TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE TWOPENNY POST.

That Ninth Report of the Commissioners of Post-office Inquiry is full of' curious information on a department in the good or bad

conduct of which more persons are perhaps directly interested than in that of' any other connected with the Government. How much may depend upon the quick and safe delivery of a letter I If the correspondence which passes through the Twopenny Post for one day could be published, some notion would he obtained of' the vast importance of speedy and Safe communication by the Metro-

politan Post, and of the anxiety, inconvenience, and loss arising from want of despatch and punctuality. Let any person, however, think how often he has himself said on receiving a " twopenny"— " If I could only have had this letter an hour sooner, what a world of annoyance I should have escaped !" or "If that letter had not been lost, all this trouble would have been spared:" let him

imagine how numerous are the daily chances of similar mischief from the same (qui° to others in this vast metropolis ; and then he will probably come to the conclusion, that the policy which has made the Post-office a department of revenue, rather than one for the accommodation of the public, is most erroneous. Few persons are aware of the amount of the Twopenny Post correspondence, even under the present expensive and defective regulations. Jt appears from a table in the Report, that the " number of letters collected from each Town Receiving-house of the Twopenny Post department for four weeks " was 841,674. Of these there were "hosted" at Charing Cross, 15,119; Oxford Street, 23,363; the Strand, 29,332; Coruhill, 59,519. So the good people in the City are the most interested in a change of system. The number of missing letters in the years ending 5th April 1835, 1836, and 1837, were respectively 3,282, 2,355, and 2,882; the number recovered, only 35„37, and 52. Of the missing letters, 339 are stated to have contained money amounting to 6,1731.; and of this sum 3,839/. was recovered. Mr. ROBERT SNI1TH, Su- perintending President of the department, admitted that there were many losses. He gave the following evidence on this subject to the Commissioners.

" Is there a great loss of letters in the twopenny-post department ?—I am sorry to say there are many losses ; and 1 fear there will always be while bank- notes pass through the office in the manner they dm "Do you think, if you had more space in the office, that might be pre- vented ?-1 do not. Above 1,000 persons belong to this establishment ; the regular letter-carriers, supernumeraries, and auxiliary carriers, are about 530; we employ many auxiliaries in the coautry, paying them a snail rate of wages, according to the duty they perform ; we do not tike bond in that case, for the regular carrier of the district is responsible. So long as letters of value pass through the post, without being delivered in charge, and there are so many persons employed, I fear there will be always a temptation. " Are large sums frequently transmitted through the Twopenny Pose-1\7o, not large SUMS ; sometimes there may be Zia or 100/. in.a letter ; but mostly much smaller sums.

" Where have the frauds generally been? among the sorters, or among the carriers ?—The duties are so connected, that it is entirely conjecture. There has been recently a case at Camberwell, where I have little doubt the depredation has been committed by one of the letter-carriers. I have been able to fix that the letter was sent there ; it was a General Post letter. A check has been kept of the addresses of all double letters going to that place, and one of them has not been delivered. There are five letter-carriers in that district : there has been great inquiry, and the letter-carriers' houses have been searched, and the in- vestigation is still going on. It is desirable that the public should have every security for their letters."

It is at present a " mere tempting of Providence" to send cash through the Twopenny Post. There is an account of the gross and net revenue of the Two- penny Post for the last thirty-seven years, which of itself offers d priori evidence of the mismanagement of the department. No- body doubts that during the last ten years there has been a great increase in time population and trade of the metropolis, and at least an equal increase in the number of people who can write : yet we find, that while the gross receipts, which indicate the number of letters posted, were 117,3691. in 1826, in 1S:16 they were only 112,924. If it be said that 1826 was a year of unusual com- mercial activity, (though the same may be said of 1836,) we refer to 1830, and find that tire amount received was 115,750/., or 30001. more than in 1836. We do not believe that fewer letters were written in the latter than the fltrmer period, but that more were smuggled. On this point Mr. W ‘1.L ACE, the '.lumber fa. Greenock, whose ex- ertions in the work of Post-ell:cc improvement have been fre- quently noticed in this journal, gave the Lllowieg evidence- " I am inclined to think, front the inferinati,a I htve revoked, that the

sending of letters by the omnibuses and coaches and persons be them prevails to an extent of which the public in general i. not aware. here is

