lishers, those experienced gentlemen must
have warned him that he was getting into
danger; must have told him that on a
comparison of dates, and with a reference to the
number printed of Little Dorrit, with that
very incident illustrated, and to the date of
the publication of the completed book in a
volume, they hardly perceived how Mr.
Dickens could have waited, with such
desperate Micawberism, for a fall of houses
in Tottenham Court Road, to get him out of
his difficulties, and yet could have come
up to time with the needful punctuality.
Does the Edinburgh Review make no
charges at random? Does it live in a blue
and yellow glass house, and yet throw
such big stones over the roof? Will the
licensed Reviewer apologize to the licensed
Novelist, for his little Circumlocution Office?
Will he "examine the justice" of his own
"general charges," as well as Mr. Dickens's?
Will he apply his own words to himself, and
come to the conclusion that it really is, "a
little curious to consider what qualifications
a man ought to possess, before he could with
any kind of propriety hold this language"?

The Novelist now proceeds to the
Reviewer's curious misprint. The Reviewer, in
his laudation of the great official departments,
and in his indignant denial of there
being any trace of a Circumlocution Office to
be detected among them all, begs to know,
"what does Mr. Dickens think of the whole
organisation of the Post Office, and of the
system of cheap Postage?" Taking St.
Martins-le-grand in tow, the wrathful
Circumlocution steamer, puffing at Mr. Dickens to
crush him with all the weight of that first-rate
vessel, demands, "to take a single and well-known
example, how does he account for the
career of MR. ROWLAND HILL? A gentleman
in a private and not very conspicuous
position, writes a pamphlet recommending what
amounted to a revolution in a most important
department of the Government. Did
the Circumlocution Office neglect him,
traduce him, break his heart, and ruin his
fortune? They adopted his scheme, and gave
him the leading share in carrying it out, and
yet this is the government which Mr. Dickens
declares to be a sworn foe to talent, and a
systematic enemy to ingenuity."

The curious misprint, here, is the name of
Mr. Rowland Hill. Some other and
perfectly different name must have been sent to
the printer. Mr. Rowland Hill!! Why, if
Mr. Rowland Hill were not, in toughness, a
man of a hundred thousand; if he had not
had in the struggles of his career a stedfastness
of purpose overriding all sensitiveness,
and steadily staring grim despair out of
countenance, the Circumlocution Office would
have made a dead man of him long and long
ago. Mr. Dickens, among his other darings,
dares to state, that the Circumlocution Office
most heartily hated Mr. Rowland Hill; that
the Circumlocution Office most characteristically
opposed him as long as opposition was
in any way possible; that the Circumlocution
Office would have been most devoutly glad if
it could have harried Mr. Rowland Hill's
soul out of his body, and consigned him and
his troublesome penny project to the grave
together.

Mr. Rowland Hill!! Now, see the
impossibility of Mr. Rowland Hill being the
name which the Edinburgh Review sent to
the printer. It may have relied on the
forbearance of Mr. Dickens towards living
gentlemen, for his being mute on a mighty
job that was jobbed in that very Post-Office
when Mr. Rowland Hill was taboo there, and
it shall not rely upon his courtesy in vain:
though there be breezes on the southern
side of mid-Strand, London, in which the
scent of it is yet strong on quarter-days.
But, the Edinburgh Review never can have
put up Mr. Rowland Hill for the putting
down of Mr. Dickens's idle fiction of a
Circumlocution Office. The "license" would
have been too great, the absurdity would
have been too transparent, the Circumlocution
Office dictation and partizanship would
have been much too manifest.

"The Circumlocution Office adopted his
scheme, and gave him the leading share in
carrying it out." The words are clearly not
applicable to Mr. Rowland Hill. Does the
Reviewer remember the history of Mr.
Rowland Hill's scheme? The Novelist does,
and will state it here, exactly; in spite of
its being one of the eternal decrees that
the Reviewer, in virtue of his license, shall
know everything, and that the Novelist in
virtue of his license, shall know nothing.

Mr. Rowland Hill published his pamphlet
on the establishment of one uniform penny
postage, in the beginning of the year eighteen
hundred and thirty-seven. Mr. Wallace,
member for Greenock, who had long been
opposed to the then existing Post-Office
system, moved for a Committee on the
subject. Its appointment was opposed by the
Government—or, let us say, the Circumlocution
Office—but was afterwards conceded.
Before that Committee, the Circumlocution
Office and Mr. Rowland Hill were
perpetually in conflict on questions of fact; and
it invariably turned out that Mr. Rowland
Hill was always right in his facts, and that
the Circumlocution Office was always wrong.
Even on so plain a point as the average
number of letters at that very time passing
through the Post Office, Mr. Rowland Hill
was right, and the Circumlocution Office was
wrong.

Says the Edinburgh Review, in what it
calls a "general" way, "The Circumlocution
Office adopted his scheme." Did it? Not
just then, certainly; for, nothing whatever
was done, arising out of the enquiries of that
Committee. But, it happened that the Whig
Government afterwards came to be beaten on
the Jamaica question, by reason of the Radi-