Her Majesty's Mails

The first part of the following pages is offered as a contribution to the study of the subject, in the hope that it will be allowed to fill the vacant place, at any rate, until the work is done more worthily. With regard to that most interesting episode in the history of the Post-Office which resulted in the penny-post reform, the materials for our work--scanty though they undoubtedly are in the earlier periods--are here sufficiently abundant. The scope, however, of the present undertaking would not allow of much more than a proportionate amount of space being devoted to that epoch. Besides, the history of that eventful struggle can be properly told but by one hand, and that hand, if spared, intends, we believe, to tell his own story. Mr. Torrens MacCullagh, in his Life of Sir James Graham, has thrown much new light on the letter-opening transactions of 1844, and we have been led, on inquiry, to concur in many of his views on the subject.