The Duke of Wellington did not believe that reduced rates of postage would encourage the soldiers on foreign or colonial service to write home oftener than before;[118] and in the earlier part of his speech drew so doleful a picture of the state of our national finances and of the danger likely to accrue to them through the lowering of any duty, that the anxious listener—who, by Lord Melbourne's wish, was in the House—seated on the steps of the throne, feared he was about to witness the slaughter of the scheme for which he and others had worked so strenuously. But Lord Duncannon, observing the downcast countenance, came up and kindly whispered: “Don't be alarmed; he is not going to oppose us.” Nor did he; for, after alluding to the evils of high postal rates, the Duke went on to say that, in his opinion, the plan most likely to remedy these was that known as Mr Rowland Hill's. “Therefore,” he concluded, “I shall, although with great reluctance, vote for the Bill, and I earnestly recommend you to do the same.”[119] The Bill passed.[120] It received the Royal assent on the 17th August; and at once Mr Wallace wrote to congratulate Mrs Hill on the success of her husband's efforts, “a success to which your unremitting exertions have greatly contributed.” [Illustration: CAROLINE PEARSON, LADY HILL.] Mr Wallace's tribute was well deserved. My mother was a devoted wife, a true helpmate, therein resembling the late Lady Salisbury, Mrs Gladstone, Lady Campbell-Bannerman, and many lesser known women. During the long postal reform agitation, her buoyant hopefulness and abiding faith in her husband's plan never failed to cheer and encourage him to persevere. Years after, when their children were old enough to understand the position, their father would tell them how much he owed to her, and bade them never to forget the debt. She was, moreover, a pattern scribe, sitting, hour after hour, untiring, unshirking, giving her opinion when asked for it, and in a handwriting both legible and beautifully formed, covering page after page with the sentences he dictated. More than one pamphlet, his journal, and letters innumerable were thus written by her; and she also helped in the arduous preparation for his examination before the Commissioners of Post Office Inquiry in 1837, the Select Committee on Postage of 1838, and the still later Committee of 1843. Years of useful work did she thus devote to the reform, and many a time was she seated already busy at her task when the first hour of the long day's vigil struck four. From her own lips little was ever heard of this; but what other members of the family thought of it is shown by the remark made by an old kinswoman of my father. Some one having spoken in her presence of her cousin as “the father of penny postage,” she emphatically exclaimed: “Then I know who was its mother!”