Now assume that the whole of the various existing railways are amalgamated; that Main line trains both for goods and passengers run at regular intervals to and from the principal towns; that Local trains run from station to station and on branch lines also at regular intervals, connecting at junctions with Main line trains; that just as there are now regular times for delivery and collections of letters and parcels by post, varying in number according to the population of each locality, so there are regular collections and deliveries of goods to and from every town and village in the United Kingdom; and that a uniform rate, no more than, or even less than, the smallest rate now charged, is all that has to be paid. It is true that with such a system at many of the smaller places the actual expense of collection and delivery may, indeed, be “more than the traffic would bear,” certainly much more than the Directors of a railway company would feel warranted in risking under the present system with their necessarily limited area, but when these smaller places are part of such a system as is here described, extending to every town in the United Kingdom, then the whole becomes self-supporting, and there is no advantage in charging, either according to distance, or according to “what the traffic will bear.” Every little village Post Office in the United Kingdom is an object-lesson to us. Here we have all the resources of civilisation, letter and parcel post, telegraph, telephone, savings bank, money orders, all provided at exactly the same rate as in the largest Cities of the Empire. Although the actual expense of each village Post Office taken by itself is out of all proportion to the population of the district, the combination of all of them in one national unified system enables these remote villages to benefit, not only with no financial loss to the nation, but actually with a handsome net profit which has actually contributed to the general revenue of the nation. This was not contemplated when the Penny Post was established, and is a practice which, in my view, is a great mistake, as explained in Chapter IV. The same principle has been applied to the ordinary roads of the country, which are now open free of charge to the whole population, although many of this generation can still remember the restrictions of the old toll-gates. It is only applying the same principle to the nation which applies to the human body. “The body is not one member, but many.… Whether one member suffers, all the members suffer with it, or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.”