The business of the department is certainly enormous, the number of persons employed being little short of two hundred thousand. In addition to the usual work of transmitting letters, books, parcels and money-orders, the Post Office in England maintains savings-banks, with deposits of about £150,000,000; and it has been given exclusive control of the telegraph by provisions which have been held to include the telephone also. But while the administration of the telegraph has been retained by the government in its own hands, the right to conduct the telephone business was granted, by means of temporary licenses, to private companies, and to some extent to local authorities also; and the government has only recently decided to take over the management as soon as the licenses expire.
FOOTNOTES:
[82:1] Such are the offices of the Lord Steward and the Lord Chamberlain, the latter having in his charge also the censorship of plays and theatrical performances.
[83:1] The name of the Board of Trade is now statutory (25-26 Vic., c. 69, § 2; 52-53 Vic., c. 63, § 12, cl. 8). Its composition, however, is fixed not by statute but by Order in Council at the beginning of each reign, save that an act of 1867 (30-31 Vic., c. 72) abolished the office of Vice-President, and provided instead that one of the secretaries to the board might sit in Parliament.
[83:2] For the organisation of the Board of Works, see 14-15 Vic., c. 42; 37-38 Vic., c. 84; for the Local Government Board, 34-35 Vic., c. 70; Board of Agriculture, 52-53 Vic., c. 30; Board of Education, 62-63 Vic., c. 33.
[83:3] In the case of the Board of Works he is styled First Commissioner.
[84:1] The Council of India, described hereafter, has some of the characteristics of a board.
[84:2] Hans., 4 Ser. LXVIII., 678-9; LXX., 338, 351; LXXIII., 632, 666.
[84:3] Ibid., LXXIII., 676.