PILLARS OF THE PAST 307 



official to encounter the sacrifice of revenue which the 

 inception of the scheme involved — reluctance which, 

 looking at his position, it is hard to decry. 



Maberly found himself in the responsible and 

 difficult place of custodian of a branch of the public 

 revenue which seemed to be in a decaying state, and 

 the productivity of which it was his laudable ambition 

 to restore. He found himself, too, the successor of a 

 Secretary who, for nearly forty years, had, with 

 sterling ability and remarkable success, wielded 

 almost unquestioned sway. He was followed, as we 

 know, by a reformer who, brilliantly capable, origi- 

 nated a plan overwhelmingly popular. Between these 

 famous men the ci-devant Colonel of Foot has suffered 

 partial eclipse. 



Maberly and Lichfield were not alone in their 

 opposition to penny postage. Even when the great 

 measure had been some years in operation, and 

 monetary success was in view, its popularity had not 

 entirely silenced opponents. So great an authority 

 on public finance as McCulloch, the statistician, and 

 writer on political economy, in his ' Account of the 

 British Empire,' expressed the opinion, as late as 

 1847, that to change from an average charge of 

 sevenpence or sevenpence halfpenny to the uniform 

 penny was ' to rush from one extreme to another, and 

 to endanger a considerable amount of revenue without 

 any equivalent advantage.' He held the view that 

 if Scotch and Irish letters for London had been rated 

 at sixpence, and other letters in proportion, and had 



