CONVEYANCE OF MAILS. As the reader is aware, I had long regarded it as of primary importance to obtain a general Act regulating railway charges to the Post Office, an Act that should _fix_ the charges for ordinary trains, and establish some principle applicable to other cases, and thus either supersede arbitration--generally a very unsatisfactory expedient--or confine it within definite bounds. There seemed at one time a prospect of some progress in this direction, a bill being introduced into Parliament by Government, under the administration of Lord John Russell, the object of which was to remove doubts as to our right to send a guard as a passenger by any ordinary train with the mails as his luggage, and also to authorize our sending bags as parcels on payment of the usual parcel rates. If this measure had been adopted, it would have enabled us to establish additional mails, especially between the larger towns, at hours when the correspondence, though important, is not sufficient to justify the high charges usually made by the railway companies. I did all in my power to support such a measure--of which, indeed, I was in great part the author--but nothing was effected. The bill was, first, so modified, through concessions to the railway companies, as to become worse than useless, and then, because yet further modification was resisted by the Government, was thrown out. Eighteen months later, under the authority of Lord Hardwicke, I prepared clauses, intended to secure fair rates of charge, for insertion in all new railway bills. These his lordship determined to incorporate in a bill, with a view to their extension also to existing railways. I estimated that their adoption (and they were perfectly just) would reduce our annual expenditure in railway conveyance (then about £360,000) by at least £100,000. The overthrow of Lord Derby's administration, which occurred a few days later, transferred the matter to other hands. A committee being appointed on railway and canal bills in the session of 1853, with Mr. Cardwell as chairman, I gave evidence,[105] of which the following is a summary.