Mr. Ambrose, speaking against the motion, said: "Questions between capital and labor and between the Government and its employees should not be influenced by motions in the House. We are all subjected as Members of this House to all manner of whips from employees of the Civil Service and the Post Office, and I know that when the _status_ of the Civil Service clerks was being settled some time ago, there was, among Members generally, a feeling of disgust at the telegrams and letters being received almost very minute from people seeking to influence our votes on some particular question of interest to them." Mr. Raikes, Postmaster General, enumerated in detail the concessions made to the telegraphists and letter sorters in 1890 and 1891, at a cost of $1,035,000 a year, and added: "and to all this, not one single reference has escaped those who have spoken." He concluded with the words: "It would never do if, in order to encourage the vaporings of three or four of those gutter journals which disfigure the Metropolitan Press, Members of this House were to make the grave mistake of throwing discredit upon a body of men like the permanent officials [Executive Officers] of the Post Office, of whom any country might be proud, with whom, I believe, any Minister would be delighted to work, and of diminishing the authority in his own Department of a Minister, who, whatever may be his personal deficiencies, at heart believes that he has done nothing to forfeit the confidence of this House." A few months later, when the House was considering the Estimates of the Post Office Department, the Postmaster General said: "Economists [advocates of economy] of former days would have been interested and surprised by the general tenor of the debate to which we have just listened. The great point used to be, as I understand, to show a large balance of revenue to the State [from the Post Office], and to make a defense against charges of extravagance in the past. But we have now arrived at a time when the opposite course is to be taken, and the only chance a Minister has of enjoying the confidence of this House is to point to a diminished balance of revenue and to a greater expenditure on the part of the department." ... In 1891-92 our telegraph expenditure will increase by $3,000,000, while our revenue will increase by $1,700,000; "the reason is to be found in the very comprehensive measures framed in the course of the last year for the improvement of the position of the staff."[151] [Sidenote: _Civil Servants circularize Members of Parliament_]