Note 216 — Chapter VIII

Here was another reformer from outside the Post Office. Yet one more was Sir Douglas Galton, who first proposed that the Post Office should take over the telegraphic system. His father-in-law, Mr Nicholson of Waverley Abbey, sent the then Captain Galton's paper on the subject to Rowland Hill in 1852. The communication being private, my father replied also privately, giving the project encouragement, and leaving Captain Galton to take the next step. He submitted his plan to the Board of Trade, whence it was referred to the Post Office. The Postmaster-General, Lord Hardwicke, did not view the scheme with favour, and it was dropped, to be resumed later within the Office itself. Had Captain Galton's proposals been resolutely taken up in 1852, the British taxpayers might have been spared the heavy burden laid upon them when, nearly twenty years later, the State purchase of the Telegraphs was effected “at a cost at once so superfluous and so enormous.” (“Life,” ii. 251, 252.)