Meanwhile I prepared for use in my expected interview with the Chancellor of the Exchequer a statement of improvements effected in the previous two years; a step the more needful, as it might well have been supposed, seeing how much my attention was occupied during the main part of this time with the agitation respecting Sunday observance and with attempts to rectify my own position, that the course of improvement had been entirely suspended. Serious as was the check from these causes, and particularly from the former, which had involved me in a sort of life and death struggle, there was quite enough to show that time had not been allowed to pass unprofitably; and I may add that, even when my personal attention was most largely withdrawn, inquiries and preparations which I had set on foot were constantly paving the way for the improvements then in hand. On the Chancellor of the Exchequer's return to town after the absence of nearly a month, I again applied for an interview, but again met with postponement; and it was not until a fortnight later that the desired opportunity was obtained. I looked upon these delays as very unpromising. Meantime efforts were renewed in another quarter; the Postmaster-General himself speaking to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who explained the delay which had occurred, and promised to see me in a day or two. Lord Clanricarde informed me that a vacancy was expected in the chairmanship of the Audit Office, to which it was intended that Colonel Maberly should be appointed. This would have been most satisfactory could I have relied on prompt action; but as I was not to allow my knowledge of such expectation to appear even in my conference with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and as meantime objections on unsatisfactory grounds were raised against my being at once placed on full equality with Colonel Maberly, I could feel no confidence in the result. After sleeping on the matter I decided that the Chancellor of the Exchequer must be pressed. A case had just occurred in which importunity had induced him to yield to claims which I regarded as at best but illfounded, and I thought that the same expedient might work as well where the claim was undeniable. I accordingly wrote as follows:-- "General Post Office, 29th January, 1851. "DEAR SIR,--It is so very important that my case should be decided without further delay, that I must beg to be excused for proposing that, if possible, the interview you were so good as to promise me may not be any longer deferred. "Yours faithfully, "ROWLAND HILL. "The Right Hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer, &c. &c." An immediate reply summoned me for the next day.