The Surveyor's establishment is responsible for the supervision of the post offices in town and country. Each Surveyor is responsible for a certain district of the country, and he has to arrange for the periodical visitation of every post office in his visit, and to have the accounts checked. The Assistant Surveyor is “the bus jumper” of the Post Office. The Surveyor also deals generally with the organisation of the service in his part of the country. Anthony Trollope, whom we have mentioned in a previous chapter, was a Surveyor of the Post Office in Ireland for many years. I have passed rapidly in view the various posts held by men who are the chief official advisers of the Postmaster-General. But of course there is a Solicitor to the Post Office, and in a business undertaking which is constantly entering into new contracts, and dealing with claims from the public, the position is no sinecure. There remain the big clerical establishments of the Head Offices for me to deal with. How can I best describe their functions in the service? In the early part of the nineteenth century, a letter was addressed to the Secretary of the Post Office by the Lord Salisbury of that time in these words:— “Pray send me word by the Bearer whether the Place in my disposal in the Bye Letter Office is fit for a Gentleman's Son. SALISBURY. “_20th Feb. 1820._” The Secretary replied:— “MY LORD,—I consider the place in the Bye Letter Office to be fit for a Gentleman's Son, if that Gentleman be poor and wants to provide for his children. At all events it is an appointment for none but the son of a respectable man. “I have the honour to be, &c., “F. FREELING.” This rebuke to the haughty Cecil was richly merited, and Sir Francis Freeling deserves credit for standing up for his office. His _esprit de corps_ was aroused, and he was not the man to remain silent when discredit was thrown on the Post Office. But the doubt as to the fitness of the Post Office service for the sons of gentlemen exists to-day among people who associate the Post Office only with the sticking on of stamps and the delivery of letters. And even in the eyes of the Treasury the Post Office has suffered because of its commercial associations, and the great spending departments, such as the War Office and the Admiralty, have usually received more honours and attention. In the old days, when places in the Civil Service were filled by the nominees of peers and politicians, there was no competition to enter the Post Office so long as positions could be found in West End offices. There was usually an uncomfortable suspicion in the candidate's mind that the Post Office required a full day's work from every man. There was a Commission of Revenue Inquiry in 1823. One of the Commissioners questioned the Secretary of the Irish Post Office thus:—