POST-OFFICE REFORM.
WE observe that Mr. WALLACE IS to move on Wednesday for a Select Committee to inquire into the state of the Post-office. He ought to receive the support of every independent Member of the House. This is no party question ; for the late Ministry were as averse to sanction a thorough purification of that great receptacle of abuses, the Post-office department, as their predecessors were, or the present Ministers are likely to be. But every individual in the country, not directly profiting by the continuance of mis- management of the revenue, is interested in the inquiry proposed by Mr. WALLACE. No injury can possibly result from the ap- pointment of a Committee, while good to some extent must arise from it.
The fact that, although the commerce and internal corre- spondence of the country have increased rapidly with the increase of population, the Post-office revenue has been nearly stationary for twenty years, should of itself be sufficient to rouse the attention of Parliament to this subject. It is proof conclusive of a bad system or bad management. The revenue derived from postage in France has been rapidly and progressively augmented, during the period that ours has stood still. There must be some suffi- cient reason for this, and it should be the business of Parliament to learn what it is.
That there has been gross mismanagement by the officers of the department, will not be denied by those who have examined the Reports of the Revenue Commission of which Lord WALLACE wa3 chief. In the Packet service alone, three hundred thousand pounds, exclusive of interest, was lost in nine years. There is no occasion to refer to minor instances of want of care or want of honesty in the parties to whom the conduct of the Post-office is intrusted ; but in the Reports of the Commission above alluded to hundreds will be found.
We caution the House against confiding in the correctness of the statements that will be made in behalf and by the prompting of the Post-office functionaries; fur they arc not to be depended on. We are borne out in this assertion by a reference to the Letter
addressed in May last to the Lords of the Treasury by the Revenue Commissioners (Lord WALLACE, and Messrs. W. J. LUSHINGTON, BERENs, and DICKINSON), in reply to certain cal- culations and letters laid before Parliament by the Duke of RICH- MOND, then Postmaster-General. The Commissioners convict
the Duke of such a series of blunders, and misstatements of facts
and figures, as would astonish any one not accustomed to Post- office accounts. In the Duke's comparison of the expense of ma-
naging the department on the present plan, and on that of the Commissioners, there are items of actual charge omitted and understated, reductions proposed by the Commissioners omitted,
and other errors, amounting to nearly 60,000/. per annum. This is a specimen of the accounts. laid beffire Parliament by the Post- office. The papers in question were issued with the sanction of the Duke of Then stoens name. His Grace cannot be suspected of conniving at the falsification of accounts; but it is plain that he was made a tool of, as other Postmasters have been before him. Let the house then, we repeat, give no credit to mere assertion, or even to formal figure statements, without examination by a Committee of its own 3h:tubers.
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