The Financial Secretary and the Parliamentary Secretary are political officers, that is, they sit in the House of Commons, and they change with every change in the Government. The Permanent Secretary, on the other hand, is a non-political officer, or civil servant, who retains office through the successive changes of Government, and secures the continuity of the office. He is the official head of the Department, and of the whole civil service. The foregoing facts make it clear that for the purposes of this present discussion, one can cite no more authoritative personages than the several Secretaries of the Treasury. * * * * * The Select Committee on National Expenditure, 1902, took a great deal of evidence on the effect of the intervention of the House of Commons in the administrative details of the several Departments of State, particularly on the impairment of the power of the Treasury to control the expenditure of the several Departments. [Sidenote: _Lord Welby on Change in Public Opinion_] The most important witness was Lord Welby, who, as Mr. Welby, had entered the Treasury in 1856; had been Head of the Finance Department from 1871 to 1885; and had been Permanent Secretary from 1885 to 1894. Lord Welby said that in theory the Treasury had full power of control over the expenditures of the several Departments, but that in practice that power of control was limited by the state of public opinion as reflected in the House of Commons. As soon as the Treasury became aware that it had not public opinion at its back, that fact "would have a certain influence on many of its decisions." Then again, as soon as the other Departments of State became aware that the Treasury was not supported by public opinion, the authority of the Treasury over those Departments was impaired. "If an idea gets abroad that the House of Commons does not care about economy, you will not find your servants economical." Lord Welby then went on to say that in all the political parties in the House of Commons, "the old spirit of economy had been very much weakened." He put the change of public opinion at about the middle of the seventies, or, perhaps, rather later, say, in the eighties. Previous to that change the influence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer had been "paramount, or very powerful, in the Cabinet." But with the change in public opinion, "the effective power of control in the Chancellor of the Exchequer had been proportionately diminished." Lord Welby concluded: "I constantly hear it said now by people of great weight that economy is impossible, that you cannot get the House of Commons to pay attention [to counsels of economy].... The main object [to be striven after], I think, is that there should be some correlation both in the minds of the Government of the day and in the minds of the House of Commons between resources and expenditure; I think that ought to exist, but I do not think it does exist at present.