This promise Mr. Yorke handsomely fulfilled, and not without good effect, though public feeling was still too strong to allow of immediate success.
On the same day that I saw Mr. Yorke there were more inflammatory notices at the churches; but to these no printer’s name was attached. It was no wonder that symptoms of direct insubordination began to appear in the department. The gas in Mr. Bokenham’s office was on one occasion suddenly put out, and one of the volunteers for the Sunday duty was hooted. I could not but feel great anxiety as to the issue, since an open outbreak would have thrown all into confusion; nor can I deem it even now needless to point out that when any considerable portion of the public, acting upon an ex-parte statement, and hastily assuming that that which is not promptly denied must needs be true, takes upon itself to countenance discontent in an important Government department, it must, at least, produce in the department itself great anxiety and the waste of much valuable time, and may expose the whole country to the risk of most serious inconvenience. Some months afterwards the Postmaster-General admitted that he was now satisfied that we should have had a strike in the Inland Office if the men had had the slightest pretext for it; and that if he had forced any one to attend on Sundays, which he says —— pressed him to do, it would, no doubt, have furnished the pretext.
On the following day I became aware of one source of misconception among the men, and, through them, among the public. Mr. Bokenham admitted that, when he communicated to his clerks the Postmaster-General’s positive order for the Sunday transmission, he withheld the minute that limited the service to volunteers, and thus raised, and in some degree justified, the cry that compulsion would be employed.
Meanwhile the trouble thus excited in St. Martin’s-le-Grand was extending to the provincial offices, at one of which the postmaster had gone so far as to issue, under his own signature, a hand-bill against the measure.[63] Meanwhile one postmaster, at least, took a very different course:—
“The postmaster at Plymouth has written to say that in his office alone thirty men, including letter-carriers, will be relieved. He describes the measure as one of the most important ‘in the annals of the Post Office.’”
All such support was very important at a time when opposition was so strong, and, I must add, so unscrupulous:—
“October 27th.—The Committee of the Lord’s Day Society has issued a copy of my minute of February 3rd, with comments thereon of a very offensive character. They insinuate doubts as to the minute having been written in February, and express their belief that I originally proposed a Sunday delivery.
“Same day.—Worse placards than ever at the churches. Sent in a memorandum to Colonel Maberly informing him that at a church in Gresham Street a placard is exhibited exhorting the men to strike.”
The following is the text of this strange exhortation:—