This grievance of Sunday duty, however, was only one among a long catalogue, which had lengthened still with the progress of time. The system of promotion created a feeling of irritation and discontent throughout their ranks, though this was by no means a grievance peculiar to them. As with other branches of the service also, the gravest discontent prevailed among them in regard to the scales of pay, but as aggravating this there was the unequal system of classification, whereby a clerk in one office might be, and very often was, placed at a disadvantage in respect to pay and promotion, as compared with another at a similar office. The wages of a second-class sorting or postal clerk were 22s. 8d. a week; but in many instances their work involved the very highest responsibilities, including the care and despatch of money-orders, stamps, registered correspondence, besides payment of pensions, Savings-Bank accounts, and similar duties. Superior in point of grade and responsibilities, they were yet, in monetary respects, inferior to postmen. Not only this anomaly, but junior clerks having, as was often the case, to perform the duties of others above them in grade, had no allowance of any description for so acting; and thus it frequently happened that juniors were constantly kept, on the shallowest pretext, on more responsible duties than their poor salaries would justify. At this time it was the general practice to deduct one-half of salary when away on sick-leave; and this was regarded as a distinct hardship, as in no other section of the service, so far as was known, was so large a proportion of salary forfeited through enforced absence from causes of illness. They very justly claimed that a deduction of one-third only would more adequately meet the case of unavoidable sickness. Another cause of annoyance to them was the extremely slow rate of promotion, ten and twenty years being a fair average of the period of waiting for dead men’s shoes. The analogous question of superannuation affected them very keenly. The Playfair Commission of a few years before had recommended that when a man had given thirty consecutive years of service and wished to retire, ten years might be added to his time in calculating the allowance due to him, and that he should be allowed to resign without either being sixty years of age or wholly incapable from infirmity. But among the sorting or postal clerks there had occurred many cases of infirm men being harshly treated in this respect, and not allowed to retire either through passing the age limit of sixty years of age, or being broken down in health. They were in a position to allege that men had been compelled to attend to their duties when in truth they were physically incapable of properly attending to them. Another sore point with the postal clerks was that a very large proportion of them were unestablished, though they were compelled to perform all the duties of