CONCLUSION.

Sir Rowland Hill, at the time of his retirement, “remained,” in the words of the Treasury Minute, “full as ever of ability, energy, and resources, and of disposition to expend them for the public good.” He was broken down in health—broken down, not so much by the great work that he had done, as by the hindrances that, time after time, had been wantonly and cruelly piled up against him in the discharge of his duty. “Men will one day think of the force they squander in every generation, and the fatal damage they encounter by this neglect.”[248] “He stands,” wrote Mr. Gladstone a few months before he left the Post Office, “pre-eminent and alone among all the members of the Civil Service as a benefactor to the nation.” He had not been two years in the service of his country when the Chancellor of the Exchequer of that day, “a man not of many words, or, in manner, of overflowing heart,”[249] told him that, were the Secretaryship to the Post Office vacant, he was the man whom he should recommend to fill it. In a most trying and severe apprenticeship he had proved his thorough fitness for the post, and had convinced Mr. Baring that there was, at all events, one inventor who could be a man of business.[250] But before long his force was squandered by Sir Robert Peel. For the next four years his work lay outside the Post Office. With the return of the Whigs to power, he was once more brought back to the great work of his life. Unhappily the squandering of force did not come to an end. Seven years more had to pass before he was made sole Secretary, and placed in a position of real and undoubted power. For these seven years he had been, to use his own words, “a general almost without an army.” For the next six years his work went on smoothly and rapidly under a happy succession of able and high-minded Postmasters-General. But a change came all too soon. In the Post Office certainly he should have had no master over him at any time. There even the ablest of our statesmen might well have sat at his feet. “He is King of Postal Reform,” wrote a Postmaster-General of a later date, “and I felt myself a very small subject in waiting upon him.” But under the able chiefs under whom he served from 1854 to 1860 he worked with full contentment. This happy period came to an end, as has been seen, with the appointment of Lord Stanley of Alderley. His force was once more, and for the last time, squandered.

How strangely and how sadly was this man thwarted in the high aim of his life. He longed for power, but it was for the power to carry through his great scheme. For the mere shows—the trappings—of authority he cared but little. Such outward things dwelt not in his desires. “My plan” was often on his lips, and ever in his thoughts. His strong mind was made up that it should succeed. He looked upon it with all the fondness and the pride with which a father looks upon his only boy. Take it from him, and his life was done. There was in him a rare combination of enthusiasm and practical power—such a combination as the world has not often seen, and may not again see for many a long day. He had “the usual concomitant of great abilities, a lofty and steady confidence in himself”;[251] but together with this confidence was found a cautiousness that, for the most part, is only seen in those who are far too timid for any great undertaking. He clearly saw every difficulty that lay in his path, and yet he went on with unshaken firmness. To the simple pleasures of life he was by no means indifferent; but he had in his early years attained a thorough self-mastery. In everything but in work he was the most temperate of men. He never repined over the past, or, when once he had taken a step, fretted at the result. His health was greatly shattered by his excessive toils and his long struggles. For the last years of his life he never left his house, and never even left the floor on which his sleeping-room was. But in the midst of this confinement, in all the weakness of old age and sickness, he wrote, “I accept the evil with the good, and frankly regard the latter as by far the weightier of the two. Could I repeat my course, I should sacrifice as much as before, and regard myself as richly repaid by the result.”

With these high qualities was united perfect integrity. He was the most upright and the most truthful of men. He hated By-ends and all his companions. He was often careless of any gain to himself, but the good of the state never for one moment did he disregard. He watched over the public money with a carefulness which few men show even in watching over their own private hoards. He was never even so much as tempted for a single moment to purchase popularity by swerving by a hair’s breadth from the narrow path of duty. More than once a slight sacrifice of public money would have saved him from attack. To public censure he was by no means indifferent. He suffered beneath it even though he knew that it was unjust. Yet he was always ready to brave it in a good cause. One of the men who long served under him bore this high testimony to the character of his old chief:—“Sir Rowland Hill was very generous with his own money, and very close with public money. He would have been more popular had he been generous with the public money and close with his own.” Of his generosity I discovered a striking instance in looking through his private Journal for his last year in office. For one of his subordinates, on whose ability and devotion to himself and zeal in the public service he set a high value, he had not been able to obtain from the Government the recompense which, in his opinion, that gentleman deserved. “I have compensated him to some extent,” he records, “by a gift of £300.” Beneath a manner that was cold beat one of the warmest and even tenderest of hearts. He had, in earlier life, known what it was to bear the proud man’s contumely. The lesson that he had learnt in that hard school was one of forbearance. His rule was stern, yet never without consideration for the feelings of others. No one who was under him ever felt his self-respect wounded by his chief. It is not yet forgotten in the Post Office how, many years ago, one of the higher officers was summoned to the room of the Postmaster-General to give an explanation on some difficult matter. He found his Lordship and the Secretary sitting at the table, but he himself, though he was likely to be kept some time, was not invited to take a chair. Sir Rowland Hill stood up, and remained standing, till his Lordship requested both to be seated.

