The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. G. W. Hunt, said he felt bound to move that the bill be committed this day three months--_i. e._, be rejected. He said it was an anomaly in the laws that the dockyard laborers were not disfranchised. "If the matter were inquired into calmly and dispassionately, he was not at all sure that a good case might not be made out for affixing to them the same disability that is now attached to the revenue officers. The fact did not at all tend to the purity or the impartiality of electors in places where many of these men were employed, and strenuous efforts were made by members representing them to increase the privileges of the dockyard men and the number of persons employed, which did not tend to economy or the proper husbanding of the national resources. Continual applications were made by these gentlemen [the employees in the Revenue Departments] respecting their position and salaries, and these applications had of late years taken a very peculiar form, being not merely made through the heads of departments, or by simple memorial to the treasury, but in the form of resolutions at public meetings held by them, and communications to Members of Parliament by delegates appointed to represent their interests. He put it to the House, whether, in the circumstances supposed, the influence possessed by them would not be very considerably increased, and whether the Government of the day would not have far greater difficulty in administering these departments with respect to the position and salaries of the officers concerned, if the measure were carried."[72] [Sidenote: _Mr. Gladstone's Warning_]