At the Post Office this spirit manifested itself even while every care was being taken to ameliorate the condition of this multitudinous class of employees, and to rectify individual cases of hardship, and while, even during the time of insubordination, many respectable men outside the postal walls were showing their appreciation of the advantage of a letter-carrier's position over that of men of like class in other callings, by applying for appointment to that corps. Misrepresentation is a principal factor in stimulating disaffection, and, for reasons other than sympathy with the alleged victims of supposed tyrannical employers, is sometimes, though, happily, rarely, employed by those who, as non-officials, are sheltered by anonymity as well as by extraneity from participation in such punishment as may befall the better-known disaffected. From an early period of Rowland Hill's career at the Post Office he was subjected to almost constant personal attacks on the part of a certain weekly newspaper. Many were written with considerable plausibility, but all were void of substantial truth, while others were entire fabrications. All too were of the sort which no self-respecting man condescends to answer, yet which, perhaps all the more on account of that contemptuous silence, do infinite harm, and by an unthinking public are readily believed. Many of these attacks were traced to men who had left the postal service—to the no small advantage of that service—and whose dismissal was supposed to be the work of the permanent postal head; and one such man at least, a scribe with a ready pen, and ink in which the ingredient gall was over-liberally mingled, vented his spleen during a long succession of years with a perseverance worthy a better cause. As the newspaper in question had rather a wide circulation—since when did harmful literature fail to meet ready sale?—and the postal employees were, in many cases, no wiser than their fellow-readers, it was perhaps not unnatural that the attacks, which were directed more frequently and angrily against the postal reformer than against his colleagues, should meet with credence. “It certainly was rather ill-timed,” says Rowland Hill, on hearing[212] of a particularly vicious libel, “for in the previous month (November 1858) I had induced the Treasury to abandon its intention of issuing an order forbidding the receipt of Christmas boxes, and also had obtained some improvement in their scale of wages, the Treasury granting even more than was applied for.”[213]