In 1862, the Pneumatic Conveyance Company set up a branch of their operations at the Euston Square Station, London. The Post-Office took advantage of this new mode of conveyance to send the mail-bags to the North-Western District Office from this important railway terminus. The work is, of course, accomplished with marvellous expedition. The machinery for other localities is in course of construction, and may ultimately extend all over the metropolis, to the supercession, as far as the Post-Office is concerned, of the existing mail-vans.

During the month of May, 1863, a Postal Congress—the first of the kind—originated, we believe, by Mr. Rasson of the United States, assembled at the Bureau des Postes, in the Rue Jean Jacques, Paris, under the presidency of the French Postmaster-General, M. Vandal. The object of the Congress was "the improvement of postal communication between the principal commercial nations of the world." As we find that the little republic of Ecuador was represented, the postal affairs of little kingdoms were also not overlooked. Each civilized nation was asked to send a delegate, and all the most important States responded. Mr. Frederic Hill, brother of Sir Rowland Hill, and Assistant Secretary, was the English representative; the President represented France; M. Metzler, Prussia; Mr. Rasson, the United States; M. Hencke, Hamburg, &c. &c. The prepayment of foreign letters was one of the most difficult subjects discussed. The Congress came to the conclusion that it would be best to leave it optional with the writer of the letter whether the postage should be paid to its destination, or paid on receipt; in the latter case, however, it was thought desirable that a moderate additional postage should be charged. Another important matter was settled in a conclusive manner. It was first decided that the postage of foreign letters should be regulated by weight: it then became highly necessary, in order to the carrying out of this decision, that the postage should be calculated by a common standard; hence the following resolution, which was agreed to—"The metrical decimal system, being of all systems of weighing that which is best suited to the requirements of the postal service, it is expedient to adopt it for the international postal relations, to the exclusion of every other system." Other subjects of lesser importance, such as the route of foreign letters, the division of postage rates, the transmission of coin in letters (which they agreed to allow), were discussed very fully and, we are assured, very amicably. The Congress seems to have arrived at a good understanding of the principles of postal reciprocity, and good will doubtless be the result. The Postal Congress of last year was a Peace Congress of the most efficient kind, and in every sense of the term.

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.

Further, there is no doubt but that Mr. Gladstone's Bill, if passed through Parliament, "to amend the law relating to Government Annuities," will have a most important effect upon the Post-Office institution.[138] It is true that under the Savings' Bank Act any person may purchase a deferred annuity through the Post-Office, only the clause making it necessary to pay the purchase-money in one sum has a direct deterrent effect upon the measure. The provisions of the new Bill, on the contrary, allow the purchase-money to be paid in even weekly instalments. Equally important is the second part of the Bill, which empowers the Government to assure a person's life for 100l. It is proposed to draft all this extra business on to the Post-Office establishment, and no interest, except the insurance company interest, is likely to say nay. Until assurance or other companies can appoint agents, and open out offices in every town and village, the Government is likely to have a monopoly of any business it chooses to undertake.

PART II.
DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE POST-OFFICE.

"It has often struck me that some pains should be taken to make the main features of the Post-Office system intelligible to the people."—Speech of Mr. Rowland Hill at Liverpool, 1847.

PREFATORY.

It is scarcely possible to over-estimate the importance of the postal regulations of this country. Every section of society, and, to some extent, every individual, participates in the benefits—commercial, social, and moral—bestowed by our cheap Post-Office. It is not our purpose here to urge the value and utility of the Post-Office institution—which most of our readers gratefully admit—but rather to furnish some general information relative to the organization and ordinary working of the Department, sensible that an intelligible account of the principal features in the system will increase the interest already felt in the Post-Office, as a mighty engine spreading the influences of commerce, education, and religion throughout the world. The Postmaster-General for 1854, in starting an annual report of the Post-Office, stated that "many misapprehensions and complaints arise from an imperfect knowledge of matters which might, without any inconvenience, be placed before the public;" and also, "that the publicity thus given will be an advantage to the Department itself, and will have a good effect upon the working of many of its branches."

