Another beneficial change arose thus. Of course, in these departments of the service where the officers have to be intrusted with the public money, guarantees are required of those who are appointed; a requirement necessarily producing either trouble or expense. Private guarantees were commonly procured, though some nominees got the security of the British Guarantee Association, the fees for obtaining which, however, although moderate, implied a considerable deduction from the smaller salaries. Mr. Banning, the postmaster of Liverpool, conceived the plan of a mutual guarantee amongst the officers themselves. This proving very successful at Liverpool, was subsequently introduced into the Chief Office, and extended to the offices of some other of the principal towns.[171] _Libraries._ The following is an extract from the Postmaster-General's Report for 1858:-- "It is with much pleasure that I have witnessed the establishment, among the clerks in the Chief Office in London, of an institution called the Post Office Library and Literary Association. The large number of clerks who have enrolled their names shows how general among them are a taste for reading and a desire for mental cultivation and pleasures of a superior kind. Besides much support within the department, the institution has received many liberal donations, both of money and books, from without--among others, a munificent gift of £50 from His Royal Highness the Prince Consort."[172] In the following year similar institutions on a smaller scale were established at nearly all the London district offices, and also at Glasgow.[173] In the London office, the institution was aided by the delivery of lectures, a work in which several of the higher officials took part. On the occasion of the annular eclipse of 1858 I took my turn by giving a lecture on the subject of that phenomenon, and had the pleasure of addressing a very full and very attentive audience. _Summary._ I cannot better close this account of the Post Office staff, numbering at that time more than twenty-four thousand persons in all, of which more than three thousand served in the London district, than by quoting the following passage from the Sixth Annual Report, that for 1859, issued as usual in the following year, and signed by the Postmaster-General of the day, Lord Elgin:--