It may be not unprofitable to mention an arrangement at the Post Office, explaining, in a measure, its habitual promptitude in reply. The papers constantly accumulating in the Secretary’s office, I should think, at the rate of a small cart-load per week, are in the keeping, not of clerks, but of a corps of messengers, chosen from the general body for their superior intelligence. These, under one of their own number, manage the whole business of tying up, docketing, indexing, and arranging; and are always ready on occasion for the duty of research. The whole is admirably managed; and, contrary to what any one would have expected, is believed to be better done than it would be by men of higher station. Many years after the events now in narration, it was hastily thought, in a general revision of duties, that the head officer of the corps should be taken from a higher grade; but the change was found far from beneficial, and was soon reversed. The explanation seems to be that the higher officer, thinking himself rather lowered by his new employment, the more so as handling dusty papers must, in some degree, have marred the results of his toilet, discharged the duty in but a perfunctory manner; while those of the lower grade, justly regarding themselves as raised in trust and position, executed it as men perform a task in which they take pride. It has been seen how much care was taken to prevent unlawful practices relative to the stamp; and the experience of many years attests the efficacy of the means adopted. Of course, too, when discovery, or seeming discovery, was made of a flaw in our security, the fact was carefully withheld from the public during the period of experiment and rectification. What, then, was my surprise and vexation at an occurrence thus recorded in my Journal?— “_February 18th._—In the _Post_ and _Herald_ of this morning is a notice of a lecture at the Polytechnic Institution, from which it would appear that the lecturer exhibited electrotype imitations of the medallion stamp, stating, at the same time, that they could be imitated with the greatest ease, that they had consequently been abandoned, and that he was authorised by Government to make a series of experiments connected therewith. I immediately showed the paragraph to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with a view of ascertaining if he had given any such authority. He had not.”