SUPPLEMENT TO THE HONGKONG GOVT GAZETTE OF 22xD MAR., 1884. 217
14. The sorting of the French Mail is too often carried on under difficulties caused by the rtinacity of intruders, persons who, after having amused themselves by persistently knocking at ery available window (where of course they receive no attention) drift round the premises in search any unguarded door where an entrance may be effected. Even a Post Office must have some mmunication with the outer world, and if any approach, however unlikely, be left unbarred, these ople will find it. In general they only want to ask "when the mail will be ready?" or some ually foolish question, the answer to which, if there is an answer, is already on the notice board. at the public service is hindered by the attempt to gratify this sort of curiosity or selfishness pears to be nothing to the intruder, who turns up with the greatest regularity whenever the ndows are closed, even for a few moments, for either an incoming or an outgoing mail. Even midnight he seems to think the Post Office is open for the sole purpose of answering his questions. the two, the intruder is a greater nuisance than the gentleman who is "very amiable to have a llection of timber posts
*1 *
15. No less than $27,000 has been paid away to Chinese on Money Orders from Australia. he Chinese in Rangoon have also discovered the money system we maintain with the Indian Post ffice, and are beginning to remit considerable sums. It is curious that the large Chinese population. the Straits Settlements use the Money Order system scarcely at all. The reason probably is that e intimate business connection between the Chinese communities of the two Colonies enables them make arrangements of their own for remitting money, and that for some reason these arrangements nnot so easily be made in the cases of British Burmah and Australia.
16. Proposals to establish a Money Order system have been addressed to the Post Office of the nited States, more with a view to the convenience of American residents in Southern China than to e exchange of Chinese remittances. If the Chinese who have crossed the Pacific avail themselves of e system as their countrymen in Australia have done, more assistance in the Money Order branch 'this Department will become unavoidably necessary, but this result is not expected.
17. Now that an inland Parcel Post has been established in the United Kingdom it is to be hoped at the much and long desired Parcel Post from China may be established. Proposals to effect this we been submitted to the London Office. This Department has always declined to participate in any arcel Post system on which prepayment will not frank the parcel to the door of the addressee. There ill probably now be no difficulty in securing this.
18. Some points in the Post Office Ordinance 1876 needing amendment, an entire reprint has en submitted for re-enactment. The point on which an alteration of the law was especially desirable as the Section exempting all Chinese letters from the action of the Ordinance. No extensive or veeping interbrence with Chinese correspondence is intended, but it is desirable to have the power > stop those wholesale evasions of public dues of all kinds which Chinese are so ingenious in devising. in one steamer for San Francisco alone over 11,000 letters were found surreptitiously conveyed in he baggage and about the persons of Chinese passengers.
19. The amount of thought Chinese will bestow on petty frauds of this kind, and the partonce ith which they will "compass sea and land" to carry them out are well illu-rated by a system hich they work between Singapore and Swatow. Chinese letters for Swaton were postal at ingapore without any attempt at prepayment. At Swatow they were of course chengal double ostage. But they had been folled with the ends open, and when the addressee had rect the contents e declined to receive the letters or pay the sums due. The Swatow Agency met this neat litcle and by enclosing the letters in envelopes, and the practice was discontinued at once. The same hing was once tried from home with short-paid post cards, and defeated in a similar manner. erhaps hardly be believed that there are persons in China who advise their friends of home not to repay their letters, as the postage is charged here not to the addressees but to decir employers! The elay which this Department has purposely introduced as an extra penalty on short-pil correspondence as greatly tended to discourage this. Every unpaid leiter retards the delivery of the mail in which t is. A system of universal compulsory prepayment is much to be desired.
It will
20. The rule of refusing to make enquiries for unregistered letters said to have contained bauk notes, ewellery, &c., and alleged to be lost in passing through the Post, introduced more than a year ago, yould seem to have worked well. Complaints have become infrequent. It will be said that people lo not complain when they are told beforehand they will not be listened to. That is true, but also,
* Sie, literally, in a letter from a timbrophile. What he meant to say was that he was very desirous of forming a collection of timbres poste, † Further seizures were as follows :---
City of Peking, Arabic,..........
Dentair,
.......
2.359 letters.
2.457
14,311
More than 25.000 of these letters have been received back from San Francisco as unclaimed,