“I have carefully considered the whole matter in all its bearings, and I cannot raise in my mind a doubt of the propriety of your abiding by these terms; and I will set down, as shortly as I can, the reasons which have occurred to me to show that the course you have taken was the only one really open to you.
“It is quite clear that to insure a fair trial for your plan you will require great powers; that Ministers will not interfere with you themselves, nor, as far as they can prevent it, suffer you to be thwarted by others, I can readily believe; but I am not so sure of their power as I am of their goodwill. You have excited great hostility at the Post Office—that we know as a matter of fact; but it must have been inferred if the fact had not been known. It is not in human nature that the gentlemen of the Post Office should view your plan with friendly eyes. If they are good-natured persons, as I dare say they are, they will forgive you in time; but they have much to overlook. That a stranger should attempt to understand the arcana of our system of postage better than those whose duty it was to attain to such knowledge, was bad enough; that he should succeed, was still worse; but that he should persuade the country and the Parliament that he had succeeded is an offence very difficult to pardon. Now, you are called upon to undertake the task of carrying into action, through the agency of these gentlemen, what they have pronounced preposterous, wild, visionary, absurd, clumsy, and impracticable. They have thus pledged themselves, by a distinct prophecy, repeated over and over again, that the plan cannot succeed. I confess I hold in great awe prophets who may have the means of assisting in the fulfilment of their own predictions. Believe me, you will require every aid which Government, backed by the country, can give you to conquer these difficulties. You found it no easy task to defeat your opponents in the great struggle which is just concluded; but what was that to what you are now called upon to effect? no less an enterprise than to change your bitter enemies into hearty allies, pursuing your projects with goodwill, crushing difficulties instead of raising them, and using their practical knowledge, not to repel your suggestions and to embarrass your arrangements, but using that same knowledge in your behalf, aiding and assisting in those matters wherein long experience gives them such a great advantage over you, and which may be turned for or against you at the pleasure of the possessors.
“To try this great experiment, therefore, with a fair chance of success, it must be quite clear that you have the confidence of the Government; and that can only be shown by their advancing you to an equality, at least, with the principal executive officer among those with whose habits and prejudices you must of necessity so much and so perpetually interfere. Have you made Mr. Baring sufficiently aware of the numerous—I might say numberless—innovations, which your plan of necessity implies? The reduction of postage and the modes of prepayment are, no doubt, the principal features of your plan; but you lay great stress, and very properly, in my opinion, on increasing the facilities for transmitting letters; and this part of the reform will, I apprehend, cause you more labour of detail than that which more strikes the public eye. In this department you will be left to contend with the Post Office almost alone. It will be very easy to raise plausible objections to your measures, of which Ministers can hardly be supposed to be competent judges, either in respect of technical information or of leisure for inquiry. Neither would the public, even if you had the means and inclination to appeal to it, give you assistance in matters upon which you could never fix its attention.
“But your personal weight and importance as compared with that of others who it is reasonable to believe will, in the first instance at least, be opposed to you, will be measured very much by comparison of salary. We may say what we will, but Englishmen are neither aristocratic nor democratic, but chrysocratic (to coin a word). Your salary will, therefore, if you have one at all, fix your position in the minds of every functionary of the Post Office, from the Postmaster-General to the bellman, both inclusive.
“But though I see these insuperable objections to your accepting either of the salaries which have been offered, I will not advise you (and you would reject such advice if I gave it) to embarrass the Government, if there be any difficulty, which there may be unknown to us, in the way of their either giving you a higher salary, or postponing the question of remuneration until the end of the two years. Your offer made on the spur of the moment, to surrender your present appointment, and work for the public without salary, though it does look somewhat ‘wild and visionary’ at first sight, yet after a long and careful reflection upon it, I distinctly advise you to renew, and more than that, I seriously hope it will be accepted. Your fortune, though most men would consider it very small, is enough to enable you to live two years without additional income; and I feel certain that the Government and the country will do you and your family justice in the end; but suppose I should be mistaken, and that you never receive a shilling for either your plan or your services in carrying it into operation, I should be very glad to change places with you, and so would thousands of your countrymen, if, on taking your labours and privations, they could also feel conscious of your merit.
“I remain, &c.,
“M. D. Hill.”
This letter I forwarded the next day, enclosing it in a short one from myself to the same effect; in which also I proposed to wait upon Mr. Baring at four o’clock, to give him any further explanation.
I was received in a manner not merely courteous but most friendly; no time was lost in debate, and I was requested to call again the following day at one o’clock, to see the draft of a letter which Mr. Baring undertook to prepare meanwhile. Of this letter, which, upon my expressing satisfaction with it, Mr. Baring immediately signed and handed to me, the following is a copy:—
“Downing Street, September 14, 1839.