Report has been and is being developed, but it requires, to be fully carried out, a comparatively inexpensive enlargement of the office, for which, as the Public Works Department is somewhat heavily taxed at present, it has not been thought advisable to press. A third measure has been the leaving over of all insufficiently paid correspondence to be dealt with after the general delivery of the mail, instead of preparing it to go out with that delivery. This may sometimes cause an unpaid letter to be forwarded to the Coast by a later steamer than that which carries the paid mail—an extra penalty on non-prepayment. One basketful of unpaid letters takes just as long to deal with as do the eighty odd sacks of which the mail is composed. If persons will not prepay their letters, they are not entitled to any sympathy when delay ensues in consequence.
22. The local delivery of the Hongkong Office is not, and never has been, one of its strong points. Without a largely increased staff, it never can be, and for such an augmented staff, there is not sufficient local work to pay.
The work of the Office has to be arranged entirely according to the arrivals of steamers; it is therefore impossible to imitate the town deliveries of inland cities, where the postmen proceed to their various districts three, four, or even ten times a day with unbroken regularity. Measures, however, have been taken to improve our local delivery as much as possible, and it is now more used for the distribution of invitations, notices, and similar documents than it has ever been before.
23. Complaints are not infrequently received that correspondence for private houses is delivered at places of business. This does not arise, as is often assumed, from the idleness of the postmen, but is the invariable rule of the Office, and is also the rule which, on the whole, is most convenient to all persons concerned.
Considering how widely scattered private residences are, some at Kowloon, some at the Peak, &c., it is difficult to see how, with our present staff, business letters would ever get delivered at all were the postmen continually taken off their work to carry single letters these long distances. The rule adopted, therefore, is delivery at the nearest place of business. The only exception is in the case of large numbers of invitations, &c., when a special request is made for delivery at private houses, and even then, such a request can only be carried out in subordination to the mail work, which is the essential duty of the Office. Of course, all this is written in the Postal Guide, but the difficulty with Postal Guides, or indeed with Postal Notices of any kind, is to get people to read them.
24. After being unsettled for some time, the departures and arrivals of the Contract Mails for and from Europe have been arranged for days and hours which, taking the year all round, are perhaps as convenient as it is practicable to make them. The mails three times reached London and once reached Hongkong in 32 days, in each instance by French packet. The quickest British packet passage has been 33 days, twice, outward. Taking the whole year, however, and the passages in both directions, the British Packets show an average of 36 days against 36, the average French mail passage. The following are the averages for the year:
British Packets, Outward, 35 days.
French Packets, Homeward, 36.
French Packets, Outward, 37.
British Packets, Homeward, 19.
**
37½.
17.
I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Your most obedient Servant,
A. LISTER, Postmaster General.
The Honourable W. H. MARSH, CMG,
Colonial Secretary,
&c., &c.
APPENDIX.
(A)—COMPARATIVE STATEMENT OF REVENUE AND EXPENDITURE 1881 & 1882.
1882 1881 Imperial Share, $19,894.49 $31,344.88 Decrease, $11,450.39 Conveyance of Mails and contribution towards P & O Subsidy, $10,031.05 $11,588.78 Decrease, $1,557.73 Expenditure,* $31,317.85 $31,901.92 Balance, Gross Revenue, $43,438.55† $27,874.98 Decrease, Increase, $584.07 $15,563.57+ $104,681.94 $102,710.56 Increase, $1,971.38* Crown Agents' account not included.
†These large differences are caused by an outstanding debt of about $13,000 to the London Office.