When the House of Commons, in March, 1883, against the protests of the Government passed the resolution which demanded that the tariff on telegrams be cut almost in two, the Government should have resigned rather than carry out the order. The Government's obedience to an order which the Government itself contended would put a heavy burden on the taxpayer for four years, was nothing more nor less than the purchase of Parliamentary support out of the public purse. No serious argument had been advanced that the charge of 24 cents for 20 words was excessive. The argument of the leader of the movement for reduction, Dr. Cameron, of Glasgow, was a worthy complement to the argument made in 1868 by Mr. Hunt, Chancellor of the Exchequer, to wit, that telegraphing ought to be made so cheap that the illiterate man who could not write a letter would send a telegram. Dr. Cameron argued that "instead of maintaining a price which was prohibitory not only to the working classes but also to the middle classes, they ought to take every means to encourage telegraphy. They ought to educate the rising generation to it; and he would suggest to the Government that the composing of telegrams would form a useful part of the education in our board schools." Parliament after Parliament, and Government after Government has purchased out of the public purse the good-will of the telegraph employees. Organized in huge civil servants' unions, the telegraph employees have been permitted to establish the policy that wages and salaries shall be fixed in no small degree by the amount of political pressure that the telegraph employees can bring to bear on Members of the House of Commons. With the rest of the Government employees they have been permitted to establish the doctrine that once a man has landed himself on the State's pay-roll, he has "something very nearly approaching to a freehold of provision for life," irrespective of his fitness and his amenableness to discipline, and no matter what labor-saving machines may be invented, or how much business may fall off. To a considerable degree the State employees have established their demand that promotion be made according to seniority rather than merit. In more than one Postmaster General have they instilled "a perfect horror of passing anyone over." Turning to one part of the service, one finds the civil service unions achieving the revocation of the promotion of the man denominated "probably the ablest man in the Sheffield Post Office." Turning to another part of the service, one finds the Postmaster General, Mr. Raikes, "for the good of the service" telling an exceptionally able man that "he can well afford to wait his turn." The civil servants, in the telegraph service and elsewhere, to a considerable degree have secured to themselves exemption from the rigorous discipline to which must submit the people who are in the service of private individuals and of companies. Finally, the