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348 METIIODS OF SOCIAL REFORM
be =signed in the case of such adventitious sources of revenue,
it would no doubt be difficult for the railway companies to
assign with any precision the net receipts from parcel traffic.
Much infonnatiorl would haw to be called forth by Parliamentary
authority before it would be possible to frame any
cvtitnates of the sums of money involved in establishing a
general parcel system. But there is the less need to produce
any financial estimates at the outset, because I hold that
if the tariff be rightly nnd cautiously framed, there must
Lo a largo margin of economy in the working of the department,
which mould insure a revenue sufEcicnt to bear all
probablc charges. The business, as I have pointed out,, is
UIIIL~O~OLIS to the letter post ratltcr thau the telegraph system ;
there is not the same risk of loss as there was in introducing
tho uniform shilling tclcgram, or the uniform sixpenny telegram,
as sanguine pcoplc wishcd. The wastc of horse-pomc~,
of nml's t,ime, ard of rtdway carrying power is so immense
under the prescut chaotic arrangements, that to the community
~LS a mholu there nus st LC grcat profit, in reducing that chaos
to sptcnlntic orgtlnisation. So far as I can venture to form
any estitmto of the financial magnitude of the proposed
department, I should say that it mill certainly not cost more
than three or foar times ns much as tlle Postal Telegraph
Department. rl'llis is no slight sum, indeed, but tllosc mho
wiucc at it must rclncmber that it is ouly about the ftcenticth
part of whrt would be involved ir. the state purchase of the
who10 railway sptem. This favourite proposal I venture to
regard 11s simply visionary, for reasons already given in the
Owens Collc~go Essays; the advantages would be doubt.ful,
tho cost and risks enormous. But in buying up the parcel
branch of traffic the cost and risk would be comparatively
small, tho advantages and profits immense and almost
certain.
Practical men will no doubt have more belief in a parcel
post when t,hcy learn that it is what has been long carried into
effect in Prussia, as well as Switzerland, Denmark, and
probabIy other Continental countries. It seems desirable that
the details of these postal systems should be ascertained by