The formal presentation of the Testimonial took place at Blackwall on June the 17th, 1846, a public dinner being given on the occasion. Of my own family there were present my father (then in his eighty-fourth year), all my brothers, my brother-in-law, and my only son. The chair was taken by Mr. Warburton. A report was read by the secretary of the Testimonial Committee, from which it appeared that the net amount of the subscription was upwards of £13,000. The committee expressed its opinion that the amount would have been larger had not individual subscriptions been limited at the outset to £10 10s. The report also, contrasting the testimony from the Treasury to the value of my services with the fact of my dismissal, urged my recall. The chairman took occasion in the speech, in which he proposed my health, to point out that among the subscribers to the Testimonial Fund was to be reckoned the First Lord of the Treasury, Sir Robert Peel. In my reply, after expressing my thanks, and speaking of the public services of those who had assisted in the great work of postal reform, I proceeded to a short review of the principal results of penny postage up to that time. I showed that, even with the very limited adoption of my plan, considerable progress had been made towards the recovery of the revenue and that large multiplication of letters on which I had counted; the number of letters delivered within twelve miles of St Martin's-le-Grand being already equal to that delivered under the old system throughout the whole United Kingdom. I next touched upon those yet more important benefits which could not be exhibited in a statistical form; and upon this point I was happily able to quote from a recent speech of Mr. Goulburn, made on the bringing-in of his Budget, the passage being as follows:-- "It would be a fallacy to suppose that the country is only relieved by a remission of taxation to the amount of the loss experienced by the Exchequer. Nothing can be more erroneous. When you reduce a tax you should calculate the amount of relief afforded upon the increased consumption of that article; you cannot take as a measure of the relief of the pressure upon the people the amount which you collect less in the revenue." Now, by applying this rule to the determination of the amount of relief afforded by the reduction of the postage rates, even taking such reduction at only fivepence per letter, it would appear that the total benefit amounted to the enormous sum of £6,000,000 per annum.[30]