Birmingham, was permanently engaged for the carriage of newspaper-bags between London and Birmingham, at the rate of 1d. per pound, or £9. 6s. 8d. per ton, for the newspapers carried. The old mails, therefore, cost as follows:— Payment by Post Office for working 2½d. per mile. Exemption from toll, with coach, say 5d. ” ———— 7½d. without occasional extra payments. So that the real sum allowed for mail coaches was nearly as large as the sum allowed to railways. But the Post Office Report admits that the mails, which were formerly carried by coaches, now leave London “in a concentrated form”—that for example, the North-Western Railway does the work of no less than thirteen of the old mail coaches: _i. e._ the mails to Edinburgh, Leeds, Halifax, Holyhead, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Carlisle, Derby, Birmingham, Hull, Worcester, and Dublin. The cost per mile, therefore, must be multiplied by thirteen, on the North-Western line alone, in order to represent the actual payment the Post Office would have had to make to the old mail coaches, as contrasted with the payment they are now making to the railway. And so as to the other railways, in proportionate degree. It is to be borne in mind, also, that the Post Office authorities obtain facilities and advantages from the railways which they could not exact from the mail coach proprietors; and for which they pay nothing. Not only have they the power, under Act of Parliament, of ordering the trains at any time, at any speed, and to stop at any place, but they have, also, the power to direct the railway companies to provide all the carriages they require; and the railways actually find carriages for the Post Office, which cost, not the £120 which the old mail coaches cost, but no less than £500 each. In many cases the mail trains are run, under Post Office direction, at such inconvenient hours, that only three, or four ordinary passengers ever travel by them, for any part of their journey; so that the only remuneration received by the railway is the payment made for carrying the mails. It happens, also, on some railways,—such for example, as the line from Shrewsbury to Stafford—that the mail train is the only train run in the night. The consequence is, that clerks, porters, sidesmen, gate-keepers, telegraph clerks, and nearly all the staff of the railway must be kept at night-work solely for Post Office purposes, for which the railway company has to pay.