There are four Monday Bank Holidays in the year; and for several years prior to 1892, the Telegraph Branch, as an act of grace, gave a Saturday holiday to those "news distributors" whose services could be spared on the Saturdays preceding Monday Bank Holidays. In 1892 it ceased to be possible to continue this act of grace without employing men on over-time, and therefore the practice was discontinued. In 1896 the news distributors complained before the Tweedmouth Committee that the withdrawal of "the days of grace was a grievance with which they would like the Committee to grapple." The spokesman of the news distributors said: "After having enjoyed the privilege for [several] years it was withdrawn, an arbitrary course, almost, it is thought, without precedent. To grant a privilege, and then take it away, displayed a lamentable want of that courtesy that we think should be inseparable qualities of power and position."[408] [Sidenote: _Intervention by Members of Parliament_] In June, 1904, Mr. Shackleton[409] intervened in the House of Commons on behalf of some men in the Liverpool Post Office, whose grievance was that an interval of 15 minutes, given as "an act of grace," had been reduced to 10 minutes.[410] In July, 1905, Mr. James O'Connor, M. P. for Wicklow, intervened in a similar matter on behalf of the men at the London West Central District Office.[411] * * * * * Before the Royal Commission on Civil Establishments, 1888, Sir Lyon Playfair was asked whether it would not be better to replace by boy clerks the "writers" employed in the past. Sir Lyon replied: "I think that would be better for the civil service and better for the boy clerks themselves. Of course, regard should be had to the writers who are employed now, and the change should be made by not taking on more, and not by dispensing with those that are now employed." A moment before, Sir Lyon Playfair had been asked: "The writers are now a very large and very important body in the public service, are they not?" He had replied: "Yes, and they make you feel their largeness and importance by Parliamentary pressure."[412] Sir Lyon Playfair had been Chairman of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service which had sat from 1875 to 1876; and he had been the author of the Playfair Reorganization of the civil service in 1876.