CHAPTER XI.

OUT OF OFFICE (1842-3).

All being thus decided, and my last duty performed, I saw no reason to delay any longer that relaxation of which I now stood much in need, and during the next month the entries in my Journal are comparatively few. While I was resting my friends were at work:—

“_November 9th, 1842._—Matthew informs me that Lord Brougham had a long conversation with Sir James Graham, on the 7th instant, on the subject of my treatment, in the course of which he (Lord B.) told Sir James Graham that in his opinion the Government was making a great practical mistake, and intimated that I must of course defend myself, and that he, from his long acquaintance with myself and opinion of the plan, should feel bound to take up the cudgels on my behalf in the House of Lords. That Sir James Graham appeared also to think that a mistake had been made, and promised to speak to some other members of the Cabinet on the subject. Lord Brougham subsequently wrote to Sir James Graham a letter to be laid before Peel.”

To give to the public such a knowledge of facts as would enable it to do justice either to my plan or myself, it was obviously important to publish that correspondence with the Treasury in which I had again and again urged improvement, and in which my application had been as often either neglected or evaded; in which, also, I had received notice of my dismissal, had deprecated this step, and had been informed of persistence in the intention, with such show of reason as had been vouchsafed me. Being aware, however, that such publication was likely to be the subject of attack, I was careful, before venturing on it, to ascertain my right to make it; and this I knew must depend upon precedent and require reference to authority:—

“_November 26th._—Matthew applied to Earl Spencer[335] for his opinion.”

The following is his lordship’s letter:—

“Longford, November 25th, 1842.

“MY DEAR SIR,—As the correspondence you sent me looked rather alarming as to bulk, I delayed reading it till I had the opportunity of a journey. I took this opportunity yesterday.

“I can see no public grounds why your brother should not publish it if he thinks fit. As a question of personal prudence I think the thing more doubtful, but I think your letter only goes to his _right_ to publish it. I have no business, therefore, to say anything more than that I think he has a right to publish it.

“You know, however, that I sometimes have done more than answer a question put to me simply, and I will do so now by adding to my answer that if I was in his place I would not publish it....

“Yours most truly,

“SPENCER.

“M. D. HILL, Esq.”

“_November 29th._—To-day the Merchants’ Committee [which had applied for an interview early in August] has seen Sir Robert Peel. They strongly urged the necessity for completing the measure—their want of confidence in the Post Office—their confidence in me, and the great satisfaction it would be to the public to see me restored to office. Peel satisfied the deputation that he was sincerely desirous of carrying out the measure, and Goulburn, who was present, assured them that, whatever might have been the feeling originally entertained by the Post Office, all there were now earnest friends of the measure! (It did not occur to the Committee to inquire where, then, lay the danger of ‘collision.’) Peel invited the Committee to send in a statement of those parts of the plan which they still wished to see carried into effect; but he stated that a return from the Post Office showed that, _with the exception of about £100,000 per annum, the net revenue was obtained from foreign and colonial letters_.[336] This statement, which he made in an early stage of the conversation, threw the Committee quite aback; for though I had prepared them, as I thought, to distrust all information derived from the Post Office, their want of familiarity with the subject, and the confident manner with which the statement was made, caused them to believe it.”

The Committee at my suggestion subsequently applied for a copy of this return, but it was prudently withheld; and, with equal prudence, no reason was assigned for the refusal. Of this return, however, more will appear by-and-by. Meantime, the question of publishing the correspondence remaining still undecided, I sought further advice. On December 4th I received the following letter from Mr. Baring:—

“Brighton, Dec. 3rd, 1842.

“DEAR SIR,—I hope to be at Lee on Tuesday, and shall be at your service on Wednesday morning. But if you are not afraid of a bad dinner, which you probably will get the first day of our return, you had better come down on Tuesday, dine and sleep at Lee, and we will talk over the matter on Wednesday.

“Yours very truly,

“F. T. BARING.”

After careful perusal and reperusal of the correspondence, Mr. Baring, in the course of several conversations, pronounced my line of conduct very judicious, and the conduct of Government very shabby. He said it was absurd to expect that the Post Office would satisfactorily carry into effect the remaining parts of my plan, and that consequently my dismissal was most unfair towards the measure. He added that, even without reference to my plan, my retention as a permanent officer would be useful as a check upon the proceedings of the Post Office; and that such retention would be in conformity with the system of Treasury management, which consists in having an officer to check each subordinate department. He assured me that it was never his intention that my services should cease as a matter of course at the expiration of the year mentioned in his last letter, the fair interpretation of which was that he considered it advantageous to continue my services indefinitely, but that as he was then leaving office, and as there were rumours of an intention on the part of the next Government to abandon my plan, he did not feel justified in giving me a claim for more than one year’s salary. These opinions he would be prepared to state in Parliament. He thought it probable that Lord Lowther’s jealousy was the cause of the mischief, and that that jealousy was excited by my opposition to his plan of registration, which, he remarked, if carried into effect would have created an uproar throughout the country. He was of opinion that I had a right to publish the correspondence, but feared that by so doing I should bar the door against other employment, to which he regarded me as having a claim, that otherwise would probably be recognised even by the Government then in power; so that he was rather averse to my taking any step before the meeting of Parliament. I replied that, although I, of course, should be glad to obtain other employment under Government, my chief anxiety was to satisfy the public that I had not misled them by holding out expectations which could not be realized, and that, although I would carefully consider his kind advice, my present inclination was to sacrifice all other considerations to the accomplishment of this object; on which he remarked that, if I were not satisfied with the discussion in Parliament, I could still publish the correspondence. He expressed an opinion that it would not be practicable to bring before Parliament copies of my Reports, or those of the Post Office, to the Treasury, inasmuch as such Reports being considered confidential, the rule is to refuse their production. This was a serious disappointment, as I had depended mainly on the publication of these Reports as a means of showing the manner in which my duties had been discharged, and the nature of the opposition of the Post Office.

“_Same day._—Matthew has seen Lord Spencer. His view coincides almost exactly with Mr. Baring’s, differing only (if I have understood Mr. B. rightly) in thinking that the late, as well as the present, Government would disapprove of any appeal to the public, except through Parliament.”

As Mr. Warburton concurred in disapproving immediate publication, I yielded to the advice of so many influential friends, though my own opinion was still strongly in favour of the prompter course. Meanwhile there came in from various members of Parliament and many other friends letters of sympathy and support; among others, the following kind and characteristic one from Mr. Cobden:—

“Newcastle-on-Tyne, 20th January, 1843.

“MY DEAR SIR,—The men of the League are your devoted servants in every way that can be useful to you. Colonel Thompson, Bright, and I, have _blessed you_ not a few times in the course of our agitating tour.... I go back to Manchester to-morrow, after a very gratifying tour in Scotland. ‘The heather’s on fire.’

“Believe me,

“Yours very truly,

“R. COBDEN.

“R. HILL, Esq.”

This was followed, within a week, by a second letter, in which it will be seen that the warmth of his feelings led him into very strong expressions. These I do not suppress, as every one can make for them the allowance due to time, circumstance, and a generous nature:—

“Manchester, 26th January, 1843.

“MY DEAR SIR,—I have read over the correspondence, and, so far as success in placing the Government in the wrong goes, you will be pronounced triumphant by all who will read it. But nothing is more true than the remark in your brother’s excellent letter, that the force of public opinion cannot be brought to bear upon the authorities to compel them to work out details. So far as your object in that direction is concerned, your correspondence will, I suspect, be nugatory. If your object be to justify yourself in the eyes of the public, _that_, I submit, is supererogatory. You cannot stand better than you do with the impartial British public. You will get no further facilities from Tory functionaries. They hate the whole thing _with a diabolical hatred_. And well they may. It is a terrible engine for upsetting monopoly and corruption: witness our League operations, the _spawn of your penny postage_! Now, let me deal frankly and concisely with you. I want to see you remunerated for the work you have done. The labourer is worthy of his hire. The country is in your debt. An organized plan is alone necessary to insure you a national subscription of a sum of money sufficient to reimburse you for time, trouble, and annoyance incurred and expended in your great social revolution.... A public subscription—a really national one—would give you power and independence, and when the next change of Government takes place you would be in the ascendant. Until then I expect no hearty co-operation in carrying out your details. We must be content, in the meantime, to prevent the Tories from robbing us of any substantial part of the principle, and I think we have bulldogs enough in the House now to prevent that. I should like to have some talk with you about this matter. Meantime, excuse my plainness, and don’t suspect me of wishing to make you a _sordid_ patriot. You see what an effect the £50,000 League Fund is producing: a similar demonstration in favour of the author of Postage Reform, and a seat in Parliament in prospective, would have a like effect upon the enemy.

“Believe me,

“Yours truly,

“R. COBDEN.

“ROWLAND HILL, Esq.”

Very different, but no less characteristic of the writer, is the following letter, received some months later, from Thomas Hood:—

“17, Elm Tree Road, St. John’s Wood, 1st May.

“MY DEAR SIR,

* * * * *

“I have seen so many instances of folly and ingratitude similar to those you have met with, that it would never surprise me to hear of the railway people some day, finding their trains running on so well, proposing to discharge the engines.

* * * * *

“I am, my dear Sir,

“Yours very truly,

“THOMAS HOOD.

“R. HILL, Esq.”

Meanwhile, I felt nowise daunted by late events, but rather filled with fresh zeal; for although I never willingly entered into a conflict, yet when one was forced upon me, or stood between me and what I deemed right, I was by no means backward at the work.

One of my earliest moves after leaving office was towards personal and domestic economy. While I was in receipt of a large salary, and had my attention fully occupied, and indeed my powers heavily taxed, I had allowed my expenditure to obtain dimensions unsuitable to my present condition. Of course I intended to seek new occupation, but this would require time; and, meanwhile, I felt that if I would act independently I must make myself independent of circumstances. I therefore entered at once upon a course of vigorous retrenchment, and partly by my efforts, but much more by the zealous and most efficient co-operation of my dear wife, our expenditure was soon brought within very narrow limits. Without any change of house or diminution in number of servants, our disbursements were soon reduced by one-half, and it was only in the first year after the change that my expenditure exceeded my income. I may add that it never had exceeded it before, and that it never exceeded it again.

As the parliamentary session approached, however, I had to turn my attention more and more to the work of preparation for the duty which I expected it to bring. I therefore put my papers in the most perfect order—a proceeding which has greatly facilitated the writing of this part of my narrative.

Sir Thomas Wilde having very kindly undertaken to lay my case before Parliament, I could not but feel some anxiety as to the view that might be taken of this course by Mr. Wallace, who had himself acted as leader in earlier days. I therefore wrote to him on the subject as delicately as I could, and a fortnight afterwards, when he came to town for the parliamentary session, I called upon him with some feeling of anxiety. I quote from my Journal:—

“He behaves nobly, as he always has done, fully acquiescing in the arrangement with regard to Sir Thomas Wilde, and expressing his own readiness to follow Sir Thomas’s lead.”

Meanwhile, however, my attention was called to considerations of a somewhat different character:—

“_February 8th._—Met Mr. Stephen, of the Colonial Office, in Piccadilly, and at his request walked with him to the Colonial Office. On the way he urged me to apply to the Government for employment, saying that he felt sure my claim would be acknowledged—intimating that I might expect such an appointment as a Commissionership of Customs. I replied, that such a step would be considered as a tacit engagement on my part not to bring my case before the public; that other friends had recommended a similar course, under the impression that the complimentary expressions in the letters from the Treasury were intended by Government to suggest it, but that, after mature deliberation, I had decided not to do anything which should prevent my making known to the public the true causes of the small amount of revenue actually obtained, as compared with my anticipations, and justifying my conduct throughout. Mr. Stephen rejoined that he did not doubt I might stipulate to do all this, providing that I refrained from attacking the Government, and yet obtain lucrative and honourable employment. To this I said I of course could not object, and he recommended that two of the leading merchants or bankers in the city, of opposite politics, should make the application on my behalf. I promised to consider the suggestion, but requested that he would, in the meantime, read the correspondence, a copy of which I sent him the same afternoon.

“_February 11th._—Prepared a memorandum ... called on Mr. Stephen, read it to him, and left it with him; he expressing a desire to reconsider the matter, with a view, perhaps, of making such inquiries of Goulburn, with whom he is intimate, as would enable him to judge of the probable success of such an application as he had suggested. I desired that he would do whatever he thought best, clearly understanding, however, that I was no party to anything of the kind.

“_February 15th._—Mr. Stephen writes that he has ascertained that nothing can be done unless I submit to be gagged, and not very much even then; so the whole ends in smoke.

“_Same day._—Wrote to Mr. Stephen thanking him for his kindness, which, from the very unreserved manner in which he spoke of the Government, I feel very strongly; but of course declining to apply to Government.”[337]

About three weeks later, Mr. Goulburn, in reply to an application made by Mr. Hutt, on behalf of Sir Thomas Wilde, for the production of my correspondence with the Treasury, refused to give more than a few letters, withholding those of chief importance;[338] and though, on being pressed, he somewhat enlarged the grant, it still remained very imperfect. Unsatisfactory, however, as was this concession, motion was made accordingly:—

“_March 29th._—My correspondence with the Treasury. The printed copies were delivered this morning. By the omission of all the letters urging progress in the plan, Goulburn’s notice of dismissal is brought into juxtaposition with a minute of December 24th, 1841 (of which I never heard till now), confirming the extension of my engagement for one year from September 14th, 1841, and made to appear as the natural sequence of such minute, instead of being, as it was in fact, the answer to my complaints of no progress, and of Post Office interference to prevent my journey to Newcastle. The whole thing is cunningly done, and it shows that the five weeks taken to prepare the correspondence have not been lost. The case is so much damaged, however, that I have determined to give the papers a very limited circulation, and to press on Wilde to consent to the publication of the whole. Sir Robert Peel, in his letter[339] to me, admits that ‘important improvements’ still remain to be effected; but in the printed copy the word ‘important’ is dropped.”[340]

To my surprise, the strength of my case, grievously impaired as it was by this maiming of the correspondence, was nevertheless recognised in one of the journals regularly supporting the Government:—

“_March 30th._—The _Morning Herald_ gives the correspondence with Sir Robert Peel, and has a leader, sneering, of course, at penny postage, but expressing an opinion that I have been unjustly treated, and ought to have a place or a pension.”

This is the last entry in my Journal for the present. On the one hand, I became so engrossed in preparation for the coming conflict—a conflict which seemed to me as one almost of life and death—that I had no time to spare save for pressing demands; while, on the other hand, the motive to record was greatly weakened since my exclusion from the Treasury. For the history of the following three years and a-half, my dependence is on documents, parliamentary or otherwise, produced during the period (all of which I have carefully preserved), and on such recollections as are suggested by their perusal.

On April 10th a petition for inquiring into the state of the Post Office, prepared by myself and in my own name, was presented to the House of Commons by Mr. Baring; and on the following night Mr. Hawes gave notice that Sir Thomas Wilde would call the attention of the House to the same soon after the Easter holidays—a notice, however, which from various causes had to be repeated several times before being acted upon. Of this petition, which appears at length in the Report of the Committee,[341] I will merely mention here that, after reference to my appointment and subsequent dismissal, after statements as to the very incomplete introduction of my plan, evidence as to the hopelessness of its completion being effected by the Post Office, and representations as to the vast interests at stake, I concluded by expressing my desire “to submit the truth of the foregoing allegations to the severest scrutiny,” and by petitioning for the necessary inquiry.

This petition was presently backed by another from eight members[342] of the Mercantile Committee, so often mentioned before, in which, after briefly adverting to the beneficial effect of the improvement already made, the petitioners, expressing an earnest desire for the completion of the plan, prayed for inquiry with a view to that end.

I now felt that the time was come when my friends should be put in full possession of the facts of the case; and, consequently, having printed all of the correspondence which had been applied for in Parliament, that withheld as well as that granted, I sent copies, marked “strictly confidential,” to the members of the Mercantile Committee, and some others of my friends, prefacing it with an introduction, in which I justified the proceeding—first, by the declaration of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that his denial was made on the ground that the part which had been withheld was unnecessary, no allegation being made as to inconvenience to the public service, and, secondly, by the high authority which I had for saying that I had a right, looking to the nature of the correspondence itself, to official usage, and all other circumstances, to place the whole before the public. This step, taken on April 13th, was on the 19th condemned in the House of Commons by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Goulburn, but defended by the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Baring.

It was not until May 1st that I obtained a copy of the return upon which Sir Robert Peel, in the preceding November, based his injurious and erroneous statement that the inland post yielded but £100,000 a-year to the revenue. This return was now laid before Parliament on the motion of Sir George Clerk. In consequence I addressed a letter to the daily papers, in which I expressed myself as follows:—

“I have no hesitation in stating that the return, whether considered in regard to its general results or to the division of revenue under the two heads, is utterly fallacious.”

I concluded by promising to give in due time a full exposure of the fallacy—a promise afterwards fulfilled.[343]

In the short period during which this return was under my consideration, an incident occurred which must be mentioned, because, besides giving additional evidence of Post Office incompetency, it excited some surprise and not a little amusement. The Overland Route to India being now established, a notice was issued by the Post Office, that persons wishing to send letters by that route to Australia must address them to “an agent in India,” who in turn must pay the postage onward, as otherwise the letters would not be forwarded. To the unreasonableness of expecting that every one writing by that route to Australia should have an agent planted half-way, was added such vagueness of expression as would have rendered the injunction very misleading; “India” being put for “Bombay,” where alone, according to Post Office arrangement, the postage could be paid. The absurdity of the proceeding was so manifest that within a week from its appearance the notice was withdrawn.

In this short period, also, Mr. Ashurst, acting for the Mercantile Committee, issued a circular to mayors of towns and other representative persons, recommending that petitions should be sent up praying for the complete execution of my plan; the recommendation being accompanied with a statement showing, in the most pithy manner, the chief estimates as to number of letters and average of postage under the old rates, made severally by the Post Office authorities, the Parliamentary Committee, and myself, previously to the adoption of the plan, and comparing them with actual results.

About this time Mr. Baring had moved for a return, to show how far the instructions, issued by the Treasury more than a year and a-half ago,[344] for the extension of rural distribution, had been carried into effect by the Post Office. Of course he had, ere this, learnt from me that its operation had been suspended by the Treasury; but now, in the return called for, this essential fact was suppressed, the whole answer being as follows:—

“No definite arrangements have yet been made by the Post Office in conformity with the Minutes of the Lords of the Treasury, dated the 13th and 27th days of August, 1841, relating to the Post Office distribution in the rural districts of the United Kingdom.

“W. L. MABERLY.

“General Post Office, 8th April, 1843.”

The motion, so important to me, and, as I thought, and still think, to the cause of postal reform, seemed in danger of lapsing to the end of the session, not coming on until June 27th. The House was far from full, but the number present was considerable. I obtained a seat for myself and my brother Arthur under the gallery, sitting on the opposition side of the House, that I might the more readily supply my friends with any information that might be required during the progress of the debate. Colonel Maberly, likewise under the gallery, was, I suppose for the like reason, on the Government side of the House. The debate occupies forty-seven pages in “Hansard;”[345] but keen as was the interest with which my brother and I listened to every word, I shall not trouble the reader of the present day with more than a brief abstract.

