I cannot mention the name of Lieutenant (now Colonel) Harness without adding that I always found in him a very zealous and efficient co-operator. I owe much to the information and assistance which he yielded me from time to time. The plan I proposed, which was upon the whole more convenient for the public than the existing arrangement, involved a saving of about £5,000 a year, and it was with much satisfaction that five months later I learnt that it had received the approbation of the Postmaster-General. How I was unexpectedly prevented from myself carrying this important project into effect will be shown a few pages later. A curious incident occurred which, however small in itself, showed how far the Office was competent to deal correctly with questions of economy. On the Glasgow and Ayr Railway the practice had been to place the bags under the care of the railway guard; a service for which the company received £40 a year. A Report came to the Treasury from the Postmaster-General, showing that he had superseded this service by the appointment of a mail guard, and taking credit to himself for economy so effected by the discontinuance of such payment; the self-gratulation being made in the apparent forgetfulness that the mail guard’s salary would be somewhere about double the sum saved. One form of extravagant expenditure on railway conveyance was in occupation of superfluous space:— “_August 2nd, 1842._—In one instance, to which I have called attention, namely, the day mail between York and Normanton, the maximum weight of the bags being only two quarters twenty-four pounds, two compartments of a second-class carriage are occupied by the Post Office, that is to say, sixteen passengers are displaced to make room for what is about equivalent to the luggage of one. Recommended a thorough investigation of the subject.” In consequence of this discovery, the Post Office was directed to report upon the state of all the railway lines in respect of space occupied. The Report, however, had not been received when my services came to an end. Another form of waste arose from inaccuracy as to the length of railway used by the Post Office on particular lines, the award, according to a common practice, fixing not a gross sum, but a mileage rate; thus, after much dunning for information, I found the Post Office so overpaying one company by as much as, £400 a year, though the true distance was stated both in its official notices to the Company and in its own time bills. What was more remarkable was that the Post Office, after I had pointed out the error, persisted in maintaining that the amount was correct.