198
No. 69.
THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 6TH APRIL, 1872.
GOVERNMENT NOTIFICATION.
The following Annual Report of the Hongkong General Post Office for the Year 1871, is published for general information.
By Command,
CECIL C. SMITH, Acting Colonial Secretary.
Colonial Secretary's Office, Hongkong, 6th April, 1872.
No. 18.
GENERAL POST OFFICE, HONGKONG,
28th March, 1872.
SIR, I have the honor to submit for the information of His Excellency SIR RICHARD GRAVES MACDONNELL, K. C. M. G., and C. B., the twelfth Annual Report on the Post Office, being that for the year 1871.
2. The arrangements mentioned in my last Report under which the general Mails for Shanghae are sorted in this Office instead of at sea as formerly, have been successfully carried out, with ad- vantage to the Shanghae Community, but at the cost of this Government.
.3. The building No. 15 Nankin Road, Shanghae, to which the Post Office was removed, under the sanction contained in C. S. O. No. 491 dated 15th February, 1871, is centrally situated, commo- dious, and otherwise adapted for Post Office purposes.
4. The increasing importance of Shanghae as a commercial entrepôt is, however, such as to fully justify the erection of a Post Office, and so long as the Mail Packets touch there, I consider, as I stated in the Report of my Tour of Inspection, that as an investment and for obvious reasons, it will be far more advantageous to the Public to have a building erected specially for Post Office purposes, than to continue the present plan, paying rent and being liable to repeated changes.
5. The Convention or Agreement between the British Post Office and the Local Post Office at Shanghae, which had been in force for about four years, was abrogated in June last, and whilst the Revenue has not been affected by the separation of the two Offices, no inconvenience has apparently been sustained by the Public.
6. No improvement has taken place in the Revenue of the Yokohama Agency since the 24th March last, when I reported a decline of about 35 per cent therein attributable to the opening out of the Pacific Railway from San Francisco to New York, which has diverted most of the correspondence from Japan for the United States of America and a portion of that for the United Kingdom from its former route by British Packets viâ Hongkong, to the less expensive and more direct route afforded by the United States' Packets at present plying monthly between Yokohama and San Francisco, and it is probable that when those Packets run fortnightly the usefulness of the British Post Office at Yoko- hama will be still further diminished and its Revenue likewise. The loss involved by the mainte- nance of that Office is borne chiefly by the Imperial Post Office.
7. The Spanish Government having in June last entered into a contract for the exchange of Mails between Singapore and Manila, the Mail service between Hongkong and Manila, which had been for many years conducted by vessels of the Spanish Navy, was discontinued. The new service is carried on in connection with the fortnightly English Mail Packets only, and the Letters from Manila for transmission by the homeward French Mail Packets and for the United States' Mail Packets are still sent to this Office by private steamers from Manila.
8. The arrangement made in the year 1864 with the Government of India under which corres- pondence conveyed by private ship between India (which then included the Straits Settlements) and Hongkong is charged with Postage at the receiving Office only, which Office pays the gratuity to the Ship Master for its conveyance, has been departed from in the Settlements, and, whilst the correspondence for Singapore, Penang and Malacca is forwarded from this Office by private vessels without any prepayment of Postage, it appears that the Post Offices at those places make the prepayment of the Postage compulsory on such correspondence, which is, under the arrangement above referred to, liable, on receipt here, to a charge of 8 cents per ounce Letter and of two cents each Paper to enable this Office to pay the gratuity authorized by Law for its conveyance. As this is obviously both inequitable and inconvenient to the Public, I have called attention to the matter in a letter dated 7th October, 1871, No. 55.
9. The negociations referred to in the 15th paragraph of my last Annual Report for a regular exchange of direct Mails between Hongkong and Brindisi, which includes the transmission of corres- pondence between Hongkong and all the British Postal Agencies in China and Japan on the one side, and Italy, Switzerland, the German States, Austria, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Heligoland, Swe- den, Norway and Russia on the other, have been completed, and the arrangements made have been found advantageous to the Public. Letters between the places named are delivered more speedily and at less cost for Postage than when they were passed through the French Post Office.
10. The whole of the Postal Agencies in China and Japan have been thoroughly inspected during the past year, and the result of the examination thereof will be found fully set forth in my letter of the 20th July, No. 43.