1 66 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE 



himself hot-headed and impatient of control, he 

 very soon came to disagreement from them. 

 Their suggestions he at first haughtily ignored, as 

 in his opinion likely to injure his plans, and when 

 those suggestions l)ecame commands, he entirely 

 disoheyed them. The chiefs witli Avliom he thus 

 came into bitter conflict were at first Lords 

 Carteret and Walsingham : the former a " job- 

 master," as Palmer satirically styled him, of 

 peculiar shamelessness and audacity; his colleague 

 a man of probity, but with something of the 

 formal prig in his constitution that irritated 

 Palmer at last beyond endurance. Walsingham 

 made a point of investigating everything. He 

 may not have been a better man of business than 

 Palmer, but he was a man of orderly metliods, 

 which Palmer was not. Palmer did things well, 

 but in an unbusinesslike way ; Walsingham must 

 for ever be seeking precedents, calling for vouchers, 

 and insisting ujion official etiquette. All this was 

 very poisonous to the new Comptroller-General, who 

 found himself largely controlled instead of control- 

 ling. Carteret, being convicted by his colleague 

 of a job. Palmer hotly thought his own honesty 

 questioned when careless and unreported appoint- 

 ments solely on his own initiative were resented 

 by his official suj^erior. Thus affairs continued 

 through six years of changes, in which Postmasters- 

 General succeeded one another and returned like 

 the changes of a kaleidoscope. But while other 

 Postmasters disappeared, Walsingham, the stickler 

 for form, remained. With others Palmer might 



