The Treasury has been described as a superintending and controlling office that has properly no administrative functions;[127:1] and this, in a sense, is true, for even in money matters its duty as an organised department is financial direction and control, not the actual collection and disbursement of the revenue. It prepares the budget, reviewing the estimates submitted to it, and devising the means of defraying them; it supervises the collection of the revenue, and keeps watch over the expenditure. In this work the political chiefs are assisted by a body of clerks, headed by the permanent under-secretary, whose office is generally regarded as the highest in the permanent civil service. The offices that have direct charge of the collection of revenue have separate organisations with distinct staffs of permanent officials; but, except for the Post Office, they have no political chiefs of their own, and are in fact subordinate branches of the Treasury. The four great offices of this kind are the Post Office, which has already been described; and the departments of Customs, of Inland Revenue, and of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues, each of which is managed by commissioners who are members of the permanent civil service, and do not change with changes of ministry.[128:1] The Treasury bears a similar relation to the departments that deal with purely fiscal payments, the National Debt Office, the Public Works Loan Board, and the Paymaster General's Office, through which almost all disbursements are now made. For, although the Paymaster General is a political officer, he has ceased to have any real connection with his department, and it is administered under the direction of the Treasury.[129:1] [Sidenote: The Outlying Departments.]