Note 174 — Chapter VII
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The people of to-day who have never known the old postal system can have no idea of the unanimity and strength of that voice. Memory of the former state of things was still fresh in men's minds; and, with perhaps one exception, no person wished for its return. “Hill, you are the most popular man in the kingdom,” one day exclaimed an old friend. The exception—there might have been more than one, but if so, we were none the wiser—was one of the Bentincks who, so late as the year 1857, suggested in the House of Commons a return to franking on the score that penny postage was one of the greatest jobs and greatest financial mistakes ever perpetrated. Sir Francis Baring advised Mr Bentinck to try to bring back the old postal rates, when he would see what the country thought of the proposal.—(“Hansard,” cxlvi. 188, 189.)