Nothing daunted, Rowland Hill resolved to try direct appeal, and wrote to the Duke, setting forth briefly “a few facts in support of the Bill,” etc. No answer was received, but the letter had a scarcely looked-for effect.
The second reading of the Bill in the Commons took place on the 22nd July, Mr Goulburn, Sir Robert Inglis, and Sir Robert Peel attacked the measure; and Mr Baring, Lord Seymour, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Wallace, and Mr Warburton defended it. The House did not divide. The Bill was read a third time on 29th July, and passed.
My paternal grandfather was in the House on the occasion, and was probably the happiest and proudest man there, the author of the plan not even excepted.
A few days later, my father, through Lord Duncannon,[116] received a summons to confer with Lord Melbourne at the latter's house the following Sunday. Lord Duncannon was present at the interview; and the three soon went to work in the most friendly fashion.
The subject in hand having, after a while, been thoroughly mastered, Lord Melbourne began to walk up and down the room, his lips moving as if rehearsing his speech for the House of Lords, but uttering no word. While thus employed, a servant entered, and made an all but inaudible announcement to his master. “Show him into the other room,” said Lord Melbourne; and presently passed through the folding doors into the adjoining apartment. A hum of conversation at once began, one of the voices rising at last to angry tones, and the postal reformer's name being once audibly pronounced by the irate speaker. “It is Lord Lichfield,” quietly observed Lord Duncannon. Gradually, peace seemed to be restored; the visitor departed, and Lord Melbourne, re-entering, said: “Lichfield has been here. Why a man cannot talk of penny postage without getting into a passion passes my understanding.”
The following day, 5th August, the Prime Minister, in a long speech, moved the second reading of the Penny Postage Bill in the Upper House.
The Postmaster-General supported the measure, but did not conceal his distrust of it from a financial point of view.
To Lord Brougham's speech allusion has already been made.[117]
The Duke of Wellington did not believe that reduced rates of postage would encourage the soldiers on foreign or colonial service to write home oftener than before;[118] and in the earlier part of his speech drew so doleful a picture of the state of our national finances and of the danger likely to accrue to them through the lowering of any duty, that the anxious listener—who, by Lord Melbourne's wish, was in the House—seated on the steps of the throne, feared he was about to witness the slaughter of the scheme for which he and others had worked so strenuously. But Lord Duncannon, observing the downcast countenance, came up and kindly whispered: “Don't be alarmed; he is not going to oppose us.”