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An Historical and Descriptive Account of the British Post-Office. Together with an Appendix.
"OUR ENGLISH POST-OFFICE IS A SPLENDID TRIUMPH OF CIVILIZATION."--_Lord Macaulay._
London: Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, 14, Ludgate Hill. 1864.
London: R. Clay, Son, and Taylor, Printers, Bread Street Hill.
This volume is the first of a contemplated series designed to furnish some account of the history and ordinary working of the revenue departments of the country--to do for the great _Governmental_ industries what Mr. Smiles has so ably done (to compare his great things with our small) for the profession of civil engineering and several _national_ industries. Few attempts have ever been made to trace the rise and progress of the invaluable institution of the Post-Office. We have more than once seen the question asked in _Notes and Queries_--that _sine quâ non_ of the curious and the learned--where a continuous account might be found of English postal history. In each case, the inquirer has been referred to a short summary of the history of the Post-Office, prefixed to the Postmaster-General's _First Report_. Since that, the Messrs. Black, in the eighth edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, have supplied an excellent and more extended notice. Still more recently, however, in an admirable paper on the Post-Office in _Fraser's Magazine_, Mr. Matthew D. Hill has expressed his astonishment that so little study has been given to the subject--that it "has attracted the attention of so small a number of students, and of each, as it would appear, for so short a time." "I have not been able to find," adds Mr. Hill, "that even Germany has produced a single work which affects to furnish more than a sketch or outline of postal history." The first part of the following pages is offered as a _contribution_ to the study of the subject, in the hope that it will be allowed to fill the vacant place, at any rate, until the work is done more worthily. With regard to that most interesting episode in the history of the Post-Office which resulted in the penny-post reform, the materials for our work--scanty though they undoubtedly are in the earlier periods--are here sufficiently abundant. The scope, however, of the present undertaking would not allow of much more than a proportionate amount of space being devoted to that epoch. Besides, the history of that eventful struggle can be properly told but by one hand, and that hand, if spared, intends, we believe, to tell his own story. Mr. Torrens MacCullagh, in his _Life of Sir James Graham_, has thrown much new light on the letter-opening transactions of 1844, and we have been led, on inquiry, to concur in many of his views on the subject.