He had not the fault of most enthusiasts, who look in others for a zeal as ardent as that which animates themselves. He found it somewhat hard, indeed, to understand how any one could be indifferent to the statistics of Penny Postage, and help watching the rise in the number of letters and the postal revenue with as much interest as Englishmen, on a wet day, watch the rise in the weather-glass. But though he did not ask for the same enthusiasm in those who were set under him, he did look for the same carefulness, the same exactness, the same integrity, and the same constant thought for the public good. He forgot that they had not been trained in the same stern school with himself, and he failed to make due allowance for the weakness of man’s nature. By asking too much from men he got from them, perhaps, less than they might otherwise have given. Yet the better natures were not a little raised by the high standard of duty that he ever set before them. He left behind him, in all ranks of the service, a strong sense of public duty, which has managed to outlive even the evil days which came after him.

The history of his declining years I shall but touch on. His work was well-nigh done on the day when he left the Post Office; yet prolonged rest gave him back some small part of his old strength. “Much improved during the winter,” he noted down at the end of his first year in retirement; “rest and cool weather suit me.” In his labours as a member of the Royal Commission on Railways[252] he showed that his mind, however much it had been strained, had yet lost none of its clearness. Not less did it show its power in the years when he was employed in writing “The History of Penny Postage.” He managed, he could long boast, to keep himself “au courant with the progress of science and mechanical invention.” For a while he had strength enough from time to time to attend the meetings of the Political Economy Club. From a short paper that he drew up I extract the following passage:—

He took a strong interest in politics; and no long time before his death he was heard to say that he should gladly live two or three years longer, that he might see how the arrangements made under the Treaty of Berlin would work. It was, however, in watching the operations of the Post Office that his chief interest still lay. I remember how I called upon him one day about eighteen months before his death. On my coming into his room he turned with a smile of pleasure to his son, who happened to be present, and said, “Has your cousin heard of the discovery?” I pricked up my ears, and at once thought of some curious old family record that might have been found hidden away in an old chest or cupboard. “This year,” he continued, with proud exultation, “the postal revenue is larger than the revenue produced by the income tax. I was quite startled to find this out.” Many years earlier he had written to tell his brother how he had met Garibaldi. “On Thursday (April 21, 1864) Caroline (Lady Hill) and I dined at Fishmongers’ Hall ‘to meet Garibaldi.’ I was a little afraid of the undertaking; but I enjoyed the meeting, and am, to say the least, none the worse for it. I had some conversation with Garibaldi about the state of the Italian Post Office; but it was evident that he felt but little interest in the matter. There is something very pleasing, not to say fascinating, in his appearance and manner.” Mr. M. D. Hill replied, “I was very glad to hear you were able to go to the Fishmongers’, and very much amused to find that you consulted Garibaldi on Italian Penny Postage. When you go to heaven, I foresee that you will stop at the gate to inquire of St. Peter how many deliveries they have per day, and how the expense of postal communication between heaven and the other place is defrayed.”

When, by the establishment of School Boards, primary education was so widely extended, he foresaw at once the effect that would be thereby produced on the postal revenue. “Is there,” he wrote, “in addition to the moral, intellectual, and commercial benefits more directly aimed at, any set-off to this increased expense? For this I naturally turn to its effect on the number of letters, which will obviously be enlarged by diffusion of the power to write and read; though the extent to which this will operate is at present matter for conjecture rather than for estimate. I hold it, however, not quite impossible that in this manner the outlay will eventually repay itself, though I am by no means so sanguine as to expect so rich a result.” That knowledge might be more readily brought within the reach of all, he was eager to see a reform of what, to use his own words, “is grossly misnamed orthography.” “For myself,” he writes, “I frankly confess that I have always made it a practice to have a spelling dictionary at hand, and have not infrequently to turn to its pages. My education must, then, it will be said, have been defective! True enough! but of how many has the education been more defective! And even in those who have attained proficiency, how great has been the sacrifice of time else applicable to beneficial study!”

While his mind thus constantly turned to any subject that in any way bore on his great plan, he found, unhappily, much that distressed him in the government of the Post Office. He grieved over the changes that after his retirement were too often made in disregard of the great principles on which he had steadily acted.[253] More than once he addressed warnings to the government. But at the very close of his Journal he records,[254] “I have made myself seriously ill—having brought on renewed threats of apoplexy—by what I have already done.” He could do no more. He had lifted up his voice, and lifted it up in vain. There was happily another side to this sad picture. Wrong-doings and blunders he could often forget, while he contemplated the perfection with which the great machine still worked, though there was no master-hand to govern it. He had the delight, too, of watching his plan as it spread from country to country. “In some respects,” to quote the words that Mr. Gladstone used on his death, “his lot was one peculiarly happy even as among public benefactors; for his great plan ran like wildfire through the civilised world, and never perhaps was a local invention (for such it was) and improvement applied in the lifetime of its author to the advantage of such vast multitudes of his fellow-creatures.” He had aimed at doing something for the world, and he lived to know that his success had been far greater than his hopes, and that the world was not ungrateful.

In the quiet course of his private life there is but little on which I shall dwell. Each year saw his range narrowed more and more till at last he was confined to one floor. In an interesting paper, which he drew up in the summer of 1874, he thus describes the state of his health:—

It was, he says, so far back as the year 1839 that he could trace the first indications of this coming inability to walk. It had grown upon him till, about the year 1868, he fell into the state which he has thus described, from which he never recovered. “This is the more remarkable,” he adds, “because, when a young man, I was the best walker of the brotherhood, and could ‘do’ my thirty miles a day for, I believe, any number of days in succession.” He managed, nevertheless, for many years to dine with the Royal Society Club.

He next describes the mode in which he suffered through the action of others:—

I may mention here, as an instance of his delicate consideration for the feelings of others, that I had often noticed when I went to see him how he thus screened his eyes. It was not till I read this account of his health that I was in the least aware that it was against my restlessness that he was screening himself.

