Her Majesty's Mails

From the date of the opening of the new General Post-Office, improvements were proposed and carried out very earnestly. Under the Duke of Richmond, reforms in the establishment set in with considerable vigour.[72] He seems to have been the first Postmaster-General during the present century who thought the accommodation which the Post-Office gave to the public was really of a restrictive nature; that more facility might easily be given to the public; and that the system of management was an erroneous one. In 1834, the Duke of Richmond submitted a list of improvements to the Treasury Lords, in which there were at least thirty substantial measures of reform proposed. It is true that many of these measures had been strongly recommended to him by the Commissioners of Post-Office Inquiry, who had sat yearly on the Post-Office and other revenue branches of the public service. The previous policy, however, of the authorities was to put on a bold front against any recommendations not originating with themselves. The Duke of Richmond had considerably less of this feeling than some of his predecessors. Thus, to take the principal measure of reform concluded in his time--namely, the complete amalgamation of the Scotch and Irish Offices with the English Post-Office--we find that the twenty-third report of the Commissioners, signed by "Wallace," W. J. Lushington, Henry Berens, and J. P.