Long before my resignation, however, a change had been made, the benefit of which I have never been able to discover,--the construction and alteration of Post Office buildings being transferred by the Treasury, in the year 1858, from the Post Office to the Board of Works. I attempted to obtain a reversal of this order, knowing that the change by no means tended to economy; and, in support of my view, I produced the following striking contrast. A new post office had lately been erected at Brighton, the cost, excluding a very moderate sum expended in fitting up a portion of it as a residence, being no more than £1,600. A similar erection had now to be made at Dundee; and as the correspondence of this town is not more than about half that of Brighton, the least to be expected was that the cost here should be within the cost there; instead of which, the estimate sent in by the Board of Works raised it to four-or five-fold the amount; nor could all the remonstrance I made, and I was not sparing in my representations, bring it lower than £5,700. My general pleading availed no more than my special remonstrance, and the duty in question is still attached to the Board of Works, with what æsthetic advantages I cannot pretend to say, but certainly at a greatly increased expense. FREE DELIVERY. Free delivery was rapidly extending throughout the United Kingdom. At the present day (1868) the work is so far advanced that to many readers the very term "free delivery" must have lost its significance. Formerly, to every office there were limits, sometimes narrow ones, beyond which delivery was either not made at all, or made only at an additional charge, generally of one penny per letter, an arrangement nowise interfered with by the simple establishment of penny postage. During the period now under consideration, however, in addition to much previously done, this immunity was extended to several thousand places, without counting a widening of range or other improvement at places where it already existed in an imperfect state. In short, by the end of this period free delivery was extended so far as to include ninety-three per cent. of the whole correspondence.[123] LONDON DELIVERY.