if you remember that you are Englishmen as
well as Postmen; and if you call a meeting after
business hours—look out! Censure or other
proportionate punishment awaits you, at the hands
of your impartial Authorities. You quite
understand? Very well, then. Good morning."

Those are the last words of the Authorities,
expressed through the medium of an official
notice; which notice the letter-carriers
provoked by calling a public meeting for the
temperate discussion of their claims, on Friday
evening, June the twenty-first, in this present year.

Surely it was rash to call a public meeting,
in opposition to the wishes of the Controller
of the Circulation and the other Authorities?
It is certainly rash for men to rush into
extremes of their own accord. But if men are
driven into extremes, rashness seems to be
scarcely the right epithet to apply to their
conduct. For the last two years—to go back
no further than to the period when these
Post-office grievances first attracted public
attention—for the last two years, these unfortunate
Postmen have been memorialising; petitioning;
praying for interviews with a courteous
Postmaster-General; obtaining interviews, with
the result of an affable reception and nothing
else; getting acknowledgments of their memorials,
and nothing else; getting advice to be
quiet and behave themselves; being quiet and
behaving themselves, and getting nothing by
that either. After two years of useless praying
and petitioning, and eating and digesting humble
pie with resigned official stomachs, these
exceptionally patient men show at last that they are
mortal, and open their complaining lips faintly
in the public hearing. If this is rashness, what
is discretion? Will the Controller of the
Circulation and the Postmaster-General be so kind
as to tell us?

But (the Controller may say, and doubtless does
say) the whole principle of the thing is wrong.
These ignorant men don't understand even the
rudiments of political economy. Here are we, the
Authorities, with the public purse in our charge.
In the name of political economy, what are we
to do for the public advantage? Buy service in.
the cheapest market, of course! Here, on the
other hand, are a pack of postmen who want
more wages. Preposterous! Hosts of unemployed
young men—embryo letter-carriers, with
the tendon Achilles powerfully developed, and
immense pedestrian possibilities in the calves of
their legs—are ready to snap at eighteen
shillings a week, or less for the matter of that, if
we will only give them postmen's work to do.
What necessarily follows? The market rate for
postmen is eighteen shillings (or less)—we give
the market rate—and let the present postmen
go, if they want more.

This is a strong argument? Uncommonly
strong as long as we keep it in the lower regions;
but let us take it up-stairs, and it becomes as
rickety as an octogenarian postman, on thirty
shillings a week, at the end of the day's
deliveries. What is the market value of the heads
of the Post-office departments? There are
hundreds of disengaged gentlemen in this country
(not including Irish gentlemen) with dormant
administrative capacities, who would cheerfully
undertake their work, at half their salary. Do
we limit that salary to the lowest sum which
those unemployed gentlemen would be willing to
receive?

No: we wisely remember that Sir Rowland
Hill and the heads of Post-office departments
ments have qualifications which are too
important to be rewarded according to such a
preposterous principle of economy as this. The
decision which settled the amount of their
salaries (and which did not regulate them
at a farthing too much) sprang, and sprang
properly, from a due sense of their individual
responsibilities, and a fit conviction of their
individual capacity for dealing with them. Far
beneath higher officials, intellectually and socially,
as the letter-carrier may be, he may surely claim
that his individual responsibilities, too, may be
considered as part, and a very important part, of
the question of his wages. We are purchasing the
use of his honesty and his diligence, as well as
the use of his legs. Granting that the necessary
legs are to be sold cheaper elsewhere—are
we sure of getting the necessary honesty and
diligence thrown into the bargain as well? It
is true that we can be sure of no man until
we have tried him—but taking servants
generally, in relation to their employers, what
practical incentives to diligence, what practical
safeguards against dishonesty, are we all really
driven to rely on? A good character? Rogues
get a good character every day. Promises and
protestations? Hypocrites deal in them every
hour of their lives. No; we take men in the
mass; we accept humanity for what it
generally is; and we rely (in default of better
holding-ground) on good wages. The better rate of
remuneration does, in the long run, secure the
better order of man; and the better order of
man is wanted to take care of our letters. The
cheapest-attainable-Sir Rowland Hill, would, we
all know very well, be no bargain for us; and—
when you come to number your letter-carriers
by the hundred; when you reflect on the serious
public interests which they represent; and when
you remember that Temptation oftenest fights
the winning battle, with Poverty for a backer—
the cheapest-attainable-postman is no such
certain bargain either.

More arguments pro and con. might easily be
stated; but, in its present aspect, the question
presses for settlement. It has advanced beyond
the stage of mere wrangling, and has narrowed
its immediate claims to one plain inquiry,
plainly spoken out. Do the postmen ask too
much? Remember what is socially as well as
economically due to their labours and their
position; remember, though they have waited two
years, that they are not following the wretched
example set them by other workmen with higher
wages than they receive—remember that these
men are pleading, and not striking—and then say,
is a salary of twenty-three shillings a week to
begin with, and forty shillings a week after fifteen