Page:The Post Office of Fifty Years Ago.djvu/55

 by post, as in 1839, the annual number is now more than 147½ millions, and if we add to these the 342 millions of Book-packets and circulars, and the 26½ millions of articles sent last year by Parcel Post, the total number of missives transmitted through the Post Office annually for delivery in the United Kingdom (exclusive therefore of outward Foreign and Colonial mails) reaches the goodly total of more than 2,091 millions.

The gross revenue is now fourfold, and the net revenue double its former amount—pretty fair results from a plan no portion of which could, in the opinion of the old postal officials, be adopted with advantage either to the public or to the revenue!

Among other great improvements in the Post Office, the establishment of Post Office Savings Banks, originally proposed by Sir Charles W. Sykes, manager of the Huddersfield Banking Company, the cheapening of the telegraph service, and the establishment of the Parcel Post are too obvious to need more than a passing allusion, though they furnish abundant evidence of the sturdy growth and strong vitality of that beneficent measure of "Post Office Peform" of which, just fifty years ago, the "importance and practicability" were first made manifest.

The contrast between the old and new postal systems in all matters affecting social intercourse, has perhaps never been placed in a more striking light