population. The Postmaster General
proposes to remedy this defect by carrying
the wires, at as early a date as possible, to
the post offices of all the towns and villages
at which there is a money order office.
At the same time, as the railway
companies will have the means of transmitting
messages for the public, along the wires
which they will maintain for their own
peculiar business, it has been decided that
they shall transmit such messages on behalf
of the Postmaster General, and shall
account to him for the produce. The
populations which have grown up around
railway stations, and the persons who are
taken to those stations by business or
pleasure, will therefore lose none of the
accommodation which they have hitherto
enjoyed.

The offices which the Post Office will
maintain for the collection and transmission
of messages will be of three kinds, namely:
Offices of deposit for messages. Every
pillar or wall box will be a place of deposit
for messages, which will be carried from, it
at the ordinary hours of collection to an
office from which they can be sent by wire.
Every receiving office which is not a money-
order office, will also be a place of deposit
for messages, which will be carried from it
at the ordinary hours of collection to the
telegraph office: unless, indeed, the senders
of the messages be willing to pay for
immediate transmission, in which case the means
of immediate transmission will be provided.

      Sub-telegraphic offices.

      Head telegraphic offices.

Every money-order office will be either a
sub or a head telegraphic office. If it be a
sub-office, it will be at the terminal point
of a telegraphic line, and will merely have
to transmit or receive messages. If it be
a head office, it will occupy an intermediate
point between two or more offices, and will
have, not merely to transmit and receive
messages on its own account, but to repeat
the messages of other offices; it will, in
fact, be a "forward" office.

Over and above the extension of the
wires to every town and village in which
there is a money order office, it is proposed
that district systems shall be established in
some of the large towns. The classification
of the offices into offices of deposit,
sub-telegraphic, and head telegraphic offices,
will prevail in the urban or district, as well
as in the extra urban or general, systems.

In those places in which there is neither
receiving office nor pillar box, and where
the inhabitants give their letters to a rural
post messenger, or mail cart driver, for
transmission to the head office, they may,
in like manner, if it be convenient to them,
hand their telegrams to such messenger.

It is intended that all charges for the tr
ansmission of messages, porterage
included, shall, so far as is practicable, be
pre-paid by postage stamps. Even in
those cases in which some portion of the
charge is paid in money by the sender or
addressee, it is probable that the
postmaster who receives the money payment
will be required to affix postage stamps
of corresponding value to the message
paper, and to cancel them.

The advantages of pre-payment by
postage stamps are obvious. The department
will be spared the cost of making several
denominations of special telegraph stamps,
and of stocking twelve thousand receiving
offices with them. The public will be
much more likely always to have a
sufficient supply of stamps near at hand than
they would be if the telegraph stamps were
distinct from the postage stamps; and the
account of telegraphic revenue collected
will be at least as simple as it would be if
two classes of stamps were used.

The limits within which delivery by
special messenger will be covered by the
charge of one shilling for twenty words,
&c. &c., are prescribed by the act: which
also prescribes the extra charge for special
foot messenger beyond those limits. Where
the public do not care to incur that extra
charge, the delivery is to be effected free
of extra charge, with the next ordinary
delivery of letters.

Let us consider what increase will be
produced by the alteration of rate which
the Post Office proposes to effect. In all
cases but one, the alteration effected by
the Post Office will be reduction; but as
there will be no rate below one shilling,
the rate in the case of messages now
carried for sixpence will be doubled. These
messages are town messages. In his
examination before the Committee last year,
it was stated by Mr. Scudamore, to whose
signal ability and indomitable energy the
successful development of the scheme is
due, that as under the government system,
the town offices would be much more
numerous, i. e., much closer to the
population than are the town offices of the
telegraph companies, it is probable that the
charge of one shilling, which would, in
many cases, include postage, would, as a
general rule, not exceed the existing charge
of sixpence; plus the extra charge for