10. Perhaps of all the prevalent misconceptions to which the public have been, and still are, liable, none is so unfounded as that the servants of the Post-Office are, as a body, ill-used and ill-paid. Without question, individual cases of hardship and inequality exist; but that there is anything inherently wrong in the system, or that that system is administered with harshness or partiality, or that there is in this Department more than the usual modicum of cases in which the legislation for the many presses heavily on the few, no one who will make himself acquainted with the subject in all its bearings can believe for a moment. Statements to a contrary effect have often appeared in the public newspapers; instead, however, of representing the feelings of the officers, they have much more frequently goaded them into discontent, no doubt, at times, against their better feeling and judgment. Two or three years ago, the Postmaster-General, in referring to these statements, dwelt upon the weight of responsibility resting with that part of the public press who, unthinkingly, and on an _ex parte_ view of their case, indulged the martial sentiments of the men with encouragement to the utter abandonment of discipline and control. We incline to the belief that the time will come when, in the provinces for instance, more liberal allowances will be made to the lower grades of Post-Office officials; when the graphic description already given by the postman poet would, if uttered, be regarded as a libel on his class of officers. On the other hand, with regard to the same class of men in the metropolitan office, the more the question is calmly considered, the less reason is there for sympathy with the popular view. In 1860, the _Times_ gave a dismal account of the sufferings of the London letter-carriers, whose cause it espoused more warmly than wisely. "Hard-worked and ill-paid," said the leading journal, "these men are all discontented and sullen; they are indifferent to the proper performance of their duties, and hold the threat of dismissal in utter disdain, feeling sure, as they say, that even stone-breaking on the road-side would not be harder labour and scarcely less remunerative." A short time after, the other side of the picture relating to these would-be stone-breakers was given, not by an anonymous writer in the _Times_, but by a Cabinet Minister. The report of the late Lord Elgin stated that "there need not be the least difficulty in procuring, at the present wages, honest, intelligent, and industrious young men, perfectly qualified for the office of letter-carrier: and, I may add, that in cases of dismissal--happily a rare occurrence, considering the number of men employed--the most strenuous efforts are made to obtain readmission to the service." Regarding the question in a practical common-sense light, there could be no manner of doubt as to which statement should carry most weight. Other organs of the press, however, either thought differently, or dispensed with the preliminary investigation which the Post-Office courts rather than discourages, and which inquiry it would only have been fair to make. Only last year an important commercial paper commented sympathisingly on "the loud and deep complainings of the London letter-carrier, of the grinding oppression to which they are subjected, and their ineffectual struggles to obtain redress;" and this opinion was echoed round by many smaller lights.