Beneath the balcony that he had built for himself, wherein he hoped, each year as the suns grew warm, to breathe the fresh air, the Metropolitan Asylums Board set up a Small-Pox Hospital. Within a few yards of the old man’s only walk ran the road along which, day after day for many a month, passed a sad train of ambulances and a still sadder train of hearses. For the signal benefit that he had conferred not only on England, but on the whole world, he had been hitherto rewarded and honoured by a gratitude that was as strong as it was general, by the free gifts of his countrymen and the vote of Parliament. The University of Oxford had made him a Doctor of Laws, and the Queen had made him a Knight Commander of the Bath. Before many years had passed the City of London was to give him its freedom, and Westminster Abbey a grave. The Asylums Board cared for none of those things. Public benefactors and public honours did not enter into its world. It knew of nothing but ratepayers. But ratepayers, it should have remembered, are after all only men, and men, in these islands at least, are neither ungrateful nor pitiless.

There was a striking regularity in the order of his household. Everything went on almost as if by clockwork. He asked me one day whether I had ever noticed that the sound of a bell was scarcely ever heard in his house, save when someone came to the hall-door. He was, he said, strictly punctual himself, and he had trained his servants to habits of the strictest punctuality. He could afford, I knew, to take some trouble with them, for they were very slow to leave his service. His visitors saw year after year the best proof of a good master in the familiar faces of those by whom he was served. As everything was done at its appointed time, there was no need for a bell to be rung. His meals, his medicine, everything was brought to the exact minute. No one was summoned, for no one was ever late. In the days when he was still strong enough to drive out, he had been often troubled by the unpunctuality of his coachman:—

The result was that the man became so exact to his time that in twelve months “there were only six cases of lateness, amounting in the aggregate to eight minutes.”

Confined though he so much was to one room, yet time did not hang on his hands. His eyesight happily remained strong, and he was a great reader. In the pages of a novel for many years he found pleasant repose. Few men, indeed, were more deeply read than he in fiction. Science, too, as I have shown, took up much of his time. Astronomy remained to the last his favourite study. Poetry did not throw her charm over him—at least to any great extent. Yet one day he told me that he had just finished “Paradise Lost.” “Milton,” he said with a smile, “does not, in my opinion, prove his case.” His money accounts he kept with the utmost exactness, even to a late age. Two years before his death he told me that he could not expect to live much longer, for his mental strength was steadily failing. He had been obliged to give up even his account-keeping, which had been a pleasure to him from a very early age. A day or two before, he added with an air of great vexation, he had had to make an entry of money received, and he had entered it as money paid.

Few things pleased him more than to talk over his past life. I find the following record among the notes that I took of his talk. “As he told me this day the story of his youth, and the difficulties that he had overcome, the old man grew eloquent. If his words could have been taken down, they would have read like a chapter of De Foe. I was filled with admiration of his powers.” Nothing touched him more than the memory of some kindness that had been done him. He was grateful to all who had at any time, in any way, helped him; but his gratitude overflowed towards those who had rendered him help in the struggles of his youth. A year before his death he could not be satisfied till he had put on record the names of those who, more than seventy years before, had lent his father money in the time of his greatest straits. The loans had been long since paid off—mainly by the son’s efforts as I have shown—but the memory of these benefactors was not to be suffered to pass away from his father’s family. At no time was his thoughtfulness for others more shown than in the winter of 1876, when he was suddenly struck down by an attack that threatened paralysis. Forgetful of himself at so awful a time, he thought only of others. It so happened that in a few weeks’ time he would have had to make me a certain payment. He remembered that I had been suffering from a long illness, and he feared that I might be put to some inconvenience should payment be delayed. He sent to ask me to let him know at once the amount that would be due, so that he might sign the cheque before his hand was paralysed. During the same attack his son asked him whether he would like to consult one of his nephews—a surgeon in whose skill he had great trust. He had, indeed, he answered, wished to send for him. As, however, his own doctor had not suggested, it, he had not said anything for fear of hurting his feelings. A day or two later he begged me to go and see him. I found him in bed, and very weak. He did not think, he said, that he was dying, but it might be that he really was. It had always been his habit, he added, throughout life to prepare for every contingency, and therefore he wished to see me now. What he said could not, for the present at least, fitly be set before the reader. He showed, however, that in the blow that had thus suddenly fallen upon himself, his feelings and his fears were all for those who had so long been dear to him.

Such a life as this, secluded though it was, could not be free from the losses that are common to the race. The old family group began to grow thin before his eyes. His two elder brothers went first, to be followed before long by his only surviving sister. They, however, had all reached a ripe age. In the death of his eldest daughter, and of more than one of his grandchildren, he felt the far deeper sorrow that comes on the old when they see the young gathered to the grave before them. He would tell with sad pride how one of these little ones had once had the courage to call him to account. The child, who was but three years old, one day when playing with his elder brother, had seen his grandfather give a little dog a slight blow with a switch:—

Outside his own circle, Death, while it so long passed him by, was very busy. Old friends, men eminent in science or in public life, he saw pass away before him. He once spoke to me with deep feeling of certain old men who, whenever they met him, had always received him with the greatest warmth. Of his friend Colonel Torrens, whom he had known years before as the chairman of the South Australian Commission, he has left the following brief record:—“He was eminent as a writer on political economy, and was one of the founders of the Political Economy Club. He was many years in Parliament, and was chairman of the South Australian Commission when I was secretary. I had known him previously, but this made our acquaintance intimate, and led to a friendship which continued till his death. When on his death-bed, at the age of eighty-four, he wrote me a most affectionate letter, expressing his desire that a connection even then contemplated between his family and mine should be realised; and a year or two later this was done, to the great satisfaction of my wife and myself, by the marriage of my son with one of the Colonel’s granddaughters.” Colonel Torrens, I may add, had early in the century distinguished himself as a brave soldier. His descendants show with pride a sword of honour which was presented to him for his gallant defence of the Island of Anholt.

