6 OCTOBER 1849, Page 11

SUNDAY AT THE POST-OFFICE.

REACTION of a formidable kind is provoked by the last reform in the Post-office. The proposal to improve the arrangements re-

specting the mails which arrive for transmission on Sundays, and have always been in part transmitted, has called forth demonstra- tions as angry asSif it had been a proposal to increase the work— indeed it is treated as "the point of the wedge" towards that end ; and a great meeting is held in the City to protest against it, in a manner that cannot be slighted.

This mischance is mainly imputable to a want of explicitness in the first notice. It has long been justly accounted a great de- fect in the arrangements of the Post-office, that the letters which are sent through London have to remain in St. Martin's-le- Grand a whole day, although the machinery of the Post-office throughout the Country districts is in activity. The Metro- politan immunity from labour caused a general derange- ment of correspondence altogether disproportionate to the bene- fit attained. The new arrangements would remove that defect, and with this amendment combine a considerable relief of Sunday labour for the Country districts. But, instead of being stated as an incident of the new plan so distinctly fore- shadowed in Mr. Rowland Hill's Post-office Reform, this relief is put forth as the main object. Whatever the official intention, it is not generally believed to be the main object ; and its being so stated, instead of conciliation, produces suspicion. Yet the substantial effect of the improvement, and the gain to the Sunday, are sufficiently clear. The employment of people on that day in the central office is no innovation ; but men are now employed in sorting letters. from Ireland, from Scotland, and from foreign parts, for the London delivery on Monday morning : this number varies from twenty-six to,fifty-seven, and they are employed chiefly during the hours of Divine service. The number of letters which require to be forwarded through London, and which now remain untouched, is about 50,000; and it is proposed to add twenty-five men, all volunteers, for that additional duty. They will be engaged before ten o'clock in the morning and after five in the afternoon, and an attempt will be made to relieve the other hands during the hours of public wor- ship. The employment of the twenty-five men in St. Martin's- le-Grand on Sunday is the price for setting free two thousand men in the country ; so that, in mere numbers, the gain to the sacredneas of the Sunday is in the ratio of 8,000 per cent on the cost.

The opposition is instigated by mixed motives: and, to judge from the speeches of the Lord Mayor and Mr. ilasterman, one motive is a doubt whether the partial activity of the Post-office on Sunday is' a real convenience to the public or whether the inconveniences do not counterbalance the conveniences; and the very nature of the improvement helps to throw a more forcible light on that doubt. The partial activity of the Post- office enables some persons to correspond while others cannot : You can correspond between two provincial towns on Saturday but it is sharply vigilant for bringing property within its grasp, and Sunday, or Sunday and Monday, but not between Loia4ksta4sand for preventing, by severe penalties, the escape of available and either of those towns : hence London is fettered in tVe ince I assets.

of competition—an obvious unfairness to Metropolitan trade. On the other hand, the London Sabbath throws out the correspond- ence of the whole country on different days; your immunity in London from letter-writing duties on Sunday debars a Country resident, not from corresponding on Sunday, but from writing certain letters on Saturday and receiving them on Monday— which is absurd ; while your immunity is attended by a decided stimulus to Country letter-writing on Sunday. These difficulties probably suggested the proposal of the City Member and banker, Mr. Masterman, "to abolish the delivery of all letters on Sundays all over the United Kingdom." It would be a more effectual and consistent plan to arrest the whole machinery of the Post-office throughout the United Kingdom, from mid- night of Saturday till Monday morning ; making Sunday lite- rally a "dies non." In such case, the responsibility as well as facilities of the partial Sunday correspondence would cease, and probably the inconvenience would not be greater than the con- venience resulting from the simplicity and distinctness of the plan. It is not correct to say that it would derange the cor- respondence of three days in the week : it would not cause so much complicated derangement as the present plan. Civilly, or Post-officially, Monday would be the tomorrow of Saturday; which it is already in the greater part of business arrangements.