In 1862 he was able to make important alterations in the registration of letters. Allusion has already been made to the ancient quarrel between a former Postmaster-General and my father over the amount of fee, the political head of the office wishing to keep it at 1s., Rowland Hill to reduce it to 6d., a reduction easily obtained when in 1846 the latter entered the Post Office. A largely increased number of registered letters had been the result. The fee was now still further reduced, the reduction being followed by an even larger increase of registered letters; while the registration of coin-bearing letters was at last made compulsory. Before 1862 coins had often been enclosed in unregistered letters, at times so carelessly that their presence was evident, and abstraction easy. As a natural consequence, misappropriation was not infrequent. After the passing of this necessary enactment the losses diminished rapidly; the number of letters containing money posted in the second half of that year increased to about 900,000, and the number of those which failed to reach their destination was only twelve. While it is undeniable that occasionally a letter-carrier or sorter has been responsible for the disappearance of some articles—at times of great value—entrusted to the care of the department, the public itself is frequently very far from blameless. As has already been shown, carelessness that can only be called culpable sometimes throws temptation in the men's way. In the course of a single twelvemonths, nearly 31,000 letters entirely unaddressed were posted, many of which contained money whose sum total amounted to several thousands of pounds. The number of things lost in the post through negligence to enclose them in properly secured covers, or through placing them in covers which are imperfectly addressed or not addressed at all, so that sometimes neither sender nor intended recipient can be traced, is very great. In one twelvemonths alone the accumulations at the Dead Letter Office sold at auction by order of the Postmaster-General comprised almost every description of wearing apparel from socks up to sealskin jackets and suits of clothing, Afghan, Egyptian, and South African war medals, a Khedive's Star, a pearl necklace, some boxes of chocolate, a curious Transvaal coin, and several thousands of postage stamps. Did none of the losers dream of applying for repossession of their property ere it passed under the auctioneer's hammer; or did they resign themselves to the less troublesome assumption that the things had been stolen?