With all its losses, its seclusion, and its deprivations, the old man’s life was far from being unhappy. He had resources in himself, and he had the never-failing past on which to dwell. His strength failed, and his mind began to lose somewhat of its old vigour. “Yet hath my night of life some memory,” he might well have said. He had, moreover, a hearty love of fame, and he was doubly happy in this, that honours followed him even into his retirement. He passed away from the sight of men, but he was never made to feel that he was forgotten. Now in one grateful acknowledgment, now in another, he was shown that the world was not indifferent to the man who had conferred on it so signal a benefit. In some newspaper, or in some book, would appear from time to time a kindly and generous mention of his services which would warm up his heart even in the chill of age. I am reminded how Johnson, one day in the last summer of his life, “called out with a sudden air of exultation, as the thought started into his mind, ‘O! Gentlemen, I must tell you a very great thing. The Empress of Russia has ordered the ‘Rambler’ to be translated into the Russian language; so I shall be read on the banks of the Wolga.’ Boswell,—‘You must certainly be pleased with this, Sir.’ Johnson—‘I am pleased, Sir, to be sure. A man is pleased to find he has succeeded in that which he has endeavoured to do.’” In like manner Sir Rowland Hill often exulted at the news that his great plan had won yet another triumph on some distant shore.

Fresh honours were done to him in his own country. Birmingham, the town in which he had spent his youth and early manhood, had already set up his statue. A short time before he died he heard that Kidderminster, his birth-place, was going to pay him a like honour. And now, at the very close of his life, the City of London granted him its Freedom. He was far too weak to attend at the Guildhall, in accordance with ancient custom, to receive this high distinction. The Court of Common Council, with a kindness that gave a double grace to the honour that they rendered, appointed a deputation to wait on him at his residence.[255] He received it in his bed-chamber. It was the 6th day of June, 1879, less than three months before his death. “I offer you,” said the City Chamberlain at the conclusion of an eloquent address, “the right hand of fellowship in the name of the Corporation whom we represent, and who deeply regret that they cannot receive you in person, as is their wont on such occasions as the present. We congratulate you that, notwithstanding the ‘labour and sorrow’ inevitable to the weight of eighty-three years, you have been spared to witness the complete triumph of your postal principles, to receive acknowledgments from the State, and honours from your Sovereign. Detractors and obstructors you have outlived, or they only survive to swell the ranks of those who applaud. May your remaining days be consoled by the thought that your name and services can never be forgotten, and may the sunset of your life be brightened by the reflection that you have been permitted to become one of the greatest benefactors of mankind.” It was a touching sight how the old man was moved by this, the last honour, that he was to receive in his life-time from his fellow-countrymen. The tears streamed down his venerable face, and he was scarcely able to utter a word. I stood close by him, and I heard him say, “I cannot listen to it as I ought.” When the address was finished he could only say, “I wish it were in my power to thank you.” His son had to read his answer. More than once he was distressed to see the members standing while their Chamberlain was addressing him. “It would be a relief to me,” he said, “if you would sit down. I cannot bear to see you standing.” This is a trifling matter in itself, but it had its rise in that tender and anxious thoughtfulness for others which I had so often marked in him. Before leaving the house I went once more up to his room, and through the open door gazed at the man whom I had so honoured. I did not venture to break on his repose by going in. He had on his face a look of great peacefulness. That which should accompany old age was indeed on that day seen to accompany him. I never saw him again.

His strength failed daily, and it was soon seen that the end was not far off. In the beginning of July death seemed close at hand, but he rallied once more. Happily his sufferings were at no time very severe. His mind often wandered, and at last he sank into a state of stupor. For hours he lay motionless, giving no signs of life but by his quiet breathing. His aged wife sat holding his beloved hand in hers. He gave one last sign that he was still of this world. He felt for her wedding-ring—that ring which he had put round her finger more than fifty years before. Finding it, he knew whose dear hand it was that he was holding, and with one gentle pressure he showed that the love that he had always borne her from the beginning he bore her to the end. He never moved again. He died on the 27th day of August, in the year 1879. Hitherto this day had always been held a festival in our family; for on it his brother Arthur had, for eighty-one years, kept his birthday.

