Thus was created the most serious situation which had ever confronted the General Post-Office, the most serious, one might say, if it is ever safe to forecast the complications of international affairs, with which it can possibly have to deal. The public looked to the Postmaster General to carry their correspondence, commercial and private; the Government called on them for the safe delivery of despatches. My Lords took down the map of Europe and found that from the Elbe to Dalmatia their Packets could land in Portugal alone, a country whence mails must be forwarded not only through a hostile territory, but across lofty mountain passes, and through provinces so wild and unsettled that it appeared hopeless to think of organizing mail routes from Lisbon for Germany or Austria. The chances of smuggling letters into Hamburg was the only one worth consideration, and the thoughts of the officials in Lombard Street remained fixed on Northern Europe. When the French entered Hamburg, Mr. Thornton, the British Consul, retired to Husum. He saw no prospect whatever of forwarding the mails which arrived from England, and being somewhat uncertain how long his position in Holstein might be secure, he thought it well to send the bags back to London. This was in November; and in the following July those mails were lying still at the General Post-Office, waiting for some chance of conveyance to their destination. It needs but a small effort of the imagination to realize what widespread mischief might result from the detention of a mail for seven months. Such a fact, more than pages of description, brings home to our minds how hard and heavy was the burden which our grandfathers bore in the days of the great war.