Her Majesty's Mails

Hill that the revision which he was just giving to his work as it was passing through the press would, on the old system, have cost him 1,500l. in postage alone, and that the Bible could not have been printed but for the penny post. Secretaries of different benevolent and literary societies wrote to say how their machinery had been improved; conductors of educational establishments, how people were everywhere learning to write for the first time in order to enjoy the benefits of a free correspondence, and how night-classes for teaching writing to adults were springing up in all large towns for the same object. Mr. Stokes, the honorary secretary of the Parker Society--composed of the principal Church dignitaries and some intelligent laymen--which has done so much for ecclesiastical literature by reprinting the works of the early English reformers, stated that the Society could never have come into existence but for the penny postage. One of the principal advocates for the repeal of the Corn Laws subsequently gave it as his opinion, that their objects were achieved two years earlier than otherwise would have been the case, owing to the introduction of cheap postage. After a lapse of twenty years, many more useful societies might be mentioned of which the same could be said. An interesting letter from the late Professor Henslow, the then Rector of Hitcham in Suffolk, may be given, as it contains a pretty accurate estimate of the social advantages accruing to the masses.