When, by the establishment of School Boards, primary education was so widely extended, he foresaw at once the effect that would be thereby produced on the postal revenue. "Is there," he wrote, "in addition to the moral, intellectual, and commercial benefits more directly aimed at, any set-off to this increased expense? For this I naturally turn to its effect on the number of letters, which will obviously be enlarged by diffusion of the power to write and read; though the extent to which this will operate is at present matter for conjecture rather than for estimate. I hold it, however, not quite impossible that in this manner the outlay will eventually repay itself, though I am by no means so sanguine as to expect so rich a result." That knowledge might be more readily brought within the reach of all, he was eager to see a reform of what, to use his own words, "is grossly misnamed orthography." "For myself," he writes, "I frankly confess that I have always made it a practice to have a spelling dictionary at hand, and have not infrequently to turn to its pages. My education must, then, it will be said, have been defective! True enough! but of how many has the education been more defective! And even in those who have attained proficiency, how great has been the sacrifice of time else applicable to beneficial study!" While his mind thus constantly turned to any subject that in any way bore on his great plan, he found, unhappily, much that distressed him in the government of the Post Office. He grieved over the changes that after his retirement were too often made in disregard of the great principles on which he had steadily acted.[253] More than once he addressed warnings to the government. But at the very close of his Journal he records,[254] "I have made myself seriously ill--having brought on renewed threats of apoplexy--by what I have already done." He could do no more. He had lifted up his voice, and lifted it up in vain. There was happily another side to this sad picture. Wrong-doings and blunders he could often forget, while he contemplated the perfection with which the great machine still worked, though there was no master-hand to govern it. He had the delight, too, of watching his plan as it spread from country to country. "In some respects," to quote the words that Mr. Gladstone used on his death, "his lot was one peculiarly happy even as among public benefactors; for his great plan ran like wildfire through the civilised world, and never perhaps was a local invention (for such it was) and improvement applied in the life-time of its author to the advantage of such vast multitudes of his fellow-creatures." He had aimed at doing something for the world, and he lived to know that his success had been far greater than his hopes, and that the world was not ungrateful.