How would the people of England feel were they deprived
of their penny postage ? The bold innovation of Rowland Hill has become a familiar thing, as necessary to our comfort as oral conversation. The feasibility of an "ocean penny postage" has for the last year or two been under discussion, and a movement has just been made that promises before long to place within our reach this extension of the Rowland Hill emancipation of letter- writers from fiscal surcharges. An association has been formed —of which Lord Ashburton, Sir Roderick Murchison, Baron Charles Dupin, Herr von Viebahn, and other distinguished Eng- lishmen and foreigners, are members—for the purpose of inducing the Governments of their respective countries to establish a low and uniform rate of postage on letters to and from all parts of the world. The association propose that the whole postage on foreign letters shall be prepaid in all countries, by means of postage- stamps, and according -to one uniform scale of weights. Postal conventions hate already been concluded by England with France, the United States of North America, Russia, Prussia, Austria, eighteen other German states, some of the Northern European states, Belgium, Switzerland, Greece, Sardinia; and Tuscany, tin- der which the whole postage on foreign letters will be collected in the country in which they are posted. The extension of this "postal league" to Meet the views of the association presents no difficulties of moment. The boon to friends at a distance and to merchants would be inestimable. Such a postal alliance would be a most efficient "peace congress."
