How is it now? The Post Office Department has been for many years under the control of our Government. There are in Ontario 2,353 Post-Offices, with a revenue of $914,382. The mails are carried by rail to all the principal points, and to outlying places and country villages by stage, and by couriers in light vehicles, with much greater despatch, owing to the improved condition of the highways. A letter of not over half an ounce in weight can be sent from Halifax to Vancouver for three cents. A book weighing five pounds can be sent the same distance for twenty cents, and parcels and samples at equally low rates. To England the rate for half an ounce is five cents, and for every additional half-ounce a single rate is added. Postage stamps and cards, the money order system, and Post Office savings banks have all been added since 1851. The merchant of Toronto can post a letter to-day, and get a reply from London; England, in less time than he could in the old days from Quebec. In 1830 correspondence was expensive and tedious. Letters were written only under the pressure of necessity. Now every one writes, and the number of letters and the revenue have increased a thousand fold. The steamship, locomotive and telegraph, all the growth of the last half century, have not only almost annihilated time and space, but have changed the face of the world. It is true there were steamboats running between York and Kingston on the Bay of Quinte and the St. Lawrence prior to 1830; but after that date they increased rapidly in number, and were greatly improved. It was on the 15th of September of that year that George Stephenson ran the first locomotive over the line between Liverpool and Manchester--a distance of thirty miles--so that fifty years ago this was the only railway with a locomotive in the world--a fact that can hardly be realised when the number of miles now in operation, and the vast sums of money expended in their construction, are considered. What have these agents done for us, apart from the wonderful impetus given to trade and commerce? You can post to your correspondent at Montreal at 6 p.m., and your letter is delivered at 11 a.m., and the next day at noon you have your answer. You take up your morning's paper, and you have the news from the very antipodes every day. The merchant has quotations placed before him, daily and hourly, from every great commercial centre in the world; and even the sporting man can deposit his money here, and have his bet booked in London the day before.