This was nothing to the official.

He had nothing to do with other departments.

His business was to see that the public's money came to the Treasury; he was certainly not going to countenance the raising of money for an industrial purpose.
You could no more have got into this gentleman's head than you could have got into the head of a rabbit the idea that money invested in an essential industrial undertaking pays the State far better than money advanced to it at the cost of five per cent.
Not to weary the reader with an incident, however telling, the end of this affair was that after going backwards and forwards between a Cabinet Minister and a Treasury official, Lord Leverhulme was at last permitted to ask the public for a small sum of money which he himself considered inadequate for the Government's purpose.
I have never heard him speak bitterly of his political experiences, but I have never heard him express anything but an amused contempt for the antiquated machinery which passes amongst politicians for a system of government.
The English [he says] have pushed their fortunes, never by the aid of Government, but on the contrary almost always in the teeth of Government opposition.

There is no man so lacking in imagination as a Government official, and no man, unless it is a banker, so wanting in courage as a Cabinet Minister.

The wealth of England is the creation of her industrial population.