Endeavouring to exclude all matter that is purely technical, and presenting the reader with no more statistical information than is necessary to a proper understanding of the subject, and only premising that this information—for the correctness of which we are alone responsible—has been carefully collated from a mass of official documents not easily accessible, and others presented to the public from time to time, we will first describe—

CHAPTER I.
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE POST-OFFICE.

The Post-Office being a branch of the public service, instituted by statute, is, of course, under the control of the Government of the country in every respect. The principal Acts of Parliament which now regulate the Post-Office are those of 1 Vict. c. 32-36, entitled "An Act to repeal the several laws relating to the Post-Office;" "An Act for the management of the Post-Office;" "An Act for consolidating the laws relative to offences against the Post-Office;" one to which we have previously referred, 2 Vict. c. 98, "An Act to provide for the conveyance of mails by railway;" 3 & 4 Vict. c. 96, "An Act for the regulation of the duties of Postage." Besides these more important Acts, there are others of later date relating to the Money-order Office, colonial posts, and, more recently, one relating to the Post-Office Savings' Banks.

According to the latest returns,[139] there are 11,316 post-offices in the United Kingdom, of which 808 are head-offices, and 10,508 sub-offices. To these must be added a great number of road letter-boxes, making a total of 14,776 public receptacles for letters, or more by 10,000 than the total number before penny postage. The total number of letters passing through the Post-Office during the year 1863 was 642,000,000, or, in the proportion of letters to population, no less than 22 to each person in the three kingdoms. As contrasted with the last year of dear postage, the number of letters show an eightfold increase. The distance over which the mails travel with this enormous amount of correspondence, in the United Kingdom alone, is nearly 160,000 miles per day. Of the mails conveyed by railway, a distance of 50,000 miles is accomplished every working-day; 72,000 miles per diem are traversed on foot; and the rest are carried by mail-coaches, mail-carts, and steamboats.

The gross revenue of the Post-Office for the year 1863 was, in round numbers, 3,800,000l., being more by nearly a quarter of a million sterling than the proceeds for the year 1862. Of this enormous total, England contributed upwards of 3,000,000l., the remainder having been raised from Ireland and Scotland. To this sum should be added a further item of 130,000l. for the impressed stamp on newspapers sent through the post, the charges for which are collected by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue. The actual expenditure of the Department, including the expenses of mail-packets (great part of which appertain to the Admiralty), amounted, in round numbers, to 3,000,000l. The amount of all the items belonging exclusively to Post-Office charges is, however, less than two and a quarter millions. The net revenue of the Post-Office for 1863 may, therefore, be stated at 1,790,000l.; or, counting the whole of the packet expenses—which mode of reckoning, however, would lead to erroneous notions of the financial success of penny postage—to a clear revenue of 900,000l.

At the end of 1862, the staff of officers employed in the British Post-Office numbered 25,380. Of this number 25,285 were engaged in the British Isles, 73 in foreign countries (as agents collecting the British share of foreign postage), and 22 in the colonies.[140] Of the employés at home, between 3,000 and 4,000 are attached to the London Office alone, while the remainder, including more than 11,000 postmasters, belong to the establishments in the various towns and villages of the United Kingdom. The entire staff is under the immediate control of the Postmaster-General, assisted by the General Secretary of the Post-Office in London. The service of the three kingdoms, notwithstanding this direct control, is managed in the respective capitals, at each of which there is a chief office, with a secretarial and other departmental staffs.[141]

The Postmaster-General, the highest controlling authority at the Post-Office representing the Executive, is now always a peer of the realm, a member of the Privy Council, and generally, though not necessarily, a Cabinet Minister. Of course he changes with the Government. As we have seen in the origin of the office, he holds his appointment by patent granted under the Great Seal. The Postmaster-General has in his gift all the postmasterships in England and Wales where the salary is not less than 120l. per annum (all under that sum being in the gift of the Treasury Lords), and to those in Ireland and Scotland where the salary is 100l. and upwards. Besides this amount of patronage, now dispensed to officers already in the service, he has the power of nomination to all vacancies in the General Post-Offices of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin.[142] The following noblemen have occupied the position of Postmaster-General during the last forty years, or since the joint Postmaster-Generalship was abolished in 1823,[143] viz. Earl of Chichester (1823), Lord Frederick Montague (1826), Duke of Manchester (1827), Duke of Richmond (1830), appointed Postmaster-General of Great Britain and Ireland the year after; Marquis of Conyngham (July, 1834), Lord Maryborough (December, 1834), Marquis of Conyngham again (May, 1835), Earl of Lichfield (June, 1835), Viscount Lowther (September, 1841), Earl St. Germains (June, 1846), Marquis of Clanricarde (July, 1846). Still more recently, we find the Earl of Hardwicke, Viscount Canning, Duke of Argyll (twice), Lord Colchester, the Earl of Elgin, and Lord Stanley of Alderley.

