Page:The Post Office of Fifty Years Ago.djvu/138

70 minute error, for which, considering the complicated nature of the duties, and the rapidity with which they are required to be executed, we were prepared to make allowance. In many instances, it appeared upon inspection, that for twenty-five successive days the 'Office Account,' as it is called, differed from the charges admitted by the Deputy Post-masters, and this with reference to towns affording the most considerable revenue, as Hull, Brighton, Exeter, Plymouth, Birmingham, Liverpool. Your Lordships may observe, on referring to the evidence of Mr. Johnson, who combines the duties of a President of the Inland Office with those of a senior clerk in the Letter Bill Office, and should therefore be peculiarly conversant with this branch of the business, that such a continued series of differences is not regarded as unusual in most of the large towns. His statement is corroborated by Mr. Brown, a clerk also in the Letter Bill Office, who says that in the large towns there is scarcely a night that some variation does not occur.

"We do not pretend to offer any accurate pecuniary estimate of the general result of the imperfect practice in raising these charges against the Deputy Post-masters; but we have grounds for stating, so far as our scrutiny has extended, that the 'Office Accounts' have most frequently fallen short of the true amounts of charge as corrected and admitted by the Deputy Post-masters. A comparative statement which we caused to be made from the Letter Bill Books of the accounts of 184 post towns, included in the first, second, and third divisions, for the months of July and August last, showed that in the former month, in 118 out of 158 cases, and in the latter, in 113 out of 168 instances, an excess of charge was admitted by the Deputy Post-masters beyond the amounts of the respective office accounts for those periods. It is remarkable that in some of those instances, as of Bath and Bristol, the daily differences consisted uniformly of short charges against the Deputy Post-masters throughout the period of two months, and the same was observable in the case of Plymouth for the month of August. The short charges against the two first-mentioned towns in this period amounted to £47 0s. 0½d. The total excess upon the whole of the divisional accounts alluded to