A far less serious but more harassing increase of expense arose out of demands for augmented salaries, allowances, &c., which now poured in from all sides; and which came to the Treasury, backed by recommendation from the Post Office authorities; the Chief Office seeming never to question the judgment of the local surveyors, save when there appeared plausible ground for advising yet further augmentation. The reasons advanced were sometimes so insufficient that it was impossible for me, knowing the bitter hostility still entertained towards Penny Postage and its author, to avoid the suspicion that the care incumbent on such occasions was willingly set aside; that increased expenditure was almost welcomed as a means of fulfilling adverse prediction. Not the least remarkable were two cases afterwards stated in my evidence before a Parliamentary Committee. Additional allowances to two postmasters (at Swinford and Ballaghaderin in Ireland) were proposed, on the ground that the money-order business had become so heavy that each postmaster was obliged to engage a clerk to attend to that duty alone. The accounts in the Post Office would of course have supplied a check to this statement; but it came to the Treasury vouched, first, by the surveyor of the district; second, by the Dublin office; and third, by the London office. The Treasury, at my suggestion, however, called for information as to the actual number of money-orders paid and issued by each office in a given time; and after the lapse of a year the information was supplied, when it appeared that the actual number of money-orders paid and issued, when taken together, was in one office only three per day, and in the other only two. I advised the rejection of the proposed allowances; but this question, with many others of a similar character, remained undecided when my duties were interrupted.[308] I thus found myself engaged in a constant succession of petty contests, often unavailing, and always invidious; since, while ever called on to resist the demands of the undeserving, I was debarred, by my position, from originating any recommendation in favour of the deserving; a disadvantage under which I laboured for many years, and which seriously clogged my efforts for subsequent improvement.