It was evident that the agitation was rapidly subsiding, and two days later I was able to administer an additional sedative; my report of January 28th, showing the progress made in Sunday relief, being at length printed, I sent out five hundred copies in various directions, feeling sure that the statements therein contained, however unavailing to such as resolutely kept their eyes shut, would have no small effect upon the more candid. A week later I record progress:-- "_April 20th._--The returns are producing their effect. I have received numerous letters congratulating me on the result." I also began to conjecture as to the probability of formal retractation by those, so many in number, who had assailed and misrepresented our measures in tirades, whether from the press, pulpit, at public meetings, or otherwise. My recorded summary is "I don't expect it." Up to that time, so far as I am aware, there had been but two retractations. Lord Ashley, in a private letter to the Postmaster-General, had declared that the country was under the greatest obligations to him for the Sunday relief already afforded. Of the journals that had attacked me one had frankly acknowledged its error. Though, doubtless, many instances of such reparation may have occurred unknown to me, it is remarkable that neither record nor memory supplies me with a third instance either then or afterwards. The one paper thus honourably distinguished is the _Leeds Mercury_, which had been throughout a staunch supporter of postal reform, but had too hastily yielded credence to bold and plausible allegations. The _Times_, which, though it was sometimes mistaken in matters of detail, had, on the whole, given highly valuable support during the late trial, published on April 25th the following admirable exposition and defence of the whole proceeding:--