The Reports themselves, though always perused and often curtailed or otherwise modified by the Postmaster-General, were, from the beginning to the close of my secretaryship, substantially the work of my brother, with whom indeed the plan originated, being but the application to the Post Office of a practice which he had very fully maintained during sixteen years as an Inspector of Prisons. It must be observed that the surveyors and heads of departments were called on to supply the necessary materials by reporting each on his own division of the service. This arrangement obviously supplied an additional motive for exertion, and more especially for bringing all matters in hand to a speedy completion. It may be added that in the year 1856, that is to say within two years from our first issue, a letter was addressed by the Treasury to the other departments of the public service, calling attention to the Post Office Reports, and inviting similar reports from them, and that in the following year there appeared a First Annual Report from the Board of Customs, and from the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, each containing a mass of valuable information. RATE OF IMPROVEMENT. The following passage in the First Report throws light on the rates of improvement:-- "On the first day of every month a report is laid before the Postmaster-General, showing the principal improvements in hand, and the stage at which each has arrived. The latest of these reports (which is of the usual length) records one hundred and eighty-three measures, in various stages of progress, or completed, during the month of December, 1854. Minor improvements, such as extension of rural posts, &c., are not noticed in these reports." BUILDING. At various towns correspondence having far outgrown the space provided for dealing with it, existing offices were enlarged or new offices erected. Though, at times, there was more or less of contest with influential corporations, naturally inclined to adorn their respective towns at the national expense, yet, so long as the matter was left in our hands, we were able, upon the whole, to effect these changes at moderate cost.