from Italy, 1s. 11d.; from Spain, 2s. 2d.; from Madeira, 2s. 7d.; from the United States, 2s. 2d.; from Mexico, 3s.; from the Brazils, Buenos Ayres and Columbia, 3s. 6d. Letters may be carried in first-rate vessels to all these countries for a mere trifle. The Post Office charge in New York for a ship-letter is six cents, about 3 d. this is the expense of the transport across the Atlantic. But our Post Office demands 2s. 2d. for conveying a letter for New York from St. Martin's-le-Grand to St. Katherine's Docks. An English letter would be carried 400 miles for half the money. One would really suppose, either that letterwriting to foreign countries was, like gin-drinking, a vice to be discouraged by legislative enactments; or that there were foreign establishments for the manufacture of letters which came into competition with similar ones in England, which it was thought necessary to protect. Were this the case, we should have something like a rational motive for over-taxing the foreign correspondence of the country. But as one letter begets another, as the more we receive the more we send, and the more we send the more money finds its way into the public treasury, it seems to be a wretched policy, even regarding the affair as one merely of pounds, shillings and pence, to adhere to our present high discriminating duties on foreign letters.

In fact, in a financial point of view, the system has worked badly. As we foresee that the main objection to the diminution of the rates of foreign postage will be its asserted tendency to reduce the revenue, it may be worth while to dwell a little on this part of the subject.

It will not be denied that the foreign commerce of Great Britain has increased prodigiously during the last twenty years. Possibly it may not have been a very profitable trade; that does not affect our argument: the vast increase in the amount of business done is unquestionable. The number of British residents abroad in pursuit of business, pleasure and cheap living, is much greater than formerly. Men of science, literature and business, from the continent, and from North and South America, have visited this country in much greater numbers during the last few years than they did fifteen or twenty years ago. All these circumstances must have produced a very great extension of our foreign correspondence, and the Post Office revenue ought to exhibit a proportionate increase. But how stands the fact? In 1814, the gross revenue for Great Britain was £2,005,987; in 1820, £1,993,885; in 1825, £2,160,390; in 1826, £2,184,514; and in 1833, £2,062,839. Thus we see that there has been no increase worth notice since 1814: since 1826 there has been an absolute decrease of £120,000.

Supposing the internal correspondence of the country to have been stationary, the increase from the foreign correspondence ought to have been sensibly felt in the Post Office receipts. But no one will be hardy enough to assert that there has not been a vast increase in the number of letters written at home during the last few years. A greater proportion of a growing population have become letter-writers. This seems to prove that the rates of inland postage have been so high, as to compel recourse to unlawful channels for the transmission of an immense number of letters. But these inland rates are moderate when compared with those charged upon foreign letters. The imposition of heavy fines does not prevent the sending of letters by private conveyances. The only way to diminish this smuggling, and to augment the quantity of letters, is to lower the rates of postage. will be found that the Post Office, like the Excise, will afford proof of the superior productiveness of low over high taxes.

This view is confirmed by a reference to the state of the French Post Office revenue; which is more than double what it was in 1815, as will appear from the following figures. In 1815 the net amount was 7,688,085 francs; in 1820, 11,527,788; in 1825, 14,479,305; in 1831, 15,171,000. The returns of the first quarter of 1834 justify the expectation that the revenue for the current year will be nearly a million of francs more than in 1831. Now what are the French rates of postage as compared with those charged in England? The conveyance of a single letter the distance of 15 miles in France is charged 2d., in England 4d.; 20 miles, in France 2d., in England 5d.; 50 miles, in France 3d., in England 7d.; 170 miles, in France 5d., in England 10d.; and so on. Yet the English revenue has been nearly stationary during the twenty years in which the French revenue has been doubled. The cost of collection in France is considerably greater, in proportion to the amount received, than in England; but not so much greater as we should be led to conclude from the fact, that letters are delivered in France over twice as great a space as in the United Kingdom; and that there is a daily post delivery in every village of France, while there are several districts in England which do not enjoy that advantage. The total number of persons employed by the French Post Office in Paris and the departments exceeds 8000. Moreover the state of the roads in this country is much better than in France; and the French Post Office authorities, instead of making their contract for the carriage of letters at the cheapest rate, are compelled to employ the maitres de poste alone. They calculate that they lose five millions of francs annually by this monopoly. The mode in which our Post Office accounts are kept, or rather

the mode in which the Returns of the Post Office revenue are made, prevents our ascertaining distinctly the actual amount received for foreign postage. In the Finance Accounts for the year ending January, 1833, we find the revenue derived from "unpaid letters outwards, and paid letters inwards, and ship letters, &c. charged to country postmasters," all put down in one sum. Some of these letters, we presume, are foreign letters. The sum of £62,365 was received in 1832, for "postage of letters received by the windowmen, &c. of the Foreign office." This, we apprehend, must refer solely to the postage of letters which are sent abroad from the metropolis, and of a portion of those which arrive from abroad for residents in it. But though we are thus at a loss for distinct accounts of the sum total of foreign postage, yet it is quite safe to conclude that there has been no increase of any consequence during the last fifteen or twenty years. If there were, it would affect the gross amount of Post Office revenue, which has not increased, although the inland correspondence ought to have been vastly augmented with the growth of trade and population.

