Before dismissing this branch of the subject, I must refer to a description of postal service by railway which has now become very extensive throughout the kingdom. I allude to the cases in which the Post Office sends a certain weight of mail in charge of the companies’ guards, by an ordinary train, over the working of which no control whatever is claimed by the department. For a service of this nature, the payment awarded under arbitration has, in a recent case, amounted to the exorbitant sum of 7d. per single mile, the weight of the mail averaging for the whole line not more than 1 cwt., or about half that of a second-class passenger and his luggage. For this trifling weight of mail the Post Office was thus made to bear very nearly half of the whole cost of running the train; while it has been ascertained that the average charge made by various railway companies for ordinary parcels carried beyond short distances very little exceeds one half-penny per cwt. per mile, the average charge for ordinary goods being of course even less. I may add, that, although in a few cases, railway companies have been induced to accept moderate sums either for the use of one or two passenger trains, or for the general use of all their trains, it constantly happens that the department is prevented from increasing postal facilities by the refusal of companies to accept rates equal to, and often exceeding, the charges made to the public for the occasional transmission of a corresponding weight of such ordinary light goods as are frequently sent by passenger trains. At page 7 of his address, Mr. Stephenson gives the total earnings of railways from passengers, for the year 1854, at £9,170,000. The sum paid to railway companies by the Post Office during the year was about £392,000, or about 1/23 part of the gross earnings of all the passenger trains. He estimates the gross weight of passengers conveyed during the year at 8,000,000 of tons; while the gross weight of mails for the entire kingdom (including guards, clerks, &c.) was considerably under 20,000 tons, a large portion of which was not conveyed by railways at all. Assuming, however, that the whole of it had gone by the railways, it would appear that the Post Office paid 1/23 part of the total earnings for the conveyance of less than 1/400 part of the total weight. In connection with this branch of the subject, it may not be immaterial to mention, that in the finance accounts printed by order of Parliament last year, the gross amount of the passenger tax paid to the Government by railway companies in the preceding year is stated to have been £309,000. As the amount paid by the Post Office to railway companies for the postal service of the year 1854 was £392,600, it follows that the Government paid to railway companies for the carriage of the mails very nearly one-third more than it received from them in the shape of passenger tax.