[208] For further information on this subject, see Appendix M.—“Pneumatic tubes for the conveyance of telegrams are in use,” I am informed, “between the Central Telegraph Office in St. Martin’s-le-Grand and many branch offices, the longest line of tube being that to the House of Parliament—upwards of two miles. They are also in use in Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Birmingham, Newcastle, and Dublin. In Berlin a costly tube service has been established for the distribution of letters to the various parts of that city.”—Ed.
[209] More detailed information on this subject will be found in Appendix I.
[210] “Hansard,” Vol. CLVIII., p. 1205.
[211] “Third Annual Report,” p. 33.
[212] “Fourth Annual Report,” p. 17.
[213] “Hansard,” Vol. CLXVI., pp. 188, 189.
[214] Some of the old abuses of the franking system have reappeared. Private letters are often sent under the Government frank; especially is this the case with private letters for the colonies.—Ed.
[215] It is important to observe that the amount actually paid by Government for its postage before the abolition of franking was less, in proportion to the amount of its correspondence, than that paid after the abolition.
[216] The following note on Lord Canning was added by Sir Rowland Hill in June, 1876:—“In an able article in the last ‘Edinburgh Review,’ on Lord Mayo’s Indian administration, the writer thus speaks of Lord Canning:—‘And then we come to Earl Canning, who, almost without exception among English statesmen, presents the grandest picture of unswerving firmness, courage and magnanimity in the midst of the most appalling dangers; who, without losing hope and strong resolve, saw the fabric of an empire fading away from his vision like an iceberg in the Gulf Stream; who at the same time had to confront a native rebellion, the panic fear and disaffection of his countrymen, and the opinion at home which was the reverberation of the latter. He met the rebellion, and he put it down. He met the panic fear, and he triumphed over it. When blood and punishment and cruelty were preached, he stepped forward as a grand and magnanimous ruler, as the representative of British humanity and civilization, and with mild but absolute accent proclaimed, “This shall not be,” and it was not. The greatness of the man who could so speak and so act, at such a time as the crisis of the mutiny and rebellion in India in 1857, is not to be measured by the ordinary deeds of war and peace, however grand in execution the former, however wise and beneficent the latter may be.’ That such a man, after acquiring a thorough knowledge of myself, should have selected me for the difficult and responsible post of Secretary to the Post Office, and have continued throughout my attached friend, is to me a source of the highest gratification.”—Ed.
[217] “The trace of Marlborough’s neglected education was seen to the last in his reluctance to write. ‘Of all things,’ he said to his wife, ‘I do not love writing.’ To pen a despatch, indeed, was a far greater trouble to him than to plan a campaign. But nature had given him qualities which in other men spring specially from culture. His capacity for business was immense.”—“Green’s Short History of the English People,” p. 691.—Ed.