“The Post Office authorities complain that the price they have to pay, under many of the arbitrations, for services rendered, is in excess of what individuals pay for such services, and that if guards are sent in charge of the mails as baggage, the railway companies insist that the guard can only carry the baggage from one end of his journey to the other, without intermediate receipt and delivery, and that, therefore, when they desire to use the trains by sending a guard with mail bags, without putting the trains under the statutory notice, the demands of the railway companies are exorbitant. They also state that they cannot require a company to run a train exclusively for their use, and that the law is defective as to the speed they are entitled to require, and as to the provision of apparatus for exchanging mail bags without stopping. “The railway companies, on the other hand, complain that whilst by law the award should bind both parties for three years, the Post Office practically possesses the power of at once putting an end to it, if they consider it too high, by requiring some alteration of service, which may be a mere nominal alteration, and thus the Post Office may go on asking for fresh arbitrations until they get an award to their liking. The Post Office authorities deny that there has been any abuse of this power. The railway companies further complain that, by means of the book and parcel post, the Post Office has entered into competition with the railway companies for an important branch of their traffic. “The Post Office is anxious that a fixed tariff for the conveyance of mails should be introduced into Acts of Parliament. The experience which has been already acquired must, by this time, suffice to enable a fair and remunerative tariff to be affixed to every service required to be rendered by the ordinary trains of the company, and the only reason why some fixed scale does not appear to have been adopted by some general Act is, that the Post Office has never urged it upon the consideration of Parliament on a satisfactory basis for legislation. “It is quite clear, however, that at the present time legislative interference in this question has either gone too far or not far enough. If the Post Office had originally been left free to make its bargains with railway companies, it would probably have obtained greater facilities at lower rates than it now possesses, for the railway companies largely benefit by postal communication, and the feeling of the directors would obviously be to assist it; but the fact of the service being compulsory, to some extent neutralises such a feeling.