1st.—As to Practicability. I argued that question, solely and exclusively, and, I will add, fairly and properly, upon the question of bulk. “The old mail coaches,” I said, “were never planned for bulk. Bulk, indeed, would have been fatal to that regularity and speed, upon which the Post Office could alone rely, as the means of securing the monopoly of the letter carriage of the nation.” How is this reasoning met in the Post Office Report? The Report argues the question as a question of weight. “The increase,” it is said, “which has taken place in the weight of the mails has presented no difficulty to their conveyance by mail coaches.” Seventeen times in one page the word weight is reiterated, whilst the word bulk is carefully avoided. The reply to my argument that the bulk would have been fatal is that the weight would have presented no difficulty. Until my argument is met on the question of bulk, I must maintain that my argument is untouched. We all know that letters weigh very little. But unpressed, sent in bags, as they are, by the Post Office, what is the bulk of the mails? I told you in my address, that “On a Friday night, when so many thousands of weekly papers are sent into the country, the Post Office requires, on the London and North-Western Railway, not only the use of the travelling post office, which is provided for its convenience, but of six or eight additional vans.” This is not denied in the Report. But it is argued, nevertheless, as if all these letters could have been packed into the old mail coaches. What are the facts? On Saturday week the 1.30 p.m. Dover train carried down the Indian mail. That mail consisted of no less than 170 boxes,[150] each about 1 foot 9 inches long by 1 foot broad and 1 foot deep. How could these have been carried by a mail coach? I have caused an old Dover mail to be measured, for the purpose of ascertaining the space allotted to bags. The box under the guard’s feet was 2 feet 10 inches long by 2 feet 1 inch deep, and 3 feet 5 inches broad; the boot (usually assigned to passengers’ carpet-bags and private parcels) was 2 feet 11 inches wide, 2 feet 6 inches deep, and 2 feet 7 inches long. The space on the roof, including the roof seat, was 5 feet long by 4 feet broad. Giving all this space to the Post Office, without reservation, had that mail coach carried last Saturday’s mail from London, it would have carried on its top a pyramid of mail boxes 12 feet high from the roof of the mail, or 20 feet from the ground! Yet the Report tells you, that there would have been no difficulty in providing for the conveyance of the present mails by the old mail coaches.