Changes occasioned by Railways.

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Since January, 1854, the number of post-offices was increased by 515, making the whole number at present 9,973; more than double those existing when the penny rate was established in 1840. Most of the new offices were opened in the rural districts; and to their further extension we may look for a great increase in the number of letters in future years. Free deliveries have been, besides, established last year at 1,242 places, where none had hitherto existed, and improved in 245 more, including most of our important towns. Day mails from London have been granted to fourteen additional towns, a day mail to London to four such towns, and an additional day mail to London to three towns. In other places inconvenient hours have been changed; whilst to Scotland and Ireland has been afforded increased communication with their capitals. To these improvements we may add accelerations in Ireland, and the establishment of the first travelling post-office in that country. Measures have also been taken for increasing the speed of the night mails from the metropolis to every part of the United Kingdom.

We should naturally have expected that the Post-Office would have derived the same advantages from conveyance by railway, as the general public have done, in increased punctuality and cheapness. The fact is, however, quite the reverse. An immense additional expense has been incurred. For instance, in 1844, the Post-Office received about £200 a year from the coach proprietors for the privilege of carrying the mails twice a day between Lancaster and Carlisle; whereas, at the present time, the same service performed by the railway costs the PostOffice about £12,000 a year. Indeed, generally speaking, the Railway Companies seem to be greatly wanting in the performance of their contracts, although they receive very high remuneration. The London and Brighton line forms an honourable exception, as they spontaneously offered the use of all their trains between London and Brighton for the conveyance of mails, without any further charge. And latterly arrangements have been made with the London and North Western, and other northern and midland lines, which enable mails to be sent by all the trains, on the payment of a fixed sum annually. Still there are two considerable deficiencies, which the public convenience requires should be supplied. One is the want of better arrangements for obtaining railway services on equitable terms: the other, the lack of any available means of enforcing punctuality in the arrival of the mails. Now, with regard to the first of these points, we are by no means disposed to join in the too general demand for impossibilities from the Railway Companies. We are inclined to think that they are often somewhat harshly treated. They are expected to provide trains at once rapid and cheap, well appointed and carefully guarded, and yet at rates

which are not sufficient to cover the expense which such excellence involves. But it certainly is not too much to require that they should convey the mails at rates which give them a fair, and not an extravagant, profit; and that they should afford every facility for a service in which the whole public is so deeply interested. We want ample accommodation, and are willing to pay a fair price. The question is one, no doubt, of considerable difficulty, as is evinced by the "disproportionate and unequal " rewards which have been at different times assigned. But we cannot but think that if the Railway Companies met the PostOffice in a fair spirit, and made a clear statement of the expense which they must incur for conveying the mails, a form of contract might be mutually agreed upon, so drawn up as to admit of extended application, as circumstances might require. With regard to punctuality of arrival, there would probably be more difficulty, as many unavoidable causes might delay a train which had been appointed to travel at a quick rate. The Report certainly gives us the impression that the blame lies chiefly with the Railway Companies; for when the Postmaster-General proposed a system of mutual penalties, under which, according as the cause of delay in any case rested with the Company, or with the Post-Office, the party in fault should pay a fine to the other, and even offered in addition to give a premium in every instance in which a mail-train arrived at its appointed time, every one of the Companies declined acceding to the arrangement. The cause of irregularity is the undue enlargement of the passenger or other traffic sent by the mail-trains; and it certainly appears strange that when, to obviate this irregularity, an offer was made to incur the expense of a special train to convey the letters from London to Edinburgh and Glasgow, the railway authorities thought fit to reject it.

The influence of the war has been felt in two ways by this department, as the transport of troops and stores caused the removal of many of the mail-packets from their stations, whilst the presence of our army and fleets in the Baltic and Black Seas called for new lines of communication with this country. How severely the existing arrangements were disturbed by the first cause, may be gathered from the fact, that no fewer than twentyeight steam-ships, belonging to Companies which contracted for the conveyance of the chief foreign and colonial mails, were withdrawn for the service of the war; and these, of course, were the most powerful and efficient in their fleets. This happened, too, at the very time when negotiations were in progress for a monthly mail to Australia, to which it not only put a stop, but even made the former regular service dependent upon temporary engagements with sailing vessels. The question then arose, How were the mails to be conveyed to Turkey? We had no British mail-packets in the Mediterranean; the high rates through

Postage to the Fleets and Army.

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France and Austria were serious impediments to the employment of their vessels; whilst the scarcity of shipping made a British mail from Marseilles to Constantinople impossible. The French Government, however, established a communication at first six times a month, and more recently twice a week; and our gallant ally, the Emperor, very liberally offered to convey letters to British soldiers and scamen at the same rate as is charged to the French troops, by which the postage was reduced to threepence for each quarter-of-an-ounce letter prepaid, and twopence for each newspaper. On reaching Constantinople, the correspondence was placed under the control of the Commanders of the Forces; and,

"To insure, as far as possible, a prompt delivery of the correspondence on its arrival at head-quarters, and a regular dispatch of return mails to this country, an experienced officer of this department was selected, with the approval of the Secretary of War, to proceed to Turkey as Postmaster of Her Majesty's Forces; and three AssistantPostmasters, together with seven letter-sorters, have since been dispatched from England to aid him in his duties.

"If doubt has any where existed as to the ability or inclination of our soldiers and seamen to avail themselves, in the midst of their trials and hardships, of the means of sending and receiving letters, it has been completely set at rest by the extent to which the mail service through France has been made use of.

"Since the arrangement has been in force,-about eight months,more than 282,000 letters have been forwarded from England to the seat of war in these mails; and more than 325,000 have reached this country by the same route.

