[184] “Life,” ii. 365. (Note by its Editor.)
[185] “Life,” ii. 122. On the famous 10th of April 1848 (Chartist day) Colonel Maberly likewise showed his martial spirit and strong sense of the virtue of discipline when he requested Rowland Hill to place his own clerks and those of the Money Order Office—in all about 250—under his, the Colonel's, command, thus making up a corps of special constables some 1,300 strong. All over London, on and before that day, there was great excitement; a large supply of arms was laid in, defences were erected at Governmental and other public buildings, very little regular work was done, and there was any amount of unnecessary scare, chiefly through the alarmist disposition of the Duke of Wellington—seldom, rumour said, averse from placing a town in a more or less state of siege, and ever ready to urge upon successive Governments the desirability of spending huge sums on fortifications whose destiny ere long was to become obsolete—though partly also because there were many people still living who could remember the Gordon riots immortalised in “Barnaby Rudge,” and who feared a repetition of their excesses. But the Chartists were a different set of men from Gordon's “tag, rag, and bobtail” followers. On the morning of the 10th, my father, driving to the Post Office, came up in Holborn with the long procession marching in the direction of Kennington Common (now a park), preparatory to presenting themselves with their petition at the Houses of Parliament. Calling on the cabman to drive slowly, my father watched the processionists with keen interest, and was much struck with their steady bearing, evident earnestness, and the bright, intelligent countenances of many of them. On close inspection, not a few terrible revolutionists are found to look surprisingly like other people, though the comparison does not invariably tell in favour of those other people.
[186] The Mercury's article (25th April 1850) was so good that it seems worth while to quote some of it. “Macaulay informs us that the post, when first established, was the object of violent invective as a manifest contrivance of the Pope to enslave the souls of Englishmen; and most books of history or anecdote will supply stories equally notable. But we really very much doubt whether any tale of ancient times can match the exhibition of credulity which occurred in our own country, and under our own eyes, within these last twelve months.... Nearly 6,000 people have been relieved from nearly six hours' work every Sunday by the operation of a scheme which was denounced as a deliberate encouragement to Sabbath-breaking and profanity.”
[187] À propos of never answering attacks in the Press and elsewhere, my father was not a little given to quote the opinion of one of the Post officials who “goes so far as to declare that if he found himself charged in a newspaper with parricide, he would hold his tongue lest the accusation should be repeated next day with the aggravation of matricide.”—“Life,” ii. 235.
[188] This relief, proposed in November 1849, became an accomplished fact a few days before the year died out.
[189] “Life,” ii. 138.
[190] Ibid. ii. 137.
[191] In those slower-going days a large part of the holiday would be taken up by the journey home and back.
[192] A frequent and always welcome visitor at my father's house was this son of America—“the learned blacksmith,” as he was habitually called. He was one of the most interesting as well as most refreshingly unconventional of men, but was never offensively unconventional because he was one of “Nature's noblemen.” Sweet-tempered, gentle-mannered, and pure-minded, he won our regard—affection even—from the first. He could never have been guilty of uttering an unkind word to any one, not even to those who were lukewarm on the slavery question, who did not feel inspired to join the Peace Society, or who were languid in the cause of “ocean penny postage.” On the last-named subject he had, as an entire stranger, written to my father a long letter detailing his scheme, and urging the desirability of its adoption; and it was this letter which led to our making Elihu Burritt's acquaintance. He became a great friend of my elder sister, and maintained with her a many years' long correspondence. Once only do I remember seeing him angry, and then it was the righteous indignation which an honest man displays when confronted with a lie. It was when unto him had been attributed the authorship of my father's plan. He would have nothing to do with a fraudulent claim to which sundry other men have assented kindly enough, or have even, with unblushing effrontery, appropriated of their own accord. Elihu Burritt and Cardinal Mezzofanti were said to be the two greatest linguists of the mid-nineteenth century; and I know not how many languages and dialects each had mastered—the one great scholar a distinguished prince of the Roman Catholic Church, the other an American of obscure birth and an ex-blacksmith. Another trans-atlantic postal reformer, though one interested in the reform as regarded his own country rather than ours, was Mr Pliny Miles, who in outward appearance more closely resembled the typical American of Dickens's days than that of the present time. In his own land Mr Miles travelled far and wide, wrote much, spoke frequently, and crossed the Atlantic more than once to study the postal question here. He was an able man, and a good talker. I well remember his confident prophecy, some few years before the event, of a fratricidal war between the Northern and Southern States; how bitterly he deplored the coming strife; and how deeply impressed were all his hearers both with the matter and manner of his discourse. I believe he had “crossed the bar” before hostilities broke out.
[193] “Life,” ii. 241.