The motion of which Sir Thomas Wilde had given notice was for a Select Committee, “To inquire into the progress which had been made in carrying into effect the recommendations of Mr. Rowland Hill for Post Office improvement; and whether the further carrying into effect of such recommendations or any of them will be beneficial to the country.”[346]

Sir Thomas Wilde, after adverting to the deliberate adoption of my plan by Parliament, and this in a time of commercial depression, with the knowledge that its adoption was expected to produce a small permanent and a large immediate reduction of revenue, pointed out that my plan had been presented as a whole, no part being recommended unless accompanied with the remainder. After referring to the authoritative condemnation of the old system, to my appointment, to the acknowledged value of my services, to the opposition of the Post Office, to the hopelessness of expecting the completion of my plan from that department, or even from the Treasury, unless aided by one able and ready to deal with the fallacies with which resistance was defended; after having pointed out the unfairness of the experiment on which my plan had been judged, and, in fine, given a history of the progress (and non-progress) of postal reform during the time I was at the Treasury, and of my dismissal therefrom, he concluded by moving the resolution of which he had given notice.[347]

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, while repeating some of the allegations made in his letter to me, endeavoured to inculpate the late Government, and to throw upon them the responsibility of my dismissal, condemned my divulging the correspondence as a breach of confidence, greatly overstated the power committed to me during his tenure of office, spoke of much having been accomplished since I left the Treasury, enumerating for this purpose some measures adopted on my recommendation while I was still there, and others hastily resolved on since the presentation of my petition, no one of which, however, was yet carried into execution.

He attempted to defend the opposition to the reduction of the registration-fee by greatly overstating the amount of money-order business, extolled Lord Lowther, absurdly attributing to him the origination of penny postage,[348] though he had voted against it in committee;[349] asserted that the Post Office did not pay its own expenses;[350] but ended by saying that he had no objection to a limited inquiry, and by proposing, as an amendment to Sir Thomas Wilde’s motion, the following:—

“That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the measures adopted for the general introduction of the system of penny postage, and for the facilitating the conveyance of letters throughout the country.”[351]

Mr. F. Baring (late Chancellor of the Exchequer) saw no objection to the amendment, and hoped that Sir Thomas Wilde would allow it to be carried in lieu of his own motion. He touched upon the unfair use made of the term “penny postage,” a term by no means including the whole plan, for the purpose of limiting my engagement; and remarked that in renewing this engagement for one year he had not meant to restrict it to that period, but had merely refrained from acting discourteously towards his successor, while “all along of opinion that the services of Mr. Hill at the Treasury would be required for a much longer period than one year.”[352] He continued as follows (and I hope that I may be pardoned for making the quotation):—

“He also thought it was only common justice to say that, at the period when it was determined to carry out this plan, he had not the slightest personal knowledge of Mr. Rowland Hill.... He had expected that a person who had been long engaged in the preparation of an extensive system of this kind would not carry out the change with that coolness and judgment that was requisite; and he had expected that he should have great difficulties to contend with in inducing Mr. Hill to adopt any alteration in his plan that might appear requisite. He found quite the contrary of this, and that Mr. Hill, with the greatest readiness, adopted any suggestions that were made to him; so that instead of difficulties, he found every facility in carrying the plan into effect. True, Mr. Hill gave his reasons for the opinion that he had adopted, or for the course that he recommended; but if any of his suggestions were not adopted, he always found Mr. Hill most ready to give way to the course which he suggested.”[353]

He admitted that—

“No absolute bargain had been broken with Mr. Rowland Hill, still he could not help expressing his sincere regret that, after three years’ exertions, which were characterized by the utmost zeal and intelligence, he should be allowed to retire from the public service in the way in which he had. He repeated that, although no bargain had been broken, still, if zeal, intelligence, and ability, and the rendering important public services, entitled any one to claim consideration, Mr. Hill had a most powerful case.”[354]

Towards the close of his speech he dealt as follows with Mr. Goulburn’s statement as to the extent of the money-order operations:—

“The calculation which the right hon. gentleman had made, as to the amount of money transmitted through the Money-Order Office, was a most extraordinary one. The right hon. gentleman stated the amount to be eight millions, whereas he should have said four millions; the right hon. gentleman had made the slight mistake of doubling the amount by calculating the money which was paid in, and adding to it the same money when paid out. According to the right hon. gentleman’s mode of calculating, to arrive at the quantity of water which passes through a pipe, you must add the water which enters at one end to the same water when it passes out at the other end, and the quantity so added together will give the result desired.”[355]

He rejoiced that a Committee was to be appointed, and he observed, in conclusion:—

“That if ever there was a measure in reference to which the people had a right to ascertain whether it was carried into effect fully and fairly, it was this.”[356]

Sir Robert Peel—

“Had never felt a doubt as to the great social advantages of lowering the duty on letters; the only doubt was as to its financial effect: in all other respects the result of any inquiry would show that, whatever might have been the loss to the revenue, much advantage had been derived in what concerned the encouragement of industry, and the promotion of communication between the humbler classes of the community.”

After observing that “it was, therefore, no dissatisfaction with Mr. Hill’s conduct, no indifference to his services, that led him and his right hon. friend to take the course they had taken,”[357] he said, in reference to my original appointment—

“It appeared to him that, had it been deemed necessary to retain Mr. Hill’s services, and had it been conceived that the Post Office authorities were hostile to the plan, prejudiced against its principle and its details, and indisposed to lend themselves with zeal and cordiality to carrying it out, the plan should have been, not to retain Mr. Hill in control over the Post Office (yet unconnected with it), but to have at once made him Secretary of the Post Office. That department would thus have been no longer in a position continually to obstruct, as the complaint was, the due execution of the plan; but Mr. Hill himself, the person so deeply anxious for the success of the scheme, would have the immediate control of it.”[358]

He also spoke of Colonel Maberly in terms of general esteem, and denied that he had failed in cordial co-operation with me, speaking likewise in high terms of Lord Lowther, and maintaining (contrary to fact) that he had voted in committee for all Mr. Warburton’s resolutions,[359] and was a decided friend to Mr. Hill’s system.[360] He acquiesced in the appointment of a Committee, and “would assure them (the House) that, while he continued in office, he would lend all his weight, influence, and authority to insure full justice to the new system.”[361]

Sir Thomas Wilde declared himself satisfied with the amendment, which was agreed to without a division.[362]

The indirect effect of the modification demanded by Ministers in Sir Thomas Wilde’s motion was to take the nomination of the Committee out of the hands of the mover, and to give it to Government—the natural consequence being that the majority was made to consist of Government supporters. Of the thirteen gentlemen selected, six only were of the Liberal party; amongst these, however, were some of my best friends. Of course, in securing a majority, Government also obtained the appointment of the Chairman, and the choice fell upon Sir George Clerk. Upon this choice no further comment can be required than a simple statement of the position. I had appealed against a decision of the Treasury, a Court was constituted to try the case, and of this Court the Secretary of the Treasury was President. Lord Brougham used to tell of an amusing occurrence, I think at York, at the time when he was on the Northern Circuit. When the list of the jury was calling over, preparatory to trying a certain case, the judge, remarking identity of name between one of the jurors and the plaintiff in the suit, and inquiring, “I suppose, Mr. Thomson, you are no relation to the plaintiff in this cause?” was answered, “Please you, my Lord, I _is_ the plaintiff.” The interloper was of course discharged, and a severe rebuke was given to the officer of the court by whom so improper a selection had been made. Looking at my own case, however, the parallel would have been more complete had he been retained, and made, at least, foreman of the jury. However, to have obtained a Committee at all was a very great gain; for though the bias to be naturally expected from its composition did not fail to show itself in the course of the proceedings, still opportunity was thus given for that full and plain statement of facts which, I felt sure, would suffice to set me right with the public; and, in justice to the Committee generally, I must say that my opportunity for making such statements was fairly given. I had, indeed, some browbeating to endure (even beyond what appears in the Report, as may be seen by the letter given below),[363] but with this the Committee generally did not appear to sympathize; indeed, I have reason to believe that it tended rather to injure than to benefit the cause which it was meant to advance.

APPENDICES.

APPENDIX A.

[See p. 57.]

ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY.

[_For my Biography, written, chiefly from my dictation, in June, 1874._]

Although a member of the Astronomical Society for more than half a century, and, with the exception of two out of about 430, the oldest now living, I have never contributed to the Society’s transactions.

Yet from boyhood I have been very much attached to astronomical pursuits. My father was well informed on the subject, and eventually, though several years later than myself, became a member of the Society.[364] He had long possessed a reflecting telescope, capable of showing Jupiter’s Moons and Belts, and Saturn’s Rings, though not, according to my recollection, any of the moons, even the rings appearing not severally but as one. He had also a Hadley’s Quadrant, an artificial horizon, and a tolerably good clock, and he regularly took in the “Nautical Almanac.”

By means of this simple apparatus, he not only regulated the clock, but determined the latitude and even the longitude of our house, or rather of the playground, at Hill Top.

In these occupations I was invariably his assistant; and it was in this manner and with the aid of his lectures that I gradually acquired, even while a boy, a taste for Astronomy, and, for my age, no inconsiderable knowledge of the subject.

My father (like myself in youth and early manhood) was a great walker, and we frequently journeyed together. When I was only nine years of age, I walked with him, for the most part after dark, from Birmingham to Stourbridge, a distance of twelve miles, with occasional lifts—no doubt according to usage—on his back. I recollect that it was a brilliant starlight night, and the names of the constellations and of the brighter single stars, their apparent motions and the distinction between the so-called fixed stars and planets, formed then, as on many other similar occasions, never-failing subjects of interesting conversation, and to me of instruction. On the way we passed by the side of a small pool, and, the air being still, the surface of the water gave a perfect reflection of the stars. I have a vivid recollection, after an interval of nearly seventy years, of the fear with which I looked into what appeared to me a vast abyss, and of my clinging to my father to protect me from falling into it.

The remarkable comet of 1811—remarkable from the length of time it continued in sight—interested me greatly. I was then fifteen years of age. I examined it frequently with our telescope, got much information from my father and from such books as were accessible to me; and before the comet had disappeared was, I believe, tolerably familiar with what was then known of cometary astronomy.

As already stated in the “Prefatory Memoir,” the teaching of a subject was with me concurrent, or nearly so, with the learning. I soon began to lecture on Astronomy, first to the boys of our school, and afterwards to a literary and scientific association of which I was a member.

With a view to these lectures, availing myself of the “Transactions of the Royal Society” (taken in by one of the Birmingham libraries to which we subscribed), I read, I believe without exception, all the contributions of Sir William Herschel, then incomparably the first of living English astronomers. My reverence for the man led me to contrive, on the occasion of my second visit to London (1815), to go round by Slough, in order that I might obtain a glimpse—as the coach passed—of his great telescope, which I knew could be seen over the tops of the neighbouring buildings.

In the “Prefatory Memoir” I have already spoken of my teaching navigation, of the planispheres which I constructed for my father’s lectures upon electricity, of my trigonometrical survey, of my visit to Captain Kater and the Greenwich Observatory, and of my Vernier pendulums—all more or less intimately connected with my pursuit of Astronomy. Nor must I omit mention of a popular explanation of the transit of Mercury in May, 1832, which I wrote for the “Penny Magazine.” (See Vol. I., p. 82.)

I may also mention, as a fact worth recording, that in 1817 (I believe) the celebrated mathematician, M. Biot, passed through Birmingham on his return from the Shetland Isles, where he had been engaged in measuring an arc of the meridian.[365] My father was invited to dine with him, I think at the house of Mr. Tertius Galton; and afterwards both he and I, among others, were invited to meet him at the rooms of the Philosophical Institution. Very few obeyed this second summons, perhaps because the day fixed upon was Sunday. He showed us in action a small instrument for the polarization of light—a subject of which my father and I, and I think the others, were up to that time profoundly ignorant. The only individual with whom M. Biot appeared to be previously acquainted was an emigré, Dr. De Lys, a leading physician of Birmingham, whose father, the Marquis De Lys, had been guillotined during the Reign of Terror. In the evening we met again at a coach office in the Market Place, to bid farewell to M. Biot on his departure for London, when he caused some tittering, and put poor Dr. De Lys to the blush by publicly kissing him, in French fashion, on both cheeks.

To return to the Astronomical Society. My attendance at its meetings, so long as I continued to live near Birmingham, was necessarily rare. On my removal to the neighbourhood of London it became more frequent, but even then my time was so fully occupied with more pressing duties that my attendance remained very irregular, and it totally ceased several years ago. I have, however, invariably read the “Monthly Notices” of the Society’s proceedings, and have thus benefited more, perhaps, than by mere attendance.

Still, as already stated, I have never contributed to the Society’s transactions, the truth being that up to the time of my becoming disabled for steady application to any difficult subject, my mind was so entirely engrossed with my official duties, that the little leisure I could obtain was necessarily devoted to recruiting my health.

Nevertheless, as already shown,[366] I have attempted something to promote my favourite science. The following is an instance of the kind:—

VARIABLE STARS.

On the 16th January, 1865, I addressed the following letter to my late excellent friend, Admiral Smyth:—

“MY DEAR ADMIRAL,—I have just completed the perusal of your very interesting volume on ‘The Colours of Double Stars,’ kindly presented to me by Dr. Lee in your name and his; and I thank you for the gratification it has afforded me.

“What you say on the subject of variable stars has called to my recollection an idea which first occurred to me shortly after the discovery of the periodicity of the increase and decrease in the number and frequency of solar spots. I am aware that such increase and decrease is not continuous, and that the variation is not such as materially to affect the Sun’s brightness. Still, in point of fact, is not our own Sun a variable star—however slightly—with a period, tolerably well defined, of about eleven years? And may not the more marked character of other variable stars be owing to similar causes to those which produce the spots in our sun, acting with greater regularity and intensity?

“If you think it deserving attention, pray favour me with your opinion of my theory. Possibly it may have been suggested previously, but if so, I am not aware of the fact.

“I remain, my dear Admiral, yours faithfully,

“ROWLAND HILL.

“Admiral Smyth, F.R.S., &c., &c., &c.”

Shortly afterwards I received a very friendly letter from Mrs. Smyth, the tenor of which will be sufficiently understood from what follows:—

“Hampstead, 20th January, 1865.

“DEAR MRS. SMYTH,—Many thanks for your letter. Pray don’t let the Admiral withdraw himself from his present work. My theory can wait, or I may find an opportunity of consulting some other authority.

“Our kindest regards.

“Very truly yours,

“ROWLAND HILL.”

I accordingly, on the 14th February following, addressed a letter—similar to the one to Admiral Smyth—to my friend, Mr. Warren De La Rue, then President—as Admiral Smyth had once been—of the Astronomical Society; but although Mr. De La Rue took much trouble to ascertain whether my theory had, as he thought, been suggested before, it was not till long afterwards that he was able to give any definite information on the subject.

In a letter of July 9th, 1866, Mr. De La Rue drew my attention to a paper by Mr. Balfour Stewart in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, which, in the opinion of Mr. De La Rue, “gives a very explicit enunciation” of the theory.

On referring to the paper in question (Vol. XXIII, part iii.), I found that it was read on the 18th April, 1864, and the following is an extract from a memorandum which I made on the subject:—“Indirectly, by showing a probable connexion between the maxima and minima of Sun-spots and the rotation of Jupiter about the Sun, and by suggesting that the periodic variations of the stars is caused by the rotation of large planets about them, Mr. Balfour Stewart has, I think, forestalled me.” Perhaps, however, I may be justified in doubting whether the enunciation here given is very explicit.

Before proceeding, it is necessary to digress for a moment. When a boy I was fond of reading books of elementary science. I occasionally met with statements which puzzled me—which appeared to me to be wrong—but assuming, as children do, the infallibility of the author—or perhaps I should say of a printed book—I naturally came to the conclusion that my own understanding was in fault, and became greatly disheartened. After awhile—I forget on what occasion—I applied for solution of the puzzle to my father, who, possessing a large amount of general information, was well qualified to advise. To my great delight, he assured me that I was right and the author wrong. My unqualified faith in printed statements was now, of course, at an end; and a habit was gradually formed of mentally criticising almost everything I read—a habit which, however useful in early life, is, as I have found in old age, a cause of much waste of thinking power when the amount is so reduced as to render economy of essential importance.

Still, through the greater part of my life this habit of reading critically, combined as it was with the power of rapid calculation, has been of great use to me, especially in my contests with the Post Office, and, after I had joined the Department, in the revision of the thousands of Reports, Returns, and Minutes prepared by other officers.

In general literature, if the author attempt to deal with science, the chance of a blunder appears to be great. Even Lord Macaulay could not always do so with safety, as appears from the following passage:—“In America the Spanish territories [in 1698] spread from the equator northward and southward _through all the signs of the Zodiac_ far into the temperate zone.”[367] What can be the meaning of the words which I have marked for Italics?

Mrs. Oliphant, too, whose admirable stories I never miss reading, says, in one of her latest, “there was a new moon making her way _upwards_ in the pale sky.”[368]

There is no writer to whom I feel more grateful than to Miss Edgeworth. When a boy I read her delightful stories with the greatest possible interest, and I feel sure that they had considerable influence in the formation of my character. Unfortunately, however, they are frequently disfigured by scientific errors. Thus, in her admirable story of “The Good Aunt,” the following passage occurs: “My dearest Aunt,” cried he [Charles], stopping her hand, as she was giving her diamond ear-rings to Mr. Carat—“stay, my dearest aunt, one instant, till I have seen whether this is a good day for selling diamonds.”

“O, my dear young gentleman, no day in the Jewish calendar more proper for de purchase,” said the Jew.

“For the purchase! yes,” said Charles, “but for the sale?”

“My love,” said his aunt, “surely you are not so foolish as to think there are lucky and unlucky days.”

“No, I don’t mean anything about lucky and unlucky days,” said Charles, running up to consult the barometer; “but what I mean is not foolish indeed; in some book I’ve read that the dealers in diamonds buy them when the air is light, and sell them when it is heavy, if they can, because their scales are so nice that they vary with the change in the atmosphere.”

Now, as the metallic weights are of greater specific gravity than the diamonds, the interests of the dealers—so far as they are affected by change of atmosphere—must be to buy when the air is _heavy_ and sell when it is _light_. An increase of density in the air would, of course, reduce the gravity of both diamonds and weights, but not equally: the diamonds, being the more bulky, would lose gravity more than the weights, and consequently would weigh less. If it were possible that the air should increase in density till it became as heavy, bulk for bulk, as the diamonds, they would float therein, or, in other words, weigh nothing at all.

I well remember when, as a boy, I first read this admirable story, how much I was puzzled by the mistake in question.

An error, occasionally met with in novels, is as follows. A wonderful marksman has to exhibit his powers, which he does thus:—He throws into the air two birds—or perhaps inanimate objects—as two apples; then, _waiting till both are in a line with himself_, sends his arrow or bullet through both. A slight consideration will show that, in a vast majority of cases, no amount of waiting would suffice.