one strong fact which I think I may .,iv I have ;Neer taietsl with to and to the use of the l'o.t.etlice in reference to cheap pw•agvs and the smuggling it letters, which I was not aware of ;viten I formerly !co my evidence here. It occurred to me to inquire to what extent sol.,:ers ;led rs availed thernselveS of their privilege of haying their letters fraiked be their emnotabiling officers; and I have fmnal that they do avail themselves to :t great extv;it, mud be- neficially for the comfort and good conduct of the men, as well hvieg very much recommended by those commanding oln,sti, who take an iol.test in the moral conduct of their regiments. ,Many pow, men, when they join their regiments, cannot write at all almo.t, or but indolltrently ; but, finding they can keep up a correspondence with their fatuities and reletitst., and their termer companions, they teach use another, and learn to write. Jr h mone,s object to acquire a good hand ; and in this tray epistolary emonumicat;oits from rtgb. merits are very extensive indeed, by means of hitch frinked by their com- manding-ollicers; and the best men, if I am rightly ar:t those who have the widest correspondence. I have inquired of those office's who seem to have at heart the good management and the mild treatniet,t of their teen, to what particular subjects or objects, so far as they can discover, their corn- spondenee relates; and I find that, for instance, on a regiment being removed from one quarter to another, the correspondence at first chiefly turns towards the acquaintance they have formed and those at the quarter they have left ; but that this soon abates, and by and by dies away nearly altogether ; and that their family, and friends, and early companions, are those with whom it may be said they chiefly or almost entirely correspond. This I consider to be a very strong proof, and, perhaps, the only practical proof we can give, of the advantages of cheapening generally the rates of postages in the first place, and to look also to the effect of this on smuggling letters, even when the postage is apparently of small amount; for, so far us I understand, soldiers never think of sending letters by private opportunities."

Mr. WALLACE is surprised at the submission of the inhabitants of the Metropolis to the heavy postage charges- . " With regard to the charge of twopence and threepence for letters in and round London, it has always been my astonishment that no objection has been made to this sum by the immense multitude it affects, in and around this me- tropolis, to that charge, seeing that the same law applies all over the country, and that the same weight may be carried for a penny in every town and district of the country that may be carried here for twopence; and, knowing from in. formation which cannot at all be doubted, and from maps I have now before me, that the distance which letters are carried by penny posts exceeds by much in the country the range allowed around London, I confess my astonishment has been great at the continuance of the system. This has been an additional

reason with me for believing that the revenue would benefit largely in place of leering by a very low rate of postage ; and if there were a discriminating charge made between letters, properly so called, and parcels of two descriptions of weight.'

These observations of the Member for Greenock lead us to the grand objection of the Post-office people to the plan of Mr. HILL; that the number of letters at the reduced postage of a penny would not compensate for the loss of revenue, or any thing near it. In the first place, we shall quote the evidence of Mr. Superin- tendent SMITH to prove that the amount of loss from the adoption of the plan is beneath notice when compared with the recompense held out. Mr. SMITH calculates that the additional charge will be 34,739/.; and adds-

" To meet this expense, it will require the circulation of 8,337,360 stamped penny-covers in the year. I calculate that the revenue produced from letter, delivered within the three-mile circle, on which the rate of 2d. is chargeds amounts to nearly 70,000/. per annum ; but, as I am most anxious not to exaggerate in my calculations, I will take it at 60,000/. Supposing this rate so be reduced to Id., it will diminish it one-half, making the sum 30,0001. To make up for this reduction, it will require an increased circulation of 7,200,000/. penny stamped covers annually: this, added to the number neces- sary to pay the expenses of the establishment, will make a total of 15,537,360 : so that, only to cover the expense and meet the reduction, there must be a larger circulation of letters in the: year, within the three-mile circle only, than are now collected from all parts of the Twopenny and Threepenny Post limits ; which, according to the last return, amounted to 13,589,925/."

These millions are formidable only on paper, and in the brain of a Post-office clerk. Let us turn to another part of Mr. SMITH'S evidence, given by him with a view to create an impres- sion contrary to that whielt it really conveys to unprejudiced minds, and we shall Lee how an alteration of price acts upon the Two- penny Post circulation. In the year 1801, the revenue was 38,422/. Now, says Mr. SMITH,

"

In the same year postage was advanced from Id. to 2d. on letters passing irom one part of London to another ; and the result was, that the following year the gross revenue was 54,893/, showing an increase of 16,471/. ; so that It would appear the circulation had not suffered much from the increased tax."

The circulation, we are told, had not suffered much. Let us see. If it bad not suffered at all, of course it would have been doubled by the advance of the charge from a penny to twopence; and would then have been £76,844 But it was only 54,893 .£21,951

This sum of 21,951/., supposing the postage of a letter to be twopence, represents 2,585,120 letters. Only a diminution of two millions tied a half of letters in one year occasioned by the addi- tional penny ! We presume to think that the circulation did wirer very much from the increased tax : and this fact would en- courage us to hope for an immense increase of correspondence simply frcm a diminution of charge ; but if the plan of Mr. Him. were adopted, the convenience to the public in other ways would be so great, that we have no doubt the deficiency of revenue would be very trifling. But even supposing it went to the full axtent dreaded by Mr. SMITH, surely the money would be well laid out in obtaining so large a benefit.

There are some other points in the Report which deserve more attention than they have hitherto received, and we shall return to the subject.