I consequently entered on my present office, and have now served under three Postmasters-General; and I gladly avail myself of this opportunity to express my deep sense of the kindness and confidence with which I have been treated, and my full recognition of the efforts made from time to time, with more or less of success, to remove impediments and to give freer scope to my exertions; but the evils which I foresaw and which have come upon me in full measure are beyond the reach of palliatives. The system on which we are proceeding is radically bad, and stands scarcely more strongly condemned by myself than by my colleague Colonel Maberly.
Though possessed of secretarial authority, I am, if I may so express myself, a general almost without an army—when I entered the office I found, of course, the clerks regarding the senior secretary as having the first if not the only claim on their services; and without desiring for a moment to reflect on them or on any one else, I become every day more convinced that without harmonious views, a joint jurisdiction, even supposing equality to be fully and practically admitted, is utterly incompatible with the requirements of the office.
Looking then back upon the events of the six years during which my promised promotion has been delayed, I feel bound to state that if in December, 1846, I could have foreseen what has occurred I could not have accepted the offer then made, nor do I believe that, under like circumstances, my friends would have advised me to the step.
That much has been done is, of course, not to be denied by me; but it has been accomplished amidst sore trials, and with risks to health which my duty to my family would not have allowed me to incur.
Let me then stand acquitted before your Lordship and the Chancellor of the Exchequer of either impatience or presumption, when I urge in the strongest manner, consistent with the respect which I owe to my superiors, my claim to the prompt fulfilment of the understanding on which alone I consented to take my seat at the Post Office.
As every statement like that which I am called upon by your Lordship to make is, of necessity, tinctured with egotism, I gladly quit that part of the task which relates to my own personal interests, and proceed to show that the change which I claim is equally demanded by the public service.
In 1847 I was directed by the Postmaster-General to report on the state of the Money Order Office, which resulted in my recommending several large retrenchments and other improvements, which were adopted by his Lordship and the Treasury, but which Colonel Maberly declined to take the responsibility of carrying into effect; in consequence of which the secretarial authority of that Department was consigned to me alone.
By a report of Mr. Barth, the head of the Department, which I called for soon afterwards, it appears that the accounts were then so deeply in arrear that great doubt was entertained whether they ever could be made complete, and the expense of their completion, supposing it to be possible, was estimated at £10,000. No general balance had ever been struck since the institution of the Department in 1839, and the liabilities were of unknown amount.
To avoid the great expense of bringing up the arrears, and to insure the extinction of unknown liabilities, it was found necessary to obtain an Act of Parliament calling in the outstanding Money Orders. Concurrent efforts were made to bring up the more recent arrears, and to prevent the possibility of new ones arising. And eventually the liabilities of the department were ascertained, and a general balance was struck, which has since been repeated quarterly.
On a full investigation of the accounts I found that the Department was not only, as I had anticipated, unprofitable, but involved an annual loss of no less than £10,000.