Before the Committee on Civil Services Expenditure, 1873, Mr. W. E. Baxter, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said: ... "but I may say at once in regard to the matter of the travelling expenses of county court judges, that I think the whole thing has hitherto been in such an unsatisfactory state that it would be very difficult to defend the action of the Treasury in various matters connected with it." Thereupon Mr. West, a Member of the Committee, queried: "Acting in accordance with that view last year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer endeavored to reform the system as to existing judges and as to future judges, did he not?... Is that reform being now pursued with regard to the existing judges?" The Financial Secretary to the Treasury replied: "Not in regard to existing judges. I have always been of opinion that it is very difficult to go back upon arrangements which have been made in the past, however injurious to the public service and uneconomical they may have been, and that it would be better for economists [persons desiring to effect economy] to direct their attention to preventing new arrangements of a similar character."[413] * * * * * [Sidenote: _Unbusinesslike Spirit Further Illustrated_] The thoroughly unbusinesslike spirit of the postal employees is illustrated still further in the following "grievance" laid before the Tweedmouth Committee by the official representatives of the postal employees, who spoke, not as individuals, but as the instructed representatives of their respective classes of public servants. Mr. G. McDonald presented the grievance of the "news distributors," who "are the picked men of the Telegraph Service, chosen on the ground of exceptional merit." He complained that there was not sufficient opportunity for promotion, since [the automatic] promotion was limited to postmasterships worth from $1,000 to $1,250 a year, and there were not enough postmasterships of that kind. Mr. McDonald admitted that men under 35 years "by competitive examination," could rise out of the class of News Distributors to surveyors' clerkships; but he argued that since such promotion was attained by competitive examination, "it must be credited to the man himself who wins his position, and I therefore beg to suggest that it cannot count as promotion in the ordinary sense."[414] Another grievance of the News Distributors was that they were not "treated and classed" as Major Division Clerks, though they were paid on the scale of such clerks. They were compelled to work 48 hours a week, whereas Major Division Clerks worked only 39 hours a week.[415]