[169] His father, an American, was the inventor of the once famous air-gun.
[170] Fifteen years after the issue of the first stamps, during which time more than 3,000,000,000 had been printed, it was deemed advisable to make a second matrix by transfer from the first. It had become necessary to deepen the graven lines by hand, but the work was so carefully done that the deviation in portraiture was very slight.
[171] And a hasty hand, too, for in those days of manual labour there was a keen race among the stampers as to who, in a given time, should make the greatest number of obliterations. The man whose record stood habitually highest was usually called on to exhibit his prowess to visitors who were being escorted over the Department.
[172] Rowland Hill's Journal, 9th November 1840.
[173] “Life,” i. 399-407.
CHAPTER VII
AT THE POST OFFICE
As the evident weakening of Peel's Government became more marked, the thoughts of the man who had been sacrificed to official intrigues, and unto whom it was, as he pathetically writes, “grief and bitterness to be so long kept aloof from my true work,” turned longingly towards the Post Office and to his insecurely established and only partially developed plan. With a change of Ministry, better things must surely come.