What, then, are some of the advantages (speaking merely with reference to the observance of the Sunday) by which this admitted evil is counterbalanced? I will enumerate three only. 1. The cessation of several Sunday cross-posts, by which the detention of letters in London throughout that day has been hitherto evaded or obviated: {10} and this, without any addition to the existing number of mail-trains, or other means of transmission, to or from London, on the Sunday. {11a} 2. A great diminution of the former amount of letters written and read in the country on that day. {11b} 3. The entire discontinuance of a second delivery of letters on Sunday throughout England and Wales: {12} a measure affecting considerably more than two hundred Towns, and affording direct and immediate relief to a very far larger number of persons. Nor is it, perhaps, altogether presumptuous to express a hope that the unrestricted _transmission_ of letters on the Sunday may eventually be followed by an equally general _suspension_ of their _delivery_; by which London and the country would be placed, in this respect, on a footing of perfect equality; the due observance of the Sunday being alike in both secured, with no injurious consequences, in either, to the business of the following day. Meanwhile, it is ascertained that, by the alterations already effected, a very large body (amounting to some hundreds at least) of persons now occupied on the Sunday in the provincial Offices, even during the hours of public worship, will be enabled to obtain rest on that day, and to enjoy without interruption the benefit of its religious services. {13} The number of principal Post Offices thus benefited, in a greater or less degree,—some to the extent of _seven hours_ of additional suspension of business on every Sunday,—amounts very nearly to _five hundred_. A very far larger number, at present imperfectly ascertained, of Sub-offices throughout the country, will partake of the same advantage. The total number of _persons_ thus relieved will obviously far exceed that of the aggregate of _Offices_. And who will say that these great benefits, _the direct and principal __object_ (be it remembered) _of the whole measure_, are utterly vitiated by their unavoidable accompaniment—the employment, namely, of a small _additional_ force in _one_, the Metropolitan Office, on the same day?