He told Mr Baring that while he was willing to give his services gratuitously, or to postpone the question of remuneration till the new system should have had adequate trial, it would be impossible for him to enter on such an undertaking were he placed on a footing inferior to that of the Secretary to the Post Office—a necessary stipulation if the reformer was to have full power to carry his plan into operation. He was well aware that the post officials viewed it and him with unfriendly eyes; and his anxiety was not diminished by the knowledge that his reform would be developed under another roof than that of the Treasury, and by the very men who had pronounced the measure revolutionary, preposterous, wild, visionary, absurd, clumsy, and impracticable. His opponents had prophesied that the plan would fail; and as Matthew Davenport Hill, when writing of this subject, wittily and wisely said: “I hold in great awe prophets who may have the means of assisting in the fulfilment of their own predictions.” It was therefore imperative that Rowland Hill's position should be a well-defined one, and he himself be placed on an equality with the principal executive officer among those with whose habits and prejudices he was bound to interfere. The labour would be heavy, and the conditions were unusual. He must try to turn enemies still smarting under the bitterness of defeat into allies willing as well as able to help on the reform they detested; and to persuade them not to place obstacles in its way. The innovations to be made would be numerous, because, while reduction of postage and modes of prepayment formed the principal features of the plan, they were far from being the only features. The projected increase of facilities for transmitting letters, etc., would cause an immense amount of extra work; and as in this matter he would have to contend with the Post Office almost single-handed, nothing would be easier than for its head officials to raise plausible objections by the score to every proposal made. Nor could the public, who had now secured cheap postage and an easier mode of paying for it—to superficial eyes the only part of the plan worth fighting for—be henceforth relied upon to give the reformer that support which was necessary to carry out other important details; the less so as the reformer would be debarred from appealing for outside help or sympathy, because, when once the official doorways are passed, a man's independence is lost, and his lips are perforce sealed. The interview was brought to a close by Rowland Hill telling Mr Baring that before returning a definite answer he must consult his friends; and that as his eldest brother was away on circuit at Leicester, and he proposed to start at once for that town to seek fraternal advice, three days must elapse before the matter could be settled.