'A recent Times publishes a condensa~ tion of the British Postmaster-General's report for the year which ended on the 81st of March last, and though it is not so amusing as some former reports have been, there are several points of interest in it. We need not repeat the total numbers of letters, etc., despatched in the United Kingdom, for when such a sum as fourteen hundred and seventy millions (the number of letters delivered in the U.K. in the twelve months) is mentioned, there is only here and there one that can Bat we can all understand it when we rasp what such a number really means
read that every man, woman and child in Great Britain and Ireland received in the course of the year an average of forty letters, five post-cards, ten book-packets and circulars, four newspapers, one parcel and one telegram and a-tenth, and in all cases there was an increase over the previous year, which was very marked in parcels and telegrams, due in both cases to reductions in charges. The only decrease is in registered letters, which shews that the habit of sending small sums of money in registered covers is being supplanted by the new postal orders. The parcel post is being very largely used for the transmission of perishable articles, such as fruit and flowers, and on Primrose Day and its eve, no less than 14,000 parcels of primmroses reached London by post. It 1s no wonder that this flower, the nonappreciation of which Wordsworth has stamped for ever as the mark of a Philistine, and which Lord Beaconsfield never recommended except in a salad, is being rapidly exterminated from the woods and hedgerows and rivers' brims of the Kingdom.
Nothing could more clearly shew the security of the British Post Office, and how small the percentage of peculation must be in the 35,380 receptacles for letters in the Kingdom, of which 17,191 are post offices, than the handsome profit made by the insurance department, which was started on the Ist of May 1886. From that date fees of one pernly or two pence each entitled the sender to compensation in case of loss or damage of registered letters or parcels, and in the eleven months covered by the report, £650 10s. 7d. was received on 105,677 letters and £1,311 5s. 6d. on 264,741 parcels, 'The compensation paid in' respect of these insurances was only £13 13s. 6d. on letters and £140 Bs. Bd. on parcels; the percentage of profit. being considerably less on the peels, which are much more susceptilo of damage than the letters are. relation to contracts with steamer companies, the Zémes makes no extract with reference to the recent ten-year agreement with the P. & 0. Company, but it gives Mr. Raikes' story of the dispute with the Cunard and White Star Companies re the Atlantic service, whom the postmaster-general brought to terms by giving the mails for three months to the Inman, Guion, and North-German Lloyd Companies. It is an amusing commentary on the wisdom with which our public departments work, that contracts are only made for short periods on the Atlantic, where there is no possibility of railways superseding steamers, while the country is bound down to a ten-year subsidy for its India and China mails, though it is more than possible that before the expiry of that time, no through mails will be' sent by steamer; and already it has been decided to pay the Canadians £45,000 a year for carrying a portion of the China and Japan mails not a cent of which can be saved from the P. & 0. Company.
The number of letters, etc., that never reach the people for whom they are intended, owing to mis-direction or nondirection, is enormous, and morea: the year under review it was 14,2' of which 447,828 could not be given back to the senders, and 27,928 had no addresses at all. Of these unaddressed letters 1,628 contained money and cheques, etc., amounting to £4,694. Many a humble tragedy has doubtless turned on the carelessness that sent off remittances without an address. The large increase in the number of book packets received in the returned letter office seems to shew a greater anxiety on the part of the public to circulate books than to receive them; probably these refused packe were the quack medicine b almanacks, with which the world is constantly being flooded. There is only one "eutrious occurrence' mentioned by Mr. Raikes in this report, and it is not a thrilling one by any means. It only cords how a tin of essence of lemon leaked in a Gloucestershire post-office, and the leakage attracted a swarm of bees, which were not finally got rid of for a fortnight. From this triviality we pass to a very serious branch of the institution, the Post Office Savings Bank, which com-lit on the 16th of September, 1886. pleted a quarter of a century of useful
"The deposits in this have grown from £1,698,221 on the 31st of December 1862, the end of the first complete year, to £50,874,338 on the 31st of December 1886. At the end of the year there were 3,731,421 accounts open, of which nearly were in Enland and Wales, 132,000 in Scotland and 147,000 in Ireland. The average balance due to each depositor is £13 12s. 11d. in England and Wales, £8 in'Scotland, and £18 7s.31.inIreland. This at first sight seems. to contradict the general impression that, the Scotch are more and the Irish less thrifty than the English; but itis really due to the fact that outside facili for the care of savings are greater in Scotland, and swaller in Ireland. In comparison with the population, the depositors are 1 to 8 in Frdtand and Wales, 1 to 30 in Scotland and 1 to 33 in Ireland. The Goverment Stock Investment business and the Insurance and Annuity systems as worked by the Post Office progress very slowly. They want pushing and it is nobody's interest to pash them, The money order and postal order business on the other hand is very lively, the total amount transmitted in a year by these means being over £35,000,000, or an average of a pound per head of the population. Phe telegraph service shows a deficit on the year's working of £469,840, but this includes interest on the preposterous stm at which the private companies were bought out. The Post office on the whole shews a profit for the year of two and a half millions sterling, which goes into the rapacious pocket of the ury, but every cent of which ought to go in reductions in postage and improvements in the service generally. For one thing the office ought to be compelled to insure without fee, the parcels ent sted to it, as all other common
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.