THE PROVINCIAL SORTING CLERKS—THEIR POSITION—THE RIDLEY COMMISSION, AND EVIDENCE PREPARED—THE FORMATION OF AN ORGANISATION—THE RIGHT OF PUBLIC MEETING. Through a long course of years the postmen, the letter-sorters, and the telegraphists had cultivated each their fertile patch of ground, and produced a plentiful crop of the thistles of discontent. But there was one other widely-distributed and important section of the postal community who, while feeling most of the grievances of which the others complained, yet took no combined action. While the letter-carriers and the telegraphists especially assumed a more or less aggressive attitude in the maintenance and furtherance of their rights and privileges in the service, the provincial postal clerks, as important a body as either of these, remained passive till the year 1886. Through the whole of the stormy and exciting periods, the strike of the telegraphists in 1870, the upheaval of the postmen and sorters two or three years later, and the recurrence of fierce agitation among all other postal bodies during the few years following, the postal clerks, undisturbed, pursued the even tenor of their way. That they had grievances goes without saying; but there were influences that held them in check; and they did not realise the grievances they suffered from so acutely as a body that they could be drawn easily into the vortex of agitation. They agitated more or less for the removal of restrictions and the redress of local grievances, but their efforts were too tentative and sporadic in their character to be of permanent value or make any lasting impression. It was not till 1886 that an awakening was to come. The postal clerks as a collective body were content to sow their wild oats on the Ridley Commission of 1886-87. That commission, on which had been centred the hopes of many thousands of men in the postal service, proved abortive. In spite of the distinct promise held out and express invitations made to prepare and tender evidence before it, the Ridley Commission on Civil Establishments dashed every hope to the ground by prematurely disbanding. The effect of this on other postal bodies has already been seen. The abortive Ridley Commission has had much to answer for, and became in itself the most fruitful source of that discontent it was originally intended to allay. When it became evident that it would not after all reach the doors of the Post-Office, a groan of disappointment went up from the overworked and underpaid multitudinous army of malcontents which made up the rank and file of the postal service; and that groan of disappointment presently deepened into cries of execration at what seemed so like a wilful betrayal. That deep disappointment was shared by the postal clerks everywhere throughout the kingdom; and in common with other bodies similarly duped, they came to recognise that the very cause of their disappointment might be turned to advantage.