In conclusion, I ask, how can the Post Office authorities justify their tone respecting the railways? They admit great advantages from railways, but they say that against those advantages there is an important set-off in increased expense. Is there any foundation for this charge? Let us look at the figures. The mails are now conveyed daily by rail and coach over, in round figures, 60,000 miles. The total cost of this conveyance is stated at £443,000. Upwards of £100,000 is saved upon the sea service with Ireland and the continent alone. Now, suppose the mail service of the country was still performed under the old mail coach system, what would it have cost? The net payment to mails, upon their own showing, would have amounted to £310,000; the tolls and coaches, at 5d. per mile, would have been £456,000. Add to this the steam-boat saving, and we should have a total cost exceeding £800,000 per annum. But as the present cost is only £443,000, there is a difference in favour of the railway system exceeding £400,000 a year, without taking credit for the increased rapidity of transmission. If I turn to the Post Office accounts, at page 57 of the Report, I find that the additional work, to the extent of five and a-half times, has been performed at an increased cost of only two and a-half times. By their own showing then, the cost of conveyance has not “increased in a far greater degree,” but in a far less degree in proportion to the work performed. I find, also, that the cost of conveying the mails has only increased, in a corresponding ratio, with the increase in the expenses of all the other branches of Post Office expenditure since 1838. I find still further, that the whole cost of conveyance amounts to little more than one-fourth of the whole cost of management, for whilst the whole cost of management in 1855 was £1,651,000, the entire payment for cost of conveyance was only £443,000. I ask, then, with what justice, with what show of propriety, can the Postmaster-General, or his officials, complain of the payments to railways for the postal communication of the nation?