The Sun.
London, England, 1863-06-03 00:00:00

POST-OFFICE PROGRESS.

Whatever department might stand still it could
never be the Post-office. In the London district
alone more than 11,000 new houses were built in
1862, 2,300 within the town limits and 9,400 in the
suburbs. But the Post-office makes constant pro-
gress. The post-offices and road letterboxes have
now increased to 14,776, and day mails and free de-
liveries are continually extended,and new rural posts
established. The mails are now conveyed over 160,000
miles a day in the United Kingdom. The number of
letters delivered in the year 1862 was 605,471,000,
being twelve millions more than in 1861, but that
is an unusually small increase. In 1862 the Post-
office carried as many letters as would make, in
England, 24 to each person ; in Ireland, 9; in Scot-
land, 19. At Liverpool and Birmingham the pro-
portion was as high as 30 letters to each person, at
Bristol 35, at Manchester 38, at Dublin 39, at Edin-
burgh 41, and in London 49. The increase in printed
circulars has been very great ; in relation to the
Lambeth election there were nearly 40,000 posted
in a single day. Nearly half a million letters passed
through the temporary post-office in the Interna-
tional Exhibition. More than 450,000 valentinees
passed through the London office on the last anni-
versary. The number of newspapers delivered in
ImBo6r2e wt nearlyhaasnin
tb
073, O
previousoo,oo 0y
year.
u t
Thbael f
number a million
f
inland money
inf0r18£611.5,761n1,2E59n;
land and Wales there was about one to every
book packets was rather more thaon4ls4,ooo,6oo—an
increase of about 1,700,000; 7,587,
above
es were
IthBa6n2,
three persons, in Scotland o
abn
eel
mvito
ai
mode
e egv
ne
triomyt
epfifavoyera,bacilne.
sums
lomwte epleneeeddndgtawmy:
ne ac-
knowledgment 008 rt
afor
sStopping
may
Ireland one to every eletvhnieuansy. A money 'order, if
at with
afterld. stamp,
date,
the payment. Small
be exchanged for
money at all the larger offices on
com-
mission of ld. on forty
£60,000 payment of a
stamps ; and in London
alone nearly was thus paid last year for
stamps. In sending them by post they should be
folded in rather thick paper, so that the contents
may neither be seen nor felt through the cover. The
regulation compelling payment of the registration
charge on letters containing money or articles of
value has:answered well, and will soon be extended
to the country. It has caused a great diminution
in application for missing letters containing coin—
a ditnin ation by more than one-half; the
regulations came into operation in London.
last August; and 58,000 letters were com-
pulsorily register( d in the remainder of the
year. It is most satisfactory to learn that,
while in the last quarter of 1861 four London let-
ter-carriers were convicted of stealing cash letters,
in the corresponding quarter of 1862 not one was
even charged with such an offence. During he
last half of 1862, out of shout 900,000 registered
letters, the whole nunihcr lost was only 12, con-
taining together .f 9 si. 6d.

- _
IRON-PLATED SIIIPS.—In a Parliamentary re-
turn of iron-plated ships built and building, pub-
lished on the 11th ult, and quoted in the Sun and other
in xis, her Majesty's ships Favourite, Research, and
Enterprize were described accidentally as "turret-ships,"
An areended Parliamentary paper has since boen issued,
in which these vessels are distinguished as ships " on Mr.
need's principle ;" the only turret-ships building in this
country for the British Government being
thePrin
Albert and Royal Sovereign,oa captain Coles's principle.