But this defalcation, great and serious as it thus appears on the face of the public accounts, was little more than _a half_ of what really occurred in consequence of the change. To conceal the effects of this great innovation, the Free-trading party, who had now got entire possession of the Government, had the address both to get the expense of the Packet Service, _previously borne by the Post-office, thrown upon the Navy_, and to keep that important change a secret among the Government officials. In this way a double object was gained. The disastrous effect of the reduction was kept out of view, and the increased charges of the Navy afforded a plausible ground for demagogues to assail the Government for alleged extravagance in that department. But that which one demagogue had done, another demagogue brought to light. Mr Cobden made so violent a clamour about the increase of expenditure in the Navy since 1835, when it had been reduced, under the pressure of the Reform mania, to its lowest point, that the Admiralty, in their own defence, let out the important fact, that, since the penny-postage system began, they had been saddled with the whole cost of the Packet Service, which they never had been before; and, in the debate on the Estimates, Lord John Russell stated that this cost now amounted to £737,000 a-year. Thus the real Post-office accounts stand thus:— Apparent surplus for year ending 5th April 1850, £803,000 Deduct cost of Packet Service, thrown on Navy, 737,000 ———————— Real Post-office revenue, £66,000 And it has been raised to this level only during a year of extraordinary manufacturing activity, when our exports turned £60,000,000. On the whole, since the postage was reduced in 1841, the Post-office has not yielded a farthing to the country, but, on the contrary, has occasioned a loss of some hundred thousand pounds. We have heard enough from the Free-traders of the disasters which accumulated on the year 1848, and commencement of 1849, when a monetary crisis, the Irish famine, the European revolution, the Irish rebellion, and the Chartist sedition, combined to reduce the revenue to an unprecedented degree. We have heard enough, also, of the unexampled prosperity of the year 1849, when these extraneous disasters had ceased, and the blessings of Free-trade and the cheapening system were still in undiminished lustre. Be it so. Let us compare the public revenue of this year of unprecedented disaster with that obtained in the next year of unexampled prosperity, as appearing from the finance accounts of April 5, 1850:—