Her Majesty's Mails

But this would be by no means the most important result. Such posts would necessitate more frequent deliveries in provincial towns--the postmen to be paid accordingly as fully, and not as now, only partially, employed. On the other hand, it is quite clear that the Post-Office net revenue is a fair and honourable item on the credit side of the Government accounts, with which the public, except through their representatives in Parliament, have nothing whatever to do. The penny postage scheme was carried through Parliament in the confident expectation resolutely urged by the intrepid founder of that scheme, that all the benefits promised under it would result to the country, without any great relinquishment of Post-Office revenue, and that only for a term of years. Gradually, year by year, with enormous gain to the public convenience in innumerable ways, the revenue derivable from this branch of the service has risen beyond the highest standard of the past. Any relinquishment of the profits--which, by the way, staves off other taxes--depends on Parliament, and not on the Post-Office.[203] 10. Perhaps of all the prevalent misconceptions to which the public have been, and still are, liable, none is so unfounded as that the servants of the Post-Office are, as a body, ill-used and ill-paid. Without question, individual cases of hardship and inequality exist; but that there is anything inherently wrong in the system, or that that system is administered with harshness or partiality, or that there is in this Department more than the usual modicum of cases in which the legislation for the many presses heavily on the few, no one who will make himself acquainted with the subject in all its bearings can believe for a moment. Statements to a contrary effect have often appeared in the public newspapers; instead, however, of representing the feelings of the officers, they have much more frequently goaded them into discontent, no doubt, at times, against their better feeling and judgment. Two or three years ago, the Postmaster-General, in referring to these statements, dwelt upon the weight of responsibility resting with that part of the public press who, unthinkingly, and on an ex parte view of their case, indulged the martial sentiments of the men with encouragement to the utter abandonment of discipline and control.