The Secretary of the Post-Office holds the highest fixed appointment in the establishment, and may be regarded, therefore, as the responsible adviser of the Postmaster-General. The principal secretaries during the century have been Francis Freeling, Esq. (1797), created a baronet in 1828; Lieut.-Colonel William Leader Maberly (1836); Rowland Hill, Esq. (1856), knighted in 1860; and, as at present, John Tilley, Esq. (1864).[144]

The chief office in London is divided into six principal departments, each under the charge of a chief officer. These heads of departments are severally responsible to the Postmaster-General for the efficiency and discipline of their respective branches. Something like the same arrangement, though on a much smaller scale, is preserved in the less-important chief offices of Edinburgh and Dublin. The branches in question consist of—(1) The Secretary's Office; (2) The Solicitor's Office; (3) The Mail Office; (4) The Receiver and Accountant-General's Office; (5) The Money-order Office; and (6) The Circulation Office.

1. The Secretary's Office exercises a general surveillance over all the other departments of the Post-Office, including, of course, all provincial offices. It is the medium of communication with the Lords of the Treasury, and also with the public. All important matters originating in other branches, or in country offices, pass through this office to the Postmaster-General, returning through the same channel. In 1763, the secretaries of the Post-Office had one clerk and two supernumerary clerks assigned to them. Now, the three secretaries are assisted in their duties by one chief clerk, one principal clerk for foreign and colonial business, sixteen senior clerks, and thirty-eight clerks in other two classes. There is also a force of nineteen supplementary clerks, five official paper-keepers, and nineteen messengers.[145]

2. The Solicitor's Office, as its name implies, deals with the law business of the Post-Office. It gives employment to a solicitor, an assistant-solicitor, and four clerks.

3. The Mail Office has to do with all matters connected with the transmission of mails, whether the conveyance be by railroad, water, or stage-coach. Attached to this office are the travelling post-offices of the country, which are under its exclusive management. The Mail Office arranges with the different railway companies for the conveyance of the mails, in the contracts for which are included provision for the employment of post-offices fitted up in railway-carriages; it also looks to the proper performance of each post-office contract embracing mail-conveyance. The staff of the Mail Office comprises an inspector-general of mails, a deputy inspector-general, two principal clerks, and twenty-one clerks in three classes. The connexion between the Mail Office in London and its important adjuncts, the travelling post-offices, is kept up by a staff of five inspectors of mails (three employed in England, one in Scotland, and one in Ireland), a supervisor of mail-bag apparatus, and several subordinate officers. The travelling offices employ a force of 54 clerks in three classes, and 139 sorters in four classes.

4. The Receiver and Accountant-General's Office takes account of the money of each department, remittances being received here from all the other branches and each provincial town in England. General accounts of revenue and expenditure are also kept, this office being charged with the examination of the postage and revenue accounts of each postmaster. All salaries, pensions, and items of current expenditure are also paid through this office. In 1763, the duties of these offices, then distinct, were performed by a receiver, an accountant, and four clerks. Now, the appointments comprise the receiver and accountant-general, a chief examiner, a chief cashier, a principal book-keeper, with forty-seven clerks in three classes, and nine messengers.

5. The Money-order Office, occupying a separate building in Aldersgate Street, takes charge of the whole of the money-order business of the country, in addition to doing an enormous amount of work as a money-order office for the metropolis. Of course, everything relating to this particular branch of post-office business, and also some part of the savings' bank accounts, pass through this channel. Each provincial postmaster sends a daily account of his transactions to this office. Attached to the Money-order Office, we find a controller, a chief clerk, an examiner, a book-keeper, 112 clerks in three classes, and 27 messengers.

