THE WESLEYAN POSTMAN.
[TO THE EDITOR OF TRU "SPROTATOR.1
SLE,-A correspondent, writing in the Spectator of the 28th ult., ventures to affirm that your definition of a Wesleyan postman's duties "is exactly and positively wrong." And the grounds upon which he builds this confident assertion are to be found, ho says, in the fact of the Postmaster-General having once upon a time informed the " clergy and laity of Rugby " that postmen were under no circumstances allowed to distribute any matter that had not passed through the post. Your correspondent is exact without being accurate. That the Postmaster-General may have endeavoured to pacify the stupid bigots who grudged a poor Catholic a Government berth of the value of ten or fifteen shillings a week by some general assurances. of the kind is probable enough, but that he absolutely said what your correspondent alleges " is exactly and positively " a mistake.
If " Gallio " thinks it worth while to sacrifice a night's rest in the interests of unseotarian education, and will station himself outside a country post-office at five o'clock any one of these November mornings, he will observe our now famous Wealeyan servant of the Crown emerge from the building enveloped in a most mis- cellaneous collection of wares, fastened to his various limbs in triangular fashion, which have certainly not "passed through the post."
The fact, which must be known to hundreds of your readers, is, that postmen in the rural districts aro allowed to unite the duties of public carriers (to a limited extent, of course), with their offi- cial duties. So that without going more deeply into the principle of the thing, as regards the aptness of the Spectator's homely illustration, there is no reason on earth why the editor should be reduced to the uncomfortable position of that old familiar friend, the unhappy engineer who was compelled by the exigencies of a cruel fate to go, as our Americans would say, "up a tree."—I am,
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