Mr. Hunt on Thursday explained the position of the Indian
-mail service, which is most unsatisfactory. The service ends in its present form on 2nd February, after which the Government must -send letters how it can, probably by paying 2d. apiece for each letter to the P. and 0. Company, and abandoning all guarantees for speed and regularity. Tenders have been asked from the P. and O. Company, but that body is greedy, and asks 10s. a mile, a -quarter of a million a year, quite a preposterous price. The Government, therefore, is puzzled, and thinks of offering half the
China and Japan contract to the Messageries ha- prudence—and the rest to the P. and 0. Company. All else fail- ing, it will send the mails in its own transports for a time. It seems by no means impossible that what with the greediness of the
P. and 0., the parsimony of the Indian Treasury, which ought to remember the great increase in soldiers' letters carried for almost :nothing on exclusively Indian service, and the lavishness of the ..French Government, this great line of communication may next year be temporarily disorganized, a state of affairs which will cost "our Asiatic trade more in a month than the whole sum in dispute.
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