At a subsequent period, as will appear in its proper place, I was called upon to expose the fallacy more in detail; but everybody knows that an error once adopted is slow of eradication. This particular one, gross as it really is, is not only still to be met with here and there among the public, but has actually been thrice put forth, since my final withdrawal from office, in the Annual Report of the Postmaster-General;[322] so that even now it is far from superfluous to point out, that in comparing the fiscal results of the new system with those of the old, the cost of the packet service should be excluded from the one as it was from the other. Nor is it less necessary to urge that, whenever it is deemed advisable to maintain a line of conveyance for political purposes, or for any other purposes not really postal, the expense, barring a due charge for such postal service as may incidentally be performed, should be charged, not to the Post Office, but to its appropriate department; confusion of accounts being always detrimental to economy and obstructive to reform. Naturally, I received, during this difficult period, but limited support from without. The public, satisfied with having obtained the adoption of the penny rate, the reform in which it was most interested, bestirred itself little in advocacy of those further improvements in which its interest was less direct and far less obvious; many persons, indeed, regarding penny postage pure and simple as the be-all and end-all of the matter. Of course, I could no longer communicate with the public, my mouth being officially sealed; and I may observe here, that it were well for the public to understand how completely this is the case with all subordinate officers. Whatever may be their views on the proceedings of their department, whatever schemes they may form or adopt for improvement, or, on the other hand, whatever injustice may be done to them by their official superiors, or whatever charges may be made against them in Parliament, by the public press, or otherwise—comment, or even statement of facts, is forbidden by official rule; a rule, which being unknown to the public, often leads to erroneous inference, and encourages attacks which otherwise would be regarded as cowardly. From one more quarter, however, assistance was given at this time. The Merchants’ Committee sent in a memorial to the Treasury, signed by every one of its members, Whig or Tory, urging the complete execution of my plan, and followed up this step with a deputation to the Postmaster-General, which ended in their receiving an assurance that Lord Lowther was desirous of carrying out my measures fully and fairly “equally so with his predecessor.” Of the value of the assurance the reader may easily judge by the parallel. The following was not a little encouraging:—