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PUBLIC

RECORD OFFICE

C.O.

Reference :-

8855 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

SIR,

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IMPERIAL PENNY POSTAGE.

IV. (Conclusion).*

To the RIGHT HON. H. CECIL RAIKES, M.P., Postmaster General.

In acknowledging the receipt of your letter of the 8th instant, I desire to express my personal sense of obligation for the pains which have been taken to supply the information of which I stood in need. That the exertions of the gentlemen of your Department who were charged with the work of research have failed, in the course of more than two months, to discover the truth in some particulars, is a fact which, while nowise discreditable to them, deserves to be noted and remembered. From the moment

of your assumption of the important duties of your office I have met with nothing but sympathy and assistance at your hands. In fact, we all recognise that this is no party question, that none of us is to blame for the existence of anomalies which we did not create, and that our Post Office is at once the oldest, the best administered, and the most useful in the world, and we all, I am sure, desire to see the speedy end of these anomalies, the abolition of which can be shown to promise both social and financial advantage to the community.

1. As you have doubtless observed, I have given notice to move two resolutions in the House of Commons on the subject, one calling for an inquiry into the injurious and anomalous regulations which at present minimise the benefit of our postal system, the other seeking to establish the principle that any surplus of revenue over expenditure realised by the Post Office, beyond the sum appearing as clear annual profit by the latest return, shall be devoted to cheapening, extending, and facilitating the postal communica tion between the various parts of the Empire. The aim of these two resolutions, of my letters to you, and indeed I may say of my life, is to promote and bring about the ultimate success of the movement for the institution of an Imperial penny postage system.

2. On the occasion of my motion of last March, the Secretary to the Treasury contended that the postal rates to the Colonies could not be reduced, because there was already a loss upon that service of about 1,000l. a day. Many honourable members voted against the motion under the natural impression that I was asking for an increase of taxation to that amount. Let me first observe that even if the Secretary's gloomiest calculations had been justified there would have been no increase whatever in the sum total of our taxes. When we buy postage stamps we submit voluntarily to indirect taxation. But the use of writing is now, thanks to the spread of education, so nearly universal, that it may be said the nation as a whole makes use of the post.

The proposal is rather one for the re-adjustment than for the increase of taxation; and there are few taxpayers who would not be able to set off against the slight increase of some other tax the corresponding diminution of the postage tax.

3. But, as I shall proceed to show, there is no need even for such re-adjustinent of taxation. The whole of this loss could be saved to the country, and an immense burden taken from the neck of our commerce, by the simple expedient of stopping the payment of the huge subsidies now received by certain steamship companies, or by shifting the obligation to pay the 600,000l. now annually paid for our Foreign and Colonial packet service from the Post Office Department to the Admiralty, the latter Department, more- over, paying only such sums as may fairly be claimed for the service. account, of course, the almost incalculable increase in the volume of correspondence I take into which would result from the lowering of the postage rate. me to you, I learn that the profits of the Post Office in 1876, after deducting all payments, In reply to questions put by were 1,994,1607. In 1886 these profits amounted to 2,875,684/. It is obvious, there- fore, that if we now stop at this sum, and apply any further profits to the cheapening, extending, and facilitating of the service with distant parts of our Empire, we shall in three years have sufficient to carry free the whole of the Imperial packet service mails.

4. The following facts, which I have elaborately demonstrated to you, Sir, I shall assume as proved beyond the possibility of dispute (a) that correspondence can be carried by swift steamships to the remotest portion of the earth's surface, and yield to the carrying company a fair profit at the rate of one farthing per letter; (b) that the * For Letters I., II., III. see H, C. 34 of February 1887.

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payment proposed by my friends and myself of 100l. per ton for the carriage of letters, one penny stamp being affixed to cach letter, would afford the Post Office a clear profit of 3487. per ton; (c) that the Post Office now exacts from the public for the conveyance of letters to Australia no less than 1,7927. per ton; (d) that the vast subsidies now paid to the mail-carrying company are contributed with the primary and almost exclusive object of encouraging and stimulating the flow of commercial traffic between the United Kingdom and its numerous and distant dependencies, a second and by no unimportant aim being the preservation of a great fleet of steam vessels available as transports or unarmoured cruisers in time of war.

means

5. I will not weary you by recapitulating the string of anomalous and inexplicably unjust charges levied on an English in favour of a foreign correspondent using our postal machinery.

It will suffice to recall the typical fact that whereas an Englishman must pay td. for the conveyance of a letter to the West Indies on the West Coast of Africa, and 5. to British East India, a foreigner can send a letter to the same destination often by way of this country. Well may the shrewd Gaul or Teuton, hotly competing with our merchants for the trade of our own Colonies, chuckle as he pockets English bounty on his efforts.

The following parallel tables showing for purposes of comparison the rates of postage for letters to the following countries and places from England, France, and Germany (at the minimum weight) require no comment :-

Aden Afghanistan British India Ceylon

China Japan Persia

Siam Tonquin Hong Kong

Labuan -

Straits Settlements.

Countries or Colonies.

Dutch Colonies (Java, &c.) Portuguese Colonies (Macao, &c.) Spanish Colonies (Philippines) Algiers

-

Egypt (Nubia and the Soudan) Congo Madagascar

•

Zanzibar Mauritius

Seychelles, Rodriguez, Gold Coast, Lagos, and Sierra Leone

French Colonies (Sengal, Mayotte, Réunion, and New Caledonia) Azores -

Madeira

Cape Verde Islands

Mozambique

Buenos Ayres, Argentine Republic, Chili

Spanish Colonies, Fernando Po

Australia

Cape of Good Hope, Natal

By sea,

From

From England. France.

From

Germany.

'.

e.

21

5 and 4 4

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With regard to New Caledonia, it will be observed that the charge from England is 4d. Now, it is perfectly well known that the mail steamers conveying these letters to New Caledonia touch at all Australian ports from four to seven days before they reach that country. Yet letters by these very steamers for Australia, also posted in England, are charged 6d. To further show the anomalies existing I will again quote Messrs. Mackonichie Brothers, to whom I referred in a previous letter. They write to me from Lowestoft as follows under date 24th February inst. :-"We are highly interested in "the glaring anomalies that you have unearthed and exposed concerning the posting "of patterns of cloths, &c. in Belgium from Eugland for England, whereby one firm was enabled to save 301. We think this should open the eyes of the commercial

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public.

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