It was shown beyond all dispute, that the scheme had almost entirely prevented breaches of the law, and that if any illicit correspondence was carried on, it was simply and purely in matters where the question of speed was involved; that the evils, amounting to social prohibitions, so prevalent before the change, had been, for the most part, removed. Commercial transactions, relating even to very small amounts, were now managed through the post. Small orders were constantly transmitted; the business of the Money-order Office having increased almost _twenty-fold_--first, from the reduction of postage in 1840, and then from the reduction of the fees in November of the same year. These orders are generally acknowledged. Printers send their proofs without hesitation;[104] the commercial traveller writes regularly to his principal, and is enabled for the first time to advise his customers of his approach; private individuals and public institutions distribute widely their circulars and their accounts of proceedings to every part of the land. Better than any account that we might give of the reception of this boon by the country, and the social and commercial advantages which were immediately seen to follow from it, we may here give some account of the correspondence which flowed in upon Mr. Hill between 1840-1842, and which he read to the select committee appointed to try the merits of his scheme. Ten times the weight of evidence, and far more striking instances of the advantages of the penny-post scheme might _now_ be adduced, but it must be remembered that we are here speaking merely of first results, and when the scheme had been but two years in operation. Numbers of tradesmen wrote to say how their business had increased within the two years. One large merchant now sent the whole of his invoices by post; another increased the number of his "prices current" by 10,000 per annum. Messrs. Pickford and Co. the carriers, despatched by post _eight_ times the number of letters posted in 1839; whilst the letters, had they been liable to be charged as per single sheet, would have numbered 720,000 in 1842 from this one firm, against 30,000 letters in 1839. In this case we have an exemplification of the correctness of the argument upon which Mr. Hill built his scheme; for the increase of money actually paid for postage was at the rate of 33 per cent. Mr. Charles Knight, the London bookseller, said the penny postage stimulated every branch of his trade, and brought the country booksellers into almost daily communication with the London houses. Mr. Bagster, the publisher of a Polyglot Bible in twenty-four languages, stated to Mr. Hill that the revision which he was just giving to his work as it was passing through the press would, on the old system, have cost him 1,500_l._ in postage alone, and that the Bible could not have been printed but for the penny post. Secretaries of different benevolent