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 it would not be received till Friday—four days being then required, under the most favourable circumstances, for an exchange of communication per post which can now be effected in twenty-four hours.

Scotland and Ireland were even less well served by the Post Office than England and Wales, but even in this, the most favoured portion of the United Kingdom, there were, at the date of Her Majesty's accession, districts larger than Middlesex into which the postman never entered.

Of the 2,100 Registrars' Districts into which England and Wales were then divided, 400 districts, each containing on the average about 20 square miles, and about 4,000 inhabitants (making in all a population of about a million and a half) had absolutely no post offices whatever. The chief places in these districts, containing about 1,400 inhabitants each, were, on the average, about 5 miles, and in some instances as much as 16 miles, from the nearest post office.

Even in the London District, where postal facilities were better than in any other part of the country, the service was singularly slow and costly. A letter posted at any Receiving Office in the city after 2 p.m. was not delivered, even in Brompton, till next morning, and the postage charged was 3d. per "single" letter.