In July, 1888, the following questions and answers passed between the Chairman of the Select Committee on Revenue Departments Estimates, and Sir S. A. Blackwood, Secretary to the Post Office. "With respect to the increase of salaries at the time when Mr. Fawcett was Postmaster General, I presume that those recommendations of his were founded upon recommendations addressed to him by the [permanent officers of the] Department?" "I can hardly say that they were. Mr. Fawcett held very strong views himself as to the propriety of making an increase to the pay of the lower ranks of the Department, and he carried out that arrangement." "But the Department, I take for granted, was not excluded from expressing an opinion upon the subject?" "Certainly not. I became Secretary at the time [1880] when Mr. Fawcett became Postmaster General.[137] I never should have initiated such a movement, but I saw great force in many of the reasons which Mr. Fawcett urged in favor of such an increase; and, at any rate, the Department, as represented by me, saw no reason to raise a serious opposition, if it were at liberty to do so, to the Postmaster General's views and determinations."[138] Before the Tweedmouth Committee, 1897, Mr. E. B. L. Hill, "practically commander-in-chief of the provincial postmen," testified as follows upon that part of the Fawcett revision of 1882 that applied to the postal service proper. He said that previous to 1882 all the revisions of the wages of the postmen had been made on the basis of demand and supply; but that the Fawcett revision had departed from that policy.[139] * * * * * [Sidenote: _Evidence, in 1888, as to Civil Service Pressure_]