Her Majesty's Mails

21. Coin is prohibited to be sent in ordinary letters passing between one part of the United Kingdom and another.[191] If a letter be posted containing coin, it will be registered and charged a double registration fee. Coins or any other articles of value, if properly secured, will be certain of careful treatment under the registration system.[192] 22. Letters meant to be registered must never be dropped into the letter-box as in the case of ordinary letters, but should be given to the clerk in charge of the post-office counter or window to be dealt with, who will in each case give his receipt for it. The receipt is the sender's evidence that it has been posted in proper course. 23. Letters containing sharp instruments, liquids, &c. or any other articles which would be likely of themselves, or if they should escape, to do injury to the other contents of the mail-bag, should never be posted. Postmasters have instructions not to forward such letters according to their address, but, when observed, to send them to the Dead-Letter Office, from which place they will be returned to the writers. Valuable letters of this forbidden kind, therefore, run great risks of delay, while the articles are liable to be destroyed in their passage through the post.[193] 24. Though the transmission of coin in letters is now absolutely forbidden, except under the registration scheme, arrangements are made for rendering it easy to send small sums by post in postage-stamps. When presented at any of the numerous money-order offices in the United Kingdom, they may be exchanged for money, at a charge of 2½ per cent. Any person wishful to send through the post a sum of money under five or six shillings will find it cheaper to buy stamps and enclose them, in place of a post-office order. One penny will be charged for buying forty stamps, a halfpenny for twenty stamps. 60,000l. worth of postage-stamps were bought from the public during the year 1862.