The Express.
London, England, 1853-05-25 00:00:00

COMMUNICATION WITH AUSTRALIA.

The arrangements respecting the Australian home-
ward mails (writes a correspondent) are more unsatisfactory
at the present time than those regarding the outward ones.
Before the steam-packet communication with Australia was
established last year, the whale of the correspondence
mailed in Australia used to be sent home by the first sailing
'hip that left for England. Al soon as the Australian post-
masters, however, found a mail steam communication esta-
blished with the mother country, they abstained from send-
ing the g 1 correspondence by sailing ships, and the
consequence has been that we have been chicity dependent
for our correspondence from Australia during the last
twelvemonth to the single voyage which each of the five
following steamers have made from Australia, viz., the
Cbuaan, Formosa, Australian, Sydney, and Great Britain,
but more particularly to the Australian and Sydney, the
only two packets of the Australian Mail Packet Company
which have as yet made homeward voyages. Numerous
wining ships have made rapid trips from the various Aus-
tralian ports, but they have brought home very few letters,
because they were only entrusted with the correspondence
that was specially addressed by them. It appears that the
I Melbourne mail steamer left Port Phillip on the 6th of
February last, and the Sarah Sands on the 10th of the
same month. Now, as the Melbourne was the regular
mail steamer, and the Sarah Sands a private steamer, there
is not the slightest doubt but what the former has a very
large =silo and the latter a very small one, so that we
shall have to wait for, most probably, the slowest steamer
before we get our letters. The sailing ship Altriveda,
which a day or two since arrived at Plymouth, left Port
Phillip several days after the Melbourne and Sarah Sands,
and has brought very few letters. The fact is, since the
establishment of a steam packet communication with Aus-
tralia, now nearly a twelvemonth since, we in England
have been much worse off, as far as regards the receipt of
Australian correspondence, than if there had been no such

communication established, because we can get no letters by
the smiling ships, many of which make better homeward'
passages than tke steamers. A very important question
now arises—What provision have the government made for
the homeward mails from Australia now the mail packet
company have lost their contract? The government is''
about to give a thousand pounds once every two months to
some ship to take out an Australian mail, aad the Oriental
Company will convey one out also once in two months; but
how are the mails to be brought home? Will tte Austra-
lian postmasters only send home the ordinaty correspond-
ence by the Oriental Company's rennin, which leave Aus-
tralia every two months, or will they be instructed
to send mails by every ship that leaves their ports?
If tho latter is to be the case, it would be important to
know when such an arrangement into come into operation.
The news of the loss of the mail contract by the Australian
Packet Company cannot be known in the gold colonies for
some time to come, and it will he months before we shall
get the bulk of correspondence mailed in Australia every
time a sailing vessel arrives home. Nothing could be more
disastrous than the egregious talky** and blundering that
have attended the attempts to effect a mail communication
from Australia. To the trading interests of this country
the failures have been most discouraging and ruinous,
and to the thousands whose friends have emigrated such
blunders have been cruelly disheartening. The govern-
ment that we have had for the lost *even years ought to be
held responsible tor the disasters or our Australian mail
services. For year. they were entreated to establish a
steam communication with Australir, nod had they done
so in the first place it would have been in good working
order by this time, and would not have failed so
miserab v just as the colony and its stews became invested
with importacce and interest.

CIIICORY IY COFFEE.—It appears from a parlia-
mentary document just printed that since the 25th of
February ticre ha•e been I,Stii insprctions of coffee, out
of which 91 prosecutions tiok place, and In other pro-
ceedin3s,