Brooklyn, Williamsburg, and Jersey
City; Boston with Charlestown, Cambridge, Chelsea and Roxbury; and as
population increases and intercourse extends, other places might be
included.

Such a system would make a vast amount of business for itself, as people
learned the advantages of so easy a correspondence--especially in those
places which may admit of two or more deliveries a day. It would also tend
to facilitate and stimulate and increase the general business of the
place, and this would in turn increase the business of the post-office.
The establishment of Free Delivery in any city or large town, would tend
to increase the correspondence of the country with such town. Every
addition to the number of letters delivered, would lessen the average cost
of delivery of each letter, and thus increase the net profits of the
institution. In these ways the department would feel its way along, in the
extension of Free Delivery from one class of towns to another, until, at
no distant day, it would be found that its benefits were far more widely
diffusible than the most sanguine could now anticipate.

On the subject of the cost of delivery, the parliamentary committee
obtained many valuable items of information. Mr. Reid, of London, said he
got a thousand circulars delivered lately, for a foreigner. The gentleman
had intended to send them through the post-office, paying the postage. Mr.
Reid told him he would get them delivered a great deal cheaper. He gave
them to a very trusty person, who delivered them all in the course of a
week, at the expense of L1 2_s_. 3_d_. They were certain he delivered
them; for nearly every time they sent him out, they took care to misdirect
two or three, taking an account of the false direction, and he invariably
brought back these letters, because he could not find the persons to whom
they were directed. The postage of these circulars, at 1_d_. would have
been L4 3_s_. 4_d_. Here was a saving of L3 1_s_. 1_d_. in one job. The
expense of delivery was 1-1/14 farthing per letter. Of course, regular
carriers, in their accustomed routes, could deliver prepaid letters at a
much cheaper rate than this.

During the parliamentary investigations on the subject of cheap postage, a
plan was suggested, of establishing what were called secondary mails, to
reach every village and hamlet in the country. These secondary mails were
to run from each post-town to the surrounding places, and deliver letters
for an add