Before my examination, however, I had been enabled, by the civility of the Postmaster-General, to obtain further information, chiefly as to the number of letters delivered and postage collected in Birmingham; and this had led me so far to modify my former estimate, as to reduce it to seventy-nine and a-half, or, in round numbers, to eighty millions.[161] I may here add that yet further information, supplied on the requisition of the committee, enabling me to make yet further correction, I again reduced my estimate to seventy-eight millions.[162] By the same time, the Post Office, having abandoned the statement so confidently put forth, had raised the number to fifty-eight and a-quarter millions,[163] and this, after the counting mentioned above, it again advanced to seventy and a-quarter millions.[164] The committee, after very elaborate calculations made by Mr. Warburton, fixed it at seventy-seven and a-half millions,[165] that is, ten and a-half millions below my first rough estimate, made on very limited information, and thirty-five and a-half millions above the authoritative statement of the Postmaster-General, made with all means of correction at command. The committee’s conclusion as to the number of letters confirmed also my estimate as to the average single postage, viz., sixpence farthing.[166] It seems invidious, but I think it not superfluous, thus distinctly to report the result, since it may serve usefully to show, when other reforms are called for, in this or any other department, that official authority ought not imperiously to bear down conclusions arrived at by earnest, laborious, and careful investigation. On the question as to the propriety of the existing rates, Colonel Maberly, the Secretary, and other witnesses from the Post Office, nearly all gave it as their opinion that these rates were too high, at once for the general interests of the public and also for those of the revenue. Indeed, Colonel Maberly believed that “every Postmaster-General had [so] thought them for many years.”[167] He did not, however, explain why this opinion, so generally entertained, had been so barren in result; and, indeed, when the Postmaster-General and the Secretary were interrogated by the committee as to any general or even specific abatements they might wish to recommend, no satisfactory reply could be obtained.