Page:The life and letters of Sir John Henniker Heaton bt. (IA lifelettersofsi00port).pdf/173

 points of administration in the Post Office. There was nothing too big—there was nothing too small—for this insatiable inquirer. Sometimes it was a suggestion of inter-Colonial policy of great magnitude, but just as often it was a question as to why one city with a double and lengthy name, say like Newcastle-on-Tyne, was charged as an address as one word, while some other city, like, say, Barrow-in-Furness, was charged as two words. The Postmaster-General of the period fretted and fumed under his pitiless and insatiate shower of interrogatory—especially in the case of the late Mr Raikes, who, though a courteous, was also an impatient Minister, and especially was inclined to resent these pin-pricks from a man of his own party. But Henniker Heaton was not a man to be cowed, or frozen out, or exhausted, and he went calmly on his way, with something of the stolid steady movement of a genial elephant trampling mercilessly, but without malignity, on all small obstacles.

This was one of Henniker Heaton's chief weapons. He also waged an active war with his pen. When he got on his favourite subject he could almost convince you, as he certainly convinced himself, that postal reform was the one panacea for most human ills. A third and most powerful weapon in his hands was the deputation to Ministers. He could get up a bigger, a more powerful, and a more representative deputation than any other member of the House of Commons. The peculiarity was, that the deputation was the result far more of his personal influence than of any strong feeling of agreement with his views.