The value of this reform is felt in every household throughout the kingdom, but its extent will be well shown by the extraction of some figures from a return which has just been made to the House of Commons. The first general reduction of postage took place on the 5th of December, 1839--a fourpenny rate being interposed for a short time before the universal charge of a penny. At this time the number of letters delivered annually in the united kingdom was about 75 millions, the actual estimate for 1839 being 75,907,572. The gross amount of the tax levied upon this delivery was no less than 2,339,737_l._, of which, as the cost of management was only 687,000_l._, there was 1,652,424_l._ carried to the account of profit. Last year the number of letters delivered in the united kingdom was estimated at upwards of _three hundred and forty-seven millions_, while the penny tax upon the same amounted to no more than 2,264,684_l._, so that while our payments to the Exchequer have been actually lessened, the service rendered to the public has been multiplied fivefold--in other words, we pay less for five letters than we formerly paid for one. It is worth remark that the correspondence in the three kingdoms has increased almost equally. In 1839 the deliveries were 59,982,520; 8,301,904; and 7,623,148, in England, Ireland, and Scotland, respectively; while last year they were 276,252,642; 35,388,895; and 35,427,534. The rate of increase has been continuous, though not quite constant, ever since the reduction. The first effect of the reform was to double the deliveries at once, and turn the 75 millions into upwards of 160 millions. From that time to this the increase has proceeded at the rate of 10 or 20 millions a year, the smallest augmentation being in the famous year of 1848, when the delivery exceeded only by 6 millions that of 1847; and the largest in the equally famous times of 1845, when railway speculations added 28 millions of epistles to correspondence of the year preceding. The return before us includes, we hardly know with what view, a weekly account taken once a month for 1850, and from this curious table it would seem that during the month in which ladies talk least they write most; at any rate the largest number of letters yet counted was for the week ending February the 21st.