In the course of this period I was reluctantly drawn into controversy with the eminent engineer, Mr. Robert Stephenson, then President of the Society of Civil Engineers, who, in his inaugural address, in defiance of facts, with which, at his request, I had supplied him, represented the railway system as essential to the fiscal success of penny postage, and even to the conveyance of the mails: and then proceeded to charge the Post Office with harsh and unjust dealing in relation to the railway companies, and with uncertainty, irregularity, and delay in its own proceedings. The dissatisfaction which I naturally felt and expressed at statements and charges so unfounded, being reported to Mr. Stephenson, drew from him a letter in which he expressed regret at my annoyance, thanked me for the information supplied to him, admitted "all the principal facts therein stated," but retained his own conclusions; at the same time deprecating controversy, and speaking in the highest terms of my public services. To remove, as far as practicable, the erroneous impression necessarily produced by Mr. Stephenson's address, which of course could not be affected by his private letter, I requested Mr. Edward Page, the Inspector-General of Mails, as the officer most conversant with the whole subject, to prepare a complete exposition of the facts of the case; and this, drawn up with Mr. Page's usual care and ability, appeared in the Appendix to the Second Report of the Postmaster-General (p. 45), and, I may add, will still repay perusal. In a subsequent address, however, to the Institution, Mr. Stephenson, without any effectual answer to Mr. Page's definite and accurate statements, repeated his former asseverations. Holding it unprofitable to argue against declamation, I allowed the controversy to drop; nor should I now have thought it needful to trouble the reader with this statement, had not a recent biographer of Mr. Stephenson reopened the question. NEWSPAPER PRIVILEGES. I now come to a question on which, I fear, sound views will at no time receive much commendation or support from the newspaper press. Inestimable as is the benefit conferred by the action of the _fourth estate_, taken as a whole, it is nevertheless unquestionable that this estate, like those more formally recognised, is at times swayed more or less by considerations not relating altogether to the highest public interest. Naturally conscious of its own high merits, it is a little apt to forget that its good work proceeds, for the most part, from the same motive that impels other caterers to the general welfare and convenience, and to suppose that it has claims which itself would be prompt to deny to other crafts. These claims it has great power of enforcing, for bold indeed must be the minister who should maintain to the full the public right against so powerful a brotherhood.