The Life of Sir Rowland Hill and the

1849] LORDS DAY SOCIETY. 113
some thousands, needful rest, and the opportunity of
attending the services of the day."
This minute was referred by the Postmaster-General
to Colonel Maberly, who, as I had the satisfaction of
learning two days later, promptly declared his intention
to report in favour of the measure, saying that it
ought to have been adopted long ago. This he ac-
cordingly did, and I have the pleasure to say that,
amidst the troubles w r
hich subsequently arose from the
measure, Colonel Maberly stood by his first decision.
About three weeks later the " Lord's Day Society "
applied to me to receive a deputation, with a view
to the total cessation of Post Office business on the
Sunday, stating that they were referred to me by the
Postmaster-General. As Lord Clanricarde was then
out of town, I wrote to him for instructions, feeling,
meantime, no small perplexity, because I well knew
that, on the one hand, resistance to the expected
demand would expose me to attack, and that, on the
other, concession would soon produce such an uproar
throughout the country as must seriously annoy the
Government, and, moreover, raise obstacles to those
practical measures of Sunday relief which were already
in progress.
However, the Postmaster-General having expressed
a wish that I should receive the deputation, I called at
the Treasury to urge immediate sanction to my last
measures on the subject, but found the Chancellor of
the Exchequer too much occupied to attend to the
business.
"March ^oth. Received the deputation from the 'Lord's Day
Society,' consisting of Mr. Cowan, M.P. for Edinburgh, General
Maclnnes, three clergymen, and others. They had prepared a plan
for stopping the mails throughout the kingdom from midnight on
Saturday till midnight on Sunday, but I had no great difficulty in
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