While support at the Treasury was thus feeble and vacillating, I could have very small hope of aid from the Post Office. It has indeed been seen that Lord Lowther had withdrawn all objection to my calling for returns as before; but these, though the information I was able to extract from them was of use, were in themselves a constant source of trouble from their inaccuracy:— “_March 8th, 1842._—Sent [to the Post Office] the financial returns recently made to the Treasury, for correction. Ledingham cannot convince —— that they are wrong (which they clearly are in principle), and they are come back uncorrected. It is strange that men whose sole duty it is to keep accounts should not only blunder, but be unable to see the error when pointed out.” It was in this account, I believe, but certainly in one from the same functionary, that the balance carried forward at the close of a quarter changed its amount in the transit; and when I pointed out this fact as conclusive against the correctness of the account, it was urged that, without such modification, the next quarter’s account could not be made to balance! Errors, however, did not end here:— “_May 20th, 1842._—Received the Parliamentary Returns from the Post Office. Very inaccurate. Sent Ledingham with them to the Post Office to get them corrected.” In short, it is literally true that an accurate return or statement in detail of any kind from the Post Office was at this time a rare exception. If I had found it hard to make head previously to the late change, I found progress now almost impracticable; and, though I persevered in unremitting effort, I had little, indeed, of that encouragement which is derived from the prospect of speedy success. For some time I had even considerable anxiety lest much that had been done should be undone; but these forebodings, at least, were not confirmed by the event:— “_March 7th, 1842._—To-day’s _Morning Post_ has a leader on the subject of the financial measures to be brought forward by Sir Robert Peel on Friday, from which the following is an extract:—‘It is conjectured by some that Mr. Rowland Hill’s Penny Postage inroad upon a revenue which could ill afford such an experiment, is to be counteracted, not by the restoration of the old system, but by an increase to the uniform rate of postage. The objections to this are that it would not do much to supply the deficiency, and that it would be an interference with an experiment deliberately adopted by a former Parliament, and not yet acknowledged by advocates to have failed in a financial point of view.’” It is to be feared that to this very day the “advocates” remain as obstinately unconvinced as ever:—