Oftentimes the difficulty experienced in dismissing unsatisfactory public servants, extends even to persons appointed on probation. In April, 1875, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the course of the Financial Statement, said: "We now appoint young men upon probation, and the understanding of that probationary employment is that if the person is found after six months or a year to be unfit, he is told that he must look elsewhere. This is a very invidious duty for the head of an office to perform, and it is very often not performed."[265] In 1888, Mr. Harvey, a Member of the Royal Commission on the Civil Establishments, said: "The tendency in a Government office is for the man to regard his probationary period as practically a '_nominis umbra_' [the mere shadow of a name], nothing else."[266] The Chairman of the Royal Commission of 1888 asked Sir Reginald Welby, the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury: "Is there anything like a real probation in any one of the divisions of the clerks at the Treasury, so that you can find out [whether they are likely to prove competent]?" "Yes, I think so. The principal clerk of the division to which the probationer is attached makes a report at the end of six months; and I have known a principal clerk to make a doubtful report. In that case, if I remember rightly, the term of probation was extended."[267] The boys employed by the Post Office Department for the delivery of telegrams, are, in a way, on continuous probation. If they serve satisfactorily, they are, at the age of 16, taken in training for the position of postmen. In 1897, Mr. Lewin Hill, Assistant Secretary General Post Office, said: ... "in London, in the past, the weeding out of messenger boys at 16 years has not been carried out so far, I think, owing to the paternal feelings of the Department. Every effort seems to have been made to keep in the service anybody who could possibly scrape through. But the country postmasters were, as a rule, careful to weed out unsatisfactory lads." He continued: ... "We could have got better postmen [in London], if we had had a free hand."[268] * * * * * In 1857 the opposition made in Parliament to the system of pensions, led to the appointment of a Committee to inquire into the operation of the Superannuation Act, 1834. That Committee stated as follows the argument "from the public point of view" in favor of pensions. "Though it is strictly the duty of heads of departments to remove from the public service all those who have become unfit to discharge their duties, yet experience shows that this duty cannot be enforced. It is felt to be hard--and even unjust--and inefficient men are, therefore, retained in the Service to the detriment of efficiency. They, therefore, were unhesitatingly of opinion that the public interest would be best consulted by maintaining a system of superannuation allowances."[269]