[221] Of this sum, which includes the Allowances to Postmasters, Letter Receivers, and others, for conducting Savings Bank business, 126,839l. 10s. 3d. was recovered from the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt prior to 31st December, 1865, and 14,535l. 10s. 11d. has since been recovered from the Commissioners.
General Post Office,
March, 1866.
Stanley of Alderley,
Postmaster-General.
George Chetwind,
Receiver and Accountant General.
A. C. Thomson,
Assistant-Controller of Post Office Savings Banks.
(I.)
As the last sheet of this work was passing through the press, the Postmaster-General's Report for 1865, to which reference has already been made, has been printed. The information therein given respecting the progress of some of the measures which we have had under consideration is so important in itself, as well as illustrative and corroborative of our text, as to justify us in making the following extracts. These extracts, which are here given in his Lordship's own words, plainly show the deep interest he takes in those schemes, which have all been commenced during his term of office, and carried out under his immediate oversight and direction.
Post Office Savings Banks.
The depositors in Post Office Savings Banks increased in number during 1865 at the rate of 29 per cent.; the total sum deposited increased at the rate of 30 per cent. During the first part of the present year the business has increased in a still greater proportion. In the first nine weeks of 1865, the number of deposits was 258,917, and 48,777 new accounts were opened; in the first nine weeks of 1866, 331,027 deposits were made, and 58,472 new accounts were opened. “It is evident, therefore,” says Lord Stanley of Alderley, “that great as had been the progress of the Post Office Banks up to the close of last year, there are good grounds for expecting a greater progress hereafter. And I am happy in being able to state, that the Scheme which was framed for the conduct of the Post Office Savings Banks, before any one of them was established, has been found to work well in each and all of its parts, and to admit of any expansion of business, no matter how great or how sudden that expansion of business may be. The officers by whom this Scheme was framed calculated, as a matter of course, upon a large and constant growth of business; but sudden augmentations, arising from causes which could not be foreseen, have been by no means unfrequent. In the first week of the present year, for instance, no less than 10,000 new depositors entered the banks; but even under such sudden and unexpected augmentations of business the scheme of operations has been found to work well.”