With the development of the railway system came the carriage of letters by train instead of by mail-coaches: and one novelty which arose out of this change was the adoption of traveling post-offices, forming part of the mail-train, where letters are arranged during transit, and which sometimes receive and drop the letter-bags while the train is going at full speed. The conveyance of the mails by railroad added greatly to the expenses of the post-office establishment; but, nevertheless, the former gross revenue of the post-office was exceeded in 1851, and the net revenue in 1863. According to the annual report of the postmaster-general for 1876, there 896 head post-offices in the United Kingdom, 12,551 branch offices or receiving-houses, and about road or pillar letter-boxes; making more than 24,000 receptacles for lettersat least 19,000 more than existed under the former system. Above 1058 millions of letters passed through the post-office in 1878—more than twice as many as in 1861, and thirteen times as many i as in 1839, the last year of the dear postage. In 1878 the gross revenue of the post office, exclusive of that yielded by the telegraphs, was £6,047,312; the expenditure, also excluding the telegraphic service, £3,960,620; the net revenue, £2,052;793. The num ber of money orders transmitted within the United Kingdom, in 1877, was 18,890,692; the amount of money transmitted being £28,474,607.
The postal service of the three kingdoms is now under the immediate control of the postmaster-general, assisted by the general secretary of the post-office in London. There arc also chief officers in Edinburgh and Dublin, with secretarial and other departmental staffs. The postmaster-general is a member of the privy council, and sometimes a cabi net minister. He has a salary of £2,500, and is the only officer connected with the department who leaves office on a change of government. The secretary is his respon sible adviser, and has a salary of £2,000. The receiver and accountant-general keeps account of the money received by each department, receiving remittances from branch and provincial offices, and taking charge of the payment of all salaries, pensions, and items of current expenditure. The surveyors are the connecting link between the metropolitan and provincial officers, each postmaster, with some exceptions, being under the superintendence of the surveyor of his district. In 1878 the staff of officers employed in the post-office, including those engaged in telegraph work, was 45,947; of this num ber, 11,473 were engaged solely in telegraph work, and 10,665 were employed in London alone.
Act 24 Vict. c. 19 instituted a system of savings-banks in connection with the post office. This department keeps a separate account for every depositor, acknowledges the receipt of every deposit, and on the requisite notice being furnished, sends out war rants authorizing postmasters to pay withdrawals. The rate of interest payable to depositors is 2 per cent, calculated on complete pounds and complete months, being a halfpenny per pound per month. Each depositor receives a savings-bank book, which is sent by him yearly for examination at the head-office, and the accruing interest is cal culated and allowed. The number of depositors at the end of 1878 was 1,892,176; the sum at their credit, £30,411,563; and the accrued interest since 1861, £5,937,033.
Act 27 and 28 Vict. c. 43 empowers the postmaster-general to insure the lives of appli cants for not less than £20 or more than £100, and also to grant immediate or deferred annuities on the lives of applicants aged ten or upward. Sec POST-OFFICE INSURANCE.
Licenses are issued by the post-office on behalf of the board of inland revenue.
Half-penny post-cards were introduced in 1870, and in the first year 75 millions were used. The number delivered in 1878 reached 102 millions.
Act 31 and 32 Vict. c. 100 empowered the post-office to acquire the existing electric telegraphs; and the telegraphic communication of the country is now in the hands of the post-office. Above 22 millions of telegraphic messages were sent in the year ending Mar. 31, 1878. Gross revenue, £1,333,542; working expenses, £1,164,131; net revenue, £169,411.
The home and foreign mail-packet service was, in the 17th and 18th centuries, in the hands of the post-office authorities, but was removed to the board of admiralty, under whose control it remained till 1860, when it was again restored to the post-office. Steam vessels were first used for conveying the mail in 1821; and in 1833, mail-contracts were introduced, the first being with the Mona Steam company to run steamers from Liver pool to Douglas in the Isle of Man. Of the home mail-packet contracts, the most impor tant are those with the City of Dublin Steam-packet company for conveying the Irish mails between Holyhead and Kingstown. The principal foreign contracts are for the Indian and Chinese mails, entered into with the Peninsular and Oriental Steam-naviga tion company, the mails to North and South America, the West Indies, the Australian colonies, and the Cape.
The post-office statute of queen Ann contains a prohibition, repeated in subsequent acts, for any person employed in the post-office to open or detain a letter, except under a warrant from one of the principal secretaries of state. During last century, such war• rants were often granted on very trivial pretenses. In 1723 at bishop Atterbury's trial, copies of his letters, intercepted at the post-office, were produced in evidence against him ;1 and in 1735 it appeared that an organization existed, at an immense expense, for the ex amination of home and foreign correspondence. In 1782 the correspondence of lord Tem ple, when lord-lieutenant of Ireland, was subjected to a system of post-office espionage. In the beginning of the present century, an improvement took place in this matter, and lord Spencer introduced the custom, in 1806, of recording the dates of all warrants granted for the opening of letters, and the grounds on which they were issued. Since 1822 the warrants have been preserved at the home office; and a house of commons' return in 1853 shows that, in the preceding ten years, only six letters were detained and opened—four in eases of felony, and two that they might be properly returned by those who claimed them. One of these cases of interference with the privacy of correspondence occurred in 1844, when sir James Graham, as home secretary, issued a warrant for opening the letters of Mazzini, and caused certain information contained in them to be conveyed to the Austrian minister, an act which involved the ministry of the day in considerable popular obloquy, and produced a widespread, though very groundless, distrust of the security of the ordinary correspondence of the country. See GRAHAM, SIR JAMES.