In response to his solicitations, the Lords of the Treasury accepted his proposals for a revised scale of pay for telegraphists and “sorting clerks,” and on the 13th of June 1881 the scheme was issued. It dealt with the principal complaints from the two branches of the service, the telegraphic and the postal; and referred specifically to inadequacy of pay, arising from stagnation of promotion, the excessive amount of overtime, the small rate of pay allowed for it, and the severity of night duty; the insufficiency of yearly holiday; and a readjustment of pay for work performed on Christmas Day and Good Friday. The scheme apparently intended was to apply to telegraphists and sorters pretty equally, and altogether, if nothing more can be said of it, it was a bold attempt, and the bolder because it was the first attempt of the kind, to bring order out of chaos, to unite in some manner the tangled and disconnected threads of a complex and perplexing problem. It was practically the first attempt to solve a problem teeming with petty jealousies and sectional discontents; a patient attempt to skilfully untie the Gordian knot, which Lord John Manners had only rudely hacked at with the knife of official despotism. It was an honest attempt to fulfil his obligations to a distressed and justly-discontented service with which years before taking office he had professed a sympathy. With him it was the accomplishment of a duty; and it was as such that he laid his proposals before the Lords of the Treasury. It was a forward step in the right direction which ought to have been taken long before it was. Instead of attempting to suppress discontent in the same fashion as his predecessor, he gave to postal servants their first charter of liberty. It was not complete; it was not made to fit the full demands of the case perhaps; few first charters are; but without it, further extensions of postal liberty would scarcely have been possible. If it was only a gleam of light in the darkness, and the beginning of a process of development, where only stagnation had prevailed, it was something; and honour was due to its author for his rare courage.