Before this same committee of 1873, Mr. Stanfeld, M. P., Third Lord of the Treasury, who, in 1869 to 1871 had been Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said: ... "the great difference between the public establishment and the private establishment is this: that practically speaking, in a public establishment, you have a large proportion of established clerks who can do no more than a moderate amount of service.... Because you have not the faculty which men in private business have, without any particular fault, of saying to a man: 'On the whole, you do not suit me, and I mean to get somebody else.' When you get a clerk on a public establishment, he remains on that establishment with very rare exceptions, and you have to make the best of your bargain; the result naturally is that, with the exception of men of ability and energy, you have not so much stimulus for their effort as you have in private employment, and you have not by any means the same power of dealing with them." ...[252] In 1888, before the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the Civil Establishments, this question of the great difficulty of getting rid of incompetent or undesirable men, was threshed out at great length. Sir Charles DuCane, Chairman of the Commissioners of Customs, said: "But it is an invidious thing, I do not mean to say as regards myself, but invidious rather as regards the [political] head of a department [the Minister], to come and make complaints against men whom one cannot perhaps accuse of any overt act of negligence or carelessness, but who are merely rather below the level of ordinary efficiency.... I think it would be a most desirable thing that we should have the power of getting rid of incapable and inefficient men who have yet managed to keep themselves out of any positive scrape or offence, for which they would be charged before a Member of the Board of Commissioners of Customs."[253]