Another prevailing error is, that a person simply standing by the side of a pool can see his own reflection from the surface—Narcissus must have found some support which enabled him to lean over the fountain.

But it is in books especially intended to teach elementary science that such errors are most to be regretted.

A few years since I purchased for some of my grandchildren the eighth edition of “The Seasons,” by Mrs. Marcet. It is an admirable work, highly interesting and useful; but before placing it in the hands of my grandchildren, I thought it necessary to read it myself—a very pleasing task, by-the-by—and to correct any errors I might find. As examples, I may mention that in Volume I. snow is described as frozen rain; that in Volume IV. _both_ stones in a flour-mill are said to revolve; and that the description in the same volume of a marine steam engine is very incorrect.

Again, few books are better calculated to interest boys than Dr. Parris’s “Philosophy in Sport,” but when, in the year 1829, I bought a copy for the School-Library at Bruce Castle, I found it necessary, before placing it there, to make numerous corrections to which I drew the attention of the author, who, in a letter dated March 18th, 1829, still in my possession, thanks me for my communication, and admits some of the errors, though not all.

As a specimen of the admitted errors, I give the following:—“Mr. Seymour now informed his young pupils that he had an experiment to exhibit, which would further illustrate, in a very pleasing manner, the truth of the doctrine of _vis inertiæ_. He accordingly inverted a wine-glass, and placed a shilling on its foot; and having pushed it suddenly along the table, _the coin flew off towards the operator, or in a direction opposite to that in which the glass was moving_.”[369]

My correction is as follows: “The coin would fall nearly in a perpendicular direction, but inclined a little _towards_ the direction in which the glass was moving, owing to the friction between the glass and coin.”

As a specimen of the non-admitted errors, I give the following: “He had ignorantly fired a quantity of oxygen and hydrogen gases in a tin vessel; the consequence of the combustion was the immediate formation of a _vacuum_; and what happened? Why, the pressure of the external air, not being any longer balanced by elastic matter in the interior of the apparatus, crushed it with violence, as any other enormous weight might have done; and so ended the accident, which report magnified into a most awful catastrophe.”[370]

My correction is as follows: “The first effect of the combustion was to _expand_ the air in the vessel, and this _expansion_ it was that caused the accident.”

On which the author, after quoting my correction, replies, “Now you will allow me to say that here you have fallen into an error; I am perfectly correct in saying that the accident arose from the external pressure of the atmosphere; for remember that the vessel contained a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen gases, which, by combustion, immediately combined and formed water, leaving an almost perfect vacuum in the interior.”

If any one entertain a doubt as to which of us is correct, I would suggest his filling a small bladder with the proper mixture of oxygen and hydrogen, and exploding it by electrical means; as I did nearly sixty years ago. The bladder will be destroyed; but, according to Dr. Parris’s view, it should simply collapse.

But even men of unquestionable scientific knowledge are not always correct. The late Professor Phillips, in his able and interesting Address as President of the British Association in 1865, after noticing Foucault’s recent admeasurement of the velocity of light, proceeded as follows:—“By this experiment the velocity of light appears to be less, sensibly less, than was previously admitted; and this conclusion is of the highest interest. For, as by assuming too long a radius for the orbit of Jupiter, the calculated rate of light-movement was too great; so now, by employing the more exact rate and the same measures of time, we can correct the estimated distance of Jupiter and all the other planets from the Sun.”[371]

Professor Phillips’s great forte was geology, not astronomy. To any one familiar with the means by which Römer determined the velocity of light, it is unnecessary to point out that, although his observations were made on the satellites of Jupiter, the radius of Jupiter’s orbit has nothing to do with the problem. The only material facts are, first, the _difference_ between the maximum and minimum distance of Jupiter from the earth,—that is to say (disregarding eccentricity) the diameter of the earth’s orbit; and, secondly, the effect which this varying distance has on the times at which the eclipses apparently take place. This effect Römer found to extend to about 16 minutes—and he thence concluded that light occupied 16 minutes in travelling across the earth’s orbit.

With the view of rendering the above intelligible to those not familiar with the subject, I offer the following illustration:—Suppose it to be known that about a certain hour a gun will be fired at a remote spot, the direction of which, but not the distance, is known, and that two persons (A. and B.) arrange to avail themselves of the opportunity for ascertaining, approximately, the velocity of sound; then, each being furnished with a good watch marking seconds, A. places himself at a certain spot, and B. at a known distance—say a mile—from A., and in a direction opposite to that of the gun, so that B.’s distance from the gun shall be a mile greater than A.’s—the actual distance in either case is unimportant.

Each now records the exact moment at which he hears the report; and if the gun be fired repeatedly, several such records are made, in order to give a more accurate result.

A. and B. then meet and compare notes. They, of course, find that A.’s time is in each instance earlier than B.’s. The average of the several differences would be about 4¾ seconds—showing that sound travels a mile in that time.[372]

The mode of procedure here described is, of course, not that actually adopted for determining the velocity of sound, but it is a practicable mode, and is selected because it is analogous to that adopted by Römer for determining the velocity of light.

A copy of Professor Phillips’s Address was sent to me immediately after its delivery, and, on my detecting the error, I endeavoured to induce a friend of his, deservedly eminent as a practical astronomer, to draw the Professor’s attention thereto, with a view to its correction before the publication of the permanent report of the Society’s proceedings; but, unfortunately, the attempt did not succeed.

In another similar case, however, as appears by the following correspondence between the Astronomer Royal and myself, I was more successful:—

“Hampstead, N.W. “1868—June 17.[373]

“MY DEAR SIR,—Pray accept my thanks for the copy of your Report. It came while I was at Brighton; but, since my return home, I have read it with great interest. I felt it a great privation not to be able to attend the Visitation.

“Will you allow me to request your attention to what appear to me to be serious errors in the recent annual Address of the President of the Astronomical Society? They will be found in the last paragraph of page 119 of the ‘Monthly Notices’ for February. To save you trouble, I have extracted the part in question, and have underlined the words which I think erroneous. ‘At the present time the Earth is about three millions of miles nearer to the Sun in our northerly winter than in our summer; our coldest month is about 60° Fh. colder than our hottest, and our winter lasts for about eight days _longer_ than our summer. M. Leverrier has calculated that 200,000 years ago the Earth approached the Sun by upwards of ten millions of miles nearer in winter than in summer: the winters were then nearly a month _longer_ than the summers, and in the latitude of London there was a difference of about 112° Fh. between the hottest and the coldest periods of the year.’

“If you find that I am right, perhaps you will have the kindness to draw Mr. Pritchard’s attention to the errors, with a view to their correction before the Address is printed in the ‘Transactions.’ I would write to Mr. Pritchard myself, but that, as I could not speak with authority, I might give offence.

“I have watched the subsequent monthly numbers in the expectation of finding a correction, but none has appeared.

“Faithfully yours,

“ROWLAND HILL.

“The Astronomer Royal, &c., &c., &c.”

The Astronomer Royal promptly replied as follows:—

“Royal Observatory, Greenwich, London, S.E. “1868—June 18.

“MY DEAR SIR,—I will duly bring before Mr. Pritchard the substance of your note of yesterday.

“The two clauses which you have cited are, on the face of them, erroneous; and in the first the fault clearly is in the word _longer_. In the second, the fault may be in the word _nearer_. For, during the period through which the great eccentricity prevails, the semi-revolution in the precession of the equinoxes may have reversed the seasons.

“It would seem that Mr. Pritchard has had in view the table in ‘Lyell’s Principles of Geology,’ Vol. I., p. 293. In the notes continued on p. 294, the references are to the case of winter in aphelion.

“The subject is a thorny one, but well worth your attention.

“I am, my dear Sir, yours very truly,

“G. B. AIRY

“Sir Rowland Hill, K.C.B., &c., &c., &c.”

I am not aware how the passage in question stands in the Society’s Transactions.[374]

The following narrative seems to show that in a progressive science like Astronomy even the highest authority is not infallible.

Some sixty years ago, my attention having been accidentally drawn to a tide-mill for grinding corn, I began to consider what was the source of the power employed, and came to the conclusion that it was the momentum of the earth’s revolution on its axis. The next question I asked myself was—could such power be diverted, in however slight a degree, without drawing, as it were, on the stock? Further consideration showed me that the draught required for grinding the corn was trifling in comparison with that employed in grinding the pebbles on every seashore upon the earth’s surface; and, consequently, that the drain on the earth’s momentum might suffice in the course of ages to effect an appreciable retardation in the earth’s diurnal revolution.

I now, as usual in case of difficulty, applied to my father. He could detect no fault in my reasoning, but informed me that Laplace had demonstrated in his great work (“_La Mécanique Céleste_”) that the time occupied in the earth’s diurnal revolution is absolutely invariable. Of course both my father and I accepted the authority as unquestionable; but I never could fully satisfy my mind on the subject, and for the greater part of my life it was a standing puzzle.

It may be stated briefly that Laplace’s demonstration appears to have rested mainly on the fact that his Lunar Tables, if employed in calculating backwards certain eclipses of the Sun which happened about 2,000 years ago, give results agreeing so nearly with the ancient records as altogether to exclude the possibility of any appreciable increase in the length of the sidereal day during that long period.

But in the year 1866 Professor Adams (really the first discoverer of the planet Neptune) received the Gold Medal of the Astronomical Society for, among other recent claims, the discovery of an error in the data on which Laplace constructed his Lunar Tables which vitiates the above demonstration.

The details of this important discovery—and the co-operation therein of M. Delaunay—were fully and ably stated by Mr. Warren De La Rue, then President of the Society, on the presentation of the Medal.[375] And the position of the question two years later is concisely stated as follows by the Rev. Charles Pritchard, in an Addendum to his address as President in 1868:—“_At present_, then, the case stands thus,—the Lunar Tables, if calculated on the principles of gravitation alone, as expounded by Messrs. Adams and Delaunay, and as confirmed by other mathematicians, will not exactly represent the moon’s true place at intervals separated by 2,000 years, provided the length of the day is assumed to be uniform and unaltered during the whole of the intervening period. There are grounds, however, for at least suspecting that, owing to the effects of tidal action, the diurnal rotation is, and has been, in a state of extremely minute retardation; but the mathematical difficulties of the case, owing greatly to the interposition of terrestrial continents, are so great that no definite quantitative results have hitherto been attainable. The solution of the difficulty is one of those questions which are reserved for the Astronomy of the future.”[376]

I need not say that this confirmation of the truth of my early conjecture proved highly gratifying. I have only to add that the increase during the last 2,000 years in the length of the sidereal day is generally estimated at about the eightieth part of a second; but the estimate has, I apprehend, no better foundation than this—namely, that since the recent correction in the Lunar Tables an assumed increase to the extent in question has become necessary in order to make the backward calculation of the ancient eclipses agree with the records as to time.

I have found it very difficult at my age (little less than fourscore), and with my mental powers seriously impaired, to deal, however imperfectly, with a subject so abstruse as that now under consideration; and I think it by no means improbable that there may be some error in my statement of facts or in my argument thereon.

All that I can say is that I have done my best to render intelligible to ordinary readers an important advance in modern Astronomy—interesting in itself, irrespective of its remote and accidental connection with my own biography.

The following very gratifying letter from the Astronomer Royal may perhaps be appropriately given here. It is in reply to my congratulations when, in recognition of his great public services, he was made a K.C.B.:—

“Flamsteed House, Greenwich Park, London, S.E. “1872—June 22.

“MY DEAR SIR,—I could scarcely have had a more gratifying letter in reference to the public compliment just paid to me from any one than that from yourself. I can truly say that it has been my secret pride to do what can be done by a person in my position for public service; and whose recognition of this can be more grateful than that of one who—by efforts in a similar strain, but on an infinitely larger scale—has almost changed the face of the civilized world?

“My wife (I am hesitating between two titles, not knowing which is at the present moment correct, but being quite sure of that which I have written) begs me to convey to you her acknowledgment of your kind message.

“I am, my dear Sir, very truly yours,

“G. B. AIRY.”

APPENDIX B.

[See p. 71.]

“PREFACE TO THE LAWS OF THE SOCIETY FOR LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC IMPROVEMENT.

“In presenting to the public ‘The Laws and Regulations of the Society for Literary and Scientific Improvement,’ its members feel it their duty briefly to state the motives which influenced them in the formation of such an establishment, and to explain their reasons for occasionally deviating in the construction of their Laws from the systems which are generally adopted for the governance of similar bodies.

“The experience of almost every one who has passed the time usually devoted to education, but who still feels desirous of improvement, must have convinced him of the difficulty of regularly devoting his leisure hours to the object he has in view, from the want of constantly acting motives, and the absence of regulations which can enforce the observance of stated times. However strong the resolutions he has made, and whatever may be his conviction of the necessity of adhering to them, trivial engagements which might easily be avoided, will furnish him, from time to time, with excuses to himself for his neglect of study: thus may he spend year after year, constantly wishing for improvement, but as constantly neglecting the means of it, and old age may come upon him before he has accomplished the object of his desires; then will he look back with regret on the many opportunities he has lost, and acknowledge in despair that the time is gone by.

“Under these impressions, a few individuals who are desirous of extending their literary and scientific knowledge, have endeavoured to establish a society for that purpose; convinced that by so doing they have provided most powerful motives for mental improvement.

“It has been thought highly desirable, that every member of the society should be, as nearly as possible, upon an equality, that all may feel alike interested in the success of the whole. In order to accomplish this important object, every regular auditor is expected, according to the rules of the society, to deliver a lecture in his turn. Thus, instead of the society being divided into two parties, one consisting of lecturers, the other of critics, every member feels himself called upon to listen to the others with candour and attention, as he is aware that the time will come when he shall require the same consideration from them. It will be observed also, on a perusal of the laws, that each lecture is followed by a discussion. Thus care is insured on the part of the lecturer that he shall not attempt a subject which he has not well studied; and an opportunity is given to every member to obtain an explanation of anything advanced, which he may not have understood, or to express his opinions on the questions that may arise, and, by these means, correct or confirm his own ideas. But the principal advantage of a discussion is, that it calls forth the individual exertion of every member, by inviting each to take a part in the general instruction, and thus affording constant inducements to private reading and study.

“In a town so populous as Birmingham, and which for superiority in art is dependent on the discoveries of science, it cannot be doubted that many individuals may be found who are desirous of intellectual advancement. For such persons ‘The Society for Literary and Scientific Improvement’ was established; and they are respectfully and earnestly invited to lend their assistance towards the promotion of its objects. The society cannot promise that they shall meet with any considerable talent or learning among its members; but in mixing with their equals, with young men of similar tastes and similar pursuits, they may hope to find in a generous emulation most powerful motives for application and perseverance.

“The details of management of a society like this, may, on a superficial view, appear of little importance; those, however, who have had opportunities of closer examination, will, it is presumed, agree with the members of this Institution, in considering an attention to such particulars as necessary, not only to the well-being, but to the permanent existence of an association, for whatever purpose it may be formed.

“With views like these, the ‘Society for Literary and Scientific Improvement’ have been anxious to establish a mode of electing the Committee, that should secure (as nearly as possible), an accurate representation of the whole body; not only because it appeared reasonable that the members would feel interested in the welfare of the Institution, in proportion as the arrangements and regulations met their own views and wishes, but because experience proves that, owing to imperfect methods of choosing those who are to direct the affairs of a society, the whole sway sometimes gets into the hands of a small party, and is exercised, perhaps unconsciously, in a way that renders many persons indifferent, and alienates others, until all becomes listlessness, decay, and dissolution.

“Men of worth and talent, of every denomination in religion and politics, will be welcome members of the society; and to prevent any unpleasant collision of opinions, it has been thought advisable to exclude altogether the discussion of subjects which have reference to peculiarities in religious belief, or to the political speculations of the day; the important questions which respect the wealth of nations, however, as they have no connexion with passing politics, are considered as among the proper objects for the society’s attention.

“Such gentlemen as may feel desirous of improving their minds by engaging in establishments of a nature similar to this, but who, on account of their residing at a distance from any large town, have not hitherto had the opportunity, will, it is hoped, be induced by the regulations respecting corresponding members, to join the society; and they may depend upon meeting with every attention, whenever the Committee shall be favoured with their communications.”

APPENDIX C.

[See p. 93.]

CUBE ROOTS.

The mode of extracting the roots of _exact cubes_ which I taught the boys, and which was probably that adopted by Zerah Colbourn, will be best shown by an example. Suppose the question to be, What is the cube root of 596,947,688? This looks like a formidable array of figures, and a schoolboy, resorting to the usual mode of extracting the root, would fill his slate with figures, and perhaps occupy an hour in the process. Zerah Colbourn or my class would have solved the question in a minute, and without making any figures at all. My class would have proceeded as follows: They would first fix in their memories the number of millions (596) and the last figure of the cube (8), disregarding all other figures. Then, knowing the cubes of all numbers from 1 to 12 inclusive, they would at once see that the first or left-hand figure of the root must be 8; and deducting the cube of 8 (512) from 596, they would obtain a remainder of 84. This they would compare with the difference between the cube of 8 (512) and the cube of 9 (729), that is to say, with 217; and seeing that it was nearly four-tenths of such difference, they would conclude that the second figure of the root was 4. The third or last figure of the root would require no calculation, the terminal figure of an _exact_ cube always indicating the terminal figure of its root—thus 8 gives 2. The cube root, therefore, is 842. In this process there is some risk of error as regards the second figure of the root, especially when the third figure is large; but with practice an expert calculator is able to pay due regard to that and certain other qualifications which I could not explain without making this note unduly long. As already stated, Zerah Colbourn did occasionally blunder in the second figure; and this circumstance assisted me in discovering the above process, which I have little doubt is the one he followed. If, instead of an exact cube, another number of nine figures be taken, the determination of the third figure of the root, instead of being the easiest, becomes by far the most difficult part of the calculation.

[This part of the explanation was written by Sir Rowland Hill, as a note to the Prefatory Memoir, before the year 1871. What follows was added in 1875.]

Rule for extracting the roots of imperfect cubes divisible into three periods:—

1. Find first and second figures as described above.

2. Deduct cube of first figure from the first period (of the number whose root is to be extracted), modified, if necessary, as hereafter described.

3. Then multiply the number (expressed by both figures) by each figure in succession, and by 3.

4. Deduct the product (or the significant figures thereof—see example), from the remainder obtained as above. (See 2).

5. Divide the remainder _now_ obtained by the square of the number expressed by both figures (see 3), multiplied by 3—dropping insignificant figures (see example),—and the quotient will be the last figure (or 3rd figure) of the root.

I can confidently affirm from experience that there is nothing in the above calculations too difficult for those who, possessing a natural aptitude, are thoroughly well practised in mental arithmetic. I doubt, however, whether the mode just described be exactly that which we followed; our actual mode, looking at the results as described above (which is in exact accordance with my Journal), must, I think, have been more facile; but as it is fully fifty years since I gave any thought to the subject, and as, in the eightieth year of my age, I find my brain unequal to further investigation, I must be contented with the result at which I have arrived.

