Rural distribution was still delayed, or was only partially and unsatisfactorily carried out. Some places of 200 or 300 inhabitants were allowed a post office, while other centres peopled by 2,000 or 3,000 went without that boon. This plan of rural distribution, whose object was to provide post offices in 400 registrars' districts which were without anything of the sort, was, after long waiting, conceded by the Treasury before the break-up of the Melbourne Ministry; and my father, unused till latterly to strenuous modes of official evasion, believed the measure safe. He forgot to take into account the Post Office's power of passive resistance; and several months were yet to elapse ere he discovered that Mr Baring's successor had suspended his predecessor's minute; nor was its real author ever able to obtain further information concerning it. Nor was this all. Letters written by Rowland Hill to the new Chancellor of the Exchequer on the subject of registration and other reforms remained unnoticed, as did also a request to be allowed to proceed with one or two more out of a list of measures which stood in need of adoption. Later, my father wrote urging that other parts of his reform should be undertaken, drawing attention to the work which had already been successfully achieved; and so forth. A brief acknowledgment giving no answer to anything mentioned in his letter was the only outcome. At intervals of two months between the sending of each letter, he twice wrote again, but of neither missive was any notice taken. Among other projects it had been decided that Rowland Hill should go to Newcastle-on-Tyne to arrange about a day mail to that town; and the necessary leave of absence was duly granted. He was also desirous of visiting some of the country post offices; but, being anxious to avoid possible breach of rule, he wrote to Colonel Maberly on the subject. The letter was referred to the Postmaster-General, and, after him, to the Chancellor of the Exchequer: the result being that the sanction to any portion of the journey was withdrawn. One of the worst instances of the official “veiled hostility” to reform and reformer appeared in a document which my father—who might easily have given it a harsher name—always called the “fallacious return,” published in 1843. In this the Post Office accounts were so manipulated as to make it seem that the Department was being worked at an annual loss of £12,000 or more. The unfriendly powers had all along prophesied that the reform could not pay; and now, indeed, they had a fine opportunity of “assisting in the fulfilment of their own predictions.”