6. The Circulation Office in London manages the ordinary post-office work of the metropolis. In it, or from it, all the letters, newspapers, and book-packets posted at, or arriving in, London, are sorted, despatched, and delivered. Not only so; but in this office nearly all the continental, and most part of the other foreign mails for the whole of the British Islands, are received, sorted, and despatched. Under ordinary circumstances, moreover, British letters for a great number of places are sent in transit through London, where it is requisite they should be rearranged and forwarded. This daily Herculean labour is performed by the clerks, sorters, and letter-carriers attached to the department. The ten district-offices in London, engaged with the same kind of work on a small scale, are subordinate to the Circulation Office at St. Martin's-le-Grand. The Registered Letter Branch, employing no less than fifty clerks, and the Returned Letter Branch, with the Office for Blind Letters, are parts of the Circulation Department. The major branch of the Circulation Office comprises the controller, a vice-controller, 15 deputy-controllers, and 251 clerks in three classes. The minor establishment, as it is called, employs no fewer than 2,398 persons. In this force are included 42 inspectors of letter-carriers in three classes; the rest, being composed of sorters, stampers, letter-carriers, and messengers.

To these six principal departments may now be added that for the management of the new Post-Office Savings' Banks. Like the Money-order Office, it occupies a separate building, in St. Paul's Churchyard. The Savings' Bank Department keeps a personal account with every depositor. It acknowledges the receipt of every single deposit, and upon the requisite notice being furnished to the office, it sends out warrants authorizing postmasters to pay withdrawals. Each year the savings' bank-book of each depositor is sent here for examination, and at the same time the interest accruing is calculated and allowed. The correspondence with postmasters and the public on any subject connected with the banks in question is managed entirely by this department. The already-existing machinery of the Post-Office has been freely called into operation, and the business of the new banks has increased the work of almost all the other branches, especially those of the Receiver and Accountant-General's and the Money-order Offices. Through the former all the investments are received, and all remittances to postmasters for the repayment of deposits are made; while the surplus revenue goes from that office direct to that of the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt. Again, and as another instance of our meaning, the Money-order Office is required to undertake the examination of the general savings' bank account of each provincial postmaster. The staff of the Savings' Bank Office in London is not yet complete, nor will it be until the complete effect of the new on the old savings' bank system be seen.[146] At present, it comprises a controller, an assistant-controller, a principal clerk, ten first-class clerks (four of upper and six of lower section), fifteen second-class clerks, with a number of third-class clerks, and six messengers.

The branches of minor importance and the miscellaneous officers of the London Establishment, consist of a Medical Department, comprising one medical officer, one assistant medical officer, and one messenger. There are, besides, distinct medical officers attached to each of the London districts. The amount required for this service for 1863-4, including medicine (given gratuitously to all officers who are not in receipt of 150l. salary), is 1,715l. A House-keeper's Department, including a housekeeper and sixteen female servants, requiring a yearly payment of 763l. Six engineers, ten constables, and six firemen are also constantly employed and paid by the Post-Office. When we add to this gigantic organization no less than 516 letter-receivers in London, who receive from 4l. to 90l. a-year for partial service, the reader will have a tolerably correct idea of the establishment required to compass the amount of London postal business in the twenty-fourth year of penny postage.[147]

The Surveyor's Department is the connecting medium between the metropolitan offices and the post-offices in provincial towns. The postmasters of the latter are under the immediate supervision of the surveyor of the district in which the towns are situate, and it is to this superior officer that they are primarily responsible for the efficient working and discipline of their respective staff of officers. Among the many responsible duties of the surveyors, may be mentioned[148] those of visiting periodically each office in their district, to remedy, where they can, all defects in the working of the postal system; to remove, when possible, all just grounds of complaint on the part of the public; "to give to the correspondence of their district increased celerity, regularity, and security" when opportunity offers, and to arrange for contracts with these objects. The Act of Queen Anne provided for the appointment of one surveyor to the Post-Office, whose duties it should be to make proper surveys of post-roads. Little more than a hundred years ago, one of these functionaries was sufficient to compass the duty of surveyor in England. There are now thirteen surveyors in the United Kingdom,[149] nine of whom are located in England, two in Ireland, and two in Scotland. These principal officers are assisted in their duties by thirty-two "surveyors' clerks," arranged in two classes, and thirteen stationary clerks. To this staff must also be added thirty-three "clerks in charge," in two classes, who are under the direction of the surveyors, and whose principal duty consists in supplying temporarily the position of postmaster, in case of vacancies occurring through deaths, removals, &c.