It must be remarked, however, that cases will arise when some modification of the process will be necessary. As, for instance, when the first period of the cube is comparatively light, it may be necessary to include therein one or more figures of the second period treated as decimals; indeed, if the first period consist of a single figure, it will be better to incorporate it with the second period, and treat both together as one period,[377] relative magnitude in the first period dealt with being important as a means of securing accuracy in the last figure of the root. But expert calculators soon learn to adopt necessary modifications, and by the “give-and-take” process to bring out the correct result. Indeed, I find it recorded in my Journal that “small errors will sometimes arise which, under unfavourable circumstances, will occasionally amount to a unit.” These observations it must be understood to apply only to the extraction of the roots of imperfect cubes, which Zerah Colbourn invariably refused to attempt. When the cube is perfect, the last figure of the root, as shown in the text, requires no calculation at all.

_Example._

What is the cube root of 596,947,687?

[NOTE.—This is the number treated above, except that in the unit’s place 7 is substituted for 8, in order to render the number an imperfect cube; so slight a change, however—though rendering it necessary to _calculate_ the last figure of the root,—will still leave the root as before.]

Following the rule, we find the first and second figures of the root in the manner described above. They are 8 and 4.

We next calculate the third or last figure of the root.

As the first figure of the second period of the cube is so large, it will be unsafe to disregard it. Call the first period, therefore, 596·9; all other figures may be neglected.

596·9 mill.

(2) 8³ = 512 ” ----- 84·9 ”

(3) deduct 84 x 8 x 4 x 3 = (roughly) 80·6 ” ----- (5) divide by 84² x 3 = (88 x 80 x 3)[378] = 2·1 4·3 ----- 2

Quotient—2, which is the third or last figure of the root.

[NOTE.—I have not encumbered the above figures with the ciphers which should accompany them, as, to the expert calculator, this will be needless.]

The root, therefore, is 842.

It is stated in the text that my pupils could extract the cube roots of numbers ranging as high as 2,000,000,000. In the ordinary mode this number would be divided, as above, into four periods; but my pupils treated the 2,000 as one period, the approximate root of which is of course 12, the cube of 12 being 1,728.

APPENDIX D.

[See p. 202.]

VERNIER PENDULUM.

Bruce Castle, Tottenham, June 7th, 1832.

_To the Council of the Royal Astronomical Society._

GENTLEMEN,—In troubling you with the following sketch of an improvement in astronomical clocks, I have a two-fold object. First, to obtain the loan of the necessary instruments, should you consider the plan worth prosecuting; and, secondly, to avail myself of the suggestions of such members of the Society as are more experienced than myself in the minute details of practical astronomy. The objects of the proposed improvement are: To supply an apparatus capable of measuring time to a small fraction of a second, and to make the determination of the exact time a matter of calm and deliberate inquiry, and thus to avoid the errors which must frequently arise from the hurry attending the present method.

In order to accomplish these objects, I propose to make use of the principle of the Vernier, by suspending in front of the clock an additional pendulum somewhat shorter than that of the clock, and so placed that the coincidence of the two when vertical may be determined by means similar to those used by Captain Kater; this additional or Vernier pendulum to be put in motion at the instant of observation by means of a trigger under the command of the observer at the telescope, and its vibrations reckoned till a coincidence takes place between it and the clock pendulum. This pendulum may have a maintaining power and an index to save the trouble of counting. When at rest, the Vernier pendulum must of course be raised to the extent of its oscillation.

The results of experiments commenced with very imperfect instruments about two years and a-half ago, and continued at intervals to the present time, appear to be as follows:—

When a Vernier pendulum, vibrating once in ·9 second, or 10 times in 9 seconds, is employed, its coincidences with the seconds pendulum of the clock may be determined to a single vibration with the greatest ease by the unassisted eye, and thus, of course, tenths of a second are readily estimated.

When a Vernier pendulum vibrating once in ·99 second, or 100 times in 99 seconds, is employed, its coincidences with the seconds pendulum of the clock may also be determined to a single vibration, but not without the aid of a telescope. By these means hundredths of a second are measured without much difficulty.

In order to avoid the inconvenience of having to suspend sometimes one pendulum and sometimes the other, and also to escape the loss of time which, if the hundredths pendulum were constantly used, would arise when the observer wished to estimate tenths of a second only, I propose to adopt the following arrangement:—To employ a single Vernier pendulum of such a length as to vibrate once in 8·99 second, or a thousand times in 899 seconds. This pendulum differs so slightly from the tenths pendulum (making ten vibrations in 8·99 seconds, instead of 9 seconds), that for estimating tenths of a second it is practically the same, while it affords the means of measuring hundredths of a second also. Its operation will be best understood by an example:—Suppose the interval to be measured by means of the Vernier to be ·24 second. At the second and third vibrations of the Vernier pendulum after its release there would be approximate coincidences between it and the clock pendulum, showing the fraction of time to be between two-tenths and three-tenths of a second. The coincidence at the second vibration would, however, be somewhat nearer than that at the third. At the twelfth vibration there would be another approximate coincidence somewhat closer than the first. At the twenty-second vibration there would be a yet closer coincidence. At the thirty-second one closer still, and at the forty-second vibration the coincidence would be the most accurate of the series. Thus it appears that the tenths of a second may be known by counting single vibrations of the Vernier pendulum till a coincidence of some kind occurs, and that the hundredths of a second may be determined by counting the decades of vibrations, or all the coincidences after the first, until the most exact coincidence arises.

By the use of the Vernier pendulum, when connected with an index, all chance of error in reading the clock will, it is conceived, be avoided. Having touched the trigger at the moment of observation, the observer has, as it were, registered the time, and he may examine the clock at his leisure, for it is manifest that a comparison of the index of the Vernier pendulum with that of the clock will at any time determine the moment of observation. It will also be seen that, should the observer omit to notice the first coincidence of the pendulums, no inconvenience except delay will arise, because the same coincidences will occur in a regular series as long as the pendulums continue in motion.

There are a few provisions necessary for extreme accuracy which, in this hasty sketch, it would be out of place to notice. I will just mention, however, that the apparatus contains within itself the means of measuring what may be called _the mean error of the observer_, or the average interval which, as regards the particular individual, elapses between the instant of observation and the release of the Vernier pendulum.

To subject the plan which I have here attempted hastily to describe to a rigid trial will require instruments of much greater accuracy than those which I can command, and if the Society possess a good clock not now in use, I shall feel extremely obliged if I can obtain the loan of it. An additional pendulum the requisite length, is not, I presume, to be found among the Society’s instruments.

I have the honour to be, Gentlemen,

Your obedient servant,

ROWLAND HILL.

APPENDIX E.

[See p. 205.]

COACH COMPANY.

Two (or more) principal offices to be established in convenient places for business—say, _one near the Bank, and one near the Regent Circus, Piccadilly_; these offices to communicate with each other by means of omnibuses.

_Coaches and omnibuses to radiate from these offices to all parts of the environs of London._

A country office to be established at the extremity of each route.

The town to be divided into small districts, and the country into larger, each with a house for the receipt and distribution of _parcels_. (Shopkeepers who have goods to distribute in the neighbourhood may undertake this). These stations to be, as far as practicable, on the routes of the coaches.

The principal and the country offices to be receiving and distributing houses, each for its own district.

Each coach in coming from the country to collect parcels from the stations on its route, bringing them to its principal office. On going out, to carry parcels for distribution from the principal office to the same stations. Thus every parcel will pass through one or other of the principal offices. (Exceptions can be made, if desirable, with respect to parcels which would otherwise pass twice over the ground, viz., those received at stations between the principal office and the place of their destination; but the first arrangement would be by far the most simple).

Stations not on a coach route must transfer parcels to the nearest stations which are on a route, and receive parcels from the same. [Qy. A small extra charge].

Places to be booked at any station for any coach; a memorandum being transmitted to the principal office concerned, with the parcels.

In some cases the passengers themselves may be so transmitted.

The omnibuses passing between the principal offices to carry passengers and parcels from each for the other. Thus every coach will practically start from both principal offices.

Coaches to depart from each principal office all at the same time. Say, for all principal places, once every hour, from —— in the morning till —— at night.

Coaches to arrive at each principal office all at the same time, say a few minutes before the time of departure, the interval being sufficient to transfer passengers and parcels.

The periods of departure and arrival at one office to differ by half-an-hour from the corresponding periods at the other, so as to allow just time enough (calculated at half-an-hour), for a transfer by the omnibuses from one office to the other. Thus the coaches from one office will start at the beginning and from the other in the middle of each hour.

Horses to be kept and changed at the country offices, or at stations about the middle of each route. The latter arrangement will make the stage shorter, and will bring the horse stations more immediately under central revision. It will also require a less number of horse stations, as in many cases one station will serve for two or more roads branching out from each other. (At least one pair of horses must be kept at the extreme station).

Supernumerary coaches and horses to be kept at the central offices for use on any road on which there may be a temporary demand.

Each coachman to pay a certain rent, and with certain deductions to receive the payments for passengers and parcels, but to have no control as to the sum to be charged, the hour of starting, &c.

The masters of the stations to be remunerated by a certain sum (to be paid by the coachman) for each passenger booked, and for each parcel received or distributed.

Contracts to be made in all possible cases. Thus the coachmaker may supply coaches at —— each per annum, or at —— per mile travelled.

The keepers of the horse stations may contract each for the supply of horses required at his station at —— per mile.

In disposing of the shares, a preference to be given to those who would make frequent use of the coaches, especially to those who travel to London daily, as their influence would materially promote the interests of the concern.

A personal right to go to or from town daily, by the same coach, to be sold for a period, say a week, at a considerably reduced rate, or a month at a still lower rate.

Proprietors to be entitled to similar privileges at five per cent. less than others.

Transferable tickets, giving the holder a right to travel by any coach in either direction on a particular road, to be sold (say twenty at a time) at a slightly reduced rate.

All the carriages to be painted alike, and so as readily to distinguish them from those not belonging to the Company.

An establishment on an extensive scale, such as is described in the foregoing sketch, would possess many decided advantages over the little independent establishments now existing. It would be more economically managed; the necessary publicity would be more easily given to its arrangements; the responsibility of the servants would be more efficient; and the extent and permanence of the undertaking would justify the most watchful attention to exact punctuality, to a proper speed, to the safety and comfort of the passengers, and, in short, to all circumstances conducive to a high reputation with the public.

_Economy._—This would manifestly result from the great division of labour, and the wholesale demand for every article of expenditure. Also from the power of transferring coaches from any road on which there was less to one on which there was more travelling than usual.

The system of contracts and sub-contracts could not be introduced with advantage into a small concern.

_Publicity._—The readiness with which the arrangements could be described would tend greatly to their publicity. Thus, it would be easily said and easily remembered, that from a certain office coaches depart every hour, and from a certain other office at the half-hour, to all the principal places within the limits of the threepenny post. This statement, with a list of the places, fares, &c., would be placarded at every station, and on every coach and omnibus.

_Responsibility._—An active and intelligent superintendent, well acquainted with the means of holding others to responsibility, should devote his whole time to the undertaking, visiting the various stations periodically to see that all arrangements are observed, to settle the accounts, &c.

He should require accurate reports to be made, showing at all times the actual state of affairs, and the improvement or deterioration in each department The most exact rules should be laid down and enforced for the conduct of each class of servants. These rules should be placarded in the coaches, at the stations, &c.

Enquiries as to the conduct of all concerned should be made frequently of the proprietors who use the coaches daily, and every possible attention paid to the well-founded complaints of passengers generally. A till might be placed in each carriage, with an inscription requesting passengers having cause to complain to put a statement of such complaint, with _name and address_, into the till, which should be opened at the central office at least once in each day.

_Punctuality and Speed._—The proper time of starting and that of passing each station should be inscribed conspicuously on each coach, as well as at each station. The actual time kept should be recorded at each extreme station and at the horse station, and fines levied on the coachman for deviation beyond certain limits. The allowance of time for the journey should be such as to require the coachman to drive steadily but rapidly, with no stoppage beyond a very short one (say a minute) at each station, and a little more for taking up and putting down passengers on the road.

The coach should never wait nor turn out of the direct road between the extreme stations. To save time, the passengers, in the omnibuses at least, should be requested to pay as they go on. At the inferior stations a signal might be established to show whether the coach need stop or not.

_Safety of Passengers._—Coaches of the safest construction, steady horses, and temperate coachmen, only should be employed; and whenever an accident occurs from whatever cause, a heavy fine should be levied on the coachman, allowing him the right to recover the whole or part of the penalty of the coach-contractor or horse-contractor, according to circumstances. No galloping should be allowed.

The coach-contractor should be required to station a man at each central office to examine each coach every time it comes in.

_Comfort of Passengers._—Some protection from wet and cold to be provided for the outside passengers. Means of ascending and descending to be improved. A convenient room at each station for those waiting. The stations should _not_ be taverns; but coffee and some other refreshments may be provided—there being no obligation, however, to call for anything. The room should contain a map of London, directory, &c.

The arrangements of the Company would be capable of gradual and almost indefinite extension. Thus they might take in towns more and more distant, or they might comprehend hackney-coaches, cabriolets, and omnibuses to all parts of London. The machinery required for the distribution of parcels might be applied to that of the periodic publications; and a contract might be entered into, advantageous to the public as well as to the Company, for the collection, carriage, and distribution of the twopenny and threepenny post letters.

This distribution might easily take place _each hour_, the letters being carried by the coaches. No guards would be required, as the bags might be put into a boot, of which keys should be kept at the post-offices only.

APPENDIX F.

[See p. 230.]

[The following letter to _The Scotsman_ was written by Mr. John Forster, late Member for Berwick. In a marginal note Sir R. Hill has written, “I vouch for its accuracy.”]

“SIR ROWLAND HILL AND THE PRINTING PRESS.

“London, February 12, 1872.

“SIR,—In your interesting article on the ‘Walter Press’ it was stated that the idea of a Rotatory Machine printing newspapers on a continuous sheet of paper was not novel; that Sir Rowland Hill had worked at it many years before, as had other persons in America. As to most of your readers this mention of a benefactor of theirs in another way as a mechanical inventor was no doubt something new and curious, it may be interesting to them to learn what Sir Rowland Hill’s share of merit in this matter was. I send with this a copy of the specification of his patent for letter-press printing machines, taken out in 1835 (No. 6762, printed by the Patent Office in 1857), and an account of it given in the ‘Repertory of Patent Inventions,’ No. 35. By these it will be seen that the most important achievements of modern printing were effected by Sir Rowland Hill thirty-seven years ago. His machine was to print either with stereotype-plates or movable type (the difficulty of fastening the last securely to cylinders revolving at great speed was met by special contrivances); was itself to keep the printing surfaces inked; to print a continuous roll of paper, of any length, and both sides, while passing once through the apparatus; to cut up the roll into sheets; and means were contrived of performing those operations on two rolls at once, so that at one revolution of the printing cylinders two copies could be struck off. Such a machine was actually constructed (at an expense of about £2,000), and was frequently shown at work at No. 44, Chancery Lane, as many persons must remember. Though driven by hand, it could produce at the rate of seven or eight thousand impressions in an hour. One great difficulty of most printing machines is that of securing perfect _register_ (the exact coincidence of the printing on opposite sides of the paper). This was anticipated and met by the patent. The one thing the inventor failed to do was to overcome the resistance the collectors of the stamp duty presented to this printing on a continuous roll, and to the affixing of the stamps to the newspapers at the proper intervals during their passage through the machine. Many years afterwards they allowed this to be done by machinery contrived by Mr. Edwin Hill (who had assisted his brother in the preparation of the printing machine), which was affixed to the presses of the _Times_ and other papers, and which itself registered, for the security of the revenue, the number of impressions made. In 1835, the task of satisfying the Treasury that this could be done with safety to it was too formidable to be overcome,—at least it was not overcome. Sir Rowland Hill’s attention was soon afterwards absorbed by his plans of postal reform; and no one can regret this, seeing what work he did in the Post Office, which probably no one but himself could have done so well; while if the fourteen years of his patent passed unprofitably to the inventor, other hands have carried to extraordinary perfection the scheme of a printing machine. Of course the Americans and the ‘Walter Press’ have greatly advanced on ‘Hill’s Machine’ of 1835; especially by the preparation of stereotype plates for this particular service. In his specification, Sir Rowland Hill made due mention of his predecessors, recording that an imitation of the process of printing calico by cylinders revolving rapidly was proposed for letter-press printing as early as 1790, by Mr. William Nicholson, and that this was applied to stereotype plates bent to a cylindrical surface by Mr. Edward Cowper in 1816. But the first practical scheme of newspaper printing on a continuous roll of paper by revolving cylinders was produced and set to work by Rowland Hill in 1835.

“I am, &c.,

“J. F.

“The Editor, _The Scotsman_.”

[Two years later Sir Rowland Hill wrote the following letter to the _Journal of the Society of Arts_:]—

“TYPE-PRINTING MACHINERY

“SIR,—In the interesting paper ‘On Type-printing Machinery,’ by the Rev. Arthur Rigg, which appeared in your _Journal_ of the 13th inst., there are certain errors affecting myself which I request permission to correct.

“It is stated that rotating cylinders and continuous rolls of paper were principles first introduced into type-printing machinery by Mr. Nicholson in 1790, and further on it is asserted, in reference no doubt to the printing machine which I invented in 1835, that I ‘revived a proposal of Nicholson’s.’

“Now, so far from Mr. Nicholson proposing to print from types on continuous rolls of paper, a reference to the specification of his invention (A.D. 1790, No. 1,748) will show that, excluding his proposals for calico and wall-paper printing, which have nothing to do with type-printing machinery, he invariably speaks of printing on sheets of paper; indeed, the means of producing continuous rolls of paper were not invented till several years later. Again, it will be seen that the means he proposes for attaching the types to his cylinder, the real difficulty to be overcome, are clearly insufficient for the purpose; indeed, as stated in the specification of my patent (A.D. 1835, No. 6,762), which was drawn by the late Mr. Farey—a man thoroughly conversant with the subject—‘on account of deficiencies and imperfections in the machinery described in that specification [Mr. Nicholson’s] the same has never been practised or brought into use.’

“Towards the close of his paper, Mr. Rigg seems to imply that hitherto all schemes for fixing moveable types on a cylinder have failed. I can only say that in my machine this difficulty was entirely overcome. Indeed, in a letter which appeared in the _Mechanics’ Magazine_ of November 12th, 1836 (when the subject was before the public), I was enabled to state that ‘in the opinion of many eminent printers who have seen my machine the end in view has been fully accomplished, for while any portion of type may be detached from the cylinder with a facility even greater than that with which a similar change can be made in an ordinary form, each letter can be so firmly locked in its place that there is no danger whatever of its being loosened by centrifugal force or by any other cause.’

“While upon this subject, I may as well add that a comparison of my specification with that of the ‘Walter Press’ (A.D. 1866, No. 3,222) will show that, except as regards the apparatus for cutting and distributing the printed sheets, and excepting further that the ‘Walter Press’ is only adapted for printing from stereotype plates, while mine would not only print from stereotype plates, but, what was far more difficult, from moveable types also, the two machines are almost identical. I gladly admit, however, that the enormous difficulty of bringing a complex machine into practical use—a difficulty familiar to every inventor—has been most successfully overcome by Messrs. Calverley and MacDonald, the patentees of the ‘Walter Press.’

