From the point of view of the national government the Post Office has two functions. It is a great administrative department which conducts a huge business, with a minister at its head; and it is a source of income, its gross receipts forming about one seventh of the total revenues of the United Kingdom, its disbursements only about one tenth of the total expenditure. For that reason it is under a financial control by the Treasury so strict as to leave very little chance for independent action, and this renders the position of Postmaster General far less important than it would otherwise be. The office has been regarded as political since 1837; but until 1866 the holder could not sit in the House of Commons, and since that time he has occasionally been a peer, the Post Office in such a case being usually represented in the Commons by the Financial Secretary of the Treasury. The duties of the Postmaster General are minutely prescribed by statute, and while he has power to make regulations for the management of the postal service, it is not easy to make substantial changes or improvements without affecting the receipts or the expenses, and when that is done he comes at once under the control of the Treasury. The rates of postage, for example, and the compensation for carrying the mails, when not fixed by Act of Parliament, are subject to the approval of the Treasury; and so are the purchase or sale of land, and any lease of the right to carry on a telegraph or telephone business. The same approval is also required for his regulations touching money-orders, post office savings-banks, and the telegraph, although in these cases the revenue would not appear to be necessarily involved. In short, as Sir William Anson puts it,[113:1] "The Postmaster General is no more than the acting manager of a great business, with little discretionary power except in the exercise of the very considerable patronage of his office."[113:2] The business of the department is certainly enormous, the number of persons employed being little short of two hundred thousand. In addition to the usual work of transmitting letters, books, parcels and money-orders, the Post Office in England maintains savings-banks, with deposits of about £150,000,000; and it has been given exclusive control of the telegraph by provisions which have been held to include the telephone also. But while the administration of the telegraph has been retained by the government in its own hands, the right to conduct the telephone business was granted, by means of temporary licenses, to private companies, and to some extent to local authorities also; and the government has only recently decided to take over the management as soon as the licenses expire. FOOTNOTES: [82:1] Such are the offices of the Lord Steward and the Lord Chamberlain, the latter having in his charge also the censorship of plays and theatrical performances.