It is not quite clear which Postmaster General is to be convinced by the destruction of two Postal Agents, the universally respected Minister who presides over the Department in London or his much humbler representative in Hongkong. If the latter, he can only say, liberavi animam.
9. To provide a larger boat is a very simple matter, the provision of a larger crew is the difficulty. Departmental expenses are continually on the increase, and can seldom be reduced again. The Government of Hongkong keeps these Offices at the Ports open simply and solely to deliver the mails from Europe, and to collect correspondence for transmission in the opposite direction. But for this, as far as we are concerned, it would be desirable to close all the Agencies to-morrow. It is discouraging, therefore, to find the London Post Office indisposed to allow any increase upon a departmental expenditure which was settled seventeen years ago, and which has of course been completely outgrown. The expenditure of Hongkong on these Agencies has been more than doubled since 1867, whilst the local Revenue of the Post Office, which in 1872 exceeded $76,000, has disappeared.
10. It may be permissible here to quote the minute which was submitted to His Excellency the Governor on this subject.
"I regret Mr. FAWCETT'S decision. It really amounts to this, that the Postal service on the Coast of China is to remain absolutely unimproved, or is to be improved at the sole cost of the Colony of Hongkong. Besides the fact that it is scarcely the province of Hongkong to provide Postal facilities for people at Amoy, &c., the Home Government has swept away all the surplus Revenue out of which the expenses of such facilities might have been defrayed."
"Mr. FAWCETT's suggestion that what is wanted might be provided at the cost of the communities concerned is not, under local circumstances, a hopeful one. This course was tried for some years at Hiogo and Nagasaki in Japan, and led to much inconvenience and complication. There are no municipalities at Ports like Amoy which could vote annual sums, in consequence any expenses would have to be met by subscriptions, or (as in Japan) by a charge levied on each letter. The communities rapidly change; the new comers, never having experienced the evils the charges were levied to meet, resent them as impositions, many refuse to pay, or decline to receive the taxed correspondence, and a constant irritation is kept up."
"The difficulty will be met some day, I hope, by the Chinese Government (at first perhaps as represented by the foreign Customs staff) awaking to a sense of its national duties, and establishing an efficient Post Office in every open Port. The time is perhaps hardly ripe for that as yet, and I do not think we can take the initiative. Hongkong has been requested to relieve the Imperial Government of the care of Post Offices in China. It is not so pleasant as might be wished to have the service stereotyped against all improvement, but our position would seem to be simply a ministerial one. There is nothing for it but to make the best of it, and not to 'wander from the allotted field' until we are relieved of our task there."
11. The disappearance of Revenue alluded to above has been completed during the year under review by the receipt of directions from home to contribute a sum of £6,000 a year towards the expenses of the P. & O. contract, in place of the sum of about £3,000 which we were paying before. For the first time therefore in the history of the Colony it may be considered that the Post Office is being worked at a loss. All the correspondence on this subject has been published. The Imperial Post Office in the first instance asked for nearly £14,000 a year, with arrears from February 1st 1880. The Colony is indebted to Lord KIMBERLEY and Lord DERBY for the reduction of this heavy demand to £6,000.
12. The question of expediting the delivery of the French Mail has again occupied the attention of the Department, it is satisfactory to be able to report that the time occupied in sorting, which had crept up to nearly two hours, has again been reduced to about an hour and a quarter, the mail having once or twice been sorted in little more than an hour. The means of effecting this has mainly been an arrangement with the Ceylon Post Office, by which the twelve or fourteen bags from Australia, which lie two or three days at Colombo waiting for the outward packet for China, are opened there and consolidated into one large mail, the contents of which are arranged so as to facilitate sorting here as much as possible. An Officer of the Colombo Post Office is paid an allowance equal to about £50 a year for undertaking this duty.
13. In a letter from the Chamber of Commerce to the Colonial Secretary dated May 12th 1882, the following remark occurs:—
"The Committee cannot agree with the Acting Postmaster General in his statement that the mail which arrives unsorted takes from an hour and forty-five minutes to two hours before it is ready for delivery, as the experience of most of the members of this Chamber is that a much longer period is required for the distribution of the letters by the French Mails."
Now as a matter of fact no French Mail has ever taken much over two hours to sort. The longest time recollected is two hours and a quarter, under exceptionally disadvantageous circumstances. But this is counting from the arrival at the Post Office of the first bag till the windows are opened. Of course if this Department is credited by an impatient public with all the time that elapses from the firing of the Peak gun until extremely deliberate coolies saunter to the houses or offices of their respective employers with the letters, a longer period will naturally seem to be required, but observation will show that even this is generally not much over four hours. The time taken up in landing the mail varies very considerably, being affected by the tide, the weather, the time of day, the amount of obstruction caused by sampans and cargo boats, and other circumstances. Some Commanders will not allow the mails to be moved until the mooring is complete, others permit their despatch before anything else is done. The occasional delays resulting from these circumstances sometimes tell heavily against the community at Canton, the steamer for which place not infrequently leaves after the mail arrives, but before it is landed or can be dealt with.