Mr. Fawcett has turned out a very competent administrator.. He
devotes himself to his department, and as yet all his schemes succeed. His plan for promoting thrift by allowing a Savings- Bank account to be opened by a deposit of twelve postage- stamps, after succeeding as an experiment in five counties, was recently made general. Already, within one month, 58,000 accounts have been opened and more than a million of stamps received, and on Tuesday Mr. Fawcett told his constituents that within a year he expected the number of depositors to be in- creased to 500,000. Many hundreds of persons have availed themselves of the permission to invest in Console through the Post-Office, and Mr. Fawcett expressed himself as sanguine that the new facility would be welcomed widely enough to have a " steadying influence " on politics. He believes also that the Poet-Office facilities for insurance need only to be known, to be widely used. Further, he told his audience that the profit on the Government telegraph now amounted to 5 per cent. on the total cost, and if the Treasury would only risk 2170,000 a year, he would introduce sixpenny telegrams. He is, moreover, negotiating, with every hope of success, with the railway com- panies for a parcel post, the parcels to be paid for in one of two
according to weight,—an immense convenience. All this is excellent, and we only wish Mr. Fawcett could be per- suaded to take the grievance of the weekly newspapers into consideration. Their proprietors cannot, without giving up " news " altogether, send their papers by any Asiatic mail, the hours of receipt ending just before papers can be dispatched.
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