Page:The Post Office of Fifty Years Ago.djvu/54

 our whole Colonial Empire, may be enjoying the same great advantage.

Looking nearer home we find that in place of the single daily communication with London, towns like Liverpool, Manchester, and Brighton receive as many as seven such dispatches daily—many other towns receiving four or five—while even to those places, so remote from London, that letters sent could not be delivered the same day (and where, therefore, very frequent dispatches would be useless), two, and in some cases three, mails daily have been established.

Town and suburban deliveries have been greatly increased in frequency and rapidity, and additional facilities are constantly being afforded. In the year ending 31st March, 1886—the latest for which the Postmaster-General's Report has as yet been issued—371 new Post Offices and 860 pillar and wall boxes were established, or, roughly speaking, four new Post Offices of one sort or another were opened every working day throughout that year.

The result of these long-continued improvements—powerfully assisted of course by the extension of the Railway system—has been enormously to increase the amount of correspondence.

The 76½ millions of chargeable letters delivered in the United Kingdom under the old system in 1839, had expanded in the year 1885-6 to a gross total, including post-cards, of nearly 1,575 millions, or more than twenty-fold the former number.

In place of 44½ millions of newspapers transmitted