Heartily as Mr Baring approved of the new system, he still distrusted the principle of prepayment. In this opinion he was, as we have seen, not singular. By many people it was still pronounced “un-English” to prepay letters. But my father was so confident of the wisdom of the step that Mr Baring ultimately gave way, stipulating only that the responsibility should rest, not on the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but on the author of the reform. The condition was unhesitatingly accepted. To ensure use of the stamps, Mr Baring, later, proposed that it should be made illegal to prepay postage other than by their means; but Rowland Hill, hating compulsion, and feeling confident of their ultimate acceptability, maintained that it would be better if at first the two modes of payment, money and stamps, contended for public favour on equal terms, and succeeded in convincing Mr Baring of the soundness of that view. The question of the stamps was therefore one of the first to require my father's attention on his return from Paris; and he found much to occupy him in dealing with the many suggestions contained in the letters sent in by the public, and in the vast number of designs accompanying them. As the succeeding chapter will show, the subject, in one form or another, took up much of his time for a little over twelve months. Early in December, at his suggestion, the tentative postal rate of 1d. for London, and 4d. for the rest of the kingdom was introduced, all tiresome extras such as the penny on each letter for using the Menai and Conway bridges, the halfpenny for crossing the Scottish border, etc., being abolished. This experiment was made to allow the postal staff to become familiarised with the new system, as a vast increase of letters, necessarily productive of some temporary confusion, was looked for on the advent of the uniform penny rate. Under the old system 4d. had been the lowest charge beyond the radius of the “twopenny post”; therefore, even the preliminary reduction was a relief. But although three years earlier a lowering of the existing rates to a minimum of 6d. or 8d. would have been eagerly welcomed, the public were now looking forward to yet lower charges; and the prospect of paying 4d. was viewed with great dissatisfaction. People began to suspect that the concession would go no further, that the Government intended to “cheat the public,” and my father was accused of having “betrayed his own cause.” Thus easily is a scare manufactured.