Sir Rowland Hill has resigned, officially on account of ill
health, - really, it is said, because his Chief thinks that being responsible he ought to direct his department. His retirement is, perhaps, well timed, for there is no mind which stereotypes so rapidly as that of an inventor ; but if ever public servant deserved a formal Parlia- mentary acknowledgment it is Sir Rowland Hill. He has done as much for the transmission of intelligence as Stephenson did for locomotion, and it must be remembered that his reward has been a salary, not a fortune. Objectors still deny that he invented the Penny Post, but it is quite certain that he carried it in the teeth of a most angry and resolute opposition. To this hour one economist, Mr. McCulloch, protests in his dictionaries against the single reform, except the abolition of the tinder box, which has directly benefited the poor, and doubts if a twopenny rate would not have been more advisable. We now want a man whio will give us ocean penny postage—a penny a half-ounce is nearly 3001. a ton, or fifteen times Indian steam freight—and abolish the mail subsidies. Suppose the Postmaster-General carries that, and so proves his intellectual right to dispense with Sir Rowland Hill.
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