“_Journal, May 19th._—Wrote two or three scolding minutes. There have been several instances lately of great inaccuracy on the part of one or two of the surveyors, who, in applying for authority to increase the expenses at certain provincial offices, have been guilty of, to say the least, very careless misrepresentations. In the instance of the Cheltenham Office, the surveyor deducted £100 from the gross annual income of the postmaster for house rent, whereas it afterwards appeared that the office is supplied rent free by the inhabitants. This and many other inaccuracies almost equally glaring have come before the Treasury unnoticed by the Post Office.” The foregoing circumstances might scarcely be worth mentioning, did they not tend to show how much my time was occupied in doing other people’s work, to the great hindrance of my own. A few more instances of this, and I have done:— “_August 24th._—The Postmaster-General reports to the Treasury that he cannot proceed with the arrangements for rural distribution unless he has a map divided into registrars’ districts, or a description of the boundaries of the districts. Why he should apply to the Treasury to overcome the difficulty I know not (I wrote to Colonel Maberly some time ago in reply to a remark of his, telling him that there was no such map in existence). However, as I would rather do the work myself than have the measure delayed, I have been to the Registration Office, Poor Law Commission, and Tithe Commission, to see if the necessary information for constructing a map can be obtained. I have also sent for Arrowsmith to meet me to-morrow morning, and hope by a little management to get the thing done.” It was done accordingly. With distractions so numerous and so various, with a large amount of routine work, all requiring to be dealt with carefully, with opposition at the Post Office to almost every additional improvement that I proposed, and with the greatest difficulty of obtaining access to the ever-occupied Chancellor of the Exchequer, without whose sanction no step, great or small, could be taken, I found progress towards the completion of my plan but slow; a slowness the more galling because, meantime, not only general convenience, but the fiscal results of the measure were grievously suffering; while I feared that the public, knowing that I was now in office, and yet ignorant of the trammels under which I laboured, would—as in fact a large portion of it did—charge upon the plan itself failure really due to the incompleteness of its development.