“I am, &c.,

“ROWLAND HILL.

“Hampstead, February 26, 1874.”

APPENDIX G.

[See p. 260.]

EXTRACT FROM THE “GREENOCK ADVERTISER,” OF FRIDAY, MARCH 8th, 1850.

_Testimonial to_ ROBERT WALLACE, Esq., _late M.P. for Greenock_. _The Pioneer of Postage Reform._

ROWLAND HILL, Esq., said,—Ladies and Gentlemen, the Committee for promoting Mr. Wallace’s Testimonial having done me the honour to invite me to take a part in this day’s proceedings, I felt bound, at whatever inconvenience to myself, to attend and to repeat the testimony which I have always gladly borne to the great and important aid afforded by your late representative, my esteemed and venerable friend Mr. Wallace, in the promotion of Penny Postage. (Applause.) With the view of enabling you fairly to estimate the value of Mr. Wallace’s important services, it will be necessary to take a brief review of his career as a Post Office Reformer. I need not remind you that Mr. Wallace entered the House of Commons as your representative in the year 1833. At this time the Post Office was considered by the public nearly perfect. But although several improvements had been effected under the administration of the Duke of Richmond, probably no department of government had, during the previous twenty years, improved so little, and yet no department had been so free from attack and complaint. It is true that the Commissioners of Revenue Inquiry had a short time before, with great ability, exposed much mismanagement in the Post Office, and had recommended various improvements (some of which were afterwards taken up by Mr. Wallace, and some still later by myself), but these exposures and recommendations, buried as they were in ponderous parliamentary reports, attracted little attention from the public, who still continued to view the Post Office as a vast and mysterious, but nearly perfect, machine. (Hear, hear.) I can scarcely think, however, that it could have been so viewed by the Government. They must, one would think, have been impressed with the remarkable fact that, since the close of the war, notwithstanding the great increase of population, and the still greater increase of commercial activity, the revenue of the Post Office, whether gross or net, had not increased at all. (Hear.) Such was the state of things when Mr. Wallace, in the year 1833, first roused the attention of Parliament and the public to the urgent necessity for reform in the Post Office, which he attacked with that perseverance and energy which distinguished all his proceedings; and, not satisfied with attacking abuses, Mr. Wallace, even at this early period of his parliamentary career, recommended an important improvement, which subsequently, as part of the plan of Penny Postage, was carried into effect with great advantage to the public. The improvement to which I allude was the substitution of charge by weight for charge by enclosure. (Applause.) In the year 1834 Mr. Wallace proposed in Parliament several other important measures, among which were the following:—1st. The opening to public competition of the contract for the construction of the mail coaches. This measure, which was soon after adopted, effected a saving of £17,218 a-year. 2nd. The consolidation of the London General and District Post Offices. This measure subsequently formed part of the plan of Penny Postage, and was partially carried into effect, with most advantageous results, about three years ago. Much, however, still remains to be accomplished. 3rd. The appointment of a Commission of Inquiry into the management of the Post Office. This recommendation was acted upon early in the next year (1835), and the Commission continued its labours till 1838. In the interval the Commission issued no less than ten reports, and it is fairly entitled to the credit of much of the subsequent improvement in the Post Office. During the year 1835, Mr. Wallace appears to have suspended his exertions in Parliament, thinking probably that he should more effectually serve the cause to which he had devoted himself by assisting in the investigations of the Commission. Accordingly, I find him giving evidence before that body, in the course of which he recommended the following improvements among others:—1st. The establishment of day mails, which subsequently formed part of my plan, and has been carried into effect with great advantage to the public and to the revenue. 2nd. A reduction in the rates of postage. 3rd. More frequent communication between places, Mr. Wallace expressing an opinion, since confirmed by experience, that the revenue, as well as the public, would be benefited thereby. In 1836 Mr. Wallace resumed his labours in Parliament, recommending among other measures:—1st. A reduction of the rates of postage, naming 8_d._ or 9_d._ as a maximum. 2nd. The registration of letters, since carried into effect with advantage both to the public and to the revenue. (Applause.) 3rd. That the postage charge should be regulated by the distance along the shortest practicable road, instead of being determined, as it then was, by the circuitous route through which the Post Office might, for its own convenience, carry the letter. It is now difficult to believe that only a few years since a system so monstrous as that which Mr. Wallace successfully attacked should have been suffered to exist for a single day—a system under which 6_d._ or 8_d._ was sometimes charged on letters passing between places not more than as many miles asunder, merely because the Post Office, for its own convenience, preferred to carry the letters round about. (Hear.) I have now arrived at the period when my intercourse with Mr. Wallace commenced; and in order that you may form a just appreciation of the valuable aid afforded me by Mr. Wallace, it is necessary to consider well his position and that of the Post Office at this time. By four years of incessant attacks, Mr. Wallace had destroyed the _prestige_ once enjoyed by the Post Office, and had thus exposed it to the wholesome influence of public opinion; in addition to which he had effected some important improvements. By these means he had made the subject of the Post Office his own, and was by general consent the Post Office Reformer of the day. It was therefore in his power greatly to aid, or greatly to discourage, the exertions of others. (Cheers.) In this year (1836), through the intervention of one of my brothers, then Inspector of Prisons for Scotland, I applied to Mr. Wallace for the loan of any books he might possess relating to the Post Office, and he very kindly lent me various Parliamentary reports and returns. (Hear, hear.) These documents afforded me essential aid in the work which I had long meditated, but in which I then for the first time earnestly engaged. The result was a thorough conviction in my own mind that the inland rate of postage ought to be the same for all distances, and that provided the postage of letters were prepaid, the rate might be reduced as low as 1_d._ throughout the United Kingdom. (Applause.) I did not, however, (and I distinctly stated as much at the time), reckon on effecting so vast a reduction without a considerable loss of net revenue, though I did calculate on eventually obtaining as large a gross revenue as before. But the greatest difficulty of my task had still to be overcome. That difficulty consisted in the apparent hopelessness of convincing others that results so startling, and _primâ facie_ so paradoxical, could really be derived from a careful examination and accurate appreciation of the facts of the case. Entertaining these apprehensions, and having regard to Mr. Wallace’s position as the leading Post Office Reformer of the day, I was exceedingly anxious as to the view which he might take of my plan. I felt that its success or failure would greatly depend on his verdict. Accordingly, at the beginning of 1837, I sent Mr. Wallace a copy of my pamphlet (which, in the first instance, was printed for private circulation), and waited in the greatest anxiety for his opinion. It came couched in kind and encouraging language, conveying his hearty concurrence in the main features of the plan, and I at once felt that a most important advance had been made. It is impossible to speak too strongly of my obligations to Mr. Wallace at this time. Many a man circumstanced as he was would have treated me as an intruder—as one coming to poach on his warren; but Mr. Wallace, so far from evincing any jealousy, at once gave me all the advantage of his position, and before the public had declared in favour of my plan, he had adopted it with all his accustomed heartiness. (Applause.) Almost immediately on the issue of my pamphlet, both Mr. Wallace and myself were examined by the Post-Office Commissioners with reference to the application of my plan to the London District post—a measure which the Commissioners recommended, though unfortunately their recommendation was not adopted by the Government. From this time the progress of public opinion in favour of the plan of Penny Postage was so rapid, that before the end of the year Mr. Wallace had succeeded in obtaining the appointment of a committee of the House to investigate its merits. Of this committee Mr. Wallace was the active and indefatigable chairman. It continued to sit throughout the session of 1838, in the course of which it examined no less than eighty-three witnesses; and the labour to the chairman, whose duties were by no means confined to the sittings of the committee, was most severe. The result of the investigation is well known, but it may not be in the recollection of this meeting that the committee having been nominated by Government, which was then unfavourable to Penny Postage, contained several members who were, _ex officio_, opponents of the measure, and that the resolution establishing the vital principle of uniformity of rate was carried only by the casting vote of the chairman. (Hear, hear, and applause.) Had Mr. Wallace given his casting vote on the other side, or even withheld it, the adoption of Penny Postage would probably have been delayed for years,—possibly the plan might have been altogether abandoned. The Report of the committee, one of the ablest documents ever laid before Parliament, gave an extraordinary impetus to the demand for Penny Postage, and in the session of 1839 upwards of 2,000 petitions, with more than a quarter of a million of signatures (though a large proportion of the petitions being from corporate bodies bore only a single signature each), were presented to the House of Commons alone; and before the end of the session, and within the short space of two years and a-half from its announcement, Penny Postage became the law of the land. (Applause.) During the greater part of this period (at least so long as Parliament was sitting) I was in almost daily communication with Mr. Wallace. The labour which we both had to go through was enormous; and I never shall forget how much I felt cheered and encouraged to persevere, by his own hearty, earnest, and confident manner of encountering the difficulties and disappointments necessarily incidental to so vast an undertaking. (Loud applause.) It would ill become me to speak of the commercial and social advantages which have resulted from Penny Postage. Under its operation, the number of chargeable letters has increased from 76 millions to 337 millions per annum, and though the net revenue, owing to the enormous cost of railway conveyance and other causes into which I cannot with propriety enter, is much less than my estimate, the gross revenue has realized that estimate, being now nearly, if not quite, as great as before the reduction of the rates. But whatever may have been the sacrifice of revenue, most people now readily admit the benefit to the nation at large has been cheaply purchased. (Cheers.) The advantages of cheap Postage however are by no means confined to this country. Our example has been followed, more or less closely, by several of the nations of Europe, and by the United States of America; and it is most gratifying to know that cheap Postage is gradually extending over the civilized world. The manner in which Mr. Wallace, the earliest Post Office Reformer of the present generation, has laboured zealously and successfully to bring about these happy results, has been shown by the statement of facts with which I have felt it my duty to trouble this meeting, and I earnestly hope that the people of this great country, who so munificently rewarded my exertions, will recognise also the claims of Mr. Wallace, and will step forward to cheer in the decline of life a man so justly entitled to our respect and gratitude. Mr. Hill then sat down amid hearty demonstrations of applause.

APPENDIX H.

[See p. 347.]

UNIFORM PENNY POSTAGE.

_Facts and Estimates as to the Increase of Letters._

The only point connected with uniform Penny Postage on which there appears to be any material difference of opinion is as to whether or not the revenue will suffer by the proposed reduction.

The plan will stimulate the increase of letters in two ways. First, by the increased facilities of despatch of letters;—second, by the great reduction of postage.

INCREASED FACILITIES.

Many facts were proved in evidence before the Postage Committee which render it clear that even at the same or higher rates of postage, increasing the opportunities of despatching letters, and the rapidity with which they are transmitted and delivered, always increases the number sent.

1. Palmer’s adoption of mail-coaches, though accompanied with repeated _advances_ of postage, increased the number of letters three-fold in twenty years. And

2. The new facilities of transmission afforded by the Manchester and Liverpool railway, increased the number of letters between the termini nearly fifty per cent. in six years; postage remaining the same.

3. Although not substantiated before the Postage Committee, it is understood that the recent establishment of a morning mail from London to Brighton has produced a similar effect.

4. It appears from the valuable work of M. Piron “_Sous Directeur des Postes aux Lettres_,” that a reduction in the time of transmission from Paris to Marseilles, from 118 to 68 hours, has doubled the number of letters.

REDUCTION OF POSTAGE.

This is relied upon as by far the most efficient cause of increase in the number of letters.

It has been found that the decrease of price in any article of general demand, so far from lessening the amount of the public expenditure on such article, has always increased it.

1. “The price of soap, for instance, has recently fallen by about one-eighth; the consumption in the same time has increased by one-third. Tea, again, the price of which, since the opening of the China trade, has fallen by about one-sixth, has increased in consumption by almost a half. The consumption of silk goods, which, subsequently to the year 1823, have fallen in price by about one-fifth, has more than doubled. The consumption of coffee, the price of which, subsequently to 1823, has fallen about one-fourth, has more than tripled. And the consumption of cotton goods, the price of which, during the last twenty years, has fallen by nearly one-half, has in the same time been fourfolded.”—_Post Office Reform_, p. 70.

2. The sale of newspapers for the twelve months before the late reduction in stamps was—

35,576,056,[379] at an average price, say of 7_d._, costing the public £1,037,634.

For the twelve months subsequent to the reduction, it was—

53,496,207,[379] at an average price, say of 4¾_d._, costing the public £1,058,779.

3. The annual number of advertisements before the late reduction in the advertisement duty, was—

1,010,000[380] at an average price, say of 6_s._, costing the public £303,000.

It is now—

1,670,000, at an average price, say of 4_s._, costing the public £334,000.

4. The number of persons paying for admission to the Tower was, in the ten months prior to the late reduction—

9,508, at 3_s._, each (including the Warder’s fee), = £1,426.

In the ten months subsequent to the reduction it was—

37,431, at 1_s._ each, = £1,871.

The rule established by these facts, viz., that the demand for the article increases in a greater proportion than the price decreases, so that if one thousand are sold at 1_s._ many more than two thousand would be sold at 6_d._, is, it is believed, without exception. Certainly the article of postage does not furnish one.

“The reduction of the Irish postage rates which was made in 1827, was immediately followed by a considerable increase in the Irish Post Office revenue, though precisely to what extent it would be difficult to state, owing to a transfer that was made at the same time of certain receipts from the English to the Irish Post Office revenue. An alteration was made in the year 1831, which was equivalent to a partial reduction, by exempting the correspondence of a portion of the metropolis, which had paid the General-post rate, from paying an additional Twopenny-post rate. Consequent on this reduction, though at first attended with some loss, the Post Office revenue was improved to the amount of £10,000 a year, instead of there being a loss of £20,000 a year as had been expected by the Post Office. A reduction made in 1835, on the rates of ship-letters, has been followed by a considerable increase in that branch of the revenue.”[381]—_Third Report of the Select Committee on Postage_, p. 29.

PRACTICAL EFFECT OF REDUCTION TO ONE PENNY.

The postage of letters between Edinburgh and the adjacent towns and villages was, in 1837, reduced from 2_d._ to 1_d._ In rather more than a year the letters had more than doubled, and were on the increase when the last returns were made.[382]

Postage between Stroud and Nailsworth in Gloucestershire was recently reduced from 4_d._ to 1_d._ The number of letters has already increased about sixfold.

FUTURE GROSS REVENUE OF THE POST OFFICE.

There seems, then, no rational ground of fear that the gross revenue of the Post Office will be diminished.

On the contrary, its increase might be safely predicted, even if no other change was contemplated than the proposed reduction. But taking the proposed additional facilities for the despatch of letters into account, the increase of the gross revenue may, at no distant period, be fairly expected to be considerable. Many persons, competent to form a sound opinion, think such increase will be very large.

FUTURE EXPENSES OF THE POST OFFICE.

The proposed changes will operate partly to increase, and partly to decrease, the cost of the Post Office.

The _increase_ will arise out of the additional number of letters passing through the post.

The _decrease_, chiefly from the postage being paid in advance, by means of stamps.

The _balance_ will probably be a comparatively slight augmentation of expense, which, it is confidently expected, will be more than compensated by the increase of the customs, excise, &c., produced by the stimulus to commerce, consequent on the cheapness of postage.

_There is, then, no just reason for believing that the proposed reduction in Postage will at all diminish the revenue of the country._

Below I have drawn out an estimate of the course which things may probably take after the proposed change, on the supposition of the gross revenue remaining the same as at present. I have perhaps undervalued some sources of increase, and overestimated others. I do not place much reliance on the details, but I have great confidence that the general result will hereafter be found below the truth.

_Estimate of the Mode in which the required Increase of General Post Letters may be presumed to take place._

_From the present Letter-writing Class_—

Present number of chargeable General Post Letters, call this 1

Contraband Letters, and evasions by writing in newspapers, &c. (Estimated by many at double the Posted Letters, but consider it equal only) 1 --- Total of Letters now written 2

Assume the rate of increase to be only 2 to 1 2 --- Estimated Return General Post Letters, from the present Letter-writing class 4

Invoices—(Estimated by Mr. Cobden, and other mercantile men, as equal to the present Post Letters—say half only) ½

Additional printed circulars, catalogues, small parcels, &c., say ¾

Letters from numerous classes, who may now be said not to use the Post Office at all, say ¾ --- Required increase of General Post Letters to sustain the gross revenue (Vide _Third Report_, p. 55.) 6

That is to say, an addition of five fold.

ROWLAND HILL.

Bayswater, July 1, 1839.

APPENDIX I.

[See p. 406.]

EXTRACT FROM FIRST REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS OF INLAND REVENUE, ON THE INLAND REVENUE.

_Under the head_ “DISCOUNT AT THE OFFICES OF DISTRIBUTORS IN THE COUNTRY.”

“It is only just to our stamping department, and more especially to Mr. Edwin Hill, under whose supervision it is placed, that we should mention the constant improvements which are every day being introduced in the machinery for impressing or manufacturing stamps, although it is impossible to enumerate or explain them in detail.

“The most remarkable of Mr. Hill’s inventions was one which has now become of comparatively minor importance, namely, the application of steam power to newspaper stamping. By a very ingenious contrivance, the unwieldy sheets of paper for newspapers, which used to be presented for stamping in immense quantities at a time, were separated, turned over, and stamped, with a dispatch and accuracy which had previously been considered as unattainable; and the superior execution of the work, instead of increasing the expense, was attended with a saving of at least £2,000 a-year.”

EXTRACT FROM SECOND REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS OF INLAND REVENUE, ON THE INLAND REVENUE.

(Dated 12th of May, 1858.)

_Under the head_ “STAMP DUTIES.”

“The efficiency of our stamping department continues to be maintained, and to keep pace with the demands of the public, through the watchfulness and inventive ingenuity of Mr. Edwin Hill. His most recent addition to our machinery, a contrivance for fixing the blue paper and metal guard on parchment, is a substitute for two operations in different departments, and the labour of three men. This small improvement effects a saving of £300 a-year.”

EXTRACT FROM THIRD REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS OF INLAND REVENUE, ON THE INLAND REVENUE.

(Dated May, 1859.)

_Under the head_ “STAMPS.”

... “The pressure on our stamping department was at first very great, and the administrative and mechanical resources of Mr. Edwin Hill were taxed to the utmost to keep pace with the demands of the public. By the invention of new and more rapidly performing machines, and the employment of a large number of extra hands, he was able to dispose of the immense stock of cheques thus suddenly poured in, without giving rise to any complaint of delay or inconvenience.”

_Minute of the Board of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue on the retirement of Mr. Edwin Hill._

[Dated the _6th May, 1872_.]

“The Board, in accepting this resignation, desire to place on record their sense of the exemplary manner in which Mr. Hill has at all times discharged his official duties, and their great regret at the termination of a career which has been of so much advantage to the public service.

“Mr. Hill has proved himself to be a most valuable servant of the public, not merely in the general conduct of the business confided to his superintendence, but also, and more especially in the application of his inventive mechanical skill to numerous contrivances which he has from time to time introduced, by which the work of his department has been greatly facilitated and improved.

