These words called forth Mr. Page’s Report, and, as the public usually feels interested in matters relating to the Post Office, we have given it in full as an Appendix. We also have done very nearly the same with the Reply to Mr. Page, which Mr. Stephenson read to the Institution on the 20th of May, 1856. Combinedly these documents are long; nevertheless, we think they will repay perusal; at all events, our readers, if they choose to read, will get both views of the question, about which we also wish to say something.
Mr. Page, as it will be seen, passes by “bulk,” and deals, in all his arguments, with weight only. Yet the difference between them, even in the case of mails, the most favourable for the Post Office is very great indeed. Let us, for illustration, take the case of our Eastern mails; being all conveyed in parallel-sided boxes,[31] filled to the uttermost their inner dimensions will permit, they pack closely, and there is no loss of space, as must be in the case of bags, which, even when full, do not lay compactly together. Thus, the weight of one mail conveyed from Southampton to the East, in 1864, was 46 tons; its measurement was 99 tons, and the weight of the heaviest Eastern mail conveyed _viâ_ Southampton, in 1865, was 49½ tons; its measurement 106½ tons. Weight to bulk in mail _bags_ is nearer to 1 to 4 than to any other quantity. Had the weight (or bulk) of chargeable letters only increased about eight-fold between 1839 and 1855, no doubt the addition to the mails would not have been considerable. But Mr. Page, “no doubt without any intention whatever to mislead,” omits from his calculations matters which it is surprising that an officer of his intelligence and experience should have allowed to escape him. In the first place, he omits the fact that “chargeable letters” were very different in their character in 1855 from what they were in 1839. Then chargeable letters were, as has been stated by Mr. Page, about 7 per cent. of the total weight of the mails, but in 1855 letters quite equal in weight to the weight of those chargeable, viz., parliamentary and official franks, are excluded from Mr. Page’s calculation. It is well known that the correspondence of all the public departments has largely increased in the last thirty years, because, owing to the increased magnitude of the business of the nation, the number of clerks in the old offices has been greatly added to, and because several new branches of the public service have been created. To take a few examples at random. The Steam branch of the Admiralty consisted in 1838 of five or six persons; now, owing to rapid and frequent additions, an immense staff is necessarily connected with it. The Railway and the Navigation, the Education and the Scientific Departments of the Board of Trade, “Science and Art” and South Kensington, the Civil Service Commissioners, &c., have either been created or the staff of each has been added to. So that the substitutes for franks should be included among the letters of the general public, and it is quite certain that the weight and bulk of official letters has kept pace with the weight and bulk of ordinary letters. Between 1839 and 1855, notwithstanding the foot-note about newspapers at page 15, of the Postmaster-General’s Second Report, the number circulating through the post had increased from 44,500,000 to 71,000,000, and although the weight per newspaper had slightly diminished in the interval, still the increased weight of newspapers to be carried by the mails was nearly 50 per cent. over that of 1839.