In speaking of the evidence given before this committee, I follow not the order in which it was given, but the classification observed in the final Report; selecting, as the Report does, only those portions which bear most strongly on the questions to be resolved. My own evidence I shall in the main pass over, seeing that it was in substance almost identical with my pamphlet. My plan of “secondary distribution,”[154] however, I now thought it expedient to abandon, so far as regarded the existing range of post office operations, not from any doubt of its justice or intrinsic advantage, but with a view to simplify the great question before the committee.[155] One question, of course, related to the varying rates of postage, which any one accustomed to present simplicity would find sufficiently perplexing. In Great Britain (for in Ireland it was somewhat different) the postage on a single letter delivered within eight miles of the office where it was posted was, as a general rule—consequent on a recent reduction—twopence, the lowest rate beyond that limit being fourpence. Beyond fifteen miles it became fivepence; after which it rose a penny at a time, but by irregular augmentation, to one shilling, the charge for three hundred miles; one penny more served for four hundred miles, and thenceforward augmentation went on at the same rate, each additional penny serving for another hundred miles. This plan of charge, with various complications arising out of it, produced remarkable anomalies. As if this complexity were not quite enough, there was as a general rule an additional charge of a half-penny on a letter crossing the Scotch border; while letters to or from Ireland had to bear, in addition, packet rates, and rates for crossing the bridges over the Conway and the Menai; or, if they took the southern route, a rate chargeable at Milford.[156] Lastly, there was the rule already mentioned, by which a letter with the slightest enclosure incurred double postage, and with two enclosures triple; the postage, however, being regulated by weight whenever this reached an ounce, at which point the charge became quadruple; rising afterwards by a single postage for every additional quarter of an ounce.[157] Surely it is no wonder that Post Office officials, viewing prepayment in connection with such whimsical complexity, and probably thinking the connection indissoluble, should be hopeless of inducing the public to adopt the practice. A second inquiry, which occupied much attention, referred to the number of chargeable letters then passing annually through the Office. The importance of this question, which no longer appears at first sight, was then so great that it was regarded as one of the main points at issue between the Post Office and myself.