“The saving of time, labour, and expense which has accrued to the public benefit by means of these appliances, some of which are more particularly referred to by Mr. Hill, can scarcely be overestimated: and there can be no doubt that these important results have been attained at the cost of much independent thought and labour on the part of Mr. Hill, whilst no personal benefit has been derived from them by himself.

“Their Lordships have been pleased, under the powers conferred upon them by the Superannuation Act, to mark, on certain occasions, their sense of eminent and exceptional service by the award of a special allowance. The Board are impressed with a conviction that few more fitting cases could be found for the exercise of this power than that which is now presented to their Lordships, and which the Board desire to support with their strongest recommendation.”

APPENDIX J.

[See p. 437.]

LETTER TO THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER, SUGGESTING TRANSFERENCE OF COLONEL MABERLY TO ANOTHER POST.

Downing Street, June 23, 1841.

DEAR SIR,—I have to apologize for troubling you at such a time with considerations which may appear personal. Nothing but the conviction that they are not really so, and further, that they do not admit of delay, can justify the present application.

It has occurred to me as possible that the official changes now in progress may afford an opportunity of placing me (without injury to any one) in a position more favourable to the success of the measure in which I am engaged.

I think you will agree that to complete the introduction of my plan requires a careful consideration of numerous measures of detail, and a close and constant watchfulness over their working. Also, that its financial success depends on a rigid and searching economy in every branch of management.

I am sure you will do me the justice to admit that I have patiently and anxiously sought to accomplish these objects under the existing arrangements, and yet a review of the last twelve months (that is to say, of the period since we entered on the details of the measure) shows, I fear, that little of this kind has been effected.

If progress is thus slow while I enjoy your powerful support (and for the kindness and constancy with which it has been afforded I shall always feel most grateful), what will be the result if, unfortunately, that support should be even temporarily withdrawn?

Will you therefore excuse the liberty I take in respectfully suggesting for your consideration whether it is not highly important to the success of the measure that I should henceforward take a position in the Post Office, and whether the official changes now in progress may not afford opportunity for creating the necessary vacancy without any injury to Colonel Maberly? Such a change could not, I presume, be otherwise than agreeable to him; it would relieve him from the unpleasant task of working out a measure which he dislikes, and which he has repeatedly affirmed cannot succeed; a measure, therefore, whose success cannot add to his reputation, and whose failure is not unlikely to be attributed, however undeservedly, to his mode of conducting it.

At the same time the proposed change would put an end to a divided, unacknowledged, and therefore ineffectual responsibility, without, I should hope, depriving me of the great advantage I have hitherto enjoyed of submitting every important question to your judgment.

Permit me to add that, as I have no desire to advance my own emoluments, the suggested change would effect a saving to the revenue of Colonel Maberly’s present salary and allowances.

May I be allowed to hope that, whatever may be your decision on the arrangement I have ventured to suggest, you will excuse the liberty I have taken, and attribute my conduct to the motive by which alone I am influenced, viz., an earnest and anxious desire to establish speedily and beyond all question the success of a measure on which not only my whole reputation is at stake, but which, in case of failure, or even of partial success, is sure to be used as a ground of attack against the Government by which it has been adopted.

Let me beg that you will not take the trouble to answer this letter till you return to town. In bringing the matter under your notice before the completion of the official arrangements referred to above, the immediate object which I have in view is accomplished.

I have, &c.,

ROWLAND HILL.

FOOTNOTES

[1] See p. 235.

[2] See pp. 234, 292.

[3] “Life of John Sterling,” p. 198. Edition of 1857.

[4] See “Miscellanies,” by J. A. Symonds, M.D. Edited by his son.

[5] Butler was a Worcestershire man.

[6] In looking over some old records at the General Post-office I noticed that the first Kidderminster postmaster, who was appointed about the beginning of last century, was named Hill. Likely enough he was an ancestor of Sir Rowland Hill.

[7] An instance of the manufacture of a new kind of faggot-vote.

[8] In this, as in other cases, I quote from the fragments of an autobiography which Mr. T. W. Hill left behind him at his death. As he did not begin to write it until he had by some years passed fourscore, it is scarcely surprising that he never finished it.

[9] He was also related through her to Dr. J. A. Symonds, the late eminent physician of Clifton, and his son, Mr. J. A. Symonds, the accomplished essayist, to the Rev. Morell Mackenzie, who showed such noble fortitude at the shipwreck of the _Pegasus_, and to the admirable comedian, the late Mr. Compton.

[10] Vol. I., p. 9.

[11] “Essays of a Birmingham Manufacturer.” By William Lucas Sargant. Vol. II., p. 186.

[12] The definition is as follows:—“A straight line is a line in which, if any two points be taken, the part intercepted shall be less than any other line in which those points can be found.”

[13] “The strength of prejudice at the time is well exemplified by the following epigram, written in all earnestness and sincerity, by one of my father’s intimate friends:—

“‘And what did Watt accomplish for mankind?— What was the produce of his powerful mind? He found machinery a deadly curse; And what did Watt? He left it ten times worse!’”

[14] See page 69.

[15] Prefatory Memoir.

[16] Prefatory Memoir.

[17] _The following table may be of some service to the reader._

THOMAS WRIGHT HILL, Born, April 24, 1763. Died, June 13, 1851. SARAH LEA ” August 23, 1765. ” April 9, 1842. Married, July 29, 1791.

_Their Children._

MATTHEW DAVENPORT, Born, August 6, 1792. Died, June 7, 1872. EDWIN ” November 25, 1793. ” November 6, 1876. ROWLAND ” December 3, 1795. ” August 27, 1879. ARTHUR ” August 27, 1798. CAROLINE ” August 18, 1800. ” September 16, 1877. FREDERIC ” June 29, 1803. WILLIAM HOWARD ” July 26, 1805. ” November 30, 1830. SARAH ” July 9, 1807. ” June 12, 1840.

[18] For the sketch of this house, as it was at the time of Sir Rowland Hill’s birth, I am indebted to the kindness of William Bucknall, Esq., of Franche Court, Kidderminster.

[19] “Henry Crabb Robinson’s Diary.” Vol. I., p. 80.

[20] The Peace of Amiens was not signed till March 27, 1802. But the general rejoicings were on the conclusion of the Preliminary Articles on October 1, 1801.

[21] The battle was fought on the twenty-first.

[22] Prefatory Memoir.

[23] Prefatory Memoir,

[24] I remember how, at the age of eight, I was myself set for a short time to teach some still smaller children to read. The book we used was Mrs. Barbauld’s “Early Lessons.” We came to the word mezereon. I was ashamed to own that I did not know how it was pronounced. With great gravity I informed my class that this was a word that no one knew how to read. So far as I can remember there was no doubting Thomas present.

[25] For many years he was engaged to give private lessons in mathematics to some of the boys in the Grammar School. Among his pupils were Dr. Kennedy, the Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Cambridge, and Dr. Guest, the Master of Caius College, Cambridge.

[26] “I shall never forget the joy I felt on taking the first spark from the prime conductor.”—Rowland Hill’s Journal.

[27] Prefatory Memoir.

[28] See Appendix A.

[29] See Appendix A.

[30] Prefatory Memoir.

[31] “At the first meeting in April, and also in October, a Committee shall be elected, which shall consist of at least one-fifth of the members of the Society. The mode of election shall be as follows:—A ticket shall be delivered to each member present, with his own name at the head of it, immediately under which he shall write the name of the member whom he may wish to represent him in the Committee. The votes thus given, shall be delivered to the president, who, after having assorted them, shall report to the meeting the number of votes given for each nominee. Every one who has five votes shall be declared a member of the Committee; if there are more than five votes given to any one person, the surplus votes (to be selected by lot) shall be returned to the electors whose name they bear, for the purpose of their making other nominations, and this process shall be repeated till no surplus votes remain, when all the inefficient votes shall be returned to the respective electors, and the same routine shall be gone through a second time, and also a third time if necessary; when if a number is elected, equal in all to one-half of the number of which the Committee should consist, they shall be a Committee; and if at the close of the meeting the number is not filled up, by unanimous votes of five for each member of the Committee, given by those persons whose votes were returned to them at the end of the third election, then this Committee shall have the power, and shall be required, to choose persons to fill up their number; and the constituents of each member so elected shall, if necessary, be determined by lot. The President, Secretary, and Treasurer, all for the time being, shall be members of the Committee, _ex-officio_, whether elected or not. In the intervals between the general elections, it shall be competent to any four members of the society, by a joint nomination, in a book to be opened for the purpose, to appoint a representative in the ensuing Committee; such appointment being made shall not be withdrawn, nor shall the appointers give any vote in the choice of a Committee-man, as such, until after the next election. A register shall be kept by the Secretary of the constituents of every member of the Committee; and the constituents of any member, except those appointed by the Committee, (upon whose dismissal that body may exercise a negative,) shall have the power of withdrawing their representative, by a vote of their majority, of which vote notice in writing shall be given (subscribed by the persons composing such majority) both to the member so dismissed, and to the Chairman of the Committee; and in the case of a vacancy occasioned by a dismissal as above, or by any other cause, the constituents of the member whose place becomes vacant, may elect another in his stead, by a unanimous vote, but not otherwise; if such election be not made within a fortnight after the vacancy has occurred, the appointment shall devolve upon the Committee.”

[32] I give this Preface in Appendix B.

[33] A young man to whom he was strongly attached. He also had been bent on doing something for the world—something which should make his name live. He was studying engineering, and it was his great hope that he should live to make a canal through the Isthmus of Panama. Unhappily he died at an early age.

[34] Published in London by Sir Richard Phillips.

[35] Prefatory Memoir.

[36] Prefatory Memoir.

[37] “Of course I do not mean by these quotations to set up for my father or myself any claim to invention, seeing that we merely formed crude ideas which were never elaborated or even published.”—Prefatory Memoir.

[38] Prefatory Memoir.

[39] Sir Rowland Hill, to a considerable extent at all events, recovered the process. It is described in Appendix C. He adds: “As it is fully fifty years since I gave any thought to the subject, and as, in the eightieth year of my age, I find my brain unequal to further investigation, I must be contented with the result at which I have arrived.”

[40] “Essays by a Birmingham Manufacturer,” Vol. II., p. 188.

[41] This expression is not strictly correct, as it was impossible to maintain absolutely the same level throughout without using stools of an unmanageable height. What was done was to keep the rods in a right line until a new gradient was designedly taken; the angle of rise or fall being in each instance carefully measured, and the whole afterwards reduced by computation to the exact horizontal distance. It may be added, that in order to make due allowance for the elongation or contraction of the rods by change of temperature, thermometers were attached to the apparatus, and the rise and fall of the mercury duly recorded.

[42] “These manuscripts were unfortunately destroyed two years afterwards in a fire which will be mentioned hereafter, and with them perished not only my water alarum, but also my planispheres, and various other results of past labour.”

[43] Colonel Mudge’s “Report of the Trigonometrical Society of England and Wales.” Vol. III., p. 156.

[44] Alphabetical Index to the third volume of the “Report.”

[45] Prefatory Memoir.

[46] “Southey’s Life and Correspondence,” Vol. I., p. 39.

[47] “Plans for the Government and Liberal Instruction of Boys in Large Numbers. Drawn from Experience.” London: Printed for G. & W. B. Whittaker, Ave-Maria Lane, 1822. A second edition was published in 1825.

[48] He was speaking of the system as it was in his time. His only son, and all his grandsons, have been pupils of the school.

[49] “When Dr. Johnson read his own satire, in which the life of a scholar is painted with the various obstructions thrown in his way to fortune and to fame, he burst into a passion of tears.”—“Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson.” By Madame Piozzi, p. 50.

[50] This Society, which was thus founded more than sixty years ago, has existed ever since. Many hundreds of pounds have been raised by successive generations of the pupils of Hill Top, Hazelwood, and Bruce Castle. Why should not every school in the country have its Benevolent Society?

[51] This officer, I believe, kept the punches with which the number that each boy bore in the school was stamped on certain articles of his clothing.

[52] See page 112.

[53] “By this institution, successive committees of boys (generally, indeed, presided over by a master, but still free in action) must have disposed of little less, perhaps more, than four thousand pounds.”—Prefatory Memoir.

[54] “Essays by a Birmingham Manufacturer,” Vol. II., p. 187.

[55] Emilius. Book II.

[56] Prefatory Memoir.

[57] Prefatory Memoir.

[58] “The ammunition with which these poor fellows were to overturn the government was kept in an old stocking.”

[59] The passage quoted begins, “Deep-toned the organ breathes,” and ends, ‘He smiles on death.’

[60] It was part of Uriconium.

[61] It was at a time of grievous distress and loud discontent that the suspension of this Act was carried. In few places was there greater suffering than in Birmingham. Rowland Hill, before he set out for London, had passed near the Birmingham Workhouse while a crowd was gathered round the doors waiting for their weekly dole. One of them called out to him, “Look there, Sir; there’s a sight, while they’re a-passing their Horpus Corpus Acts. Damn their Horpus Corpus Acts, say I.”

[62] There existed at this time in Birmingham, as Sir R. Hill subsequently recorded, “a very exclusive society for procuring private concerts. It was supposed that the society’s strict rule would be waived in favour of so distinguished a visitor as Mr. Campbell; but upon application being made for his admission to one of these performances, answer was returned that no exception had been made even in the case of an officer who had bled for his country, and whose claims were of course very superior to any that could be advanced by Mr. Campbell.”

[63] See page 87.

[64] Joseph Hodgson, Esq., F.R.S., late President of the College of Surgeons.

[65] M.P. for Midhurst.

[66] “The Recorder of Birmingham.” A Memoir of Matthew Davenport Hill. By his daughters. Page 76.

[67] “History of my Religious Opinions.” Page 290.

[68] See page 47.

[69] See Mr. Trevelyan’s “Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay.” Second edition. Vol. II., p. 463.

[70] “By a mistake of the Secretary, my name was omitted in the first list of the Committee.”

[71] Writing to his wife from Hazelwood on January 12th, 1830, he says: “I am engaged in my experiments with pendulums, which at present promise very well. Father is much interested in the matter. I tell you this, my dear, because I know you take a lively interest in everything I undertake.”

[72] Published by Simpkin and Marshall.

[73] The _Arthur Hill Lifeboat_, stationed at Fowey, is a memorial of the affection of many generations of scholars for their old master.—ED.

[74] This was written in the year 1869. Eight years later—seventy-four years after the opening of Hill Top, and fifty years after the opening of Bruce Castle—the school passed out of the hands of any member of Sir Rowland Hill’s family. In justice to the present head-master, it should be stated that in the fifty-eight years that have elapsed since the publication of “Public Education,” great changes have been made in the system of government of the school.

[75] The reader will find the scheme described in Appendix E.

[76] The late Sir John Shaw-Lefevre, K.C.B.

[77] Assistant Secretary to the Poor Law Commissioners.

[78] The Society was later on joined by Dr. Arnott, Dr. Lyon Playfair, Mr. Edwin Chadwick, Mr. Henry Cole, Mr. Arthur Symonds, Mr. Dilke, and Mr. Frederic Hill.

[79] See Southey’s “Life and Correspondence.” Vol. I., p. 216.

[80] We may compare with this what Gibbon says of his own training. “Whatsoever have been the fruits of my education, they must be ascribed to the fortunate banishment which placed me at Lausanne.”—ED.

[81] Sir R. Hill, in after years, saw a good deal of Lord Brougham. He thus writes of him:—“Judging by what I observed, I should say that, wide as was the range of his knowledge—far wider, indeed, than I could measure,—it was deficient in accuracy, and therefore in profundity. This, indeed, must be evident to all who regard the undulatory theory of light as now fully established.... Other instances of inaccuracy, doubtless of a minor, but yet of a serious character, I found in his essay on Hydrostatics, written for the Useful Knowledge Society, and, as it happened, referred to me by the Committee for report thereon. On the other hand, I found much more of kindliness in him than the world generally gave him credit for, and in particular I remember with gratitude the important help which he freely and promptly rendered to myself.”—ED.

[82] Writing to Mr. M. D. Hill on September 5, 1834, he says:—“However absurd it may appear, I do really believe that Mr. Spring Rice [at that time Secretary to the Colonies] has jumbled up together in his mind the statements as to the sterility of some parts of the Continent with the ample evidence of the fertility of other parts, and has got a notion that the evidence is contradictory.”—ED.

[83] See “First Annual Report of the Colonisation Commissioners for South Australia,” pp. 7 and 13, and “Fourth Report,” p. 3.

[84] “Third and Fourth Reports of the South Australian Commissioners.”

[85] “Third Report,” p. 18.

[86] See page 69.

[87] The office was No. 6, next door to the house in which Garrick had died; and this, on an alarm of fire, I once entered at the request of the occupant. I need not say with what interest.

[88] It was in the same year that he received this refusal that he and Mr. Lefevre formed the small society which has been described on page 209. He has recorded that the society discussed “the possibility of feeding the machine mechanically with a continuous supply of _sheets_.... I scarcely need add that we found the problem insoluble.”—ED.

[89] The offer was made by Mr. Wm. Clowes, Sen. I should have had to contribute, I think, about £5,000 of capital, and my share of the profits was estimated at £2,500 a-year.

[90] See Appendix E for letters by Mr. John Forster, late Member for Berwick, and Sir Rowland Hill, on the subject of the printing machine.

[91] The employment of existing stage-coaches instead of slow and irregular horse and foot posts, a change made in the year 1784.

[92] In Sir R. Hill’s Pamphlet on “Post Office Reform,” (Third Edition, p. 86), is the following passage:—

“Coleridge tells a story which shows how much the Post Office is open to fraud in consequence of the option which now exists. The story is as follows. ‘One day, when I had not a shilling which I could spare, I was passing by a cottage not far from Keswick, where a letter-carrier was demanding a shilling for a letter, which the woman of the house appeared unwilling to pay, and at last declined to take. I paid the postage, and when the man was out of sight, she told me that the letter was from her son, who took that means of letting her know that he was well; the letter was _not to be paid for_. It was then opened and found to be blank!” (“Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge,” Vol. II., p. 114).

In Miss Martineau’s “History of England During the Thirty Years’ Peace,” which was published thirteen years after “Post Office Reform,” this story appears in the following shape:—

“Mr. Rowland Hill, when a young man, was walking through the Lake District, when he one day saw the postman deliver a letter to a woman at a cottage door. The woman turned it over and examined it, and then returned it, saying that she could not pay the postage, which was a shilling. Hearing that the letter was from her brother, Mr. Hill paid the postage, in spite of the manifest unwillingness of the woman. As soon as the postman was out of sight, she showed Mr. Hill how his money had been wasted, as far as she was concerned. The sheet was blank. There was an agreement between her brother and herself, that as long as all went well with him, he should send a blank sheet in this way once a quarter, and she thus had tidings of him without expense of postage. Most people would have remembered this incident as a curious story to tell; but Mr. Hill’s was a mind which wakened up at once to a sense of the significance of the fact. There must be something wrong in a system which drove a brother and sister to cheating, in order to gratify their desire to hear of one another’s welfare, &c.” Vol. II., p. 425.

