The Post Office is not the only British Department of State which is obliged to consider with care how far it may go counter to individual interests in enforcing rules and standards adopted for the preservation of the public interest. Before the Select Committee on National Expenditure, 1902, Sir John Eldon Gorst, M. P., and Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education, 1895 to 1902, said: "What I want to impress upon the Committee is that Parliament has never an influence which goes for economy of any kind in the expenditure of public money on education [about $40,000,000 a year]. Then I hope I have now shown the Committee that the only security the public has that what it spends will be efficiently spent is the system of inspection. Earlier in my evidence I also pointed out the two systems which are in vogue for inspection, namely the South Kensington system and the Whitehall system. The Whitehall system, which deals with the larger amount of public money, is extremely inefficient. The Elementary Education Inspectors have before their eyes the fear, first of all, of the managers of the schools which they visit. The managers of the schools are often important School Boards like the School Board of London, which is not a body to be trifled with, which has very great influence, both in Parliament and in the Education Department, and which the Inspectors are very much afraid of offending. But it is not only powerful School Boards, but any managers [of schools] can take the matter up. If an Inspector goes into a school and sees [reports] that the children are dirty, or that the school is dirty, or that the teacher is inefficient, the manager is up in arms at once, and writes a letter to the Board of Education, and comes up and sees the Secretary, and protests against the Inspector for having dared to make an unfavorable report of his or her school. Besides that, the Inspectors have before their eyes the fear of the National Union of Teachers. Almost every teacher now is a member of the National Union of Teachers, and if an Inspector is supposed to be severe, a teacher complains at once to the National Union, and the case is taken up, possibly even in Parliament, by some of the officials of the National Union of Teachers in Parliament, and it is made very uncomfortable for the Inspector. Then, lastly, they [_i. e._, the Inspectors] have the office--that is not, say, their own Chief Inspector, but the officials of the office, who do not like an Inspector who makes trouble. The great art of an Inspector is to get on well with the managers [of schools] and teachers, and to make no trouble at all. I have known cases of adverse reports which were not liked at the office being sent back to the Inspector to alter," not by the Chief Inspector, or Senior Inspector of the District, but by some other person in the office.[360]