I opened the year 1838 with a series of letters to Lord Lichfield, which were inserted in all the morning papers. These letters were written in the manner described below; and it may save trouble hereafter to remark that much else which has appeared under my name, together with not a little to be found in my minutes at the Treasury and at the Post Office, was produced in the same way. To me the device and elaboration of plans was incomparably easier than their exposition or advocacy; with my brother Arthur the case was the reverse; and this led me to the frequent employment of his pen. What neither of us could have effected separately, joint action made easy.
Our mode of proceeding was as follows: I having collected and arranged my facts and formed a skeleton of the proposed paper, we sat down together, my brother dictating and I writing, often, however, pausing to bring the language into more exact expression of my thoughts, or to mention, or at times to learn, some new idea that arose as we went on. Occasionally, however, when business pressed we worked apart; but in any case the whole paper so constructed underwent our joint revision, and we sometimes found that the thoughts with which we had started had, in the very attempt to express them, undergone such modification that we rejected all that had been done, and began our task afresh.
The letters to Lord Lichfield were written mainly in reply to his lordship’s speeches in Parliament, from which some passages have already been cited. From these letters I give one or two quotations:—
“In the series of letters which I shall take the liberty of addressing to your lordship, I hope I shall carefully maintain that respect for the claims, and consideration for the feelings of others, which, I trust, have marked all that I have hitherto written. Your lordship must be well aware that whoever enters on the task of innovation must expect some amount of ridicule or abuse aimed either at his plan or himself. Your lordship must feel that a person so circumstanced ought not to allow such a necessary consequence of his attempt either to deter him from his adopted course, or to provoke his retaliation.”
The following passage from the third letter is in reply to the announcement by Government that the principle of stamped covers would be tried in the London District:—
“Should the trial of stamped covers on the plan now unfortunately contemplated issue in success, the world will indeed see a paradox,—an effect without a cause. Were such an experiment merely useless it might pass without comment; but its inevitable failure may produce no small mischief. An apparent trial of a plan may easily be confounded with a real one; and though I am sure nothing could be further from the intentions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, yet, had the aim been to throw unfair discredit on the plan, it would have been difficult to devise a better mode of proceeding.”
The following passage is from the last letter:—
“There is one remaining objection, which, as it can scarcely have been made seriously, needs but little remark. Your lordship objects that, on the required increase in the amount of correspondence, ‘the whole area on which the Post Office stands would not be large enough to receive the clerks and the letters.’ Without adverting to the means which I have distinctly pointed out for obviating any such inconvenience, I am sure that your lordship will not have much hesitation in deciding whether, in this great and commercial country, the size of the Post Office is to be regulated by the amount of correspondence, or the amount of correspondence by the size of the Post Office.”
About the time that the last of these letters appeared, an important movement, which had been already some weeks in preparation, took definite shape. Mr. Moffatt, afterwards M.P. for Southampton, had proposed to me the establishment of a “Mercantile Committee,” to collect evidence in favour of the plan. His proposal being gladly accepted, he went to work with such earnestness, that I soon found in him one of my most zealous, steady, and efficient supporters. Funds he raised with comparative ease, but the formation of a committee he found more difficult than he had expected. Now, however, February 5th, 1838, he wrote to inform me that he had at length prevailed upon Mr. Bates, of the House of Baring Brothers, to accept the office of chairman; and this point being secured, other good members were easily obtained. As soon as the committee was formed, I was invited to attend, in order to give such information as might seem desirable, and to answer such questions as any of the members might wish to propose.
Mr. Ashurst, father of the [late] solicitor to the Post Office, having been requested to act as solicitor to the committee, went promptly to work; and though by choice he acted gratuitously, he laboured with as much ardour as if important personal interests were involved in the issue. No less earnestness was shown by Mr. Henry Cole,[152] who had been engaged to aid in the work. He was the author of almost innumerable devices, by which, in his indefatigable ingenuity, he contrived to draw public attention to the proposed measure. He once passed through the Post Office, and afterwards exhibited in fac-simile to the public eye (the originals being previously shown in Parliament), two letters, so arranged as to display, in the clearest light, the absurdity of the existing rule of charge. Of these, one nearly as light as a feather, and almost small enough to require a pair of forceps for its handling, quite a letter for Lilliput, but containing an enclosure, bore double postage; while the other, weighing nearly an ounce, eight inches broad, and more than a foot long, when folded a very creditable letter for Brobdingnag, but all written on one sheet, had its postage single.