To draw with precision the line between those who ought to be admitted and those who ought to be excluded would be a task requiring much time, thought and knowledge of details.

But the general principles which ought to guide us are obvious.
The multitude of subordinate functionaries ought to be excluded.

A few functionaries who are at the head or near the head of the great departments of the administration ought to be admitted.
The subordinate functionaries ought to be excluded, because their admission would at once lower the character of Parliament and destroy the efficiency of every public office.

They are now excluded, and the consequence is that the State possesses a valuable body of servants who remain unchanged while cabinet after cabinet is formed and dissolved, who instruct every successive minister in his duties, and with whom it is the most sacred point of honour to give true information, sincere advise, and strenuous assistance to their superior for the time being.
To the experience, the ability and the fidelity of this class of men is to be attributed the ease and safety with which the direction of affairs has been many times, within our own memory, transferred from Tories to Whigs and from Whigs to Tories.

But no such class would have existed if persons who received salaries from the Crown had been suffered to sit without restriction in the House of Commons.