The Chancellor of the Exchequer had the plan of a uniform rate of postage embodied in a bill, which passed in the session of 1839. This act, approved by a majority of one hundred and two members, conferred temporarily the necessary power on the lords of the treasury. On the 12th of November, 1839, their lordships issued a minute reducing the postage of all inland letters to the uniform rate of 4_d._ The country was greatly dissatisfied. It required Mr. Hill’s plan; and the fourpenny rate was in no respect his. The treasury lords were at length convinced they had made a mistake, and on the 10th of January, 1840, another minute was issued, ordering the adoption of a uniform penny rate. On the 10th of August the treasury had its minute confirmed by the statute 3 & 4 Vict. c. 96. A treasury appointment was given to Mr. Hill, to enable him to assist in carrying out the penny postage. He only, however, held the appointment for about two years; for when the conservative party came into power the originator of the penny postage lost his situation. Mr. Hill entreated to be allowed to remain at any sacrifice to himself, but Sir R. Peel was obdurate. Mr. Hill’s popularity increased with his dismissal. A public subscription was opened for him throughout the country, as an expression of national gratitude, which amounted to over £13,000. On the restoration of the whigs to power, in 1846, he was placed in St. Martin’s-le-Grand as secretary to the postmaster-general. In 1854, on Colonel Maberly’s removal to the audit-office, he was named secretary to the post-office under the late Lord Canning,—the highest appointment in the department. In 1860 the secretary of the post-office was made a Knight Commander of the Bath. During the autumn of 1863 his health began to fail him, and in March of the present year (1865) he resigned his situation. The executive government showed a just and liberal sense of Sir Rowland Hill’s merits. By a treasury minute of the 11th of March, 1864, advantage was taken by the government of the special clause in the Superannuation Act relating to extraordinary services, to grant him a pension of three times the usual retiring allowance. This was not merely a just but a generous act; and the language in which the resolution was couched was not official, nor solemnly and decorously dull, as is usual on such occasions, but encomiastic in the highest degree. Sir Rowland Hill was pronounced not merely a meritorious public servant, but a “benefactor of his race.” We do not say this eulogistic epithet was not deserved, for we think it was well merited; but we may be permitted to remark that Sir Rowland Hill has lived in a felicitous time, thus promptly to find his merits officially recognized on retiring from his labors.