Whatever may be thought of this arrangement, it will scarcely be maintained that it is too favourable to the Post Office, which, save in respect of the two packet services just mentioned (which now jointly yield a surplus of about £56,000 per annum), is debited with an amount equal to its whole receipts (viz., £470,000), without even any allowance for the expense it incurs in that portion of the packet administration which is necessarily carried on within the department. The Eighth Annual Report of the Postmaster-General[265] contains an estimate of the net revenue of the Post Office for the year 1861, prepared on the principles laid down in the foregoing remarks, but including some less important adjustments shown in the document itself. The net revenue thus determined is £1,161,985, the whole, save the £56,000 mentioned above, and about £30,000 derived from money-order transactions, being the produce of inland postage, which thus yields a net revenue of about £1,076,000. Second. I now proceed to consider the question of net revenue as to its _comparative_ amount, when contrasted with the net revenue obtained before the establishment of Penny Postage, the object being to ascertain the loss consequent on the reduction of the rate. When proposing Penny Postage, I estimated this loss (under different circumstances, however,) at about £300,000.[266] The amount of net revenue in the year 1838, the last year throughout which the old rates were maintained, was, according to the mode of account then in use, £1,659,510.[267] For the purpose of comparison, it is obvious that a similar mode of account must be applied to the present state of things. Bearing this in mind, we have now once more to consider the two points affecting receipt, viz., the postage of the Government correspondence, and the proceeds of the impressed stamps on newspapers, and the one point affecting expenditure, viz., the expense of the packet service. _As regards the Government correspondence._ It is alleged that, under the old system, this was carried free. Now the fact is, that under that system the departments of probably the largest correspondence, viz., the Customs, the Excise, and the Stamps and Taxes, paid the postage of all their letters, while some other departments, though less strictly dealt with, paid at least for their foreign correspondence. The aggregate of such payments amounted, on the average, to about £45,000 per annum.[268] Now, seeing that, since the adoption of Penny Postage, the non-official correspondence has increased nearly eight-fold, it may well be doubted whether, had the old system continued, the official correspondence would not have so increased as to raise the expenditure from £45,000 per annum to at least equality with the £110,000, the present average.[269] _As regards Newspapers._