The general-post delivery at Edinburgh extended, and the posts in the neighbourhood much improved.

Fourteen new post-towns established in addition to thirty-three which had been established since the occupation of the enlarged General Post-office in St. Martin's le-Grand.

The mail-coaches throughout the kingdom have been generally accelerated, especially those to and from Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, the principal commercial districts, and the main lines of cross-roads. It is to be observed that when a post is improved, it is not the points of arrival and departure only that are affected, but the inhabitants of every intermediate place on the whole route derive the advantage of an earlier receipt of their correspondence, and a longer interval for answers, and that the improvement extends to the branches from the main lines.

Twelve new mail coaches established: amongst others, one direct between Bristol and Liverpool, and many extended and improved.

Thirty-four new horse posts established, and numerous others accelerated, connecting main lines of communication, and enabling places wide of such main lines to answer letters earlier, and in many cases by return of post.

One hundred and twenty-eight local posts established, affording accommodation to many hundred villages and places in the neigh VOL. LXXVI.

bourhood and intermediate of posttowns, where there had not previously been any official and responsible arrangement.

Additional clerks and letter-carriers appointed at many post-towns for the acceleration of the delivery of the correspondence within those towns and in the neighbourhood. An increase to the number of receiving-houses for letters at many towns where the extension of buildings has called for it, and additional communications to those already existing between neighbouring towns of importance. Improvements of this description are so numerous, and so constantly in progress, that any attempt at minute detail would be tedious and unnecessary.

The abolition of the fee or gratuity on the delivery of letters within post-towns; this is already nearly accomplished at every town in the kingdom, and will be completed as soon as the necessary arrangements for a free delivery can be made at the very few posttowns where a fee is yet charged.

A new and improved arrangement of the ship-letter duty at Liverpool*, for the better and more expeditious despatch and receipt of letters conveyed by merchant-vessels between that port and places beyond seas.

A new arrangement of the mailboat service in the West Indies, for the more efficient performance of the duty, at a considerable saving of expense to the public.

The regulation of post-office agencies at home and abroad as

vacancies occur, attended with a considerable reduction of expense*. The post and post-office regulations in the British North American provinces in a course of revision.

The main line of communication with Ireland by Holyhead and Dublin has been essentially improved. The mail that leaves London at eight o'clock at night reaches Dublin, under ordinary circumstances of weather, between seven and eight on the second morning; and arrangements have been made, (to commence from the 1st of next month,) by which let ters from Dublin for London will be taken in at the General Postoffice as late as those for the interior, affording to the Irish Government and the public of the metropolis of Ireland two hours more time for their correspondence with this country, in addition to a previous extension of one hour.

The communication by the Mil ford line has also been improved, affecting the correspondence with Waterford, Cork, and much of the south-west of Ireland.

The power of the machinery of the packets increased at Holyhead and most of the other stations.

The mail-coaches materially accelerated, especially those to and from Cork, Waterford, Belfast and Derry; and an improved description

*This has already been carried into effect at Dover, Harwich, Jamaica, Brazil, Gibraltar, and Cuxhaven. The object is not merely to reduce the annual charge upon the revenue, but to relieve the expenditure of the department of dead weight in pensions.

+ Thirty-five to thirty-six hours from London to Dublin; 269 miles by land and a sea-passage of seventy miles, including stoppages for official business and other necessary purposes.

of carriage introduced as contracts expire. Nine new mail-coaches established.

Progressive regulation of the Irish mail-coach contracts, which were formerly for such long pe riods as to retard the possibility of improvement on any particular line of road. Those yet unexpired will be placed upon the improved system as they fall in.

Forty-five new and direct post communications opened, and about sixty much improved.

One hundred and eighty-seven local posts established where there had not been any official accommo◄ dation before.

The abolition of the system of subletting contracts for posts, insuring the more punctual performance of the service, at a considerable reduction of expense to the public.

An

The abolition of the fee or gratuity on the delivery of letters within post-towns, heretofore general throughout Ireland. official delivery has already been provided at many principal commercial towns, and will be extended as soon as the necessary arrangements can be made.

The delivery of letters in Dublin and its vicinity expedited, and additional offices established for the reception of letters.

The circulation of letters in the south of Ireland revised, connected with the alteration of mail-coaches, affording more or less advantage to the communications with Dublin and England.

The circulation of letters in the north of Ireland revised and improved.

General Post-office, Feb. 24

"Gentlemen,-On the 26th of November last, being then at Rome, I received from his majesty a summons wholly unforeseen and unexpected by me, to return to England without delay, for the purpose of assisting his majesty in the formation of a new government. I instantly obeyed the command for my return; and on my arrival, I did not hesitate, after an anxious review of the position of public affairs, to place at the disposal of my sovereign any services which I might be thought capable of rendering.

"My acceptance of the first office in the government terminates, for the present, my political connexion with you. In seeking the renewal of it, whenever you shall be called upon to perform the duty of electing a representative in parliament, I feel it incumbent upon

me to enter into a declaration of my views of public policy, as full and unreserved as I can make it, consistently with my duty as a minister of the crown.

