The Sun.
London, England, 1837-12-02 00:00:00

is best attention to the details of the measure, and if he could
afford any assistance in the further progress of the Bill, he would
do so with the greatest possible pleasure.—(Cheers.)
After a few words from General JoHNsoa and Mr. J. Yousic,
Lord J. RUSSELL was very glad his proposition had been so
fairly received. It was his intention to propose the second reading
before the holidays, as he did not anticipate that on the second
reading there would be any difference of opinion, and he hoped to
be able to go into Committee rather early in February. With re-
spect to what had fallen from the Hon. and Learned Gentleman
( Sir E. Sugden), he would not enter upon the questions referred
to ; he would merely say, that he considered that if there was no
law of settlement, they must either have unions established simul-
taneously, or make some provision for the unions first established,
until the others were established. This was a point well worthy of
the consideration of the House, and, he must add, of the Govern-
ment and the Commissioners.
Mr. F. SHAW inquired whether there had been any provisions
made for establishing the unions simultaneously.
Lord J. RUSSELL said no provision had been made.
Mr. D. ROCHE hoped that the Hon. Member for Monaghan
(Mr. Lucas) would persist in the motion of which he had given
notice when the Bill came forward, as, if there was not a law of
settlement, the Bill would have an injurious effect on the state of
society in Ireland.
Leave was then given to bring in the Bill, and Lord John Rus-
sell and Lord Morpeth were ordered to bring it in.
POST-OFFICE RETURNS.
Mr. WALLACE rose to call the attention of the House to the
most extraordinary document that had ever been laid before them.
From a return laid before the House, it appeared that in a period
of eight years no less a sum than 640,0001. had been abstracted
from letters in their progress through the Post-office. He saw by
the newspapers of that day that it had been stated by the Post-
master-General in the House of Lords, that of this sum 400,000/.
had been restored to the individuals from whom it was taken. He
was very much astonished at the statement that this money had
pot been abstracted, as he could not comprehend how it could have
been restored unless it was first abstracted. He did not know how
this money could have been abstracted without a violation of seals.
It was a general practice in the country post-offices to break the
seals of letters and read their contents ; but he believed the prac-
tice of opening letters was carried on to a greater extent in
Glasgow than any where else. The Honourable Gentleman
referred to two cases in which parties had put money-let-
ters into the Glasgow Post-office, which letters had never
reached their destination. A good system existed in Ire-
land in 1821 ; but it had been put down when the Irish and
Scotch offices were united with that of England. They had in
Ireland at that time an excellent system of registry, which, while it
saved 20,0001. a-year, cost only 1001. He hoped that her Majesty's
Government would take up the subject in one way or other. It
was not to be endured that the Post-office should have a monopoly
of the carriage of the country, that there should be a penalty upon
using any other mode of carriage, and yet that they should not be
bound to make up losses. The Hon. Member complained that
whilst Ireland and the north of England hid now the benefit of the
Irish express by the railroad, Scotland was still deprived of that
advantage. There was another matter of which he had to com-
plain. At his instigation the Post-office had consented to send two
mails daily to Glasgow and Edinburgh. They had certainly done
so, but they had sent a mail-bag by only one of them, not a single
letter or paper being taken by the other mail to Scotland. He
considered this a complete breach of faith. He hoped that it would
be enough to draw the attention of the Government to these facts
to insure immediate redress. If not, he would certainly move for
leave to bring in a Bill to regulate a system of registration of all
leVers carrying money. The Hon. Member sat down.
The SPEAKER—Do you move anything?
Mr. WALLACE moved for leave to bring in a Bill for the re-
gistration of letters.
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER said, the Hon.
Member seemed to suppose that this sum, 600,0007., represented
the amount abstracted from the Post-office. Now he would show
that the return bore no such meaning. He would first ask of any
mercantile gentleman present whether, as a matter of common
sense, he believed it possible that 600,000/. could have been ab-
stracted from the correspondence of the country without raising
such a clamour on the part of the trading interest of the country
as to induce them to complain of the grievance, and not leave it
entirely in the hands of the Hon. Member for Greenock. Would
they not have heard of it before through the representatives of
Manchester, of Bristol, of Liverpool, and of every other com-
mercial town in the country, which must have felt its inte-
rests deeply affected by such proceedings? It was, there-
fore, unlikely that the conclusion come to by the Honourable
Member should be a correct conclusion. But not only was
it not likely, but it was impossible. This 600,0007. was not a re-
turn of the amount of money lost ; it arose in this sample way.
Suppose a person expected a letter containing money, and the let-
ter was delayed in consequence of some accident one or two days ;
under these circumstances he makes an appeal to the Post-office,
and the appeal is registered, showing the amount of money thus
detained. But it did not by any means follow that the money
should be lost, and the party receiving it did not always inform
the Post-office of the fact. There was also another case which
was not impossible, namely, parties sending their servants to put
money-letters in the Post-office, which letters might never have
been posted. The House must not, therefore, in looking at these
returns, suppose that the sum of 600,000/. in any way represented
the amount of money actually lost. He was not prepared to deny
that a considerable sum of money was lost in its passage through
the Post-office ; but that was a circumstance which could never be
wholly prevented. Willi respect to the transmission of money in
letters, he believed that in nine cases out of ten, unless an addi-
tional envelope was put upon the letter, the money was so care-
lessly put in that it would fall Olt. He did not wish to deny that
an evil existed in the present system, to which he should be
anxious at the first opportunity to apply a practical and
efficient remedy. He thought, however, that nothing could
be done with any approach to success in this matter until
a system for the registration of letters had been adopted.
