The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-02-05 00:00:00

despatched too early or kept till too late, as we have just seen,
to save having such a mail, although it is clear we want one.
If that correspondence which, now that Liverpool has become
so great a packet station, especially from America and Austra-
lia, is more considerable than ever, must still go by a London
mail, let the hours of that mail be made to suit Lan-
cashire. Such a mail could very well leave London at 5
p.m,, with the letters collected there during the day for Scot-
land, and reach Edinburgh at 5 a.m. Indeed, the express
train that now traverses half the distance, might, as formerly,
traverse the whole, and be connected with the various mail
trains which distribute themselves over Scotland. Now, as to
the mails from the North, we have only one. But such popu-
lous places as Liverpool and Manchester may well claim two.
A second can easily be granted ; what more easy than for the
express train that leaves Edinburgh at 9 25 a.m., and reaches
Liverpool at 5, to bring a bag? I doubt if the commercial
men in the North are fully aware of the needless detention
for hours to which their foreign and colonial letters arriving
here must often be subjected, in Glasgow, if they go
,by the
first mail, in Liverpool, if by the second. But there are other
respects in which Liverpool has not all the advantage to which
it may well be held entitled. Whereas London has ten de-
liveries daily, we have but four. Whereas Liverpool has its
latest delivery at 430 p.m., London has THREE after that
hour. No wonder, then, that a thousand of our merchant
firms cling to the clumsy system of service by high-charged
boxes, nor even that the greatest firms in London do entirely
without them, and would, no doubt, reject an offer of such
a miscalled facility, as a burden and not a boon. How
can the Government expect us to dispense with boxes, and
how can it conceive justice is done to those firms who
have consented to dispense with them, when the number of
deliveries to boxholders is no less than nine daily, but to non-
holders only four ! I refer to the regular deliveries, those of
the ordinary mails; but there is another important advantage
given to the boxholders. No sooner does an American or
Australian mail-packet arrive,—a matter happily of almost
daily occurrence now at our port, though not so in London,—
than a delivery takes place to the boxholders, while the others
must wait till the letter-carriers go their round, which would
be no hardship if, as in London, where deliveries are hourly,
the delay is at the worst very short. I believe lam correct
in stating that the' number of collections at the London
receiving houses is also ten at least. Here they are four
only. The fewness of collections and deliveries will appear
grievous if we remember that, between half-past seven in the
morning and nine at night, there are twenty differently-timed
despatches, and fifteen differently-timed arrivals, of mails.
Whereas the earliest collection at the receiving-houses is at
8 a.m., in London, the earliest here is at about 10 a.m.
Whereas the latest collection there is at 10 p.m., our latest
is at 7.30 p.m. Now let us compare with Edinburgh and
Glasgow. Those cities have their first delivery at 7 and 7.15,
a.m. ; ours is at 8. The latest collection at the receiving-
houses there is at 10, p.m. ; here the latest is at 7.30, as
already stated. Letters posted in any receiving house by 9
o'clock, are delivered in any part of London by -i- past 11,
and so on for every succeeding hour till 5 o'clock. Letters
posted by 6, p.m., are not delivered till between 8 and 9i
same night. That is, a person living at one extremity of the
town or in its outskirts, may feel assured that a letter posted
any time during the day, for a person living -at the opposite
extremity or outskirts, will reach in about two hours, and an
answer be due in about two hours after an immediate posting
of the reply. To prevent the suspicion of this being an
overstrong representation, I have allowed the maximum
time, the close of the letter-carrier's round. In Liverpool,
a person being in Upper Parliament-street posts a letter
before half-past nine, a.m. It is not delivered in town till
between eleven and half past twelve. If he posted it before
a quarter to twelve, it is delivered between balf-past one and
three o'clock. If he post before half-past two, it is delivered
between half-past four and six o'clock. Thus, the time taken
to deliver a letter posted in a receiving house in Liverpool is
about an hour more than that taken in London, where the
work to be done, and the distance to be traversed, are both so
much greater. Now, as to the answer to such a letter : If it
have been posted before half-past nine, the answer is due by
six o'clock, that is, in eight hours ; whereas, in London, an
answer is due after about five hours. But what is worse, you
cannot count on an answer the same day to a letter posted
after breakfast time; whereas in London, a letter posted any-
where by three o'clock, is entitled to an answer in due course
the same night. It must be evident that what is possible in
the way of speedy and frequent deliveries in so large a city as
London, must be as easy, or rather, much more easy, in the
comparatively limited area of Liverpool. Nor can it be fairly
alleged that the correspondence which passes through the
receiving houses of London, for distribution within London
itself, is so important as to justify ten deliveries, but that the
like " intramural" correspondence of Liverpool is so unim-
portant as to deserve only four. If there be ground for such an
apology, I blame the Post-office itself. The excuse is virtually
a confession that by omitting facilities it has stunted the growth
of a branch of business which it ought to have fostered and fed,
by affording such ample accommodation to meet the natural
wants of the public, as any private individual or company, if
favoured with a lease of the postoffice, would have felt it a
matter both of duty and interest to supply, and when sup-
plied, make known, till it should be thoroughly availed of.