It had been Rowland Hill’s hope that his countrymen would think him not unworthy to find his last resting-place in Westminster Abbey. It was, indeed, with singular agreement that the voice of the people awarded to him the last great honour which we Englishmen render to our famous dead. There, followed by his children and his children’s children, by his two aged brothers, who had shared in his struggles and his triumphs, by his brothers’ children and their children’s children, he was laid in his glorious place of rest. It was the burial of a man of the people, and the people came together to do him honour. Men came, too, who had worked under him and worked with him—men who knew well what manner of man he was who was now laid among the great ones of the land. There was but one left of the good line of Postmasters-General under whom it had been his happiness to serve. He unhappily was on the wide Atlantic the day that we were gathered round the open grave. “I can truly say,” wrote the Duke of Argyll, “that no one among his many friends and admirers would have joined more sincerely than I should in the mourning of that day. I had the highest admiration of him, and the strongest feeling of personal regard and affection towards him.” The City of London, which he had so signally served, was represented by its chief magistrate, and the great Liberal party, to which he had been so long attached, by his old friend Mr. Charles Villiers and Earl Granville. His native town sent its Mayor and a deputation of citizens, while his county was represented by its Lord-Lieutenant. The presence of the venerable Astronomer-Royal, for whom the dead man had long entertained a feeling of high regard, reminded those who had known him how he had always spoken of astronomy as “my favourite science.”

There came into my mind the words in which Edmund Burke told of the funeral of our great English painter:—“Everything, I think, was just as our deceased friend would, if living, have wished it to be; for he was, as you know, not altogether indifferent to this kind of observances.” The solemn, glorious, and beautiful scene does not easily lend itself to the poor words of mine. Yet I would willingly let those who are to come after us know something of that which was felt by more than one on this day that was so great in our house. One who was present among the mourners writes to me: “It was not a state ceremonial,—it was a people’s payment of honour. There was not grief; but there was a solemn sense of recognition of a great deed. As I saw from the window of the Jerusalem Chamber the approach of the hearse, and ‘heard,’ if one may say so, the sudden hush, the one feeling was not grief, or that the country had sustained a loss, as when Macaulay was buried with his work half done, but that the crown was being put on a noble career. Sir Rowland, in his coffin, seemed to be making a triumphal progress. What struck me most was, if you will put a kind construction on the first part of the antithesis, this absence of sorrow, this presence of reverence.” From another account that was written down at the time I take the following:

We saw him then laid to rest in the little chapel in the venerable Abbey, beneath the statue of Watt. A memorial will one day be set up in this quiet spot, to show the stranger and the passer-by where Rowland Hill lies buried. In the great city hard by his statue will, before long, stand in the very centre of the trade of the world. In the charity that so many of his countrymen have founded for the relief of the widows and orphans of the servants of the Post Office his memory will be kept alive. But so long as men keep warm feelings, and the name of home has still its charm; so long as there are sorrowful partings and hearts that need comforting; so long as our high aim is towards peace on earth, good will toward men, Rowland Hill is not likely to be forgotten. For he has done almost more than any other man to bring near those who are far off, to bind the nations together, and to make the whole world kin.

APPENDICES.

APPENDIX A.

[See p. 101.]

Letter to Postmaster-General Lord Clanricarde.

Hampstead, 3rd January, 1849.

My dear Lord,—Referring to the various representations which I have at different times taken the liberty of making to your Lordship, relative to my position, and to the difficulties arising out of it which still impede the course of improvement in the Post Office, I find myself called upon by present circumstances to request your kind attention to a review of the whole subject.

Your Lordship will remember that my present duties were undertaken with great reluctance, because of the doubt I felt whether in the position I was to occupy I should be able to secure those great objects whose attainment would naturally be expected of me, as well by the Government as the public, and that one of the most weighty of the considerations influencing me to accept the appointment, was the prospect which was held out of such reorganization in the official arrangements of the Department, as would at no distant time place in my hands such prompt and direct means of acquiring information and exercising control as I have always deemed necessary for the full realization of my plans.

These views, your Lordship will recollect, are fully set forth in my letter to Mr. Hawes, of 23rd November, 1846.

I feel sure that your Lordship will bear witness to my having used, to the best of my ability, all such authority as was placed in my hands, and to my having made every possible effort to surmount or avoid the obstacles incident to my present position.

It was with this view that I selected and submitted to your Lordship those improvements which, from their comparative simplicity, or from the concurrence of the practical officers in my views, were most readily carried into effect, deferring others, either in whole or in part, where the measures, however important and even urgent in themselves, presented great complexity or appeared to be, on whatever grounds, very repugnant to those who had to carry them into effect.

Among the improvements thus effected are the following:—

1st. The time for posting letters at the London receiving houses extended.

2nd. The limitation of weight abolished.

3rd. An additional daily despatch to London from the principal villages in the vicinity established without additional expense.

4th. As one step among others towards the extinction of money prepayment, the business of all new receiving houses restricted to stamped and unpaid letters. A lower scale of salaries being also consequently introduced.

5th. The postal arrangements of 120 of the largest towns in the United Kingdom revised and completed.

6th. Unlimited writing on inland newspapers authorised on payment of 1d. fee.

7th. The public and the Department better protected from annoyance and loss in respect of unpaid letters, by the establishment of a summary process for recovering postage from the senders.

8th. The book-post established.

9th. The advantage of cheap registration secured to the public (by reducing the charge from 1s. to 6d.), without inconvenience to the Department.

10th. An important extension of the time of posting late letters for a great part of the United Kingdom afforded by arrangements at the Euston Railway Station.

11th. As a step towards more frequent communication between large towns, a third mail per day established from Birmingham and other towns on the North Western Railway to London; this addition being made by the North Western Company without payment.

12th. Day mails extended to several smaller towns in a circuit of about twenty miles round London.

13th. The number of mail-guards reduced by placing the smaller mails under the charge of the railway guards.

14th. The service of parliamentary returns for private bills provided for.

15th. The despatch of mails at the country offices facilitated, and the late letter fees secured to the revenue by requiring both fee and postage to be paid in stamps. This improvement is about to take effect.

