If it be objected that every grievance complained of—the conditions of service, insufficiency of pay prospects and promotion, deprivation of civil liberty and the right of combination reduced to a meaningless farce—have had and still have their counterparts in every other department of the State, that objection in itself scarcely lessens the justification for the action taken by the agitators. The reasonableness or otherwise of their methods is another matter which it is proposed to deal with later on as this narrative unfolds itself. If it be urged that the policy of attempting to force concessions from a Government department has been a more or less selfish and sordid one, it must be conceded also that principle has always entered largely into it. That their sole consideration was not getting the greatest material benefit at little cost, and that it was not with them entirely a question of more bread and butter and less work, is pretty well proved by the risks which postal agitators have run and the sacrifices they have cheerfully made. It has never been an easy matter for a man to demand his just dues in a Government office. The attitude of mind towards the subordinate staffs in the Post-Office has not essentially altered since the days when they publicly hanged men for letter-stealing. That was only a little more than sixty years ago, and if the asperities of administration have been somewhat softened of late years, it is only through the force of public opinion, and because the men have learnt lessons of appeal which render it almost impossible for officialdom to persist in methods of repression for any length of time. It is because the liberty of the working-classes has been so enlarged that they can no longer withhold a modicum of it from postal servants. But there is not wanting the evidence to show that something of the same spirit which, in the olden times, sent working-men to the hulks and penal servitude for attempting to band themselves and their mates together for the purpose of safeguarding their few interests from a greedy and rapacious employer was alive still until quite recently, even if it has altogether died out to-day. The postal servant seeking to better his position or daring to complain still labours under far greater disadvantages than the mechanic or the handicraftsman. A postman, a sorting-clerk, or a letter-sorter, if he be dismissed from his employment cannot pick up his bag of tools and offer himself to the next workshop, for the simple reason that he has no tools, and his trade is one of such a peculiar nature that it is wanted nowhere outside the Post-Office. Nor is a telegraphist much better off in that respect. Dismissal from the service has generally meant very much more to the postal official than to the ordinary artisan. He not only lost his immediate source of livelihood but his future prospects, his hopes of a pension, towards which he had contributed, his character and everything