On investigating the accounts, I found, to my great concern, that the department was not only, as I had anticipated, unprofitable, but that it involved an annual loss of no less than £10,000. It has, however, been found practicable, even with greatly increased perfection in the accounts, to introduce, by successive improvements, such simplification as will save the salaries of 50 clerks in the London Office alone; and this, combined with other important savings already effected, will, in all probability, render the department self-supporting in the course of the present year. But your Lordship is aware that further important improvements are now in progress, by means of which I confidently expect the money-order department will be made to afford a satisfactory profit. I may remark that the savings effected in this department have already exceeded my estimate as laid before the select committee of the House of Commons on Postage of 1843 (p. 90). From the facility with which the necessary changes, many of them difficult and complicated, have been effected in this department since it came under my immediate and exclusive direction, your Lordship will, perhaps, deem it not unreasonable to infer that, with similar means at my command, a like success may be obtained elsewhere; and the encouragement hence derived has augmented my earnest desire to attempt without delay improvements in other departments, for years contemplated, which, while they present many difficulties, are of no slight importance to the public service. The complete consolidation of the two corps of letter-carriers is a promised measure of this description. This consolidation I first recommended in the year 1837, submitted to the Treasury in the year 1842, laid before the select committee on postage of 1843, and sustained through a severe examination. Up to that time it was opposed by the Post Office authorities, and not supported by the Treasury; but at the commencement of 1847 a decided step was taken in that direction, and with advantageous results. My opinion of the value of the measure has never varied, and my desire for its adoption is, of course, greatly strengthened by finding it pressed on the Office by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose exhortations to the same effect have now, for twelve months, been from time to time earnestly given. But, after the maturest deliberation, I still feel impressed with the painful conviction that unless I could be placed, with reference to the departments concerned in the change, in a position similar to that which I hold with regard to the Money Order Office, the attempt would not only fail, but might produce a state of serious insubordination.