[196] In this category we suppose the reviewer placed the following letter addressed to the Secretary of the Post-Office, from Lord Cranworth when Lord Chancellor. We adduce it here, on the contrary, as a specimen of a handsome and manly apology: "Sir,--Complaints were made early last month, that a letter posted by Mr. Anderson, of Lincoln's Inn, and addressed to me, had never reached its destination.... You caused inquiry to be made.... I feel it a duty to you, Sir, and the Post-Office authorities, to say that I have just found the missing letter, which has been accidentally buried under a heap of other papers. I have only to regret the trouble which my oversight thus caused, and to take the earliest opportunity of absolving all persons, except myself, of blame in the matter. I have, &c. &c. CRANWORTH." Somewhat similar to the above case, occurring only last year, we may refer to the circumstance, probably in the memory of most of our readers, when, among a batch of complainants whose letters The _Times_ admitted to its columns, was one from the late Mr. John Gough Nicholls, the eminent _littérateur_, who grieved bitterly that a letter sent through the post to him had not arrived at his address. From a manly apology which he made to the Post-Office authorities a few days afterwards, also given in The _Times_, it appeared that the reason why he never received the letter was, that _it had not been sent through the Post-Office_, as it ought to have been, but was delivered by a private messenger at another house in the street.
[197] We do not mention this latter circumstance, be it understood, to discourage the use of slits or letter-boxes in private doors. An occurrence of the above kind must be exceedingly rare, whilst nothing so much helps the prompt delivery of letters as such an arrangement.
[198] Perhaps, however, there is room to doubt whether the true reform will consist in anything less than the entire abolition of packet subsidies, and the offering of the contracts in the ordinary way of commercial transactions. An ocean penny-postage, _e. g._ penny sea-postage, would then be almost inevitable. A letter charged a penny the half-ounce would amount to nearly 300_l._ a ton, an enormous freightage it will be admitted, to the United States, being even fifteen times steam freight to India. Nor when the letters get across the sea would they be subject to heavy inland postage either in the one country or the other. In the United States letters are circulated for thousands of miles for three cents, while for half an anna, a sum equivalent to three farthings of English money, a letter may be forwarded through the length and breadth of British India.