Some of the improvements in the money order department also belong to this class.

Upwards of twelve months ago, this class of improvements being, as I thought, nearly exhausted, I was preparing to address your Lordship as at present, when my design was postponed through the following circumstance:—The money-order department being of such a nature as to admit of separation, in a great degree, from the other business of the office, and Colonel Maberly having declined to undertake the responsibility thereof under the retrenchments and other improvements adopted on my recommendation by your Lordship and the Treasury, you were pleased to transfer the secretarial management of that department to me.

Of the change which has followed this transfer I need not speak in detail. By a report of Mr. Barth, the head of the department, dated 31st January, 1848, it appears that the accounts were then in an almost hopeless state of arrears; great doubt was entertained whether they ever could be made complete, and the expense of their completion, supposing it to be possible, was estimated at £10,000. No general balance had ever been struck since the institution of the department in 1839, and the liabilities were of unknown amount. To avoid the enormous expense of bringing up the arrears, and to ensure the extinction of unknown liabilities, it was necessary to obtain an Act of Parliament calling in the outstanding money orders. Concurrent efforts were made to bring up the more recent arrears, and to prevent the possibility of new ones arising; and, in consequence of these measures, affairs are now in such a state that, at the end of August next, the liabilities of the department will be fully known, and the materials obtained for a general balance, which will then be struck forthwith.

On investigating the accounts, I found, to my great concern, that the department was not only, as I had anticipated, unprofitable, but that it involved an annual loss of no less than £10,000. It has, however, been found practicable, even with greatly increased perfection in the accounts, to introduce, by successive improvements, such simplification as will save the salaries of 50 clerks in the London Office alone; and this, combined with other important savings already effected, will, in all probability, render the department self-supporting in the course of the present year.

But your Lordship is aware that further important improvements are now in progress, by means of which I confidently expect the money-order department will be made to afford a satisfactory profit.

I may remark that the savings effected in this department have already exceeded my estimate as laid before the select committee of the House of Commons on Postage of 1843 (p. 90).

From the facility with which the necessary changes, many of them difficult and complicated, have been effected in this department since it came under my immediate and exclusive direction, your Lordship will, perhaps, deem it not unreasonable to infer that, with similar means at my command, a like success may be obtained elsewhere; and the encouragement hence derived has augmented my earnest desire to attempt without delay improvements in other departments, for years contemplated, which, while they present many difficulties, are of no slight importance to the public service.

The complete consolidation of the two corps of letter-carriers is a promised measure of this description. This consolidation I first recommended in the year 1837, submitted to the Treasury in the year 1842, laid before the select committee on postage of 1843, and sustained through a severe examination. Up to that time it was opposed by the Post Office authorities, and not supported by the Treasury; but at the commencement of 1847 a decided step was taken in that direction, and with advantageous results.

My opinion of the value of the measure has never varied, and my desire for its adoption is, of course, greatly strengthened by finding it pressed on the Office by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose exhortations to the same effect have now, for twelve months, been from time to time earnestly given.

But, after the maturest deliberation, I still feel impressed with the painful conviction that unless I could be placed, with reference to the departments concerned in the change, in a position similar to that which I hold with regard to the Money Order Office, the attempt would not only fail, but might produce a state of serious insubordination.

Your Lordship will bear in mind that the improvement in question involves other changes, some of them of a very complicated nature, and such as could be effected only by a delicate and difficult process; I need not say that where the ramifications are so numerous, it is quite impossible to frame, in prospectu, any detailed plan which will not require very much of subsequent modification. The experience derived from each step of the process, will be required to govern the succeeding step. The improvements must be introduced on the tentative principle, and extended or varied, hastened or delayed, according as the peculiar feelings and opinions of parties concerned, or other circumstances, may require. In fine, the management will constantly demand immediate, confidential, and uninterrupted intercourse with those most conversant with details, or on whom the duty of immediate execution will devolve, as well as the exercise of an influence and authority limited only by due subordination to your Lordship.

In the absence of these aids, any attempt to effect the improvement in question would, in my opinion, be most inexpedient.

In the same category with this measure are various others, some of which are of pressing importance, at a time when there is so great a demand on the part of the Government for retrenchment and economy in every department of the public service; and, considering that every delay renders such improvement more and more difficult, I respectfully submit the importance of my being early placed in a position for entering upon them with safety and success.

I trust, my Lord, that in earnestly dwelling on these considerations as affecting the public interest, I advance no improper claim as regards myself. Your Lordship will, I am sure, remember that expectation of such promotion was held out to me, contingent only on my demonstrating that I possess the requisite administrative capabilities, and that one object in placing the Money Order Departments under my immediate direction was to bring these capabilities to the test. With the result of this experiment your Lordship has been pleased to express entire satisfaction, and, combining this testimonial with the repeated expressions of approval with which your Lordship has honoured me during the two years of my service, I trust I am not assuming too much in regarding the conditions as fulfilled.

I am the more strongly impelled to ask for the fulfilment of the contingent expectation, because, in addition to the Treasury’s demand and your Lordship’s exercise for economy, there is, from time to time, a manifestation of some disappointment in the public mind. It is naturally expected that, under your Lordship’s sanction, I should effect the improvements in reference to which my appointment was made. And as the public is far from being fully aware of the difficulties under which I labour, and as I am of course precluded by my position from giving explanations, I am exposed to attacks which I must not repel, and suffer in my reputation, without being conscious of blame.