A few years ago Sir R. Hill drew my attention to the blunder into which Miss Martineau had fallen. The following is my note of what he said:—“He remarked on her carelessness, and the trouble it had cost him. He had sent her, on her application, his pamphlet. She read it carelessly. The story Miss Martineau tells is, in the pamphlet, told of Coleridge. He (Sir R. Hill) had been attacked in some of the papers for taking credit to himself for charity. Cornewall Lewis asked him one day whether he had seen an attack on him in ‘Notes and Queries.’ On his answering ‘No,’ he showed it him, and undertook to answer it himself. The story was so believed and amplified, that a friend of his, when travelling in the Lake District, was shown the very room in an inn where Rowland Hill had first thought of penny postage.”

I am informed that two old ladies who lived in No. 1, Orme Square, Bayswater, used to show to their friends the room in which Rowland Hill devised Penny Postage, though he only took that house in 1839, a few months before the Penny Postage Act was passed.—ED.

[93] In “Post Office Reform” this anecdote is given as of a friend, but in truth I was my own hero. It must not be supposed that in franking these newspapers I was usurping a privilege. In those days newspapers, unless franked, at least in appearance, were charged as letters. But any one was at liberty to use the name of any Peer or Member of the House of Commons without his consent. The publishers of newspapers had a name printed on the wrapper.

[94] A short time since Sir William Armstrong told me that a pound of coal contained a greater latent power than a pound of gunpowder.

[95] See page 23.

[96] “Early in the ‘thirties’ there had been some reduction in certain departments of taxation. It occurred to me that probably some ease might be given to the people by lowering the postal rate, and I discussed the subject with members of my family. My brother Matthew, who was expecting Mr. Parker, (M.P. for Sheffield, one of the Lords of the Treasury), to dine at his house, invited me to meet him. Leading the conversation to the reduction of taxation, he said my attention had been turned to the subject, and I explained to Mr. Parker the method of relief that had occurred to me. Afterwards, at my brother’s suggestion, I wrote down my views, the whole not exceeding three or four pages of foolscap. Although occupied with other affairs, the reduction in the postal rate was not then dismissed from my thoughts. The interest it had excited induced me to read Reports, &c., on postal administration, and it was in the perusal of their contents that the question arose in my mind, whether the cost of a letter was affected by the distance it had to be conveyed.”—Note of a conversation with Sir R. Hill two or three years before his death, by Miss F. Davenport-Hill.—ED.

[97] “Post Office Reform; its Importance and Practicability.” By Rowland Hill. Published by Charles Knight and Co., London. 1837.

[98] “Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 2.

[99] “Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 3.

[100] p. 4.

[101] Ibid.

[102] “Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 5.

[103] pp. 5, 6.

[104] “Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 9.

[105] “Eighteenth Report of the Commissioners of Revenue Enquiry,” p. 4.

[106] I applied for permission to see the working of the London office, but was met by a polite refusal.

[107] “Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 10.

[108] “Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 16.

[109] Ibid.

[110] When at length I obtained precise information, I found that in taking care not to make my estimate too low I had made it considerably too high; and I think the history of this rectification too curious and characteristic to be omitted. Two years later, the Parliamentary Committee appointed to consider my plan ordered, at my suggestion, a return on the subject; when, to my surprise and amusement, the report of the Post Office gave as the cost of this mail the exact sum estimated by me, viz., £5. Struck with the coincidence, the more so as I had intentionally allowed for possible omission, I suggested the call for a return in detail; and, this being given, brought down the cost to £4 8s. 7¾d. In the return, however, I discovered an error, viz., that the charge for guards’ wages was that for the double journey instead of the single; and when this point was adjusted, in a third return, the cost sank to £3 19s. 7¾d. When explanation of the anomaly was asked for, it was acknowledged by the Post Office authorities that my estimate had been adopted wholesale.—_Appendix to Second Report of Select Committee on Postage_, 1838, pp. 257-259.

[111] “Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 18.

[112] “Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 12.

[113] Returns, 1830, Nos. 293 and 478.

[114] “Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 55.

[115] By statistics published in the Journal of the Society of Arts (Oct. 28th, 1870), it appears that the plan of secondary distribution, (though perhaps not under that name) actually exists in North Germany, concurrently with complete distribution from house to house; and, doubtless, the one arrangement has facilitated and justified the other.

[116] “Post Office Reform,” second edition, pp. 34 and 83.

[117] Parl. Return, 1834, No. 19.

[118] “Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 83.

[119] “Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 83.

[120] p. 85.

[121] “Post Office Reform,” second edition, pp. 86, 87.

[122] “Post Office Reform,” second edition, pp. 94-96.

[123] “Post Office Reform,” second edition, pp. 66, 67.

[124] “Post Office Reform,” p. 67.

[125] From this pamphlet many extracts are given in the course of this chapter. I have not thought it necessary to follow Sir R. Hill in giving, in each case, the reference.—ED.

[126] The following extract from a letter by the Right Hon. C. P. Villiers, M.P., to Mr. Frederic Hill, most fittingly comes in here. It was written, indeed, a few days after Sir Rowland Hill’s death, but the writer was carried back in his thoughts to the earliest days of the great struggle for postal reform, in which he himself had played no mean part:—

... “His time, probably from fulness of years, had arrived for leaving us. Still those who appreciated his rare qualities, and the great service he had rendered the country, liked to think that he was yet amongst them, and could observe, with justifiable pride, the continued and increasing success of his great and beneficial scheme.... I remember well, indeed, the frequent communications I had with your brother when he was first bringing his plan before the public, and also (to his honour) the great disinterestedness that he showed when he requested me to submit the scheme then in MS. to the Government, offering to allow them to have the entire credit of its introduction, if they chose to undertake it, stipulating only that, if they should refuse, he should then refer it to the Press, and make it known to, and understood by, the country. The apprehensions that were then expressed at head-quarters (when I executed his commission) are still fresh in my recollection, and most certainly was he left free to do what he liked about a measure that, in their view, would require such a sacrifice of revenue, and the success of which was so extremely problematical. I always considered it fortunate (with regard to its success) that the measure was thus left to the unbiassed judgment of the public, and to the energetic support which such men as Grote, Warburton, and Hume, and the really intelligent reformers, then in the House, gave to your brother.”—ED.

[127] Within the last few months (November, 1869) I have privately recommended to Government the contingent adoption of this measure, as well as of others for giving increased facilities and greater speed of conveyance.

[128] See p. 218.

[129] Neither Mr. Knight nor I was then aware of an earlier though long abandoned use of stamped covers in France. See p. 377.

[130] “Ninth Report of Commissioners for Post Office Enquiry,” pp. 32, 33. Same substantially, “Post Office Reform,” second edition, pp. 41-45.

[131] “Ninth Report of Commissioners for Post Office Enquiry,” pp. 38, 40.

[132] “Ninth Report of Commissioners for Post Office Enquiry,” p. 34.

[133] “Ninth Report of Commissioners for Post Office Enquiry,” p. 87.

[134] “Ninth Report,” pp. 8, 9.

[135] “Post Office Reform,” first edition, p. 53; second edition, p. 65.

[136] “A curious incident happened to-day while Mr. Thrale and I sat with Dr. Johnson. Francis announced that a large packet was brought to him from the post office, said to have come from Lisbon, and it was charged _seven pounds ten shillings_. He would not receive it, supposing it to be some trick, nor did he even look at it. But upon inquiry afterwards he found that it was a real packet for him, from that very friend in the East Indies of whom he had been speaking; and the ship which carried it having come to Portugal, this packet, with others, had been put into the post office at Lisbon.”—BOSWELL’S _Life of Dr. Johnson_ (8vo edition), p. 501.—ED.

[137] “Hansard,” Vol. XXXVIII., p. 1464.

[138] pp. 1462-1464.

[139] Post Office advertisement, _Morning Chronicle_, August 22, 1837.

[140] The Bill for effecting this was drawn by my friend Mr. Arthur Symonds.

[141] “Eighteenth Report of the Commissioners of Revenue Enquiry,” p. 66. “Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 69.

[142] “Post Office Reform,” third edition, p. 49.

[143] “Ninth Report of Commissioners of Post Office Enquiry,” p. 22.

[144] “Third Report of the Select Committee on Postage,” p. 2.

[145] Ibid.

[146] That their opposition was altogether official is shown by the fact that when the Government subsequently adopted my plan, they all three became its advocates.

[147] “Hansard,” third series, Vol. XXXIX. pp. 1115, 1116.

[148] The word “penny,” though found in “Hansard,” is, as shown by what follows, erroneously inserted.

[149] “Hansard,” third series, Vol. _XXXIX._ pp. 1201-1210.

[150] “Hansard,” Vol. XXXIX. p. 1207.

[151] “Mirror of Parliament,” Vol. XXXVIII. p. 833.

[152] Now (Sept., 1875) Sir Henry Cole, K.C.B.

[153] “Third Report of the Select Committee on Postage,” p. 3.

[154] See page 251.

[155] See my letter to the Chairman of the Committee. “First Report,” p. 424.

[156] “Third Report from the Select Committee of Postage (1838),” p. 6.

[157] “Third Report,” p. 43.

[158] “Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 78.

[159] “Third Report,” p. 339.

[160] Speech of Lord Lichfield in House of Lords, November 30th, 1837.

[161] “Third Report,” p. 7.

[162] “Third Report,” p. 8.

[163] “Third Report,” p. 7.

[164] “Third Report,” p. 8.

[165] “Third Report,” p. 9.

[166] Ibid.

[167] “Third Report,” p. 12.

[168] Ibid.

[169] Ibid.

[170] “Third Report,” p. 13.

[171] Ibid.

[172] Ibid.

[173] Ibid.

[174] Ibid.

[175] Ibid.

[176] Ibid.

[177] “Third Report,” p. 14.

[178] “Third Report,” p. 15.

[179] “Third Report,” p. 17.

[180] “Third Report,” p. 18.

[181] “Third Report,” p. 19.

[182] Ibid.

[183] “Third Report,” p. 20.

[184] “Third Report,” p. 21.

[185] Ibid.

[186] “Third Report,” p. 21.

[187] “Third Report,” p. 22.

[188] “Third Report,” p. 22.

[189] Ibid.

[190] Ibid.

[191] “Third Report,” p. 23.

[192] “Third Report,” p. 24.

[193] Ibid.

[194] “Third Report,” p. 25.

[195] Ibid.

[196] “Third Report,” p. 25.

[197] “Third Report,” p. 26.

[198] Ibid.

[199] Ibid.

[200] “Third Report,” p. 27.

[201] “Third Report,” p. 27.

[202] “Third Report,” p. 28.

[203] “Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 55.

[204] Ibid.

[205] “Third Report,” p. 29.

[206] “Third Report,” p. 33.

[207] “Third Report,” p. 34.

[208] Ibid.

[209] “Third Report,” p. 34.

[210] Ibid.

[211] Ibid.

[212] Ibid.

[213] “Third Report,” p. 41.

[214] “Second Report,” question 11,110.

[215] “Second Report,” question 11,111.

[216] “Second Report,” question 11,112

[217] Ibid.

[218] “Third Report,” p. 42.

[219] “Third Report,” p. 43.

[220] Ibid.

[221] “Third Report,” p. 44.

[222] “First Report,” questions 1,369, 1,372.

[223] “Third Report,” p. 45.

[224] “Third Report,” p. 45.

[225] “Third Report,” p. 46.

[226] “Third Report,” p. 47.

[227] “Third Report,” p. 48.

[228] Ibid.

[229] “Third Report,” p. 49.

[230] “Third Report,” p. 50.

[231] “Third Report,” p. 52.

[232] “Third Report,” p. 53.

[233] “Third Report,” p. 54.

[234] “Third Report,” p. 56.

[235] “Third Report,” p. 60.

[236] Ibid.

[237] “Third Report.” p. 61.

[238] “Third Report,” p. 63.

[239] “Third Report,” p. 65.

[240] “First Report,” p. 79.

[241] “First Report,” p. 106.

[242] “First Report,” p. 109.

[243] “First Report,” p. 189.

[244] “First Annual Report of the Postmaster-General,” pp. 65, 68.

[245] “Third Report,” p. iv.

[246] Ibid.

[247] “Third Report,” p. iv.

[248] This is strikingly shown by the following extract from the First Annual Report of the Postmaster-General, published in 1854. “In 1844 the Post Office _received_ from the coach contractors about £200 a year for the privilege of carrying the mail twice a day between Lancaster and Carlisle; whereas, at the present time, the same service performed by the railway costs the Post Office about £12,000 a year.”—ED.

[249] _Times_, May 31, 1839.

[250] See p. 268.

[251] In grateful recollection of Mr. Warburton’s friendship and assistance in the cause of Penny Postage, I am glad to say that my son has christened one of his children Henry Warburton (1877).

[252] The eminent Liverpool merchant.—ED.

[253] A periodical of which Mr. Henry Cole (now Sir Henry Cole, K.C.B.) was the editor. It was brought out in support of the cause of Penny Postage.—ED.

[254] _Times_, March 16, 1839.

[255] _Morning Chronicle_, May 3, 1839.

[256] “In 1839, I think it was, he [Mr. Warburton] urged upon me the adoption by the Government of the plan of penny postage which had been made known to the public by Mr. Rowland Hill. I said I thought the plan very ingenious, and likely to confer great benefits upon the public, but that it would make a temporary deficit in the revenue, which would probably require to be filled up by new taxation. Mr. Warburton said that a new tax was a great evil, and he hoped it would be avoided. No further conversation passed at that time. Unfortunately the Government adopted both parts of Mr. Warburton’s advice. The Cabinet was unanimous in favour of the ingenious and popular plan of a penny postage; but they ought to have enacted at the same time such measures as would have secured a revenue sufficient to defray the national expenditure. Failing to do this, there was for three years together a deficit, which exposed the Government to the powerful reproaches and unanswerable objections of Sir Robert Peel. Public opinion echoed those reproaches and those objections, and produced such a degree of discontent as was in itself a sufficient ground for a change of Administration.”—Extract from EARL RUSSELL’S “Recollections,” &c., p. 231.

[257] Earl Russell states in his “Recollections,” &c., that “the Cabinet was unanimous” in this decision (_vide_ p. 231).

[258] This passage is entirely omitted in “Hansard,” but is recorded partly in the “Post Circular,” No. 14, p. 59; and partly in the “Mirror of Parliament,” Vol. XXXVIII., p. 2578.

[259] The paper in question will be found among those “issued by the Mercantile Committee on Postage.” It is No. 65.

[260] In speaking of labels I recommend that they “should be printed on sheets, each containing twenty rows of twelve in a row; a row would then be sold for a shilling, and a whole sheet for £1.”

[261] The offer of prizes for suggestions noticed hereafter. See page 381.

[262] “Mirror of Parliament,” Vol. XXXVIII., p. 3298.

[263] Ibid.

[264] “Hansard,” third series, Vol. XLVIII., p. 1360.

[265] pp. 1361.

[266] “Hansard,” third series, Vol. XLVIII., p. 1365.

[267] “Hansard,” third series, Vol. XLVIII., p. 1387.

[268] “Mirror of Parliament,” Vol. XXXVIII., p. 3695.

[269] “Hansard,” Vol. XLIX., pp. 277-307.

[270] “Hansard,” Vol. XLIX., p. 494.

[271] “Mirror of Parliament,” Vol. XXXVIII., p. 4171.

[272] “Hansard,” Vol. XLIX., pp. 623-641.

[273] “Hansard,” Vol. XLIX., p. 687.

[274] “Hansard,” Vol. XLIX., p. 936.

[275] “Mirror of Parliament,” Vol. XXXVIII., p. 4206.

[276] “Hansard,” Vol. XLIX., pp. 1207-1239.

[277] “Mr. Rowland Hill was then pondering his scheme, and ascertaining the facts which he was to present with so remarkable an accuracy. His manner in those days—his slowness and hesitating speech—were not recommendatory of his doctrine to those who would not trouble themselves to discern its excellence and urgent need. If he had been prepossessing in manner, and fluent and lively in speech, it might have saved him half his difficulties, and the nation some delay; but he was so accurate, so earnest, so irrefragable in his facts, so wise and benevolent in his intentions, and so well-timed with his scheme, that success was, in my opinion, certain from the beginning; and so I used to tell some conceited and shallow members and adherents of the Whig Government, whose flippancy, haughtiness, and ignorance about a matter of such transcendent importance tried my temper exceedingly. Rowland Hill might and did bear it; but I own I could not always. Even Sydney Smith was so unlike himself on this occasion, as to talk and write of ‘this nonsense of a penny postage.’.... Lord Monteagle, with entire complacency, used to smile it down at evening parties, and lift his eyebrows at the credulity of the world which could suppose that a scheme so wild could ever be tried.... The alteration in Rowland Hill himself, since he won his tardy victory, is an interesting spectacle to those who knew him twenty years ago. He always was full of domestic tenderness and social amiability; and these qualities now shine out, and his whole mind and manners are quickened by the removal of the cold obstruction he encountered at the beginning of his career. Grateful as I feel to him as the most signal social benefactor of our time, it has been a great pleasure to me to see the happy influence of success on the man himself. I really should like to ask the surviving Whig leaders all round what they think now of ‘the nonsense of the penny postage.’”—“Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography,” Vol. I., p. 410.—ED.

[278] Mr. Gardiner was Secretary to the Commissioners of Post Office Enquiry; Mr. Ledingham was his clerk.

[279] “Report on the French Post Office,” p. 2.

[280] “Report on the French Post Office,” p. 5.

[281] “Report on the French Post Office,” p. 6.

[282] Ibid.

[283] “Report on the French Post Office,” p. 11.

[284] “Quarterly Review,” No. 128, p. 555.

[285] “Quarterly Review,” No. 128, p. 524.

[286] “Quarterly Review,” p. 531.

[287] “Quarterly Review,” p. 551.

[288] On this day, so long as his health lasted, the great postal reformer loved to gather his friends around him.—ED.

[289] This system was very unwisely abolished some years ago.—ED.

[290] “We are all putting up our letter-boxes on our hall doors with great glee, anticipating the hearing from brothers and sisters,—a line or two almost every day. The slips in the doors are to save the postmen’s time—the great point being how many letters may be delivered within a given time, the postage being paid in the price of the envelopes, or paper. So all who wish well to the plan are having slips in their doors. It is proved that poor people _do_ write, or get letters written, _wherever_ a franking privilege exists. When January comes round, do give your sympathy to all the poor pastors’, and tradesmen’s and artizans’ families, who can at last write to one another as if they were all M.P.’s. The stimulus to trade, too, will be prodigious. Rowland Hill is very quiet in the midst of his triumph, but he must be very happy. He has never been known to lose his temper, or be in any way at fault, since he first revealed his scheme.”—Extract of a letter from Harriet Martineau. “Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography,” Vol. III., p. 250.—ED.

[291] I have been told that Mr. Lines, the Birmingham drawing-master, proud of his old pupil of some thirty years ago, was bent on being the first man in his town to send a letter by the penny post. The old man waited accordingly outside the Birmingham Post Office on the night of the ninth. On the first stroke of twelve he knocked at the window, and handed in a letter, saying “A penny, I believe, is the charge?” “Yes,” said the clerk, in an angry voice, and banged the window down.—ED.

