Thus before the passing of the year 1846 he was able to comment yet further in his diary on the curious parallel between his own treatment and that of Dockwra and Palmer. “Both these remarkable men,” he wrote, “saw their plans adopted, were themselves engaged to work them out, and subsequently, on the complaint of the Post Office, were turned adrift by the Treasury.” We “were all alike in the fact of dismissal.... I alone was so far favoured as to be recalled to aid in the completion of my plan.”[176] At the time when Dockwra, the most hardly used of all, was driven from office a ruined man, and with the further aggravation of responsibility for the costs of a trial which had been decided unjustly against him, the “merry monarch's” numerous progeny were being lavishly provided for out of the national purse. The contrast between their treatment and that of the man who had been one of the greatest benefactors to his country renders his case doubly hard. In an interview which Mr Warburton had with the Postmaster-General preparatory to Rowland Hill's appointment, the Member for Bridport pointed to the fact that his friend was now fifty-one years of age, and that it would be most unfair to call on him to throw up his present assured position only to run risk of being presently “shelved”; and further urged the desirability of creating for him the post of Adviser to the Post Office, in order that his time should not be wasted in mere routine duty. At the same time, Mr Warburton stipulated that Rowland Hill should not be made subordinate to the inimical permanent head of the Office. Had Mr Warburton's advice been followed, it would have been well for the incompleted plan, the reformer, and the public service. Rowland Hill himself suggested, by way of official designation, the revival of Palmer's old title of Surveyor-General to the Post Office; but the proposal was not received with favour. Ultimately he was given the post of Secretary to the Postmaster-General, a title especially created for him, which lapsed altogether when at last he succeeded to Colonel Maberly's vacated chair. The new office was of inferior rank and of smaller salary than his rival's; and, as a natural consequence, the old hindrances and thwartings were revived, and minor reforms were frequently set aside or made to wait for several years longer. Happily, it was now too late for the penny post itself to be swept away; the country would not have allowed it; and in this, the seventh year of its establishment, its author was glad to record that the number of letters delivered within 12 miles of St Martin's-le-Grand was already equal to that delivered under the old system throughout the whole United Kingdom.