The Life of Sir Rowland Hill and the

1849] VERY ILL. 131
As usual, in these exhortations to bold defiance, the
printer's name was cautiously suppressed.
While so much was doing to abuse the public mind,
official reserve prevented my taking the most direct
means for its correction :
" Same day. The Postmaster-General objects to my sending the
proposed information to the newspapers ; he thinks it will be better to
wait and see what they say, contradicting it if necessary. I cannot
convince him of the practical impossibility of correcting an erroneous
impression when once adopted by the public."
After all that has been described, the reader will not
be surprised at the next passage from my Journal. I
must first state, however, that ere this the time for
hesitation was past, the labour of preparation concluded,
and the day of actual trial come :
" October 28th. Sunday. Very ill confined to my bed nearly the
whole day. I have no doubt my illness has been caused by the
anxieties of the last month."
Ill though I was, nevertheless I was eagerly desirous
of information as to the success of the first experiment,
particularly as to whether the force engaged had proved,
as I expected, ample. I had ascertained the previous
day " that no more carriages, drivers, guards, &c.,
would be employed in conveying the bags from and to
the stations than heretofore on a Sunday ; the only
difference will be that four-wheeled carriages with two
horses will be substituted for two-wheeled carriages with
one horse." Mr. Bokenham wrote up from the office
that the work not having been quite completed by ten
o'clock, though twenty
minutes more would have
sufficed, he had requested ten of the force to return in
the evening to finish ; a necessity arising, however,
from the fact that the number of letters was 18,000 or
20,000 more than usual on the Sunday. He added,
K 2