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34 hfE TIiODS OF SOCIAL REFORM.
instruments, and othor fixed plant of the telegraphs. They
construct and repair them; and, still worse, they find it
necessary to call in the aid of the Royal Engineers to do thie
efficiontly and economically. I have little doubt that all this
work ought to have been put out to contract.. But,, however
this may be, tho difficulty vould not much press in the case
of the parcel post; for it would require no extensive and
complicated series of scientific instruments for its conduct.
Tho railway companies mould of course do the long-distance
convcpncc ; tho collcction and distribution would, eqnally
of conrw, be clonc by hirctl carts ; and, bcyond R few
weighing ~nacl~ineu, porters’ trucks, packing cases, and tho
like simple appliances, it is difficult to see what fixed capital
t.he Parcel Departrnent need own. Receiving aud distributing
officcs would be needed, often on a rather large scale; but
they might bo leased or built, as was found most economical.
Thus I feel sure that, in respect of capital expenditure, the
parcel post would be far more favourably situated than the
Tclcgmph Department,, and mould be closely analogous to the
letter post.
Then, again, the pnrcel monopoly would in no appreciable
degrco intcrforo with the progress of invention, as the
telopph monopoly appears to do. In spite of Mr. W. H.
Preccc’y vigorous Rttempt to shorn the opposite,* it is to be
feared tlmt tho birthplnco of the elcct,ric telegraph has ceased
to bs the foremost in the race of olectricnl inventions. Some
half-dozen capitnl inventions, such as duplex and quadruplex
telegraphy; the tolophone, the carbon telephone, etc., have
been madc since the Government took the telegraphs. How
mnny of them have been mado on English soil? The telephone
is, I believe, quite in familiar use in the United States:
where is it yet made practically useful in England ? The chill
of rod tape and circumlocution has fallen upon the zeal of
invention, a zeal which fears nothing SO much as tho inertia
of bureaucracy, and the cool indzerence of My Lords of the
* British Association : Dublin Meeting. Journal of the Society of
Arts, August 2 36 1878, 1-01. xxvi. p. 862. See also p. 890.