1841-1886
OF HER MAJESTY'S COLONIAL POSSESSIONS.
341
25
between Hong Kong, Yokohama, San Francisco, and the United States generally, by the United States' packets, has been carried into operation.
15. 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 was submitted in my letter of the 23rd September last, No. 57,
16. The advantages derivable from occasional personal inspections of these agencies are manifold, both to the public and to the members of the postal service generally. Opportunities are thereby afforded to the Postmaster-General of seeing with his own eyes that adequate facilities are at all times afforded to the public in the receipt, transmission, and delivery of their letters, and of effecting such improvements as circumstances may require. I therefore embody in this Report such portions of the Report of the tour of inspection as may be useful.
17. At all the ports, except Shanghai and Yokohama, the Post Office duties are performed by consular officers, (who are, in some cases, the junior officers of the service;) and, on this account, it is not to be expected that the work can be so thoroughly done as it would be by experienced officers of this department; at the same time, I observed that they took some interest in the effective fulfilment of the postal labour imposed upon them. A complete code of instructions for their use has been printed and forwarded for their guidance.
18. Arrangements have been made for the continuance of the amalgamation of the British and Local Post Offices at Shanghai.
19. Communication between Shanghai and Hong Kong by the British and French mail packets and the numerous other vessels now running is constant, and under the new agreement, the Local Post Office of Shanghai has undertaken to hand to the agent of this department all loose letters received from Hong Kong. The British Office at Shanghai is largely availed of, and the duties are performed satisfactorily to the public, who, among other advantages, reap the full benefit of the system of sorting their letters at sea, without any charge whatever. The system of sorting the mails at sea between Hong Kong and Singapore, and between Hong Kong and Shanghai has been successfully carried on.
20. The building occupied conjointly by the British and Local Post Offices is not well situated.
21. A new Post Office has been erected at Yokohama où a plot of ground obtained from the Government of Japan, and it is now occupied. This building being near the Hatoba and centrally situated, is found convenient and equal to the requirements of the public. The present prospects of this agency are however by no means brilliant, and I feel sure that so soon as the public have full confidence in the regular and speedy transmission of mails to the United Kingdom viâ San Francisco and New York much of the correspondence will be sent and received by that route.
22. In paragraph 12 of the Report of 19th July, 1867, it was estimated that some additional expenditure would be necessary at Yokohama, and since then a clerk at $720 per annum and a schroff at $216 per annum have been appointed to the agency there.
23. Yokohama was not at that time, however, a place of call for the contract packets, as it is now, and therefore all the revenue collected on local letters sent and received accrued to the Colony; as these letters are now carried by the contract packets, almost exclusively, the revenue goes to the Imperial Post Office; in fact since the British packets commenced running under contract, the business of the Yokohama Post Office has been, with but little or no exception, for the benefit of the Imperial Post Office; at the same time, like the other agencies, it collects and delivers letters the postage on which swells the general colonial revenue of the department.
24. The completion of the Pacific Railway from San Francisco to New York has necessarily diverted most of the letters for the United States from their former course of transmission by the English packets, viâ Marseilles and viâ Southampton, to the more direct and quicker route now afforded by the United States' packets running from Yokohama viâ San Francisco.
25. The discontinuance of the British mail contract line between Shanghai and Yokohama has an injurious effect upon the revenue of the Yokohama Post Office, whilst the French Post Office also deprives it of some of its business.
26. At Nagasaki the opportunities of sending and receiving mails have considerably diminished. At present the United States' mail packets to and from Shanghai afford the only regular means of communication, but as I mentioned in the Report of my tour, I was unsuccessful in the attempt I made to get these vessels to carry the small English mails between Shanghai and Nagasaki; arrangements have been made, however, under which some of the merchants at Nagasaki have their correspondence sent to firms at Shanghai, who repost it at the American Post Office there to be forwarded in the United States' mails
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