There are, in all, 542 head provincial establishments in England and Wales, 141 in Ireland, and 115 in Scotland. They vary exceedingly, no two being exactly alike, but are settled in each town pretty much in proportion to the demands of the place, its size, trade, &c. Sometimes, however, the position of a town—the centre of a district, for instance—gives it more importance in an official sense than it would otherwise acquire from other and ordinary circumstances. The number of sub-offices attached to each town also varies greatly, according to the position of the head-office.[150] Next to the three chief offices, the largest establishments are those of Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham, and Bristol. Among the most important offices of the second class, we may enumerate Aberdeen, Bath, Belfast, Cork, Exeter, Leeds, Hull, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Norwich, Sheffield, Southampton, and York.[151] With respect to the rest, classification would be difficult; the postmasters receiving salaries ranging from 20l. to 400l. per annum, and varying from those where the whole of the duty of the office is performed by the postmaster himself, to others where he is assisted by a large staff of clerks and other auxiliaries.[152]

Each head-postmaster is directly responsible for the full efficiency and proper management of his office. Under the approval of the district surveyor, the sanction of the Postmaster-General, and the favourable report of the Civil Service Commissioners, the postmaster is allowed to appoint nearly the whole of his own officers, he being responsible to the authorities for their proper discipline and good conduct. Formerly, and up to as late as eight years ago, each postmaster rendered an account of his transactions to the chief office quarterly. He now furnishes weekly general accounts, and daily accounts of money-order business, besides keeping his book open to the inspection of the superior officers of the Post-Office.[153]

CHAPTER II.
ON THE CIRCULATION OF LETTERS.

In order to give the reader a proper idea of the channel through which ordinary correspondence flows—the circulation of letters in the Post-Office system—it will be necessary to devote a long chapter to the subject. We therefore propose to post an imaginary letter in the metropolis for a village in the far away North, following it from its place of posting till we finally see it deposited in the hands of the person to whom it is addressed.

THE GENERAL POST-OFFICE.

The General Post-Office, the great heart of the English postal system, is a fine and, now that so many district offices are opened in London, very convenient building. On the ground-floor the different offices attached to the Circulation and Mail departments are located. Upstairs we find the Secretary's department, that of the Receiver and Accountant-General, and other branches of the Circulation Office. Approaching the large hall of the General Post-Office, through one of the three-columned porticoes, we post our letter, and as it is now nearly six o'clock P.M. we stand aside, for a few minutes only, to witness one of the most stirring scenes in the metropolis. Throughout the day, one side of the hall presents a busy enough scene, and its boxes, open for the receipt of correspondence for all parts of the world, are constantly beset with people. Not only do these huge slits still gape for letters, but the large windows, closed through the day, are thrown wide open as a quarter to six chimes from the neighbouring clocks. It is then that an impetuous crowd enters the hall, and letters and newspapers begin to fall in quite a literary hail-storm. The newspaper window, ever yawning for more, is presently surrounded and besieged by an array of boys of all ages and costumes, together with children of a larger growth, who are all alike pushing, heaving, and surging in one great mass. The window, with tremendous gape, is assaulted with showers of papers which fly thicker and faster than the driven snow. Now it is that small boys of eleven and twelve years of age, panting, Sinbad-like, under the weight of huge bundles of newspapers, manage somehow to dart about and make rapid sorties into other ranks of boys, utterly disregarding the cries of the official policemen, who vainly endeavour to reduce the tumult into something like post-office order. If the lads cannot quietly and easily disembogue, they will whiz their missiles of intelligence over other people's heads, now and then sweeping off hats and caps with the force of shot. The gathering every moment increases in number and intensifies in purpose; arms, legs, sacks, baskets, heads, bundles, and woollen comforters—for whoever saw a veritable newspaper-boy without that appendage?—seem to be getting into a state of confusion and disagreeable communism, and "yet the cry is still they come." Heaps of papers of widely-opposed political views are thrown in together; no longer placed carefully in the openings, they are now sent in in sackfuls and basketfuls, while over the heads of the surging crowd were flying back the empty sacks, thrown out of the office by the porters inside. Semi-official legends, with a very strong smack of probability about them, tell of sundry boys being thrown in, seized, emptied, and thrown out again void. As six o'clock approaches still nearer and nearer, the turmoil increases more perceptibly, for the intelligent British public is fully alive to the awful truth that the Post-Office officials never allow a minute of grace, and that "Newspaper Fair" must be over when the last stroke of six is heard. One, in rush files of laggard boys who have purposely loitered, in the hope of a little pleasurable excitement; two, and grown men hurry in with their last sacks; three, the struggle resembles nothing so much as a pantomimic mêlée; four, a Babel of tongues vociferating desperately; five, final and furious showers of papers, sacks, and bags; and six, when all the windows fall like so many swords of Damocles, and the slits close with such a sudden and simultaneous snap, that we naturally suppose it to be a part of the Post-Office operations that attempts should be made to guillotine a score of hands; and then all is over so far as the outsiders are concerned.

