Baron F. de Rothschild followed Earl Compton, with the statement: "The Postmaster General may well say it is no business of ours to interfere between the civil servants and himself, but here I would venture to ask him whether the civil servants are not quite as much our [_i. e._, the public's] servants as they are those of the Postmaster General?" Baron de Rothschild went on to say that through an error made in the course of the transmission of a telegram his betting agent had placed his money on the wrong horse, causing him to lose a considerable sum of money. Such mistakes would not occur if the telegraphists were better paid. Sir A. Borthwick regretted "the increasing tendency to invoke the direct interposition of Parliament between the Executive Government and the Civil Service." The Postmaster General concluded his statement with the words: "I hope that after the statement which I have been able to make, the House will recognize the claim of every Government that the House shall not interfere with matters of Departmental administration, except where it thinks fit to censure the Minister in charge. So long as a Minister occupies his position at the head of a department, he ought to be allowed to occupy it in his own way. I venture to hope that the House will leave questions of this sort in the hands of those who are directly and primarily responsible for them, in the belief that grievances of the servants of any department are not likely to lack careful consideration, and, I believe, just and fair treatment." A few months later, the Postmaster General made this statement in the House of Commons: "I wish to correct one misapprehension. It is supposed that the position of the Government is that only the market value should be paid for labor of this sort [the nonestablished post office servants]. Those who sat in the Committee [of Supply] will remember that I laid down a different doctrine the other day. My own view is, that while the market value must be the governing consideration, because we are not dealing with our own money, but with the money of the taxpayers, the taxpayers would wish that, in applying that standard to those in the Public Service, we should always bear in mind that a great Government should treat its employees liberally."[149] * * * * * Earl Compton failed to carry his motion in 1890; and in the following year he made another unsuccessful attempt, moving: "That, in the opinion of this House, it is desirable that a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the Administration of the Post Office."[150]