“That the poor near Bristol have signed a petition to Parliament for the reduction of the postage. He never saw greater enthusiasm in any public thing that was ever got up in the shape of a petition; they seemed all to enter into the thing as fully, and with as much feeling as it was possible, as a boon or godsend to them, that they should be able to correspond with, their distant friends.”[191] Much evidence was also given as to the extent of moral evil caused by the suppression of correspondence. On this point Mr. Henson speaks again:— “When a man goes on the tramp, he must either take his family with him, perhaps one child in arms, or else the wife must be left behind; and the misery I have known them to be in, from not knowing what has become of the husband, because they could not hear from him, has been extreme. Perhaps the man, receiving only sixpence, has never had the means, upon the whole line, of paying tenpence for a letter to let his wife know where he was.”[192] Mr. Dunlop believed that— “One of the worst parts of the present system of heavy postage is, that it gradually estranges an absentee from his home and family, and tends to engender a neglect of the ties of blood, in fact, to encourage a selfish spirit; at the same time he has known very affecting instances of families in extreme poverty making a sacrifice to obtain a letter from the Post Office.”[193] Mr. Brankston said:— “I have seen much of the evils resulting from the want of communication between parents and their children among the young persons in our establishment; I find the want of communication with their parents by letter has led, in some instances, to vice and profligacy which might have been otherwise prevented.”[194] It was also shown that one effect of suppression of correspondence was to keep working-men ignorant of the state of wages in different parts of the country, so that they did not know where labour was in demand. Thus Mr. Brewin said:— “We often see poor men travelling the country for work, and sometimes they come back, and it appears they have been in a wrong direction; if the postage were low they would write first, and know whether they were likely to succeed.”[195] Mr. Henson stated as follows:— “The Shoemakers’ Society at Nottingham tell me that 350 persons have come there for relief.... Very few of those persons would have gone upon tramp if they could have sent circular letters to a number of the largest towns in England at a penny to receive information whether a job could be got or not.”[196] It may be observed that one of the main facts now urged in favour of Trades Unions is, that they collect and circulate the very information here spoken of as so much wanting. There was evidence to show that the difficulty of communication aggravated—