At that time it was contemplated by the authorities to compel two attendances on that day as on other days of the week, and to abolish entirely for postal servants in London the distinction between the day of rest and ordinary working days. This was the origin of that question of compulsory Sunday labour in the Post-Office, which was to continue for thirty years and more as one of the prevailing causes of dissatisfaction to thousands of men. On the 8th October 1849 a great mass meeting was called at Exeter Hall to protest as strongly as possible against this desecration of Sunday. The meeting was convened in the interests of postal servants themselves as much as in furtherance of the Sabbatarian principle, and there is little doubt that the men of the Post-Office who were the principal objectors to the new regulation, were behind the scenes aiding and abetting in the success of the movement. A writer in the _Patriot_ newspaper of that year, and one evidently familiar with the Post-Office machinery, drew a vivid picture of the possibilities of Sunday labour in the Post-Office. This article in the _Patriot_, probably from the pen of the first avowed discontented postal servant, did not a little to further the memorial for the cessation of the practice, which was afterwards drawn up by the Sunday-School Union, and forwarded to the Lords of the Treasury. The action of the authorities was denounced as sacrilegious, arbitrary, and tyrannical, by a number of clergymen and others speaking for the aggrieved men, while Rowland Hill, the postal reformer, the “Father of the Penny Post,” came in for a large share of hostile criticism, his name being repeatedly hissed at the Exeter Hall meeting. If the audience hissed Rowland Hill, they as loudly cheered the postal servants on whom this new official imposition was to be put, directly it became known that, to their honour, they had respectfully but firmly declined to submit, and that when the sheets for their signature went round the large establishment only two men could be got to sign away their birthright for the little extra pay. The name of the Queen was invoked to prevent this iniquitous violation of the “Pearl of Days.”