[195] Many orders are never claimed at all. In Ireland twice as many orders are allowed to "lapse" as in England or Scotland, though there are many more orders granted in the two latter countries than in Ireland. Perhaps the fact may be accounted for by the wretched addresses of most Irish letters, which make it impossible to deliver many of them and equally impossible to return them to the writers. Of ordinary money-orders, one in 837 are unclaimed within two months; whilst as a curious fact, instancing the pertinacity of a careless habit, it may be stated that when these very orders have been renewed on payment of a second commission, one in every thirty-nine are again overlooked, and allowed to lapse, many of them, in fact, becoming entirely cancelled, and the money forfeited. CHAPTER VII. CONCERNING SOME OF THE POPULAR MISCONCEPTIONS AND MISREPRESENTATIONS TO WHICH THE POST-OFFICE IS LIABLE. The Post-Office, from its peculiar organization and the nature of its business, is liable to many misconceptions from which the other great Government Departments are more or less free. In one of the reports of the Postmaster-General, many of these misunderstandings are recounted and answered with an evident endeavour to bring about a better feeling between the people and the people's Post-Office. We cannot do better than refer here to a few of the instances given, supplementing them by more which have been suggested to us from that consideration of the entire economy of the Post-Office, into which we have been led in dealing with our subject.