The Life of Sir Rowland Hill and the

1854] SOLE SECRETARY. 225
" Addressed the following letter to the Postmaster-General :
"G. P. O., 25th April, 1854.
" MY DEAR LORD, Allow me to tender my sincere and earnest
thanks for the change which has been effected in my position a
change for which I feel the more indebted because of the persevering
kindness with which, in the midst of your own laborious duties, you
have wrought for it from the moment of my earliest application to
you on the subject, and with which I feel the more deeply gratified
because it affords a promise of seeing those improvements which
have been the main object of my life brought to completion under
your lordship's enlightened administration.
" I have the honour to remain,
"Your Lordship's obliged and faithful servant,
" ROWLAND HILL.
"The Right Honourable VISCOUNT CANNING,
"&c., &c. f &c."
I also wrote letters of thanks to Mr. Gladstone and
Lord Aberdeen.
Letters of congratulation soon poured in from the
many friends in and out of Parliament, at home and
abroad, who had so long and so steadily supported the
cause of postal reform, and so kindly interested themselves
in my favour ; amongst others, from Lord
Brougham, Lord Truro, Sir Francis Baring, Mr. Warburton,
Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Cobden, Mr. Hume, Mr.
Moffatt, Mr. Raikes Currie, and M. Piron.*
Government went further even than I had ever asked
for, advancing my salary at once to the maximum rate
of .2,000 a year.
It will be observed that all those to whom I had on
this occasion to render official thanks had been mem-
*
The eloquent words of Milton might have come into the thoughts of some of
them when he
"
: says nihil esse in societate hominum magis vel Ueo gratum, vel
rationi consentaneum, esse in civitate nihil sequius, nihil utilius, quam potiri rerum
"
dignissimum." In the coalition of human Society," to use Johnson's rendering,
"
nothing is more pleasing to God, or more agreeable to reason, than that the
highest mind should have the sovereign power." ED.
VOL. II. Q