Among the letter-boxes, scenes somewhat similar have been enacted. Letters of every shape and colour, and of all weights have unceasingly poured in; tidings of life and death, hope and despair, success and failure, triumph and defeat, joy and sorrow; letters from friends and notes from lawyers, appeals from children and stern advice from parents, offers from anxious-hearted young gentlemen, and "first yesses" or refusals from young maidens; letters containing that snug appointment so long promised you, and "little bills" with requests for immediate payment, "together with six-and-eightpence;" cream-coloured missives telling of happy consummations, and black-edged envelopes telling of death and the grave; sober-looking advice notes, doubtless telling when "our Mr. Puffwell" would do himself the honour of calling on you, and elegant-looking billets in which business is never mentioned, all jostled each other for a short time; but the stream of gladness and of woe was stopped, at least for one night, when the last stroke of six was heard. The Post-Office, like a huge monster, to which one writer has likened it, has swallowed an enormous meal, and gorged to the full, it must now commence the process of digestion. While laggard boys, to whom cartoons by one "William Hogarth" should be shown, are muttering "too late," and retiring discomfited, we, having obtained the requisite "open sesame," will make our way to the interior of the building. Threading our course through several passages, we soon find ourselves among enormous apartments well lit up, where hundreds of human beings are moving about, lifting, shuffling, stamping, and sorting huge piles of letters, and still more enormous piles of newspapers, in what seems at first sight hopeless confusion, but in what is really the most admirable order. In the newspaper-room, men have been engaged not only in emptying the sacks flung in by strong-armed men and weak-legged boys, but also in raking up the single papers into large baskets, and conveying them up and down "hoists," into various divisions of the building. Some estimate of the value of these mechanical appliances, moved of course by steam power, may be formed from the fact that hundreds of tons of paper pass up and down these lifts every week. As many of the newspapers escape from their covers in the excitement of posting, each night two or three officers are busily engaged during the whole time of despatch, in endeavouring to restore wrappers to newspapers found without any address. Great as is the care exercised in this respect, it will occasionally happen that wrong newspapers will find their way into loose wrappers not belonging to them, and under the circumstances it would be by no means a matter of wonder if—as has been more than once pointed out—Mr. Bright should, instead of his Morning Star, receive a copy of the Saturday Review, or an evangelical curate the Guardian or Punch, in place of his Record paper.

