Her Majesty's Mails

The special train, which had been in waiting for about forty-eight hours, left the Holyhead Station at 8.13 A.M., and it was from this point that the most remarkable part of this rapid express commenced. The run from Holyhead to Stafford, 130½ miles, occupied only 145 minutes, being at the rate of no less than fifty-four miles an hour; and although so high a speed was judiciously not attempted over the more crowded portion of the line from Stafford to London, the whole distance from Holyhead to Euston, 264 miles, was performed by the London and North-Western Company in exactly five hours, or at a speed of about 52-2/3 miles an hour, a speed unparalleled over so long a line, crowded with ordinary traffic. The entire distance from Queenstown Pier to Euston Square, about 515 miles, was thus traversed in fifteen hours and three minutes, or at an average speed of about thirty-four and a quarter miles an hour, including all delays necessary for the several transfers of the mails from boat to railway, or vice versâ.... By means of the invention for supplying the tender with water from a trough in transitu, the engine was enabled to run its first stage of 130½ miles, from Holyhead to Stafford, without stopping." During the session of 1860-1, an Act was passed through Parliament for the establishment of Post-Office Savings' Banks on a plan proposed by Mr. Sykes, of Huddersfield. In order to encourage the registration of letters containing coin or valuable articles, the registration fee was reduced, in 1862, from 6d. to 4d. each letter. At the same time, the plan of compulsory registration of letters was revived, and applied to all letters passing through the London Office which contained, or were supposed to contain, coin. Last year the plan was found to have been so successful in its results, that it was extended to all inland letters. The public may judge of the benefits and blessings of this proscriptive measure--to the officers of the Post-Office at any rate--when we state that the convictions for letter-stealing, since the plan was fully adopted, have been reduced more than ninety per cent.