I have now finished a task which I began with reluctance, and which I feel much relieved to have drawn to a close. A more agreeable duty remains to be performed: it is to express my sincere thanks for the kind support with which your Lordship has been pleased to honour my efforts.

I have, &c.,
Rowland Hill.

The Most Noble
The Marquis of Clanricarde,
&c., &c., &c.

APPENDIX B.

[See p. 105.]

Further letter to Postmaster-General (Lord Clanricarde).

Hampstead, August 13th, 1849.

My dear Lord,—Knowing how fully your lordship’s time and that of other ministers is occupied during the session of Parliament, I have hitherto refrained from again requesting attention to my letter of January 3rd, but now that a period of comparative leisure has arrived, I feel that I ought no longer to postpone the irksome task.

I have enclosed a copy of the letter for the purpose of inviting a reperusal of it, and I think I may confidently appeal to your Lordship’s knowledge of the state of the department for supporting me when I say that the experience of the seven months which have elapsed since that letter was written has strengthened the grounds, both public and private, on which my application was based.

The various interviews with which I have been honoured by your lordship on nice and difficult points, arising in the course of business, would enable me to refer to many cases in which the public service has suffered from the continuance of the existing arrangements, while, though this is doubtless a matter of inferior importance, such arrangements are inconsistent both with my personal comfort and my pecuniary interests.

On these, however, I will not dwell, nor even with respect to the public service will I intrude on your attention as to more than one point out of the many which occupy my thoughts. I refer to the necessity for a general revision of salaries in the metropolitan offices, which after being so long delayed now presses with great urgency. It is due in justice to the clerks that their claims, whether well or ill founded, should be set at rest by adjudication; but; notwithstanding your Lordship’s earnest desire that the task should be accomplished, I have, I believe, satisfied you that in my present position it would be unsafe to attempt even those improvements which are necessarily preliminary to the still more difficult task of revising the salaries.

Earnestly begging your Lordship will be pleased to take the necessary steps for effecting a decision on my letter of January 3rd,

I have, &c., &c.,
Rowland Hill.

The Most Noble
The Marquis of Clanricarde,
&c., &c., &c.

APPENDIX C.

[See p. 105.]

Lord Clanricarde’s reply.

Brighton, August 23rd, 1849.

My dear Sir,—I have read your letter reverting to that which you addressed to me on the 3rd of last January with much regret.

I am sorry you consider our existing official arrangements inconsistent with your comfort and your interest. I see no possibility of their being changed at present.

I could not alter them myself, and I could not send forward to the Treasury your letter of the 3rd of January without previously communicating with Colonel Maberly.

I have no reason to believe the Treasury would take at this moment any steps to put you in the position you desire to hold. And my own opinion is that, constituted as the office now is, we can proceed gradually and steadily to carry into effect many improvements which you have suggested or which may hereafter occur to you. You enumerate in your letter of January 3rd several of importance which we have achieved without even temporary inconvenience or failure,—others have been effected since that date, and I have little fear of not being able to have properly executed almost any alteration of the result of which we might be well assured.

I see no reason why you should not complete a scale of salaries for country offices and messengers as soon as the returns you have called for may be perfected, or why such a scale should not be at once adopted, and gradually, and not slowly, enforced. And in like manner, the metropolitan offices might afterwards be dealt with.

With respect to your personal feelings and interests I can of course say nothing. I am only gratified that you should feel satisfied with the support which it has been my duty, and I assure you a sincere pleasure, to me to afford you.

I remain, &c., &c.,
Clanricarde.

R. Hill, Esq.,
&c., &c., &c.

APPENDIX D.

[See p. 111.]

Minute on the Sunday Duties of the Post Office.

To the Postmaster-General.

1. In obedience to your Lordship’s instructions, I beg to submit my views as to further measures for reducing the Sunday duties of the Post Office, and as to other improvements connected therewith.

2. The importance of affording to all connected with the Post Office the utmost amount of rest on Sunday that is consistent with a due regard to public convenience having led to measures for the total suspension of money-order business on that day throughout England and Wales, it is very satisfactory to remark, that neither the announcement of the change, nor the experience of it thus far, has brought on the department a single complaint from the public; and I confidently anticipate like satisfactory results should the Treasury concur in your Lordship’s recent recommendation of a similar measure in Ireland and Scotland.

3. Your Lordship will recollect that, in considering the above improvement, the importance of a similar relief as respects other duties was kept in mind; and, from the investigations which have been made, there can be no doubt that a further very important relief as relates to Sunday work may be effected in all the provincial offices.

4. The consideration of this question, however, is closely connected with that of a measure mainly relating to public convenience, but which, contrary to first appearances, proves on investigation to have a direct tendency towards the same object of Sunday relief.

5. The transmission of letters through London on the Sunday, your Lordship is aware, has long been a desideratum, having been recommended by the Commissioners of Post Office Inquiry in 1836 (7 Report, p. 9); and by a committee of the House of Commons in 1818 (3 Report, p. x.); and again suggested by several members of a committee of the House of Lords in 1847 (Report of the Select Committee. Ev. 430-445).

6. The obstacles to the adoption of these recommendations were, first, an assumption that it would increase the Sunday work of the department; second, a fear that it would lead to a Sunday delivery in London.

7. Both these apprehensions, as will be shown hereafter, are groundless.

8. Since the time when the above recommendations were made, the importance of the change has greatly increased, the Sunday average letters involved in the consideration having advanced since 1836 from 5000 or 6000 to 50,000 or 60,000, or ten-fold.

