It is a common practice to laugh at public offices for their rigid adherence to routine. This, we think, is not quite reasonable. No doubt it is calculated to excite ridicule, and indeed to irritate beyond all endurance when a course obviously proper in itself is condemned because, forsooth, there is no precedent for it; and we are by no means sure that some public servants would not be all the better for taking to heart the maxim--Wise men make precedents, only fools require them. But, without the order and regularity which a strict adherence to routine can alone produce, the business of a Government department must inevitably drift into a state of hopeless confusion. This is a truth which persons outside the public service have always found it hard to accept; as well indeed as persons inside who have entered late in life or after their habits are formed. Palmer was of the latter class; and a striking instance now occurred of his inability to adapt himself to the requirements of his new situation. Walsingham had asked whether the surveyors were keeping their journals regularly. These officers, besides a small salary, were now receiving an allowance of one guinea a day when travelling; and not only was a journal indispensable in order to shew whether they had been travelling or not, but the keeping of one had been made an express condition of the allowance being given. No subordinate cared to pass on the inquiry to Palmer, implying, as this might seem to do, a doubt. Walsingham had no such scruple and wrote to Palmer asking that the journals might be sent to him for examination. Palmer's reply will explain how it is that the records which now exist respecting himself and his achievements are so surprisingly few. There were no journals, he said. The surveyors' own letters, with their bills of expenses attached, were sufficient evidence of the journeys they had made. And these bills and letters, he added, as soon as the charges which they represent have been paid, "are and must be useless paper, for if I did not constantly clear my office both of their as well as my own and the other officers' rubbish, I should be buried under it." The auditors of the imprests had recently made good progress, but, fortunately for the Post Office, they were still many years in arrear.[64] [64] The Post Office accounts for the year 1749 were not passed until 1784; and then only through the exertions of Lord Mountstuart, who had succeeded Mr. Aislabie as one of the auditors of His Majesty's imprests.