Lord Stanley of Alderley does not seem to have benefited
much by the retirement of Sir Rowland Hill. The merchants of London want the present system of despatching the India mails changed for a weekly mail, leaving on a fixed day in the week, and it appears from a reply given by Mr. Frederick Peel on Monday
that the arrangement can be effected. As, however, it must be extended to China and Australia, it will cost about 35,0301. a year, and the department proposes -to reimburse itself by raising the postage via Southampton from sixpence to a shilling, and via Marseilles from tenpence to sixteenpence. The proposition is monstrous. The way to increase postal receipts is to reduce charges, not increase them, and the addition proposed would in- volve an unknown amount of oppression. There are thousands of families in India and China, hundreds of thousands in Australia, in which even the present rates are felt as burdensome, and to double them would reduce their communications one-half. Reduce the Marseilles rate to sixpence, and the Southampton rate to four pence, and the Postmaster-General would soon find that the improvement had cost him nothing.