In the letter-room the officers are no less busily engaged: a number of them are constantly at work during the hours of the despatch, in the operation of placing each letter with the address and postage label uppermost, so as to facilitate the process of stamping. In the General Post-Office the stamping is partly effected by machinery and partly by hand, and consists simply in imprinting upon each letter the date, hour, and place of posting, while at the same time the Queen's head with which the letter is ornamented and franked gets disfigured.[154] It will easily be imagined that a letter containing a box of pills stands a very good chance of being damaged under this manipulation, as a good stamper will strike about fifty letters in a minute. Unpaid letters are kept apart, as they require stamping in a different coloured ink and with the double postage. Such letters create much extra labour, and are a source of incessant trouble to the Department, inasmuch as from the time of their posting in London to their delivery at the Land's End or John O'Groat's, every officer through whose hands they may pass has to keep a cash account of them. The double postage on such letters is more than earned by the Post-Office. All unfastened and torn letters, too, are picked out and conveyed to another portion of the large room, and it requires the unremitting attention of several busy individuals to finish the work left undone by the British public. It is scarcely credible that above 250 letters daily are posted open, and bearing not the slightest mark of ever having been fastened in any way; but such is the fact. A fruitful source of extra work to this branch of the office arises through the posting of flimsy boxes containing feathers, slippers, and other récherché articles of female dress, pill-boxes containing jewellery, and even bottles. The latter, however, are detained, glass articles and sharp instruments of any sort, whenever detected, being returned to the senders. These frail things, thrown in and buried under the heaps of correspondence, get crushed and broken, yet all are made up again carefully and resealed.

When the letters have been stamped, and those insufficiently paid picked out, they are carried away to undergo the process of sorting. In this operation they are very rapidly divided into "roads," representing a line of large towns: thus, letters for Derby, Loughborough, Nottingham, Lincoln, &c. might be placed in companionship in one division or "road," and Bilston, Wednesbury, Walsall, West Bromwich, &c. in another. When this primary divisional sorting is finished, the letters are divided and subdivided over and over again, with the exception of those for the various travelling sorting-carriages upon the different lines of railway, which remain in divisions corresponding with various portions of the country through which the several mail-trains run. It is into one of these divisions that our own letter falls, to be seen again, however, when we come to describe the Travelling Post-Offices. During the time occupied in making up the mails, the Circulation Branch of the General Post-Office presents a busy scene, yet retains the utmost order and regularity. Hundreds of men are engaged in the various operations of sorting and sub-sorting, yet all proceeds really noiselessly, and as if the hundreds and thousands of letters representing the commerce and intelligence of the English people could not be treated too carefully. Every now and again the sorter pauses in his rapid movements, and places a letter on one side. In some cases this signifies that he has detected a letter containing a coin of some sort; and when such letters have been posted without being registered by the sender, the Department takes this duty upon itself, charging a double fee on delivery. The number of letters of this class detected in London alone during the first six months after the plan was brought into operation, was upwards of 58,000. Letters which cannot be read, or letters imperfectly addressed, are also thrown on one side and conveyed to another part of the Circulation Branch, where gentlemen whose extraordinary faculty of discernment have gained them the singularly inappropriate name of "blind officers" sit in state.

THE BLIND LETTER-OFFICE

is the receptacle for all illegible, misspelt, misdirected, or insufficiently addressed letters or packets. Here the clerk or clerks, selected from amongst the most efficient and experienced officers, guess at what ordinary intelligence would readily denominate insoluble riddles. Large numbers of letters are posted daily with superscriptions which the sorters cannot decipher, and which the great majority of people would not be able to read. Others, again, are received with perhaps only the name of some small village, the writers thinking it a work of supererogation to add some neighbouring town, or even a county. Numberless, for instance, are the letters bearing such addresses as "John Smith, gardener, Flowerdale," or "Throgmorton Hall, Worcestershire." Circulars, by the thousand, are posted in London and other large towns without hesitancy, and with the greatest confidence in the "final perseverance" principle of the Post-Office people, with addresses not more explicit than the foregoing. Many country gentlemen would seem to cherish the idea that the names of their mansions should be known equally far and near from their manorial acres, and somehow they seem to inoculate their correspondents with the same absurd notion. If, however, it be possible to reduce the hieroglyphics on some strange letter to ordinary every-day English, or find, from diligent search in his library of reference, information relative to imperfectly-addressed letters (information which might have been given much more easily by the senders), our readers may be sure that the cunning gentleman of the Blind Office, justly known for his patience and sagacity, will do it, unless, indeed, the letter be "stone blind," or hopelessly incomplete. As a genuine example of stone-blind letters, take the following, the first of a batch which has been known to pass through the blind-room of the General Post-Office:—