"To these numbers must be added the many letters which have been sent at the rate of a penny each by the occasional opportunities of direct ships, of which no accurate return can be given, but which may be safely reckoned at not less than 10,000 outwards, and 2,500 homewards, monthly.

"Upon the whole, the correspondence of our forces in the East presents an average of 45,250 letters dispatched to, and 43,125 received from, the seat of war in each month; a result as gratifying in respect of amount, as those portions of it which meet the public eye generally prove to be in respect of spirit, intelligence, and feeling."Pp. 29, 30.

A weekly communication was also established between this country and the Baltic fleet; a bag of letters from England being dispatched to arrive at Dantzig every Friday, on which day a steamer was appointed to bring the mails from the Baltic fleet. Whilst punctuality and speed have been thus attained, the postage has been considerable in amount, from the letters becoming chargeable to the rates of Prussia and Belgium, on their passage through those countries.

For the reasons above mentioned, this Report contains but little information concerning our Colonial and Foreign Posts;

and a great portion of the space devoted to the latter is occupied by a dispute between the English and American authorities, with the details of which we shall not trouble our readers. With the exception of India, the Cape of Good Hope, Mauritius, and Van Diemen's Land, a low and uniform rate of sixpence has been adopted; and in these excepted Colonies any such arrangement is dependent upon the will of the Colonial Legislature. The importance of this reduction will be more apparent when we remember that the old higher rates carried letters to the shores only of the Colony; whereas the present charge covers its transmission between any part of the United Kingdom, and any part of the Colony. With the exception of Victoria, Van Diemen's Land, and South Australia, the book-post is now in operation with every important Colony, and with most of the minor ones.

With regard to our postal relations with foreign States, we find liberal arrangements and facilities afforded according to the enlightenment of the Government with which we have to deal. With France, from a varying rate of 8d. or 10d., we have a uniform rate of 4d. the quarter-ounce for prepaid, and a double rate upon unpaid, letters. This, as the Report observes, is less than the eighth part of the postage between Manchester and Lyons twenty years ago. Some progress has been made in negotiations for a reduction of postage with Sardinia. Whilst letters may be conveyed for half the former rates (for 6d. instead of 1s.) to China, and for 1s. instead of 28. 7d. to Monte Video, Spain, true to her character, disappoints the expectations which had been formed of her; whilst Portugal gives no encouragement "to expect that any material improvement of the postal arrangements with that country will be effected at present.'

There is, however, every reason to anticipate that further facilities will eventually be afforded for international postal communication. Since the adoption of the penny rate in Great Britain, foreign Governments have had their attention called to the subject; and of the thirty-two countries cited in the Report, there are two only, Sweden and Ecuador, in which no material improvement has been made since 1840. In twentythree countries postage-stamps have been introduced. In Russia, Spain, and Chili, the lowest rate has been reduced to sums between 2d. and 4d.; in France, the United States, Bavaria, Hanover, Portugal, Sardinia, and Brazil, the lowest rate is more than 1d., but less than 2d.; whilst in Belgium and Denmark it has been fixed at the same minimum with our own. Russia and Brazil will not convey unpaid letters; and in twelve other countries prepayment, though not compulsory, is encouraged, by an increased charge upon unpaid letters. It is very difficult, however, to carry on our comparison any further, or to ascertain clearly what the financial results have been in foreign lands. Receipts, expenses, and profits arising from passengers, are generally

Ocean Penny Postage.

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mixed with those relating to letters. In some instances, as in the United States, no expense is incurred for delivery, and the charges of railway conveyance are still more variable. But, taking these circumstances into consideration, we find that in eighteen countries the gross receipts are quite equal, and in two others nearly equal, to what they were before the reduction. In three the profits are nearly as large, and in nine the former amount has been fully regained.

The dazzling proposal of an Ocean Penny Postage is not touched upon in the Report, but we think that enough may be gathered from its pages to show the great improbability of its adoption for many years to come. Security, rapidity, and punctuality are requisite, in addition to cheapness, before any considerable increase in circulation can be permanently maintained. To secure these effectually, a very large addition must be made to the number of our mail-packets, and that at very high rates. But even under existing circumstances, the expense of conveying letters to foreign shores greatly exceeds the revenue derived from them: and the excess of expenditure over income would be proportionately increased with an increase in the number of packets employed, even if the additional number of letters called into circulation by the reduction of the rate of postage should bring up the receipts to their present amount. But we think there are strong reasons for doubting whether this latter result would ensue. Under the best systems of navigation with which we are at present acquainted, the interval which must elapse between the dispatch of a letter, and the arrival of a reply, would be too long to admit of any such extraordinary addition to the contents of the mail-bags. Any one who considers his own correspondence only, will at once see how much of it is composed of trifling notelets, of advertisements from tradesmen who are anxious to push their business, and of a thousand little items, which would probably never have been committed to paper at all, but for the conveniences which the penny rate affords. But such an employment of the PostOffice would be quite out of the question for communicating with our distant Colonies, or with our brethren in the Western hemisphere; rapidity of transmission and a speedy answer being quite as essential to their existence as cheapness.

Of the importance of these desiderata for our Inland letters, the Post-Office authorities are well aware, and are constantly endeavouring to shorten the time occupied in the conveyance and delivery of letters. For this purpose they suggest that the public should assist them, by providing letter-boxes at the outer doors of their houses, by posting all letters and newspapers as early as possible, and by making the address legible and complete, giving the name of the post-town; "and if there be more than one town of that name in the Kingdom, (but not otherwise,)