The Postmasters desired nothing better; but Pitt, who had the greatest confidence in Palmer, long evaded the interview they sought with him to procure his dismissal, and when at length they did win to his presence he made it quite clear that it was not in their direction his sympathies extended. Indeed, it is quite possible that the Comptroller-General would have seen his masters out of office while he retained his own, had it not been for the extraordinary and unexplained treachery of Palmer’s own friend, Charles Bonnor, whom he had provided with a splendid post at the General Post Office. This man suddenly launched a pamphlet in which he accused his benefactor of delaying the London post in order to create popular demands for reforms Palmer himself desired to introduce, reforms that would place him in a position of higher authority. The Postmasters-General received the publication of this pamphlet with a well-simulated amazement, but the suspicion that they had themselves induced Bonnor to perform the part of Judas is inevitable, and is deepened by their subsequent action. Palmer, of course, suspended Bonnor, whereupon they asked the reason, and on Palmer refusing to give an explanation that must have been wholly unnecessary in fact, if not in actual form, they reinstated the man. Nay, more, when Bonnor repaired to my lords with the news that Palmer had refused to reinstate him, and had, in fact, ordered him with threats off the premises, they consented to read and to show to Pitt the private and confidential correspondence he had brought with him, addressed by Palmer to his former friend during a series of years, and containing not a little compromising matter, proving how Palmer had been steadily bent on asserting his own authority and on denying that of the Postmasters-General.
_From the engraving after George Robertson._ ]
The whole pitiful story is at bottom an indictment of the figurehead in public life; an exposure of the hoary custom of appointing political and ornamental heads to the overlordship of executive departments really ruled by permanent officials. My lords came and went as party fortunes willed. Palmer had officially no politics; all he desired was to perfect his already successful plan. Other Postmasters-General would have been content with their figureheadship, and have danced like any other Governmental puppets to the pulling of official strings; but Palmer’s overlords declined to do anything of the sort, and if they could not organise or originate, found it at least possible to meddle and veto.