Every care, moreover, had been taken to provide for the speedy rectification of individual cases of hardship, which in so large and rapidly extending a department might unwittingly arise, by giving the fullest opportunity for legitimate complaint, by guarding all such complainants as took the prescribed mode from any consequent prejudice, however unfounded their allegations might prove, and by allowing to the lowest man in the service the means of appeal to the highest authority, that of the Postmaster-General. With such provision it might perhaps have been hoped that not only would all motive to such insubordinate proceedings as had frequently troubled the department in previous years be entirely removed, but even that irregular modes of complaint would not have been taken, at least until after full trial of the appointed channel. Nevertheless, about two months after the circulation of the inflammatory paper given above, amidst an almost total absence of formal complaint, and certainly without substantiation of any grievance in respect of a class, or even of individuals, a meeting of letter-carriers was held in the South Western district, and reported in the newspapers, at which "Speeches were made containing statements which the men who uttered them must have known to be false, but from the consequences of which they endeavoured to screen themselves by concealing their names."[203] For the time the misconduct was repressed; but we felt that without either such a course of concession as would gradually raise salaries far beyond true remuneration (thus tending to serious waste and other evils, not less certain though less patent), or such union of firmness and energy in all the authorities of the department as would render even an approach to mutiny unsafe to those concerned, recurrence of trouble was certain, and its imminence could not but remain a source of anxiety. This will further appear in a later period of my narrative.