A correct view certainly. We are now desirous of offering some remarks upon the part of the recommendations of the Royal Commissioners which refers to a tariff being fixed by a general Act for the various classes of services required of railways by the Post Office. It would, we are convinced, be impossible to pass an Act of this class that would be of the slightest practical value, because the circumstances of every railway company, certainly of every district of country through which a railway passes, are of constant variance. We need not go farther for evidence of this fact, than in the successive annual reports of Postmasters-General. Until 1862 each of them contained statements of the railway, horse, and foot mileage employed by the Post Office, and each item was subdivided into maximum, average, and minimum, not only for the United Kingdom, but for each component part of it. As may be imagined, the difference between maximum price and minimum on railways, were not only very striking, but they are also equally striking for the two other means of locomotion, especially so for foot messengers; these last varied—no doubt still continue to vary—from a farthing a mile (not enough we should have thought to pay for sole, to say nothing of upper-shoe-leather) to sixpence a mile. To this let be added what any person who reads Post Office documents will see constantly quoted, that before the opening of the railway from Carlisle to Glasgow, the proprietors of the coach that carried the mail between these two places, _paid_ £200 a year for the privilege. It was because there was then a violent, and as it turned out to be, destructive competition on the road, but at the time it lasted, the Post Office was paying as high as, if we recollect correctly, 1s. 3d. a double mile for mail coach conveyance in another part of the country. The Commissioners recommend arbitration in case of difference, when the Post Office requires an exclusive or limited train, and it seems that the extension of the principle to all matters of negotiation, when the parties cannot agree, affords the best means of arriving at a just and equitable solution. Arbitration, however, with the railways has always been the _bête noire_ of the department.