[292] See page 225.

[293] Subsequently the salary was raised.

[294] I have received from an esteemed correspondent the following cutting from the City article of one of the London Daily Papers:—

“MONEY MARKET AND CITY INTELLIGENCE.

“Friday Evening.

“Considerable diversion was created in the City to-day by the appearance of the new penny-post devices for envelopes, half-sheet letters, and bits of ‘sticking plaster,’ about an inch square, for dabbing on to letters. The surface of the latter is filled up with a bust of Her Majesty, or what is guessed to be intended for such, but which is much too vulgar of expression so to be mistaken by any of the loyal subjects who have had the good fortune to see the graceful original herself. But for this unlucky perversion of the royal features, the penny-post ‘sticking-plaster’ might appropriately have come into fashion and superseded the court sticking-plaster, so common for the concealment of trifling cutaneous cracks on the face of beauty. Thus women and men, too, might have carried sovereigns on their countenances as well as in their hearts and purses, and many a decayed beauty might have refreshed her faded charms with the renovating representation of royal youth and loveliness. It is shrewdly suspected that this untoward disfiguration of the royal person has been the studied work of ministerial malevolence and jealousy, desirous of rendering their royal benefactress, if possible, as odious as themselves. The envelopes and half-sheets have an engraved surface, extremely fantastic, and not less grotesque. In the centre, at the top, sits Britannia, throwing out her arms, as if in a tempest of fury, at four winged urchins, intended to represent post-boys, letter-carriers, or Mercuries, but who, instead of making use of their wings and flying, appear in the act of striking out or swimming, which would have been natural enough if they had been furnished with fins instead of wings. On the right of Britannia there are a brace of elephants, all backed and ready to start, when some Hindoo, Chinese, Arabic, or Turkish merchants, standing quietly by, have closed their bargains and correspondence. The elephants are symbolic of the lightness and rapidity with which Mr. Rowland Hill’s penny post is to be carried on, and perhaps, also, of the power requisite for transporting the £1,500 a-year to his quarters, which is all he obtains for strutting about the Post Office, with his hands in his pockets, and nothing to do like a fish out of water. On the left of Britannia, who looks herself very much like a termagant, there is an agglomeration of native Indians, Missionaries, Yankees, and casks of tobacco, with a sprinkling of foliage, and the rotten stem of a tree, not forgetting a little terrier dog inquisitively gliding between the legs of the mysterious conclave to see the row. Below, on the left, a couple of heads of the damsel tribe are curiously peering over a valentine just received (scene, Valentine’s Day), whilst a little girl is pressing the elders for a sight of Cupid, and the heart transfixed with a score of arrows. On the right again stands a dutiful boy, reading to his anxious mamma an account of her husband’s hapless shipwreck, who, with hands clasped, is blessing Rowland Hill for the cheap rate at which she gets the disastrous intelligence. At the bottom of all there is the word ‘Postage,’ done in small upon a large pattern of filagree work. With very great propriety the name of the artist is conspicuously placed in one corner, so that the public and posterity may know who is the worthy Oliver of the genius of a Rowland on this triumphant occasion. As may well be imagined, it is no common man, for the mighty effort has taxed the powers of the Royal Academy itself, if the engraved announcement of W. Mulready, R.A., in the corner may be credited. Considering the infinite drollery of the whole, the curious assortment of figures and faces, the harmonious _mélange_ of elephants, mandarin’s tails, Yankee beavers, naked Indians, squatted with their hind-quarters in front, Cherokee chiefs, with feathered tufts, shaking missionaries by the hand; casks of Virginia threatening the heads of young ladies devouring their love letters, and the old woman in the corner, with hands uplifted, blessing Lord Lichfield and his Rowland for the saving grace of 11_d._ out of the shilling, and valuing her absent husband’s calamity or death as nothing in comparison with such an economy—altogether, it may be said, this is a wondrous combination of pictorial genius, after which Phiz and Cruikshank must hide their diminished heads, for they can hardly be deemed worthy now of the inferior grade of associates and aspirants for academic honours. Withal the citizens are rude enough to believe that these graphic embellishments will not go down at the price of 1_s._ 3_d._ the dozen for the envelopes, and half or quarter sheets, for the size is somewhat of the mongrel sort, and of 1_s._ 1_d._ per dozen for the bits of ‘sticking plaster,’ with a head upon it which looks something like that of a girl, but nothing of a Queen. As a very tolerable profit may be made out of the odd pence thus charged over the stamp, the penny-postman calculates, no doubt, to make up the deficit in the Post Office revenue by the sale of these gimcrack pictures for babes and sucklings.”—ED.

[295] In Sir R. Hill’s Journal is the following entry;—“I fear we shall be obliged to substitute some other stamp for that designed by Mulready, which is abused and ridiculed on all sides. In departing so widely from the established ‘lion and unicorn’ nonsense, I fear that we have run counter to settled opinions and prejudices somewhat rashly. I now think it would have been wiser to have followed established custom in all the details of the measure where practicable.”—May 12th, 1840.—ED.

[296] “First Report of the Postmaster-General,” pp. 65-68.

[297] The late Professor R. Phillips, F.R.S.

[298] Now Sir Charles Pressly, K.C.B. He was then Secretary, and afterwards Chairman, of the Board of Stamps and Taxes.

[299] The extracts which I have given in Appendix I from the Annual Reports of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, show how well my brother discharged the duties of his office.

[300] See p. 346.

[301] Up to December 31st, 1879, have been printed more than twenty thousand millions of penny stamps. By the kindness of the Board of Inland Revenue, I am able to print the following statement, which I have received from the Secretary to the Board, Mr. Frederick B. Garnett—ED.:—

_Issues of Postage Labels from the 27th April, 1840, to 31st December, 1879._

1,600,276,320 Labels at ½d. 20,699,858,040 ” 1d. 42,638,160 ” 1½d. 338,540,280 ” 2d. 105,829,824 ” 2½d. 158,526,040 ” 3d. 153,815,820 ” 4d. 158,721,280 ” 6d. 4,608,720 ” 8d. 7,635,080 ” 9d. 5,963,476 ” 10d. 126,968,940 ” 1s. 6,475,820 ” 2s. 5,174,262 ” 5s. 6,014 ” 10s. 6,014 ” £1.

[302] Among other matters, attempts were made at reduction of rates in reference to correspondence with France; though, for a time, without success. “A letter has been received from Thiers—he appears willing to meet our views, but does not accept the invitation to negotiate the matter in London. Wishes to settle it with Lord Granville, our ambassador, who, not understanding the matter, very properly objects to undertaking the negotiation. Mr. Baring says he has observed that, if any course is pressed on the French Government, they immediately suspect some sinister motive, and that the only way to bring them to is to turn our backs upon them.... We made them a very good offer which they ought to have accepted.”—Sir R. Hill’s Journal, June 24th, 1840.—ED.

[303] “First Report of the Postmaster-General,” p. 66.

[304] “First Report of the Postmaster-General,” p. 68.

[305] See “Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 14.

[306] Finance Account for 1840.

[307] “Fifteenth Report of the Postmaster-General,” p. 15.

[308] “Report of the Select Committee on Postage, 1843,” p. 92.

[309] About seventeen years later Sir R. Hill, writing to his wife, says:—“T—— has just received a letter from Lord Canning, containing a very friendly message to myself—part of which informs me that ‘a pillar letter-box has just been set up in the bazaar of Allahabad,’ the place at which Lord Canning now is.”—ED.

[310] The hydrographer to the Navy.

[311] The first Reform Act.

[312] See page 451.

[313] “_April 4th, 1854._—The Postmaster-General showed me a letter from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, marked ‘secret,’ stating that additional taxes will be required on account of the war, and asking his opinion as to the probable effect on the Post Office revenue of increasing the inland rate to twopence.... I am to prepare an estimate, but to consider the whole matter as most strictly secret. I expressed great regret, in which Lord Canning concurs, that such a project should be entertained, adding, perhaps a little hastily, that ‘I could not assist in giving effect to the measure.’ It is very disappointing that this new difficulty should arise just as I am about to overcome all the old ones.”—Sir R. Hill’s Journal.—ED.

[314] See page 433.

[315] “Appendix to the Report of the Committee on Postage (1843),” p. 56.

[316] See page 446.

[317] “Report of the Committee on Postage (1843),” Appendix, p. 7.

[318] “Report of the Committee on Postage (1843),” Appendix, p. 11.

[319] “Report of the Committee on Postage (1843),” Appendix, p. 11.

[320] “Report of the Committee on Postage (1843),” p. 28.

[321] “Hansard,” Vol. LXIV., p. 321.

[322] “Tenth Report of the Postmaster-General,” pp. 37, 38; “Eleventh Report of the Postmaster-General,” pp. 16, 17; “Twelfth Report of the Postmaster-General,” pp. 34, 35.

[323] “Report of the Committee on Postage (1843),” Appendix, p. 11.

[324] “Report of the Committee on Postage (1843),” p. 28.

[325] “Report of the Committee on Postage (1843),” p. 29.

[326] Between the dates of these letters, occur the following entries in Sir R. Hill’s Journal:—

“April 9th.—Left the office early and went to Tottenham, in consequence of the approaching dissolution of my dear mother—she died very soon after I reached the house. Thank God without pain.

“April 15th.—Did not go to the office. Attended my dear mother’s funeral.”—ED.

[327] “Report of the Committee on Postage (1843),” p. 30.

[328] “Report of the Committee on Postage (1843),” p. 31.

[329] Mr. Goulburn’s letter was as follows:—

Downing Street, July 11th, 1842.

“DEAR SIR,—By the letter which my predecessor, Mr. Baring, addressed to you previous to his retirement from office, he intimated to you his intention of continuing your employment by the Government, which was originally limited to two years, for another year, ending the 14th September next. I had much pleasure in recommending to the Treasury to give effect in this respect to Mr. Baring’s intentions; but feeling that the time is arrived at which your further assistance may safely be dispensed with, I take the opportunity of apprising you that I do not consider it advisable to make any further extension of the period of your engagement beyond the date assigned to it by the Lords of the Treasury.

“In making this communication, I gladly avail myself of the opportunity of expressing my sense of the satisfactory manner in which, during my tenure of office, you have discharged the several duties which have been from time to time committed to you.

“I have the honour to be, dear Sir,

“Yours ever most faithfully,

“HENRY GOULBURN.”—ED.

[330] Parliamentary Return, 1843, No. 119, p. 5.

[331] Parliamentary Return, 1843, No. 119, p. 8.

[332] Parliamentary Return, 1843, No. 119, p. 10.

[333] The word “important” occurs in the original MS. letter, though, no doubt by accidental misprint, it is omitted in the official copy.

[334] Parliamentary Return, 1843, No. 119, p. 11.

[335] Better known as Viscount Althorp.—[ED.]

[336] See page 485.

[337] In a note on this passage, written in the year 1874, Sir R. Hill thus speaks of Sir James Stephen:—

“It had long been the practice with the _Liberal_ party to speak of Mr. Stephen, or, as some of them called him, King Stephen, in very disparaging terms, representing him as the chief obstacle to colonial reform; and I must confess that it was under this prejudice that I began my intercourse with him. Soon, however, I saw reason to doubt the soundness of such views—certainly they received no confirmation whatever in his treatment of South Australia. He invariably received me and my suggestions—some of which departed widely from ordinary routine—in a friendly spirit, and the result of several years of intimate official communication with him, was that I formed a very high estimate of his character.”—ED.

[338] The following entry is in Sir R. Hill’s Journal, under the date of March 11th, of this year:—

“Goulburn refuses to give any letters, except those on List No. 97, which excludes all those urging progress in the adoption of my plan, and the final letter to Peel. He considers these ‘unnecessary.’ The shabbiness of this conduct is only equalled by its folly. I shall, of course, publish the whole correspondence, distinguishing the letters which are given from those which are withheld.”

[339] See p. 470.

[340] _Vide_ Return, 1843, No. 119.

[341] “Report of the Committee on Postage (1843),” p. 54.

[342] Their names are as follows:—George Moffatt, William Ellis, James Pattison, L. P. Wilson, John Dillon, John Travers, J. H. Gledstanes, W. A. Wilkinson, all from the first warm supporters of my plan.

[343] “Report of the Committee on Postage” (1843), p. 43.

[344] See _ante_, pp. 433 and 450.

[345] “Hansard,” Vol. LXX., pp. 399-445.

[346] “Hansard,” Vol. LXX., p. 420.

[347] “Hansard,” Vol. LXX., pp. 399, 400.

[348] See p. 327.

[349] The sole ground of this statement was that Lord Lowther had recommended a penny rate for Prices Current.

[350] This assertion was obviously made in reliance on the “Fallacious Return.” So gross an error in a finance minister showed an ignorance hardly credible.

[351] “Hansard,” Vol. LXX., pp. 420-434.

[352] “Hansard,” Vol. LXX., p. 435.

[353] “Hansard,” Vol. LXX., p. 435.

[354] “Hansard,” Vol. LXX., pp. 435, 436.

[355] “Hansard,” Vol. LXX., p. 437.

[356] “Hansard,” Vol. LXX., p. 438.

[357] “Hansard,” Vol. LXX., p. 439.

[358] “Hansard,” Vol. LXX., pp. 439, 440.

[359] Lord Lowther voted for a uniform rate, but against any reduction below twopence.

[360] “Hansard,” Vol. LXX., pp. 440, 441.

[361] “Hansard,” Vol. LXX., p. 442.

[362] “Hansard,” Vol. LXX., p. 445.

[363] I give the following draft, which did not, however, take full shape as a letter, as a record of my feelings during the Parliamentary Inquiry of 1843, and of the facts which produced them:—

“Orme Square, Bayswater, “August 12th, 1843.

“SIR,—The scenes of yesterday, and your part in them, will form my justification for the unusual course which I am taking.

“The open display of your hostility would not alone have moved me to it; but, unhappily, that hostility has taken a form which, if persisted in, will most effectually suppress the greater part of my evidence in reply. You will be aware that I refer not merely to the perpetual interruptions which I receive, but the contradiction of my testimony, of which those interruptions so frequently consisted.

“Sir, I must use the freedom of reminding you of the positions in which we respectively stand. I have appealed to Parliament against the Treasury Board of which you are an active member. This appeal is now trying before a Committee of which you are chairman. You are, therefore, already a party and a judge. If you desire to add to these characters that of witness, I have no power to object; and, if I had the power, I should be far from wishing to exercise it.

“When you present yourself as a witness your statements will be sifted by cross-examination, and I should evince a distrust of my own evidence if I could wish to throw any obstacle in the way of such a proceeding. But I must object—most earnestly object—to your giving evidence while in the act of examining me. Such a course is monstrous in itself, and can only lead to a repetition of personal altercation, to which, although it has been forced upon me, I cannot revert without a deep sense of humiliation. Such courses are foreign to my habits and most repugnant to my feelings.

“Be pleased, Sir, to recollect that the result of this investigation is of vital importance to the public and to myself, and that I am contending single-handed against the whole force of Government. If you have the slightest confidence in the justice of your cause, you will not deny me the full benefit of the very brief period which is allotted to me for my evidence in reply to the numberless misstatements (as I maintain them to be) which I anxiously desire to answer. Depend upon it, I have every motive to be as short as I can be with justice to myself. The treatment which I have received will make the termination of this inquiry a most welcome relief.

“If, however, it should still be your pleasure to subject me to the annoyances which I have endured, I must beg leave to state that, after much thought, I have come to this resolution: I will answer any question, however insulting, and will reply to any statement, whatever imputation it may convey, provided the question and statement, together with its answer, are permitted to make part of the evidence on the short-hand writer’s notes. Let the House of Commons see the _animus_ which prompts the treatment of which I complain, and I shall not despair of redress sooner or later; but I shall steadfastly decline answering whenever the short-hand writer is ordered to desist from recording. I know of no right which any member has to subject me to an examination which is to be kept back from the House. I regret I did not act on this principle from the first. Probably the knowledge that an offensive examination would be recorded would have been quite sufficient to prevent its being made.

“R. H.

“Sir George Clerk, Bart., M.P., &c., &c., &c.”

[364] The following extract from a letter from my father, dated “Hazelwood, Birmingham, October 2nd, 1832,” shows at once his interest in Astronomy, and his practical knowledge of the subject:—

“MY DEAR SON,—You, like myself, will probably be asked questions about the comet now talked of as visible. I have just found an account of its movements in the Supplement of the “Nautical Almanac” for this year, page 43rd. I find on calculation that it will be to-night on one side, and to-morrow night on the other side, of a star marked on my globe θ Geminorum. I do not find the star in any of my catalogues—no doubt it is in Wilkinson’s, if I could find time to consult it at the New Library. Its right ascension is at present about 6 hours 39 minutes. Its declination about 30° N. It will be found betwixt the Twins and Capella, much nearer to the Twins. The comet is moving forward at about 7 minutes of right ascension per day, and approaching the ecliptic and the equator 27´ of declination daily. These movements will shortly bring it betwixt the Twins, namely, about the 10th October, at about ¼ of the space from Castor and ¾ from Pollux. I cannot advise dependence on these calculations as exact. I have corrected them by allowing for the errors of prediction as found by some observations quoted from the _Atlas_ newspaper of 30th instant, and have done my best. The course points towards Regulus, which will be found within about 1½° on the 1st November, the comet on the south.

“By these indications, and the help of your telescope, I hope you may find it out.

* * * * *

“P.S.—Will you oblige me by procuring me the means of studying the course of the present comet. I find it called Biela’s comet in the _Atlas_—the comet of 6·7 years in the ‘Nautical Almanac.’ I mean of knowing what is known by others of its history.”

[365] I am informed by Sir G. B. Airy, the Astronomer-Royal, that “M. Biot’s expedition was not to measure an arc of meridian, but to ascertain the force of gravity by vibrations of a pendulum, a matter connected physically with the other.”—ED.

[366] This refers to the Vernier pendulum, spoken of at length in the “Prefatory Memoir.”

[367] “History of England.” Vol. V., p. 96.

[368] “Whiteladies.” Vol. II., p. 37.

[369] Vol. I., p. 133. First Edition.

[370] Vol. II. p. 41. First Edition.

[371] Report of the thirty-fifth meeting of the British Association, p. 52.

[372] Sir John Herschel, by very careful experiments, found that, when the temperature of the air is 62° of Fahrenheit, the rate of progress is 1125 per second. This is a mile in 4·7 seconds.

[373] The usual mode of dating astronomical papers. See the Astronomer Royal’s reply.

[374] June, 1874.

[375] “Monthly Notices,” Vol. XXVI., p. 157.

[376] “Monthly Notices,” Vol. XXVIII., p. 124.

[377] This might involve the necessity of calculating or remembering the cubes of all numbers up to 21 inclusive; but such necessity would have presented no difficulty to practised calculators like Zerah Colbourn or my class.

[378] This equality is not exact, but the difference is immaterial.

[379] No. 307, Session 1838.

[380] No. 184, Session 1839.

[381] The increase has been from £84,000 to £116,000 per annum.—(Vide _First Report on Postage_, p. 472).

[382] _Third Report, Abstract_, p. 24.