To Sir S. A. Blackwood, Secretary to the Post Office since 1880, the Chairman of the Royal Commission put the question: "Do you think it is a real evil in the public service that there should not be the same power to remove inefficient men as exists outside the public service, of course I mean within certain limits, because the public service must be different from private service, but in your experience, have you found it to be a real evil in the way of efficiency as well as of wise economy to be obliged to keep men whom you would be glad to get rid of if you could have sent them away with something in their pocket, [_i. e._, a pension]?" The answer was: "Yes, it is a serious objection." Sir S. A. Blackwood even asserted that the Act of 1887, giving the Treasury discretionary power to pension men unable to discharge efficiently the duties of their office,[254] would not help much. "We should always be asking an officer to relinquish his full pay, and to retire upon a lesser pension than he would be entitled to if he served his full time, and there is always a disinclination on the part of heads of departments to do that."[255] Sir Reginald E. Welby, who had entered the Treasury service in 1856, and had been made Permanent Secretary in 1885, said there was full power to dismiss idle or incompetent persons without granting pensions or allowances of any sort. Thereupon, Mr. F. Mitford, one of the Members of the Royal Commission, asked: "Is not really the sole difficulty that public departments have to contend with in exercising that full power, the fact that Parliament is behind them, and a Member of Parliament always asks questions [in the House] and brings interest [pressure] to bear upon the head of the department, which practically annuls that power? The difficulty lies not with the public officer, but practically with the difficulties that are thrown in his way outside his department by individual Members of Parliament?" The Permanent Secretary of the Treasury answered: "There is always before the heads of departments the fact that pressure may be brought to bear by Members of Parliament, and it requires, therefore, that a case must be very strong, that it must be a very good case before you would dismiss. Probably you would be much more long-suffering in a Government department, than you would be in a private establishment." Sir Reginald Welby just previously had said: "I have known men dismissed from the Treasury.... Perhaps I had better say, I have heard of men being dismissed from the Treasury for simple idleness, but it was before my time." Thereupon the Chairman had queried: "It is the fact, speaking generally, is it not, that mere idleness and mere incompetence, without very gross negligence of duty or gross misbehavior, does not bring about dismissal from the service, either in the Treasury or anywhere else that you are aware of?" The reply was: "I would rather put it in