It may seem strange that with the knowledge which he unquestionably possessed respecting the prevalent abuses Pitt should have allowed them to go on so long uncorrected. The explanation we believe to be twofold. In the first place he was unwilling to do or suffer to be done anything which might interfere with the introduction of Palmer's improvements. This was a point on which Pitt never ceased to betray the utmost anxiety. To embark on any general system of reform might conflict with the new plan. Let the plan be established first and the abuses could be corrected afterwards. Hence it was, no doubt, that of all the public offices to be inquired into, the Post Office, in spite of the notoriety which its abuses had acquired, was taken last. But this, although the primary explanation, was not, we suspect, the only one. Incorrupt himself, Pitt was extraordinarily tolerant of corruption in others. Witness his defence of Melville. Even of Carteret's transaction with Peregrine Treves he could never be brought to admit more than that it was not a proper one. This tolerance in others of what he would have scorned to do himself we attribute to a conviction on his part that abuses were less to be charged against individuals than as the result of a bad system which made the abuses possible; and what, if we mistake not, Pitt had proposed to himself was to bring to bear upon this system the force of public opinion. A ruthless exposure, we have little doubt, had been in contemplation; and yet when the time for exposure came, Pitt held back. Whether it was that the abuses proved too flagrant to be published with safety or that their correction would involve more time or more money than could then be spared, the fact remains that, after receiving the report of the Commission, Pitt locked it up in his despatch box and kept it there for the space of four years; and not even the postmasters-general could procure a copy.