12th. Day mails extended to several smaller towns in a circuit of about twenty miles round London.
13th. The number of mail-guards reduced by placing the smaller mails under the charge of the railway guards.
14th. The service of parliamentary returns for private bills provided for.
15th. The despatch of mails at the country offices facilitated, and the late letter fees secured to the revenue by requiring both fee and postage to be paid in stamps. This improvement is about to take effect.
Some of the improvements in the money order department also belong to this class.
Upwards of twelve months ago, this class of improvements being, as I thought, nearly exhausted, I was preparing to address your Lordship as at present, when my design was postponed through the following circumstance:—The money-order department being of such a nature as to admit of separation, in a great degree, from the other business of the office, and Colonel Maberly having declined to undertake the responsibility thereof under the retrenchments and other improvements adopted on my recommendation by your Lordship and the Treasury, you were pleased to transfer the secretarial management of that department to me.
Of the change which has followed this transfer I need not speak in detail. By a report of Mr. Barth, the head of the department, dated 31st January, 1848, it appears that the accounts were then in an almost hopeless state of arrears; great doubt was entertained whether they ever could be made complete, and the expense of their completion, supposing it to be possible, was estimated at £10,000. No general balance had ever been struck since the institution of the department in 1839, and the liabilities were of unknown amount. To avoid the enormous expense of bringing up the arrears, and to ensure the extinction of unknown liabilities, it was necessary to obtain an Act of Parliament calling in the outstanding money orders. Concurrent efforts were made to bring up the more recent arrears, and to prevent the possibility of new ones arising; and, in consequence of these measures, affairs are now in such a state that, at the end of August next, the liabilities of the department will be fully known, and the materials obtained for a general balance, which will then be struck forthwith.
On investigating the accounts, I found, to my great concern, that the department was not only, as I had anticipated, unprofitable, but that it involved an annual loss of no less than £10,000. It has, however, been found practicable, even with greatly increased perfection in the accounts, to introduce, by successive improvements, such simplification as will save the salaries of 50 clerks in the London Office alone; and this, combined with other important savings already effected, will, in all probability, render the department self-supporting in the course of the present year.
But your Lordship is aware that further important improvements are now in progress, by means of which I confidently expect the money-order department will be made to afford a satisfactory profit.