Among other letters of sympathy came one from the poet who, as his epitaph at Kensal Green reminds us, “sang the Song of the Shirt.” Said Hood: “I have seen so many instances of folly and ingratitude similar to those you have met with that it would never surprise me to hear of the railway people, some day, finding their trains running on so well, proposing to discharge the engines.”[147]
The public, used to nearly four years of the new system, took alarm lest it should be jeopardised; and the Mercantile Committee, well entitled as, after its arduous labours, it was to repose, roused itself to renewed action, and petitioned the Government to carry out the postal reform in its entirety.
But the ruling powers were deaf to all protests; and thus to the list of dismissed postal reformers was added yet one more. First, Witherings; then, Dockwra; next, Palmer; and now, Hill.
While giving due prominence to the more salient features of the intrigue against the postal reform and reformer, the painful narrative has been as far as possible curtailed. It is, however, well worth telling if only to serve as warning to any would-be reformer—perhaps in any field: in the Post Office certainly—of the difficulties that lie in the path he yearns to tread. Should the reader be inclined to fancy the picture overdrawn, reference to the “Life of Sir Rowland Hill,” edited by Dr G. B. Hill, will show that in those pages the story is told with far more fulness of detail and bluntness of truth-speaking.
More than thirty years after Peel had “given Rowland Hill the sack,” as at the time Punch, in a humorous cartoon, expressed it, the real story of the dismissal was revealed to its victim by one who was very likely to be well-informed on the subject. It is an ugly story; and for a long time my brother and I agreed that it should be told in these pages. Later, seeing that all whom it concerned are dead, and that it is well, however difficult at times, to follow the good old rule of de mortuis nil nisi bonum, it has seemed wiser to draw across that relic of the long-ago past a veil of oblivion.
But here a digression may be made into a several years' later history, because, however chronologically out of place, it fits in at this juncture with entire appropriateness.
It is obvious that no person could succeed in cleansing so Augean a stable as was the Post Office of long ago without making enemies of those whose incompetency had to be demonstrated, or whose profitable sinecures had to be suppressed. Thus even when Rowland Hill's position had become too secure in public estimation for open attack to be of much avail, he was still exposed to that powerful “back-stairs” influence which, by hindering the progress of his reform, had done both the public service and himself individually much harm.
Of the reality of this secret hostility, ample proof was from time to time afforded, none, perhaps, being more striking than the following. When Lord Canning had been political head of the Post Office for some months, he one day said to my father: “Mr Hill, I think it right to let you know that you have enemies in high places who run you down behind your back. When I became Postmaster-General, every endeavour was made to prejudice me against you. I determined, however, to judge for myself. I have hitherto kept my eyes open, saying nothing. But I am bound to tell you now that I find every charge made against you to be absolutely untrue. I think it well, however, that you should know the fact that such influences are being exerted against you.”[148]
When, at the age of forty-seven, Rowland Hill had to begin the world afresh, one dread weighed heavily upon his mind. It was that Peel's Government might advance the postal charges to, as was rumoured, a figure twice, thrice, or even four times those established by the reformed system. It was a dread shared by Messrs Baring, Wallace, Moffatt, and very many more. Great, therefore, was the relief when the last-named friend reported that the new Postmaster-General had assured him that there was no danger of the postage rates being raised.[149]
After the dismissal by Peel, a long and anxious time set in for the little household in the then semi-rural precinct of Orme Square, Bayswater; and again my mother's sterling qualities were revealed. Reared as she had been in a circle where money was plentiful and hospitality unbounded, she wasted no time in useless lamentations, but at once curtailed domestic expenses—those most ruthlessly cut down being, as, later, our father failed not to tell us, her own. In his parents' home he had lived in far plainer style than that maintained in the house of which, for many years, owing to her mother's early death, she had been mistress. Yet in all that ministered to her husband's comfort she allowed scarcely any change to be made. At the same time, there was no running into debt, because she had a hearty contempt for the practice she was wont to describe as “living on the forbearance of one's tradespeople.”