The proposed establishment of a day mail to Newcastle, in accordance with my recommendation, having rendered it desirable that I should visit that town, and Mr. Hodgson Hinde, the Member for Newcastle, having urged that my journey should be made without delay, I applied to Sir George Clerk, and obtained his ready acquiescence. Wishing at the same time to visit some of the country offices, and scrupulously desiring to avoid any approach to breach of rule, I wrote to Colonel Maberly for authority so to do, but this request being referred by him to the Postmaster-General, and representations being made by the latter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the end was that the sanction to my journey was altogether withdrawn, the management of the matter being handed over to the Post Office; with what prospect of good result I leave the reader to judge. This, however, was not all; for soon afterwards, viz., on July 12th, I received a letter from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, not in reply to any of mine, but announcing that from the ensuing 14th of September (when my third year at the Treasury would end) my “further assistance” would be “dispensed with;” the notification, however, concluding with the following acknowledgment:— “In making this communication I gladly avail myself of the opportunity of expressing my sense of the satisfactory manner in which, during my tenure of office, you have discharged the several duties which have been from time to time committed to you.”[329] Being very unwell at the time when this letter reached me, and of course far from benefited by its perusal, I was constrained to apply to Sir George Clerk for a short leave of absence—a request readily granted. After a little repose I prepared an answer to Mr. Goulburn’s letter, which, after much reconsideration and consultation with my brothers, I sent in on July 29th. Its general purpose was to urge that the late decision might be reconsidered; but, to ease matters, I offered, as I had done on a previous occasion, to work for a time without salary.[330] Meanwhile, however, additional discouragement had occurred from the fact that, in reply to an objection raised against my salary by Colonel Sibthorpe, the intended discontinuance of my services had been announced by Sir George Clerk in the House of Commons. On August 1st I received a note from Mr. Moffatt, of which the following is an extract:— “‘I perused with great concern the flagrant announcement made in the House on Friday evening touching the rejection of your future services. “‘Memory supplies me with no parallel to this treatment; it embodies an act of public dishonesty, which, if permitted, would be alike discreditable to the Government which proposed, and to the assembly which should sanction, such an arrangement.’