itself his Grace would have found it difficult to take it into favourable consideration. In the second annual report of the Postmaster-General the “misconduct” of the agitators was severely animadverted on, but his Grace in conclusion expressed his willingness to make allowance for “misconduct arising out of excited feeling,” and desired to take as lenient a course as was consistent with due regard to the discipline of the office. He therefore satisfied himself with reminding those who had shared in these “objectionable proceedings” that henceforth no annual increment would be granted without a certificate of continued good character from their superiors. Having regard to the circumstances and the times, perhaps they had some cause for congratulation that their offence had been passed over so lightly. Certainly it must be said that the Postmaster-General of 1856 showed an example in lenity which a successor of twenty years after would have done well to copy, and which would have shown him in more consistent accord with the growing and expanding spirit of reform. Undoubtedly there was ample justification for the discontent which centred in the recent memorial from the letter-carriers. The conditions of the service for them and the lower ranks of postal operatives especially were perhaps not what they should have been, a recent slight improvement notwithstanding. But they were better off than they were to be a year or two later. Things were bad in the Post-Office; but if the plain truth be told, probably the position of the letter-carriers rather favourably compared with the lot of those outside, whose occupation and calling bore the nearest analogy to theirs. For, though the department had committed itself to a policy of rigid economy and profit-making, and had definitely assumed a position of subserviency to the Treasury, it had not yet fully entered on that of cheese-paring parsimony at the expense of its humblest workers which was later on to so characterise it the more as it became wealthier and mightier in its operations and its ambitions. Certainly, it had assumed to think its servants well paid on a starvation pittance, but presumably it still felt some little compunction for their bodily comfort. And this was something in those days when labour had few rights and no privileges. With a curious inconsistency, while it kept the letter-carriers on a wage too low to enable them to live decently, and deprived them of a means to add a shilling or two to their incomes, it actually expressed a philanthropic concern about the manner their poor pay and prospects compelled them to house themselves. The dwellings of the letter-carriers for some time became the object of the authorities’ benevolent attention; apparently on the assumption that a slave-owner may consistently pose as a good, kind master, it at least pretended to take a paternal interest in the domestic welfare of these humble public servants still complaining of too little pay.