Till the new postal system was established, the “packet service” for foreign and colonial mails had, “with little exception,” been charged to the Admiralty. In the “fallacious return” the entire amount (£612,850) was charged against the Post Office. Now, in comparing the fiscal results of the old and new systems, it was obviously unfair to include the cost of the packet service in the one and exclude it from the other. Despite all statements made to the contrary—and a great deal of fiction relating to postal arithmetic has long been allowed to pass current, and will probably continue so to do all down the “ringing grooves of time”—the nett revenue of the Department amounted to £600,000 _per annum_.[139] Another “mistake” lay in under-stating the gross revenue by some £100,000. On this being pointed out by my father to the Accountant-General, he at once admitted the error, but said that a corrective entry made by him had been “removed by order.”[140] And not only was correction in this case refused, but other “blunders” in the Post Office accounts on the wrong side of the ledger continued to be made, pointed out, and suffered to remain. In one account furnished by the Department it was found, says my father, “that the balance carried forward at the close of a quarter changed its amount in the transit; and when I pointed out this fact as conclusive against the correctness of the account, it was urged that without such modification the next quarter's account could not be made to balance.”[141] Not a very bright example of the application of culinary operations to official book-keeping because of the ease with which it could be detected. What wonder that to any one whose eyes are opened to such ways, faith in official and other statistics should be rudely shaken! The effect of these high-handed proceedings was naturally to foster mistaken ideas as to postal revenues. In 1842 Lord Fitzgerald, during a debate on the income-tax, said that the Post Office revenue had perished. The statement was speedily disposed of by Lord Monteagle, who, after pointing out the falseness of the allegation, declared that the expense of the packet service had no more to do with penny postage than with the expense of the war in Afghanistan or China, or the expense of the Army and Navy.[142] In the House of Commons, Peel, of course only quoting memoranda which had been provided for his use, repeated these misleading statistics; and, later, they have found further repetition even in some of the Postmaster-General's Annual Reports.