The last improvements of which I shall speak here are those connected with the Packet Service. This service, it will be remembered, had, under the management of the Admiralty, become a source of very great expense; attributable partly to the fact of its extension, for political reasons, very far beyond the requirements of the Post Office. As this extension had ceased, it was desirable, as fast as possible, to bring the expense within such limits as would render the service self-supporting, and thereby relieve the British tax-payer from a needless burden. Opportunity was given for such improvement by the transference of the service from the Admiralty to the Post Office; a change made in the year 1860. Of course progress could be but slow, seeing that existing contracts had to be respected; but steps were promptly taken to put the department in readiness for availing itself of opportunities as they should occur. The secretarial charge of the department was from the first placed in the hands of my brother, who already had like charge of the foreign and colonial departments, and had previously performed such secretarial duties relative to this service as even then devolved on the Post Office. _Improvement in Tenders._ His first move was, so to frame the tenders as, in effect, to analyze the charges hitherto made in the gross; to show how much was demanded for the main duty, and how much for its various adjuncts; and by this means to ascertain how far the various details of any particular service justified the expense of their additional maintenance. The value of such analysis may be exemplified by stating that by abandoning stipulations which were really of little or no practical utility, either to the Post Office or to the public at large, we were able to reduce the annual expense to the Home Government of conveying the mails to and from Honduras from £8,000 to £2,000; eventually, indeed, to £1,500. _Discontinuance of Surveys._