7
recent practice of sending "all the correspondence for China and Japan in the mail for Hongkong would be neither convenient nor economical. If the Post Master General should coincide in this
view,
the
only point which remains to be decided is whether the
Expense of
these Postal
is to be borne by the Colonial
Agencies or the Imperial
Government. Upon this
subject I can
only repeat
what I stated in my
Despatch No. 64
of
the 5th May,
that the amount allowed
on
agency letters the expenditure
incurred by these letters upon the central Office in Hongkong alone, leaving the expenditure at the agencies altogether unprovided for. And I entirely concur in the
opinion expressed by Lord Elgin, the late Post Master General, in his Despatch of the 26th January last that "it would
N. 15 of 17th February /60.