I see no evidence of it."[421] Mr. Hayes Fisher,[422] a Member of the Committee, and Financial Secretary to the Treasury, in 1902 to 1903, replied to Lord Welby: "But is not the business of the Treasury, and the main business of the Treasury, to check that expenditure and keep it within reasonable bounds, outside of questions of policy?" Lord Welby replied: "Quite so; but might I venture to ask the honorable Member, who occupies one of the most important posts in the Government, whether he would not be glad of support in the House of Commons?" "Most certainly we should on many occasions," was the answer. [Sidenote: _Sir George H. Murray on Change in Public Opinion_] Sir George H. Murray,[423] Permanent Secretary to the Post Office, was called as a witness because "in the official posts he had held, particularly as Private Secretary to the late Prime Minister, Mr. Gladstone, he had had frequent opportunities for observation not only of the reasons for expenditure, but of the control exercised over it in Parliament." He said: ... "But I think the whole attitude of the House itself toward the public service and toward expenditure generally, has undergone a very material change in the present generation.... Of course, the House to this day, in the abstract and in theory, is very strongly in favor of economy, but I am bound to say that in practice Members, both in their corporate capacity and, still more, in their individual capacity, are more disposed to use their influence with the Executive Government in order to increase expenditure than to reduce it.... That is the policy of the House--to spend more money than it did, to criticize expenditure less closely than it did, and to urge the Executive Government to increase expenditure instead of the reverse."[424] [Sidenote: _The Commons the Champion of Class Interests_]