That the spirit of discontent in the Post-Office manifested itself so far back as over half a century ago, will probably somewhat surprise most people outside the postal service itself. Possibly even farther back than that, some traces of discontent and effort at agitation might be found; but in those obscure days, however the working conditions of the service may have justified it, all such effort must have begun and ended with a few individual insubordinates, whose names are buried in oblivion and the official records. But it has to be remembered that in the earlier days of the Post-Office the very conditions under which the members of the working staff were introduced into the service almost precluded the possibility of organisation for the redress of grievances. Indeed, it may be well understood that in the pastoral days of the good old times—when life went slower, and when there was an absence of that feverish rush and hurry so characteristic of the present everywhere, and of the Post-Office in particular—postal officials were the happy inhabitants of a sort of Sleepy Hollow. In a word, probably there was little discontent in the earlier days, owing to the system of appointment by patronage. At least, there could have been very little open and avowed discontent, and much less could it have been organised. As a survival of the system in vogue in the old twopenny-post days, the greater part of the working staff—that is to say, those subordinates who afterwards came to be described as the manipulative part of the machinery, were for many years after the introduction of the penny post recruited from those in whose behalf some influence had been exercised or invoked. Many were the sons of old servants of the aristocracy, others the sons or relatives of the dependants of M.P.’s, of Justices of the Peace, of lawyers, and public men more or less eminent. Every notability who could exercise any influence with the postal authorities, or with those who were _en rapport_ with the powers that were, had their nominees. It was then next to impossible for a mere outsider, whatever his merits, to obtain employment under the Postmaster-General without this golden talisman. This system, so general in the earlier days, has been adverted to only in order to show one reason for there being so little discontent openly manifested, and to explain why agitation did not assume an organised form till later in the century. For however slow may have been the times, doubtless the conditions of the postal service were not even then so Arcadian as to stifle entirely the feeling of discontent in some. But the system of nomination by influence and patronage, and what in these days might be called by the uglier name of nepotism, was better calculated to foster a feeling of dependence in the majority, and one of grateful loyalty in many. This, too, it has been already pointed out, was in the days when the principles of trades unionism were little