That the Queen's own letters carried
postage under the new regime was a fact almost us highly appreciated
as Her Majesty's voluntary offer at a later date to bear her due
share of the income tax.
It is well to notice how later Postmasters General, successors of
Rowland Hill in that important office, have striven further to
benefit their countrymen. In particular, Henry Fawcett's earnest
efforts to encourage and aid habits of thrift are worthy of
remembrance.
Again, it is during the first year of Her Majesty's reign that we
find Father Mathew, the Irish Capuchin friar, initiating his vast
crusade against intemperance, and by the charm of his persuasive
eloquence and unselfish enthusiasm inducing thousands upon thousands
to forswear the drink-poison that was destroying them. In two years
he succeeded in enrolling two million five hundred thousand persons
on the side of sobriety. The permanence of the good Father's
immediate work was impaired by the superstitions which his poor
followers associated with it, much against his desire. Not only were
the medals which he gave as badges to his vowed abstainers regarded
as infallible talismans from the hand of a saint, but the giver was
credited with miraculous powers such as only a Divine Being could
exercise, and which he disclaimed in vain--extravagances too likely
to discredit his enterprise with more soberly judging persons than
the imaginative Celts who were his earliest converts.
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