Her Majesty's Mails

Within the last ten years the facilities offered to letter-writers by the Post-Office have materially increased. Four thousand additional persons have had to be employed in the service, one half, at least, of whom are engaged on account of the facilities and improvements in question, whilst the remainder may be said to have been required by the gradual increase of work in the establishment. The establishment of mid-day mails, increasing the number of daily deliveries in almost every provincial town; the acceleration of night-mails, allowing more time for posting in some places, and earlier deliveries in all; the increase in the number of village posts, to the extent of between three and four hundred every year; the gradual extension of free deliveries; the establishment of pillar letter-boxes as receptacles for letters; reductions in the rate of foreign and colonial letters, and also in the registration fee for home letters; the division of London, and to some extent other large towns, like Liverpool, into districts; and above all, the establishment of thousands of new savings' banks on safe principles, in connexion with improved money-order offices; are some of the principal advantages and facilities to which we refer. The past ten years have been years of great, gradual, and unexampled improvement. Nor is there anything but progress and advancement in prospect. The fact is, that the Post-Office is capable of infinite extension and growth: besides it belongs to the nation, and the people will expect the development of the utmost of its utilities. At the present time the experiment is being tried whether, without impairing its efficiency or the performance of its more proper business, the Post-Office can undertake the distribution of stamps; and it is not impossible, considering that it has at its command an organization which penetrates the entire kingdom, as no other private or public institution does, that the Stamp Department may be transferred to the control of the Postmaster-General.