"More than two years ago the attention of the Post Office authorities was directed towards the means of _abridging Sunday labour_ in the various offices, and inquiries were instituted with this object. While they were in progress, Mr. Hill succeeded to the secretaryship of a certain department, which brought the subject under his immediate care, and he promoted with all his efforts the advancement of the great end in view. Opinions were not altogether concurrent on the matter, but a step was at length taken, and on Sunday, the 6th of February, 1848, the post office at Bath was closed for money-order business on that day. The experiment succeeded, and on the 13th of August in the same year the regulation was extended to Leeds, and, six weeks later to Birmingham--still without inconvenience or complaint. Fortified by these results, the authorities conceived themselves competent to push still further their great object of _abridging Sunday labour_, and the arrangements above mentioned were, at the commencement of last year, extended to all offices in England and Wales, so that four hundred and fifty offices were _relieved of a material portion of their Sunday duties_ in a single day. Three months more saw the same indulgence conceded to Ireland and Scotland, by which two hundred and thirty-four additional offices experienced the same relief. "Pending these trials and successes, Mr. Rowland Hill conceived a plan for _abridging Sunday labour_ still more considerably, and, indeed, to a great extent, abolishing it altogether. The duties hitherto suspended had been those of the Money Order Department alone; but a scheme was now entertained of greatly limiting Sunday deliveries, and of absolutely closing the offices between the hours of ten and five; or, in other words, from the commencement of the morning service in churches till the close of the afternoon. With this proposed limitation of deliveries was combined a regulation, long known to be desirable, for the transmission of a certain class of letters _through London_ on a Sunday, which would, it was thought, by giving very considerable accommodation at a small cost of labour, tend to reconcile the public to the cessation of those Sunday deliveries which were now to be stopped. It was this proposal which caused the outcry. Mr. Hill asked but for the temporary service of twenty-five clerks as a present means of relieving twenty times that number; and he showed his reasons for anticipating that no measure could ultimately be more effective in _abridging Sunday labour_ altogether than that now proposed. All this was in vain. He was, as our readers know, decried, denounced, and stigmatized as a Sabbath-breaker and apostate; although his very proposition was actually one of a well-considered series for