Investigation of the Packet Service accounts showed how abundant was the room for diminution of cost. The annual charge to the Home Government for conveying the mails to and from Honduras was, as a consequence, readily cut down from £8,000 to £2,000, and eventually to £1,500. There had always been a heavy loss on the foreign and colonial service. That to the Cape of Good Hope and Natal was reduced in six years from £28,000 to £5,400 per annum. Much of the merit of this diminution of cost, as regards the Packet Service, was always attributed by my father to his youngest brother Frederic; and while that department remained under the latter's control the large annual loss was reduced by more than £200,000—one-half the sum—by the cutting down of expenditure, the other half by increased yield from the correspondence. The cost to the British taxpayer was further lightened by calling upon the colonists, who had hitherto been exempt from all such charges, henceforth to bear their fair share of the expense. Thus both punctuality and economy were insisted upon. About 1857 a persistent demand arose for a mail service to Australia by the Panama route, the Press vigorously taking up the agitation, and the Government being accused of “red tapeism” because they did not move in the matter, or not until the outcry grew so loud that it was deemed expedient to apply to the shipping agencies for tenders. Being one day at the Athenæum Club, Rowland Hill met a friend, a man of superior education and varied knowledge, who had long held an important post in the Far East, almost on the shores of the Pacific. “Why,” asked this friend, “do you not establish an Australian mail by the Panama route?” “Why should we?” was the counter-question. “Because it is the shortest,” replied the friend. At once Rowland Hill proposed an adjournment to the drawing-room, where stood a large globe; the test of measurement was applied, and thereupon was demonstrated the fallacy of a widespread popular belief, founded on ignorance of the enormous width of the Pacific Ocean—a belief, as this anecdote shows, shared even by some of those who have dwelt within reach of its waters.[196] But convincing friends was of far less moment than convincing the public; and Rowland Hill drew up a Report on the subject which, backed by the Postmaster-General, Lord Colchester, had the desired effect of preventing, for the time being, what would have been a heavy and useless expenditure of public money.[197]