The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Austen Chamberlain, spoke as follows: "The question at issue was not one between the two political parties. It was above parties. It was whether there was to be good economical government in the country at all, or whether the Civil Servants in the employment of the Crown could make such use of their votes, as citizens, for the purely selfish purpose of forcing the public to pay more for their services and so increase the expenditure of a great Department of State. He did not know how long they could go on in the position they had now reached, under which pressure was brought to bear on Honorable Members of all parties by their constituents. He was certain that if any scheme could be devised ... so that they might take this question altogether out of the region of political life--not merely out of party life, but out of Parliamentary life--it would be a great advantage. It would tend to preserve the Civil Service free from that political influence and independent of the changing fortunes of party which had been their great boast and security in the past. If there were a general feeling in the House that an object of that kind was one on which all parties might well coöperate, then His Majesty's Government, while maintaining as resolutely as they had in past years their objection to referring these specific grievances to a Select Committee appointed in the ordinary way for that particular purpose, would be prepared to assent to the appointment of a Committee of this House to consider the state of affairs which had arisen; to see if they could devise some remedy for it; to lay down the principles by which they should be governed in these matters; and to advise whether it would be possible to establish some permanent body or Commission, outside the sphere of electoral pressure and above and beyond any of our party conflicts, which might advise the Government in applying those principles to particular cases. Such a Committee could, of course, only be successfully conceded with the good will of all parties in the House, and if the whole House were animated by a desire, if possible, to set this question at rest. With that good-will, he thought, it might serve a useful purpose. The object to be attained was of such vast importance that he, for one, would not refuse any method by which they might hope successfully to compass it and to maintain the Civil Service in that high position of which, with its great traditions, they had such just cause to be proud and such good reason to be grateful for."[236]