Sound economy, I need not say, requires that salaries should be regulated by fixed principles; and as early as January 31st of this year I had suggested to the Postmaster-General that it would be well for the Treasury to appoint commissioners who should establish scales of salaries equally applicable to all the revenue departments, so as at once to remove mutual jealousy and to prevent unreasonable claims in one department from arising out of unreasonable concession in another. Such a Commission was actually appointed about five years afterwards, and its proceedings will be mentioned in their proper place. _Former Prodigality._ One past proceeding, strongly exemplifying the necessity for a regulating principle, is set forth in the following extract from my Journal. Rectification was an affair of great difficulty:-- "_May 27th._--In preparing for my minute on the mail guards I have been obliged to read the papers on the subject for the last eleven years. They show that a scale of wages about two-thirds of that now in use was proposed by the officers of the department, and recommended by Colonel Maberly; also that much lower wages (21_s._ per week) had been paid for seven years to the guards on the Manchester and Liverpool Railway, and that they were satisfied therewith; that the Postmaster-General, in opposition to the advice of his officers, proposed to the Treasury a scale nearly the same, but slightly higher than that now established, and then appointed a large number of new guards; that, owing to a blunder of ----'s [instead of the change being limited to guards on railway, who got no fees from passengers], the option was offered to all the guards then in the service to be placed on this scale, as he admits, without authority from the Treasury; that the Irish guards [who all worked on mail-coaches], without exception, accepted the offer; thus adding at once more than £5,000 a year to the expenses; that an attempt was then made (in effect unsuccessfully) to withdraw the offer, and that in the course of a few years the expenses in mail guards were advanced from £10,513 in 1836, to £28,627 in 1841; that my minute on the subject, written at the Treasury in 1842, calling for explanations and suspending further advance meanwhile, was sent to the Postmaster-General in August of that year, and remained unanswered till September, 1845, and that in the meantime the Post Office was frequently pressing the Treasury to remove the suspension.... Towards the end of 1845 the Treasury took off the suspension, and the arrears (about £2,000) were paid. The Committee of Investigation, in 1843, called for a copy of my minute, and of the proceedings consequent thereon, but it was delayed under various pretexts, and was eventually withheld altogether." _Letter-Boxes._