Thus far neither Party appears to have made an open or definite alliance with the civil servants. But in the recent years in which the Conservative Party was in power, and year after year denied--"on principle" of public policy--certain requests of the civil servants, the rank and file, as well as some of the minor leaders of the Liberal, or Opposition Party, evinced a strong tendency to vote rather solidly in the House of Commons in support of those demands of the civil servants.[3] At the same time the chiefs of the Liberal, or Opposition Party, refrained from the debate as well as from the vote. It may be that the Opposition Party discipline was not strong enough to enable the Opposition chiefs to prevent the votes on the momentous issue raised in the House of Commons by the civil servants from becoming for all practical purposes Party votes; or, it may be that the Liberal Party leaders did not deem it expedient to seek to control the voting of their followers. Be that as it may, the fact remains that the Conservative Ministry that was in power, repeatedly called in vain upon the House of Commons to take out of the field of Party politics the issue raised by the civil servants in the period from 1890 to 1905. The Conservative Ministry year after year denied the request of the Post Office employees for a House of Commons Select Committee on the pay and position of the Post Office employees. On the other hand, the support of that request came steadily from the Liberal Opposition. In the General Election of January, 1906, the Post Office employees threw their weight overwhelmingly on the side of the Liberal Party; and immediately after the opening of the new Parliament, the newly established Liberal Government announced that it would give the Post Office employees the House of Commons Select Committee which the late Conservative Ministry had "on principle" of public policy refused to grant.