Thousands of letters are sent by special messengers, and
thousands are left unwritten for want of adequate frequency
and promptitude of deliveries. Depend on it the trade might
be made a paying one. See the resolute manner in which,
for a price -no more or little more than that of the postage
penny, our newspaper proprietors furnish sheets of news, and
also deliver not later than eight o'clock. I use the
very words of one of their advertisements :—" At or
before -eight o'clock every morning in Liverpool, and within
four miles from the Exchange and four miles from Wood-
side Ferry. We can promise this confidently, for the en-
gagement is under a penalty." (Hear, hear.) This matter
of early delivery has hitherto been neglected—to say nothing
of business convenience. Much domestic happiness de-
pends on it. Why should the toiling man of business be de-
prived of receiving his private letters, in the bosom of his
family, before he leaves home for the day ? That is one illus-
tration among many of the advantages and pleasure which we
lose in consequence of the present grievous tardiness. I should
think there are few men, indeed, in this community so fa-
vourably situated that they can wait till the postman's cheerful
knock, and yet reach their offices in what they, or those who
employ them, reckon good time. As to a later collection
from the receiving-houses, I, for one, find the inconvenience
of the recent alteration, which closes them at half-past seven
instead of nine as formerly. Now-a-days, when evening at-
tendance at places of business is nearly at an end, these re-
ceiving-houses have acquired a social import and an im-
portance that did not belong to them in the bad old times
when merchants and their clerks loitered down town till nine
or ten o'clock at night, after simmering away the forenoon
and afternoon in such intermittent half-employedness, as
to have plenty of leisure for throwing off their private let-
ters, in the intervals, by the dozen, if they had chosen. But
choose they would not then, either in the counting-house
or at home; for the penny postage had not yet been intro-
duced, which has so greatly and so happily increased the
means and the occasions for letters of the class I refer to. I
hope that these great boons can be conferred on the public
without increasing the toils of the letter-carriers, who come to
their work quite early enough already, at half-past five in the
morning. An earlier delivery can easily be accomplished by
enlarging the staff, a change which would be generally bene-
ficial, as it would facilitate an increase of the number of de-
liveries, as well as the bringing the time taken to perform
them within the London standard of an hour for each de-
livery. These subjects have already been represented to the
Postmaster-General by the Council. I hope, notwithstanding
the silence of the present report respecting them, they will be
again urged, and continue to be urged till success crown your
efforts.
Mr. BUSHELL seconded the motion, which, after a few words
from Mr. Reed, was adopted.
The CHAIRMAN then moved that the thanks of the Cham-
ber be voted to the Members of Parliament for South Lanca-
shire, and for the borough of Liverpool, for the valuable aid
they had afforded in forwarding the views of the Chamber.
The motion was carried by acclamation.
On the motion of Mr. LAMONT, a vote of thanks to the
Chairman was carried by acclamation, and the meeting sepa-
rated.
The scrutineers afterwards declared the following gentle-
men to be elected : namely, Messrs. T. B. Forwoed, W. J.
Lamport, F. A. Hamilton, C. Bushell, and T. H. Holderness.