The Express.
London, England, 1861-09-03 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, SEPT. 3.
- -
TO OUR RRADIRS.

SPOIMINI 3 INTELLIOENCIL
A !4n c.f.:iota .4 thy &pre,. is published every
eveni,g darling tlui racing smicon, containing the
results of the eLty'a roma

Ir may seem • gnat marvel, at the lirst glance,
that hundreds and thousands of people should go
es, year after year, in spite of all warning, put-
ting temptation in the way of Post-office servants
by sending letters containing money and other
valuables, without any safeguard. But there ie
no department of business in which we have not
to wonder at the thoughtlessness, or stupidity, or
perverseness of persons who ought to know better;
and this Post-office grievance is only a very
striking and niinehievous instance of the way in
which the transactions of the more sensible
part of society are hampered by the fully
of the other part. Every year we are
told that the thefts which take place
in the Post-office are prodigious in number, though
every check that can be devised is in use in the
establishment itself. The eye of the police is on
ev.l7 apartment in the central office ; and a keen
ei;,ilance is exercieed over every provincial office ;
yet the amount of theft le enormous ; and the
grist majority of the thefts go undiscovered. Of
those which are discovered, not nearly all are
made public. For instance, expert Post office
thieves commit many thefts after having succeeded
in one ; and when their day of retribution comes,
and they stand at the bar of justice, they are
condemned on one or two cases, when the prose-
cutors may hold evidence of ten or twenty more.
Thu sad stories which those prosecutions bring
out, and which the reader turns from as familiar
and yet too painful to be willingly read, are a
mere sample of the miseries always going on
an.ong people connected with the Post-office.
lu every case we find that the offender
ha.l borne a good character, and had a
safe and respectable career before him, if be
• uld have kept his hands from picking and steal-
ire:. We always hear this, because the Postoffice
officials are now a picked body of men, who could
not have obtained their posts without a good cha-
racter ; and all the world knows, or may know,
what their earnings are, and that they are what
other men of the same rank in life live on in com-
fort and respectability. Yet, in all courts of jus-
tice some specimens of the class are sure to be
brought up, from time to time—men who have
been living under a sense of guilt for months or
years, daily expecting discovery ; men who
have supported parents or sisters, or who have
good Viva' at home, and children to whom
their disgrace will be • lifelong calamity ; men
who have perhaps been tempted in the first in-
stance, at some moment of pressure for money,
by a letter carelesely sent, with money almost
dropping out, or a whole banknote almost visible
through a flimsy envelope. It aprears that a suc-
cessful first attempt is always followed by more
thefts. Moat crimes fascinate the sinner, so that
while he is always assuming to himself that he
shall stop, and bu a respectable man henceforth,
be in fact never does stop. In this case, the eaai-
ness the act, and a sort of charm about the
cheating process, while the sufferer is somebody
out of sight, whew trouble at the loss will never
be seen, and whose anger will never be beard of,
stimulate the thief to new attempts, till at last the
fated tram letter ensnares him, and he and his are
ruined. He goes to prison, and comes out without
character or prospect Has family never lift up
their heels again ; and all the world wonders bow
any man eau run such risks for anything that he
can gain by the offence.
The world eery well wonder. All who are clear
of any particular sin wonder at the folly of those
who commit it ; and in this case the disproportion
between the loss and gain of failure and success is
so great that any degree of surprise is warranted.
But there stands the fact. That is what we have
to do with. Philosophers and moralists may
analyse the case, and tell us of all it' attributes
and liabilities what concerns us is the way in
which the fact is to be practically met. The phi-
leeopher may tell us, truly enough, that some per-
sons have propensities for theft, not exclusively
of a moral nature, like that which makes lady•
shoplifters, and now and then causes some poli-
tician, or scholar, or duchess to be notorious for
carrying off silver spoons from an evening party,
or penknife or parse from a friend's desk. The
moralist may show us how the touch or sight of
some forbidden good, works upon a mind ever so
little infirm in its integrity. We may all agree
that in so large a body of men as the staff of the
Post-office there must be specimens of every kind
of liability and every stamp of character. The
question remains—What is to be done to stop the
thefts in the Post-office?

The rulers of the office say that the great
mischief is the perverse carelessness of corre-
spondents, who almost invite the office to rob
them. Nobody denies the fact ; but we
MOM to be taken up with wondering at it.
►►n a general survey, it does appear very strange
that, when the money order system is proved a
complete success in the matter of transmitting
sums of money with safety and convenience, so
many hundreds of persons should go on slipping
gold and silver loose into their letter or sticking
it into a piece of card,—sa if anybody could touch
the letter without holing it. But it is equally
strange that there should be above 11,000 letters
posted in a year without being directed, and many
more misdirected and left unsealed. It is only
when one conies to particular cases that the fact
seems so very strange. Which of ua has not,