"You are entitled to this, from the nature of the trust which I again solicit, from the long habits of friendly intercourse in which we have lived, and from your tried adherence to me in times of diffi culty, when the demonstration of unabated confidence was of peculiar value. I gladly avail myself also of this, a legitimate opportunity, of making a more public appeal-of addressing, through you, to that great and intelligent class of society, of which you are a portion, and a fair and unexceptionable representative-to that class, which is much less interested in the contentions of party, than in the maintenance of order and the cause of good government, that frank exposition of general principles and views, which appears to

be anxiously expected, and which it ought not to be the inclination, and cannot be the interest, of a minister of this country to withhold.

"Gentlemen,―The arduous duties in which I am engaged, have been imposed upon me through no act of mine. Whether they were an object of ambition coveted by me-whether I regard the power and distinction they confer, as any sufficient compensation for the heavy sacrifices they involve-are matters of mere personal concern, on which I will not waste a word. The King, in a crisis of great difficulty, required my services. The question I had to decide was this-Shall I obey the call? or shall I shrink from the responsibility, alleging as the reason, that I consider myself, in consequence of the reform bill, as labouring under a sort of moral disqualification, which must preclude me, and all who think with me, both now and for ever, from entering into the official service of the crown? Would it, I ask, be becoming, in any public man, to act upon such a principle? Was it fit that I should assume, that either the object or the effect of the reform bill has been to preclude all hope of a successful appeal to the good sense and calm judgment of the people, and so to fetter the prerogative of the crown, that the king has no free choice among his subjects, but must select his ministers from one section, and one section only, of public men?

"I have taken another course, but I have not taken it without deep and anxious consideration as to the probability that my opinions are so far in unison with those of the constituent body of the United Kingdom, as to enable me, and those with whom I am about to

act, and whose sentiments are in entire concurrence with my own, to establish such a claim upon public confidence, as shall enable us to conduct with vigour and success the government of this country.

"I have the firmest conviction that that confidence cannot be secured by any other course than that of a frank and explicit declaration of principle-that vague and unmeaning professions of popular opinions may quiet distrust for a time, may influence this or that election; but that such professions must ultimately and signally fail, if, being made, they are not ad hered to, or if they are inconsistent with the honour and character of those who make them.

"Now, I say at once that I will not accept power on the condition of declaring myself an apostate from the principles on which I have heretofore acted. At the same time, I never will admit, that I have been, either before or after the reform bill, the defender of abuses, or the enemy of judicious reforms. I appeal with confidence, in denial of the charge, to the active part I took in the great question of the currency-in the consolidation and amendment of the criminal law-in the revisal of the whole system of trial by jury-to the opinions I have professed, and uniformly acted on, with regard to other branches of the jurisprudence of the countryI appeal to this as a proof that I have not been disposed to acquiesce in acknowledged evils, either from the mere superstitious reverence for ancient usages, or from the dread of labour or responsibility in the application of a remedy.

But the reform bill, it is said, constitutes a new era, and it is the duty of a minister to declare ex

plicitly-first, whether he will maintain the bill itself, and, secondly, whether he will act upon the spirit in which it was conceived.

With respect to the reform bill itself, I will repeat now the declaration which I made when I entered the house of Commons as a member of the reformed parliament, that I consider the reform bill a final and irrevocable settlement of a great constitutional question-a settlement which no friend to the peace and welfare of this country would attempt to disturb, either by direct or by in

sidious means.

Then, as to the spirit of the reform bill, and the willingness to adopt and enforce it as a rule of government: if, by adopting the spirit of the reform bill, it be meant that we are to live in a perpetual vortex of agitation; that public men can only support themselves in public estimation by adopting every popular impression of the day,-by promising the instant redress of any thing which any body may call an abuse,-by abandoning altogether that great aid of government-more powerful than either law or reason-the respect for ancient rights, and the deference to prescriptive authority; if this be the spirit of the reform bill, I will not undertake to adopt it. But if the spirit of the reform bill implies merely a careful review of institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, undertaken in a friendly temper, combining, with the firm maintenance of established rights, the correction of proved abuses and the redress of real grievances,in that case, I can for myself and colleagues undertake to act in such a spirit and with such intentions.

Such declarations of general

principle are, I am aware, necessarily vague; but, in order to be more explicit, I will endeavour to apply them practically to some of those questions which have of late attracted the greater share of public interest and attention.

"I take, first, the inquiry into municipal corporations :

"It is not my intention to advise the crown to interrupt the progress of that inquiry, nor to transfer the conduct of it from those to whom it was committed by the late government. For myself, I gave the best proof that I was not unfriendly to the principle of inquiry, by consenting to be a member of that committee of the house of Commons on which it was originally devolved. No report has yet been made by the commissioners to whom the inquiry was afterwards referred; and, until that report be made, I cannot be expected to give, on the part of the government, any other pledge than that they will bestow on the suggestions it may contain, and the evidence on which they may be founded, a full and unprejudiced consideration.

"I will, in the next place, address myself to the questions in which those of our fellow-countrymen, who dissent from the doctrines of the established church, take an especial interest.

"Instead of making new professions, I will refer to the course which I took upon those subjects when out of power.

"In the first place, I supported the measure brought forward by lord Althorp, the object of which was to exempt all classes from the payment of church-rates, applying in lieu thereof, out of a branch of the revenue, a certain sum for the building and repair of churches.