The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance

Whether this argument is cool or arbitrary I have not time nor inclination to analyse, but having been removed from this ancient district of road, and given my uniform opinion upon the merits of the alteration itself, I have no desire to fight the memorialists to all eternity. Before, however, taking final leave of this contest, and of a memorial said to be unanswerable, I consider myself in duty and honour called upon to vindicate the late Mr ----, as well as myself, from the vindictive terms of 'ignorance, arbitrary, and oppressive' implied in the memorial, and which, if admitted sub silentio, might not be confined to the mismanagement of the Post-office, but to every other department of civil government. In order to this, I shall as briefly as I can follow the general track of the memorial, as of a long beaten road in which, if there is not safety, there is no new difficulty to encounter. It is needless to go over the different distances,--I am ready to admit them--they have not formed any material part of the question,--and the supposed ignorance of the surveyor here is not to the point. The alteration neither did nor should proceed upon such mathematical nicety. The idea of posts is to embrace the most extensive and most needful accommodation.