§ DR. CLARK (Caithness)asked the Postmaster General, Why the Post Office pays £2,500 a-year for an acceleration of the down London day mail from Aberdeen to Keith, where there is a limited population, and refuses to accelerate the same mail from Perth to the North, embracing a district of seven counties, containing a population of nearly 400,000 people?
§ THE POSTMASTER GENERAL (Mr. RAIKES) (Cambridge University)The so-called acceleration of the down London day mail from Aberdeen to Keith consisted chiefly in the abolition of the interval of several hours which previously existed between the arrival of the mail train from the South at Aberdeen and the despatch Northward. The new arrangement, while effecting this object and providing for an earlier delivery of a large amount of correspondence, also secured a convenient through service for mails from Aberdeenshire to the North, viâ Inverness. The case of the down London day mail from Perth, on the Highland Railway, is very different. There is no undue detention at Perth to get rid of. The line from Perth to Thurso and Wick runs for several hundred miles through sparsely-populated districts with few towns of any considerable size except Inverness; and there is already expended on the conveyance of the mails, which includes two through mails a-day in each direction, so large a payment that no additional expense for the purpose of accelerating either service will be warranted.