Sir Ralph H. Knox,[425] who had been in the War Office from 1856 to 1901, and who, for forty years, had listened to the discussions in Parliament of the Estimates of Expenditure, said: ... "The mass of speeches that are made in Supply before the House of Commons, are speeches made on behalf of those who have grievances, their friends or constituents, or those with whom they work, or in whom they are particularly interested. If you take speech after speech, you find they are simply to the effect: 'we want more'--and they get more.... In former days there were more Members who were willing to get up with some pertinence and some knowledge to criticize those proposals. But I cannot say there has been any very great tendency in that direction when details are being discussed.... What I want, is [someone] to nip in the bud, new proposals which are made by Members of Parliament very often on behalf of their constituents. A Member, for instance, represents what I should call a labor borough; he gets up and proposes that the pay of every man employed in certain [Government] factories or dockyards should be increased by so much a week, what I want is somebody to get up and say: 'That is not the view of the country, you must not accept that;' but instead of that the matter goes _sub silentio_, and the Government, which is naturally interested in economy and in keeping the expenditure down, is induced to think if there is any feeling in the House at all, it is in favor of doubling everybody's pay." Sir R. H. Knox said he desired more opposition to unwarranted proposals, "because I know what extreme weight is attached to the speeches in Supply by the Minister in charge of a Department, and by the Department itself; but if they find that there is not a single man interested in economy when the details of the Estimates are discussed, it places them in an exceedingly difficult position."[426] [Sidenote: _Commons Debates weaken Treasury's Hands_] Sir Edward Hamilton, Assistant Secretary to the Treasury since 1894, said that the Treasury could depend less than formerly upon the support of the House of Commons, and that often-times the tendency of the debates in the House was to weaken the hands of the Treasury.[427] Sir Edward Hamilton had entered the Treasury in 1870; had served as Private Secretary to Mr. Lowe, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in 1872-73; and as Private Secretary to Mr. Gladstone, First Lord of the Treasury, in 1880 to 1885. He had been made successively Principal Clerk of the Finance Division in 1885; Assistant Financial Secretary in 1892; and Assistant Secretary in 1894. In 1902 he was made Permanent Financial Secretary.