POST OFFICE EXPANSION.
From this last comparatively limited but not unimportant test of the general prosperity of the country, we pass to the Post Office returns. Next to the test of railway traffic, already dealt with, no better evidence of the prosperity and commercial activity of a country can be found than is furnished by the growth of post office business. A nation whose trade is being filched from it by foreigners, whose blast furnaces are cold, and whose looms are silent, as Mr. Williams would have us believe, does not add every year forty million letters to the amount of its correspondence. Yet this is what we have been doing in the United Kingdom for a good many years past. Starting from the year ending March 31st, 1878, when a slight alteration was made in the method of presenting the statistics, we find that in the nineteen years that have since elapsed the number of letters delivered annually has increased from 1,058 millions to 1,834 millions. In the same period postcards have increased from 102 millions to 315 millions; newspapers and book packets, from 318 to 821 millions. Moreover, the increase has been steady, with one significant exception. In the year 1894-95, which was notoriously a year of bad trade, there was a drop in the number of letters delivered. The drop was more than made good in 1895-96. Turning to telegrams, we find a similar story. Here we are compelled to start with the year 1886-87, the first complete year after the introduction of sixpenny telegrams. In the ten years that have since elapsed the number of telegrams delivered has steadily increased from 50 millions to 79 millions.