9. The importance of the change will be still more manifest on reference to the fact, that this present number of London “forward letters” for a single day much exceeds what was in 1836 the corresponding number for a whole week, for the expediting of which it was determined by Government, on the recommendation of the Commissioners of Post Office Inquiry, to establish day mails at an estimated cost of £15,000 a year (7 Report, pp. 5 and 121).

10. The evil of the present arrangement, already so great, is constantly increasing, partly because of the general increase of letters, but mainly because of the centralising tendency of the railways. The greatly increased speed of conveyance, too, obviously tends to make any detention more severely felt; and the inconvenience is particularly serious when, as occasionally happens, the detention falls on a mail from the East or West Indies.

11. The evil of detention has been found so serious, that in several cases the rule has been evaded, either by making use of other existing channels for the conveyance of the mails sent on ordinary days through London, or by the actual establishment of Sunday cross-posts; either of which arrangements obviously involves increased expense, trouble, liability to error, perplexity to the public, and additional Sunday work. Thus the mail between Winchester and Birmingham is sent on the Sunday through Exeter; and again, the correspondence between the towns served by the North-Eastern Railway and those served by the North-Western Railway is conveyed on a Sunday by a mail-cart, expressly running on that day between Cambridge and Wolverton, through Newport Pagnel, a distance of 47 miles—an arrangement involving an expense of £148 per annum (£98 for the cart and £50 for additional sorting at Newport Pagnel), besides a direct increase in Sunday occupation.

12. Meantime the mail trains, excepting a few of the day mails, run as on other days, and, save as regards London, convey letters as usual. Even to London nearly all letters from Ireland, Scotland, and the out-ports, as also all foreign and colonial letters whatever, are brought, as on other days, the same being partly assorted at the chief office on the Sunday, for delivery or for forwarding, as the case may be, the next morning.

13. For the performance of these duties and for the selection and delivery of the “States” (letters addressed chiefly to the higher offices of Government), twenty-six persons are ordinarily employed at the chief office on Sunday, their time of occupation being, on the average, six hours. The arrival of a heavy mail from abroad requires a greater force.

14. To remove the evils of this weekly suspension of the ordinary transmission through London, and the anomalies arising out of it, and with the view of diminishing the amount of Sunday work in the department as a whole, I propose that the existing mail trains should bring up on the Sunday, in addition to the present bags, the forward stamped letters—excluding, however, newspapers, parliamentary proceedings, and all documents not paying the full letter rates. These limitations will avert, on the one hand, any possibility of a Sunday delivery of letters to the London public, and, on the other, any unnecessary addition to the Sunday accounts.

15. The restriction to stamped letters may perhaps cause some inconvenience to the public, especially at first, arising out of their difficulty of knowing what correspondence passes through London and what does not; but as it is in contemplation to confine the receipt of money-paid letters to the chief office of each provincial town, and as the deputies can be instructed whenever the want of a stamp would cause the detention of a letter to state as much when it is presented for prepayment (an arrangement which will be facilitated by the comparative leisure of blank post day), it appears to me that the danger of inconvenience to the public will be small, and certainly far less than that which now results from the doubt as to whether even stamped letters posted on blank post day will be detained or not.

16. The inland letters thus brought in, as they would require no accounts either to be examined or made out, would be despatched by the existing day mails in those cases where this would be necessary to secure their earlier delivery on the Monday. All the other letters, whether inland or not, would be sent by the night mails. It is obvious that, under this arrangement, none of the letters in question could be delivered anywhere on the Sunday.

17. I should also strongly advise that in the performance of the above-mentioned duties at the London office no infringement should be allowed on the hours of divine service; the whole interval from ten in the morning till five in the afternoon being left perfectly free; and I should propose to extend this arrangement, as far as practicable, to the existing duties at that office.

18. By availing ourselves of the time now occupied by the clerks of the travelling post office in assorting such of the letters in question as now reach them by the special cross-posts, I am of opinion that a force of twenty-five men, at the expense of £300 per annum, will suffice for the duties now proposed; and when it is considered that in the single anomaly referred to above the plan will effect a saving of £148 a year, it appears highly probable that the total reductions effected by the improvement will fully compensate such additional expense.

19. I should add that, although Mr. Bokenham, whom I have consulted, sees no difficulty as regards the practicability of the general measure, he is of opinion that little aid can be afforded by the clerks of the travelling post office; consequently, though willing to try with twenty-five additional men, his impression is that a somewhat larger number will be necessary.

20. As regards the effect of the proposed change on the amount of Sunday occupation, it is manifest, from what has already been stated, that for the increased force at the chief office there is, to say the least, a large set-off elsewhere. A further examination, however, will put the matter in a light still more satisfactory.

21. It is notorious that a blank post is everywhere preceded and followed by a greater amount of correspondence than usual. Thus, in London, the average number of letters is greater on Saturday by six per cent., and on Monday by 25 per cent., than on other days. But, as respects the correspondence sent through London, Saturday evening is at present in most towns a blank post time. It therefore follows that such correspondence is despatched from the provinces in unusual amount on Saturday morning, and on Sunday morning or evening, according as there may or may not be a Sunday day mail.

22. Now each of these augmentations tends to produce additional Sunday work, both to the department and to the public. For the letters in the first category are for the most part distributed by the Post Office and read by the public on the Sunday, and those in the second are for the most part written by the public and despatched by the office on Sunday.