The Post Office authorities have been negotiating with Belgium for the establishment of a communication four times a week instead of twice. This arrangement has not yet been completed; and we do not consider it desirable that it should be. At present, we send steam packets twice a week to Ostend, at a very considerable but needless expense; that is to say, an expense which there would be no occasion to incur, provided we came to some reasonable understanding with the French direction of the posts. Mails are despatched daily from Calais to Belgium, Holland, and all parts of Germany, and there really seems no sound reason why we should not take advantage of this to maintain a daily communication with all parts of the continent. Our letters might go with the French, at the same moderate rates of postage. What a miserable business it is to keep sending two or even four packets a week to Ostend, when at a less cost we may despatch and receive letters daily from the continent by means of the French arrangements. But our Post Office, which ought to promote public convenience in this, as in so many other ways, is a lamentable obstruction to it. The fact is, that the old notion, that all communication with foreign countries was a privilege of the Secretary of State, has not yet been fully eradicated from the minds of men in office.

We have laid the more stress on this point, because our Post Office authorities appear to be exceedingly well satisfied with the arrangement effected last year with the French administration

of the Posts, as far as regards the transmission of letters, whatever disappointment may be felt that nothing was done in regard to newspapers and periodical publications. But the country neither is, nor ought to be, satisfied, unless it is prepared to sanction the opinion that it is wise and liberal to incur a pecuniary loss for the sake of obstructing the friendly intercourse of Englishmen with foreignèrs.

Among some papers relating to the Post Office, recently printed for the use of members of parliament, in addition to a copy of the Treaty for the conveyance of letters, there is a note, dated the 16th July, 1833, from the Duke of Richmond to Lord Althorp, explanatory of the reasons which induced his Grace to reject several propositions of the French authorities for facilitating the mutual circulation of newspapers, periodicals, proof sheets, &c. in England and France. From this it appears that the public were right in suspecting that the monopoly of the clerks in the Foreign Office was the principal obstacle to an arrangement for the circulation of newspapers in Great Britain and France respectively, either free, or at a moderate rate of postage. In the following passage of his note the Duke of Richmond alludes to this proposition.

"The circulation of Foreign journals in this country, and the transmission of English newspapers abroad, has been from time immemorial the privilege of the clerks of the Foreign Post Office, and the proceeds form the sole remuneration for official services to the head of that office and fifteen clerks.

"If salaries were to be paid to those persons, the aggregate would not amount to less than £3500, and it is for the Treasury to decide whether the revenue shall be burdened with an additional charge to this extent; and this, not for the purpose of any general advantage to the public at large, but solely for the relief of the few who are desirous of receiving Foreign journals in this country, or English newspapers abroad, as articles of luxury."

As the government has wisely determined to abolish this monopoly, we shall merely remark upon this passage, that it betrays a contraction of ideas which we should have little expected to find in such a quarter. Why are foreign journals articles of luxury' within the compass of few men's means? Is it not becaue this very monopoly of the Foreign Post Office clerks has rendered them so expensive? The annual cost of any of the daily French newspapers is only about £3. 3s., and the expense of transport is a mere trifle; while the rate at which they have been hitherto supplied more than trebles their cost to the English reader. It is the monopoly therefore which makes them dear. And yet the

fact of their high cost, which necessarily renders them in some degree articles of luxury, is used as an argument against any arrangement for furnishing them at reduced prices!

The Postmaster General rejected the liberal offer of the French authorities to circulate in both countries periodical publications, pamphlets, catalogues, music, proof-sheets &c., free of expense. His principal reason for this refusal was the insufficiency of the means of conveyance at his disposal-he was "precluded from entertaining the question by the limit of practicability." The capacious and leisurely mail diligences in France, he says, have an advantage in this respect over the small and rapid English mails. But the French malle-poste is not large, and by no means leisurely. No one supposes that an arrangement of the kind proposed could be entered into, unless both the contracting parties were disposed to earnest exertion for the public advantage. Where there is a will, there is a way. It appears from the reports of the Revenue Commissioners, that owing to the scarcity of passengers on many lines. of road (for travellers seem in great measure to have abandoned the mails), it is difficult to procure contractors to furnish and horse the coaches that are required. Suppose that our mail coaches were to carry six instead of eight passengers (and they seldom carry as many as six), there would in all probability be abundant room saved for all the French and other foreign journals that would circulate in this country. Each mail coach passenger may be supposed to weigh upon an average at least 150 pounds: two passengers therefore would give 300 pounds; we should think it extremely unlikely that more than three cwt. of French publications would ever be sent by post beyond the metropolis. At present a large proportion of our own periodicals are forwarded by mail, independent of the Post Office, to different parts of the island. In the absence of data on which to form a calculation, of course we do not mean to speak positively in regard to these quantities; but there really appears to be nothing so formidable in the French proposition as to have caused its instant rejection; and it is disheartening to hear the head officer of an establishment which costs the country six or seven hundred thousand pounds annually, talking of the impracticability of circulating through the post such of the French journals as Englishmen might wish to read.

Upon the Duke of Richmond's own showing we must question the propriety of his rejection of the French propositions. But it should be known that the French Post Office authorities deny in the strongest terms that he has made a fair representation of the case. They are preparing a counter statement; letters have been received from authority on this subject, saying that the " Director