These frequently recurring instances of thwarting, hindering, and misrepresentation showed plainly that the working of the postal reform should not have been entrusted to men whose official reputation was pledged not to its success but to its failure; and that the “shunting” of its author on to a Department other than that in which if endowed with due authority he might have exercised some control, was, to put the case mildly, a great mistake. One ray of comfort came to him in the midst of his troubles. In the hard times which prevailed in the early 'forties diminution of revenue was far from being peculiar to the Post Office. The country was undergoing one of the heaviest of those periodically recurrent waves of depression which lessen the product of all taxes (or the ability to pay them) when, in April 1843, my father was able to write in his diary that the Post Office “revenue accounts show an increase of £90,000 on the year.... The Post Office is the only Department which does not show a deficiency on the quarter.”[143] In July 1842, the Chancellor of the Exchequer wrote to Rowland Hill to remind him that his three years' engagement at the Treasury would terminate in the ensuing September, and adding that he did not consider it advisable to make any further extension of the period of engagement beyond the date assigned to it. Dreading lest, when the official doors should close behind him, his cherished reform should be wrecked outright, its author offered to work for a time without salary. The offer was refused, and the intended dismissal was announced in Parliament. The news was received with surprise and indignation there and elsewhere. The Liberal Press was unanimous in condemnation of the Government's conduct, and some of the papers on their own side, though naturally cautious of tone, were of opinion that Rowland Hill had been harshly used. The Ministers themselves were probably of divided mind; and my father, when commenting upon a letter which the Prime Minister about this time addressed to him, says: “I cannot but think that, as he wrote, he must have felt some little of that painful feeling which unquestionably pressed hard upon him in more than one important passage of his political career.”[144] At the last interview the postal reformer had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Goulburn's courteous manner also went “far to confirm the impression that he feels he is acting unjustly and under compulsion.”[145]