Inspection-Office
The Inspection-Office is charged with the observation of failures and delinquencies in the service of contractors and route-agents; with fines and remissions thereof; with the subject of mail-depredations, and prosecution of violators of postal laws; with the duty of procuring and distributing mail-bags, locks and keys, and some other duties of detail.
Perhaps no institution in this or any other country requires more enterprise, general knowledge of business, and geography, than does that of the post-office. We have already alluded to the fact of its being considered by many as a “mere workshop” of the general department, and whose operations are simply mechanical; but our readers ere this have been undeceived as regards such a construction, and it must loom up before them a prominent intellectual branch of our government.
That England has a high estimate of her post-office department is evident from the encouragement given to every one connected with it, and sustaining alike its literary character in historic publications. We make the following extract from a recent work entitled “Her Majesty’s Mails”:—
“There is no postal service in the world so well managed as that of Great Britain. It is now not merely a self-supporting but a productive institution; whereas there was a deficiency of half a million in the post-office of America before the rupture between North and South. Though America for ninety years has been, next to England, the most commercial country in the world, yet, compared with the population, five times as many letters pass through the English post as through the American. London and its suburbs alone, with its less than three millions of inhabitants, sends forth a greater number of letters than the whole of America.
“The next best-managed post-office to our own is that of France; but in France, by the law of 1856, there are five different tariffs of postages. Judged by the revenue produced, the English post-office, notwithstanding its low rate of charges, stands first.
“The Austrian post-office produces a revenue of 3,714,200 florins, or £378,000; the Belgian, 2,960,000 francs; the French, 66,452,000 francs; and the English, £3,800,000; being more than a quarter of a million beyond the proceeds of 1862.
“A comparison of the year 1839—the year immediately preceding the penny postage—with the year 1861 gives these results: An increase nearly eightfold in the chargeable letters; a threefold increase in the receptacles for letters; a fortyfold increase in the number of money-orders; a fiftyfold increase in the amount of money-orders; and an increase of the gross revenue in round numbers from £2,390,000 to £3,402,000. The amount of the correspondence of a country will measure, with some approach towards accuracy, as Mr. Matthew Hill says, the height which a people has reached in true civilization. The town of Manchester equals in its number of letters the Empire of all the Russias both in Europe and Asia; and this fact we owe, as many of the marvels we have stated, to Sir Rowland Hill. The poor and the lowly, the domestic servant and the humble artisan, can now correspond with each other from one end of the kingdom to the other at the trifling expense of 1d.; and for this civilizing, Christianizing, and eminently social good we are indebted to a late post-office secretary, whose merits have been recognized, but who cannot be overpaid in money or money’s worth. As Lord Palmerston said on the 10th of June, Sir R. Hill showed, in relation to the post-office, great genius, sagacity, perseverance, and industry, and he was the first to prove that the department was a public institution for the performance of services, rather than for the collection of revenue. If, as the first minister of the crown stated, and as we believe, the cultivation of the affections raises men in their own estimation, improves their morals, and develops their social qualities, Sir R. Hill has been amongst the greatest benefactors of the human race, and he well deserves the vote that was agreed to on the 10th of June without a dissenting voice.”