In the course of a protest against the Postmaster General being a Member of the House of Lords, Sir H. H. Fowler[287] recently said: "No man who has sat in the House of Commons for 10 years can be ignorant of the fact that there is a tone in the House; that there are occasions in the House when, in dealing with votes [of Supply] and administrative questions, a Minister is required, who, with his finger on the pulse of the House, can sweep away the red tape limits and deal with the questions at once on broad general public grounds." To make the statement complete, Sir H. H. Fowler should have added the words: "and grounds of political expediency." In the course of his reply to Sir H. H. Fowler, Mr. R. W. Hanbury, Financial Secretary to the Treasury and representative in the House of Commons of the Postmaster General, said: "When I undertook the representation of the Post Office in the House of Commons, the first rule I laid down was that [in replying to questions put by Members as to the administrative acts of the Post Office] I would take no answer from a permanent official, and that all answers [framed in the first instance by permanent officials] should be seen and approved by the Postmaster General [a Member of the House of Lords]. I also reserved to myself full discretion to alter the answers if I saw any necessity so to do."[288] [Sidenote: _The Anxieties of Postmasters General_] In 1896, before the Tweedmouth Committee, Mr. H. Joyce, Third Secretary to General Post Office, London, said: "I well remember Mr. Fawcett's[289] address to the head of a large Department [of the Post Office] who, ... having a large number of promotions to recommend, had told the officers concerned whom he had recommended, and whom he had not, and what made the matters worse, he had in his recommendations taken little account of seniority, whereas Mr. Fawcett, like Mr. Arnold Morley,[290] had a perfect horror of passing anyone over. I only saw Mr. Fawcett angry on two occasions, and that was one of them."[291] A moment before giving this testimony, Mr. Joyce had said: "It is always a matter of deep regret to the Postmaster General--every Postmaster General under whom I have served--when he is constrained to pass anyone over. I have seen Mr. Arnold Morley in the greatest distress on such occasions."[292] Again, in defending the action of the Post Office in promoting one Bocking, a second class sorting clerk at Norwich, over the heads of 15 men in his own class, and 8 men in the first class, to a full clerkship, Mr. Joyce said: "It is a matter of the greatest regret to the Postmaster General to feel constrained to pass over so many officers, all of whom were thoroughly respectable and zealous, and performed the duties on which they were employed very well, but the lamentable fact remains that they were not fit for a higher position; every endeavor was made at headquarters to what I might call squeeze them through, but it was no use." Mr.