Three months afterwards (at Christmas time) the postmaster, smiling, informed him that the son had sent his mother £5 in response to her letter, and arranged to pay her passage out to him.
There had long been a steady increase of correspondence with the Colonies, even under the old rates. In 1880 the Britannia took a week's mails, 700 bags, to India and Australia. In 1890, 1,200 bags were put on board. In 1880 the weekly average for India was 250 bags; in 1890, 400. In those ten years the Australian receipts showed an increase of 50 per cent. The American service also showed a great increase, and a profit of £100,000 per annum.
Finally, it was shown that as each country pays for the carriage of its outgoing mails, and delivers free the incoming mails; and as we sent far more than we received, our Post-Office was benefiting to the extent of £228,000 a year. As an argumentum ad hominem, I at last offered, in conjunction with two wealthy friends, to give the Chancellor of the Exchequer a bank guarantee against loss. He was virtuous enough to refuse.
Our strongest argument, however, though it could hardly be stated in pounds, shillings, and pence, was the sun-browned emigrant, with his dependents here and across the ocean. Long before the Imperial sentiment became fashionable, it was remarkable how a chance allusion to this unseen pioneer of Empire would stir the imagination, the sympathy of an English audience. Hard-headed reactionaries in the House, who yawned at the idea of encouraging Imperial communications, or fostering British trade, would sit spellbound as we pictured our sturdy cousins, hewing tracks in the tropical forest, bridging torrents, draining swamps, planting, building, rearing stock—sheep, cattle, horses—and, above all, that indomitable Anglo-Saxon stock which seems fated to transform the globe. It is calculated that about seventeen million examples of our choicest manhood and womanhood have left these
