The Post Office claims the merit of this. Nothing is said of the facilities afforded by the railway. The mail, here referred to, leaves London at half-past one in the afternoon. It stops only at the four junction stations on the line;—Reigate, Tunbridge, Ashford, and Folkestone;—reaching Dover at four o’clock, and thus, in two hours and a-half, carrying all the correspondence with Europe to the confines of England. Twice a month this train carries the Indian Mail. It conveyed, last year, nearly two million letters, exclusive of newspapers, to and from the army and navy in the Crimea. It will thus be seen, that this train performs important services for the Post Office and the public, and that it travels with great speed. The Post Office complains that the South-Eastern Railway Company are exacting “enormous prices,” because they pay for the service of this train at the rate of 2s. 3d. per mile! But when it is considered that this train was put on purely for Post Office purposes, and that the ordinary train, which previously left at the same hour, has not been superseded, but has been put back, in order to give facility to this train, the rate charged cannot be considered unreasonable:—in my opinion it is too low. “Experience,” says the Report, “has confirmed the advantages to be derived from the use of Travelling Post Offices, and several additional offices of this kind have been provided. Much greater use has also been made of the apparatus for exchanging mail bags.” The Report argues, that Mr. Rowland Hill’s plans would have been as well carried out, under the old mail coach system, as under the railway system. If so, what are “the advantages derived from the use of Travelling Post Offices”? There was no “Travelling Post Office” on the Holyhead road: why should there be a Travelling Post Office on a railway? The answer obviously is, that the immense increase of correspondence renders necessary new appliances; that if the letters all remained to be sorted when they arrived at what are called the “forward” offices, the delay would be so great that the public would have to wait much longer for their letters. It is further said: “Against these great advantages, there is an important set-off in increased expense; for, strange as it may seem, the change which to the public at large has so much reduced the charge for the conveyance, whether of persons or of goods, has had precisely the reverse effect as respects the conveyance of mails.” Now, I am prepared to show that, notwithstanding the enormous increase in their bulk, there has been no real increase in the charge for conveying the mails. The charge for conveyance of the mails by railway is stated at page 14 of the Report, to be as follows:—