In the course of the debate in the House of Commons, Lord Frederick Cavendish, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said: "With respect to the telegraph clerks, since they had received the franchise, they had used it to apply pressure to Members of Parliament for the furtherance of their own objects.... If, instead of the Executive being responsible, Members of the House were to conduct the administration of the departments, there would be an end of all responsibility whatever. In the same way, if the Treasury was not to have control over expenditure, and Members of the House were to become promoters of it, the system [of administering the national finances] which had worked so admirably in the past would be at an end.... With regard to the position of the telegraphists in the Government Service as compared with their former position under private companies, what had taken place would be a warning to the Government to be careful against unduly extending the sphere of their operations by entering every day upon some new field, and placing themselves at a disadvantage by undertaking the work of private persons. He pointed out that the Government Service was always more highly paid than that of the companies and private persons, and in the particular case of the telegraph clerks [operators] the men themselves received higher pay than they had before."[129] Before the Postmaster General had introduced into Parliament his scheme for improving the positions of the telegraphists, sorting clerks and postmen,[130] Lord Frederick Cavendish, in his position as Financial Secretary of the Treasury,[131] had written the Postmaster General as follows: ... "Admitting, as my Lords [of the Treasury] do, that when discontent is shown to prevail extensively in any branch of the Public Service, it calls for attention and inquiry, and, so far as it is proved to be well founded, for redress, they are not prepared to acquiesce in any organized agitation which openly seeks to bring its extensive voting power to bear on the House of Commons against the Executive Government responsible for conducting in detail the administration of the country. The persons who are affected by the change now proposed are, as you observe, no fewer than 10,000, and the entire postal service numbers nearly five times as many. Other branches of the Civil Service employed and voting in various parts of the United Kingdom, are at least as numerous in the aggregate as the servants of the Post Office. All this vast number of persons, not living like soldiers and sailors outside ordinary civil life are individually and collectively interested in using their votes to increase, in their own favor, the public expenditure, which the rest of the community, who have to gain their living in the unrestricted competition of the open market, must provide by taxation, if it is provided at all. My Lords therefore reserve to themselves the power of directing that the