. Yates, Broken to Harness (Hoppe), II. x. 209. Down to the ‘civil servant of the Company.’
1878. G. W. Julian, in N. Amer. Rev., CXXVI. 272. He had already appointed an able Civil-Service Commission. Ibid., CXXVII. 275. The fluctuations of civil-service reform.
