To facilitate this local free-delivery, there are “receiving houses” established at convenient distances in the town, where letters are deposited for the mails, without a fee, and thence are taken to the post-office in season for the daily mails, or for distribution through the local delivery. These receiving houses are generally established in a drug or stationery store, grocery, or some retail shop, where the nature of the business requires some one to be always in attendance, and where the increase of custom likely to arise from the resort of people with letters is a sufficient consideration for the slight trouble of keeping the office. The letters are taken to the post-office at stated hours, by persons employed for that purpose; those which are to be mailed are separated, and those which are for local delivery sorted and delivered to the carriers to go out by the next delivery. I have not a list of the number or size of the cities and towns within which the free delivery is enjoyed. Its necessary effect in increasing the number of letters sent by mail, and benefiting the country and the government by the aid it furnishes to trade and general prosperity, would seem to be a guaranty that the department would be likely to extend the free delivery as far as it could possibly answer, within the reasonable ability of the government, to meet the reasonable wants of the people. The London District Post was originally a penny post, and was created by private enterprise. One William Dockwra, in the reign of Charles II., set up a private post for the delivery of letters in the city of London, for which the charge was 1_d_., payable invariably in advance. It was soon taken possession of by the government, and the same rate of postage retained until 1801, when, for the sake of revenue, the postage was doubled, and so remained until the establishment of the general penny postage. Its limits were gradually extended to include the city of Westminster and the borough of Southwark, then all places within a circle of three miles, and finally to twelve miles from the General Post-Office. Within the three miles circle there are 220 receiving houses, of which 180 are within the town portions of the district. At these offices, letters are despatched to the post-office, ten times daily, viz. at 8, 10, and 12, in the morning, and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8, in the afternoon. Letters are required to be left at the receiving house a quarter of an hour previous to the hour. The letters so left may be expected to be delivered within the three miles circle in about two hours from the hour at which they are sent to the post-office; that is, the 8 o’clock letters are delivered by 10, and so on.