Shortly before the Royal Commission had made this recommendation, in words which seemed to place the responsibility for past failure to promote by merit, on the permanent officers of the Departments, as distinguished from the political heads of the Departments, the Ministers, Mr. Raikes, the Postmaster General, and the representative in the House of Commons of the University of Cambridge, had refused to accept the advice of the Permanent Secretary of the Post Office, Mr. S. A. Blackwood, in filling a post of some importance in the Secretary's office. On March 1, 1887, the Postmaster General, Mr. Raikes, in reply to questions put to him in the House of Commons, said: ... "It is also the fact that I have recently declined to adopt the Secretary's recommendation to promote to the first class [in the Secretary's office] one of the junior officers in the second class over the heads of several clerks of much longer standing. The gentleman whom I have promoted was, in my judgment, fully qualified for promotion, and was senior clerk in the class, with the exception of one officer who, on the Secretary's recommendation, has been passed over on sixteen occasions.... What was I asked to do? I was asked to promote a gentleman who was much lower down in the class, a gentleman who was third or fourth in the class, and to place him over the heads of his colleagues. This I declined to do. I made inquiries in the office, and I found that the gentleman who was promoted was a meritorious officer who had discharged his duties with adequate ability, and therefore I thought there was no reason for promoting over his head and over the heads of one or two other competent officers, a junior officer who could well afford to wait his turn. I acted in the interests of the Public Service, and especially in the interests of the Department itself."[285] * * * * *