By this means the safe delivery of every letter would be en-
sured, though of course the same responsibility could hardly be
attached to any alleged or supposed contents of it. With respect
to the proposal for establishing day mails, he had only one word
to say. It must be evident that if this proposition were adopted,
the mails would be arriving in London at different times of the day
instead of at one general and fixed hour. Now, it was only within
these few days that he had been complained to of the irregularity
of the arrival of certain letters from Liverpool and elsewhere, and
a desire expressed that the period of the arrival of letters should
be well understood and permanent. His own opinion certainly was,
that it was far preferable that the letters should arrive at one fixed
hour from all parts of the country, and as at present, than that
there should be one hour for the Liverpool letters, another for
those from Glasgow, another for the foreign letters, another for the
Edinburgh, and so forth.—( Hear, hear.) In conclusion, he
had only to say, that he hoped, at no very remote period, to
introduce a measure for the registration of letters at the
Post-office upon the principle he had already stated.—( ear. )
Mr. HUME thought that as the Right Hon. Gentleman threw
some doubts upon the accuracy of the supposed losses to the public,
as manifested in this return, the Post-office should be at some pains
to ascertain whether those returns were correct or not. He thought
also that it was high time that the public, having only this one
means !or the conveyance of their letters at their disposal, should
enjoy something like security as respected their letters and the
contents of them. There was the case of 71. 10s. sealed up in a
letter before the Postmaster, and treble postage paid, and yet the
letter was lost ; and when the Postmaster-General was applied to,
he wrote a letter saving that " He was not aware of any law which
rendered the Post-office liable for any losses by reason of a letter's
not reaching its destination." Now he maintained that the Post
master- General who could write such a letter as that should not
be suffered to remain in his situation, and that the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, if he sanctioned such conduct, ought not to remain in his.
The public were prevented by penalties from sending letters by
any other means of conveyance than that of the General Post-
office, and in return for this valuable monopoly he did maintain that
the Post-office owed the public something like security in the con-
veyance of their letters. There ought to be responsibility some-
where. Before he sat down he begged to ask a question of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer. Two years ago the Chancellor of
the Exchequer pointed out, in a most able manner, the abuses of
the present system of Post-office management, and said that things
aught not to remain as they were. The Right Hon. Gentleman
at the same time brought in a Bill to reform these evils ; but when
that Bill arrived in the House of Lords, the nobleman who had
been Postmaster-General under all these abuses caused the Bill to
be turned out, and then laughed at the Government and this house
for the trouble they had been at for nothing. Now, he begged to
ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether it was his intention
to bring in, and to pass into a law, the Bill which he had formerly
introduced on this subject ?
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER said that it was
quite true that, in conformity with the recommendations of the
Commission of Inquiry into the affairs of the Post-office, he had
introduced a Bill for the reform of that department, two sessions
ago. At that time he certainly did state that he could not approve
of the present system of Post-office management ; but at the same
time he said so without at all impugning the conduct of the Duke
of Richmond, or of his successor, the Earl of Lichfield. On the
contrary, he bore testimony to the zealous efforts of those two no-
blemen to contend against the radical defects of the system under
which they had to aet ; and the conclusion which he then drew
was, that if after all that had been done by them there were still
defects at the Post-office, there was the greater necessity for a com-
plete reform. He had succeeded in carrying that Bill through that
House, but he could not be held responsible for its fate in the other
House. He had only to add on this subject that nothing but
the early termination of the last Session had prevented him from
again introducing a Bill on this subject, and that he certainly pro-
• posed to do so in the present Session.—( Hear. ) With respect to
the letter which the Postmaster-General had written in reference
to a letter containing money which had miscarried, and upon which
the Hon. Member for Kilkenny had commented by declaring that
the man who had written such a letter should not remain in his
situation, he begged to submit that, however such a circumstance
might be received as an additional argument for a reform in the
present system, yet, as long as the present system remained unal-
tered, by Act of Parliament, the Postmaster-General had given a
perfectly correct statement of the law of the case, and in his opi-
nion, therefore, it was the only letter which could have been written
by the Postmaster-General on the subject.
Mr. HUME explained.
Sir G. STRICKLAND thanked the Honourable Gentleman
who had brought forward this motion for his exertions in a matter
of so much public interest. It was highly necessary that a system
of increased security and vigilance should be introduced without
delay into the Post-office department. He was glad to hear that
the Chancellor of the Exchequer intended to take a step towards
this by introducing a Bill for the Registration of Letters.
Mr. G. F. YOUNG believed with the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer that the merchants and bankers of the metropolis would
not be in favour of any alteration in the conveyance of letters which
should subject them to deliveries at different periods of the day
instead of at one fixed and uniform hour.
Mr. LABOUCHERE,after declaring his belief that most of the
charges against the Post-office which had been made this evening
were extravagant and unfounded, admitted that with respect to the
alleged insecurity of letters, the security at present enjoyed was not
such as the public had a right to look for from a public department,
and he believed that the best remedy which could be applied to this
evil was that of a registration of letters as proposed by his Right
Hon. Friend. Such a registration, he thought, could be very
easily carried into operation as far as the security of the letter was
concerned, but as to the contents of it, that he thought could
hardly be attempted to be ensured, as it would be impossible
to examine every letter in the midst of the hurry of business
at a place like the Post-office. Registration was already to a
certain extent carried on at the twopenny post-office when-
ever the letter contained money or otherwise, on the demand
of the party, and the success of the practice was such, that out of
100,000 letters so registered, there had been only two lost. With
respect to remittances, he was not prepared to advise that the Post-
office should generally undertake the banking business of the coun-
try ; but at the same time he had doubts whether it would not be
a • eat convenience to the poorer classes to insure the conveyance
•;'' a small sums.
LLACE, after a few words in reply, withdrew his
,„r; POOR-LAW (IRELAND) BILL.
111152.r1/41se as brought up by Lord John Russell, read a first
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