The Sun.
London, England, 1838-02-09 00:00:00

An HON. MEMBER, whose name we could not learn, stated
that in a village within seven tulles of London, persons did
not receive the letters which were put into the Post-office for
them at half-past four in the afternoon in London till one
o'clock the next day ; a person, therefore, who was living
at Southampton, was in a better situation with respect to re-
ceiving his letters, than the inhabitants of that village. The
Commission had recommended an alteration in the threepenny
post delivery. He thought that eight months was an unne-
cessary length of time for carrying so obvious an improvement
into effect.
Mr. F. BARING said that the Commissioners did not ac-
tually recommend that an alteration of the system should be
immediately adopted, with respect to the threepenny-post in
the neighbourhood of London, but that an inquiry should be
made with a view to a better management being effected, and
the Government were now attempting to establish a better
system.
Mr. WALLACE would not long occupy the time of the
House in replying to the statements which had been made ;
but he must make one or two observations on the re-
marks of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the con-
tracts for the packet service. In 1836 the St. George Steam-
packet Company offered to carry the mails to Ireland for no-
thing; but what did the Government do? They refused this
offer, but allowed in the same year an Act to be passed by
Parliament limiting the liability of the Company. This was
done under the plea of assisting the inland navigation of Ire-
land ; but 200,000/. having been raised in consequence of that
Act, the Company, instead of applying themselves to the in-
land navigation; set to work to build boats purposely to beat
the Post-office, or rather, at that time, the Admiralty packets.
The Admiralty continued their old boats, and the consequence
was, that the St. George's Company, having completely out-
sailed them, run them out of sight, and carried away all the
custom, now turned round and did what every other trading com-
pany would have done under similar circumstances—they de-
manded 34,000/. to contract for doing what, before their new
boats were built, they would have gladly undertaken for nothing.
The great boon held out by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the
reduction of the fourpenny postage to twopence, was not recom-
mended by the Post-office Commissioners, but was introduced by
thQ Right Hon. Gentleman on his own responsibility. It
was true that a Committee had been appointed on his (Mr.
Wallace's) own motion, and was still sitting ; but three weeks
afterwards, and before any report had been made. the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer had given notice of his Bill. if the
whole subject of the Post-office were to be left to the inquiry
of the Committee, he had no objection to make ; but he
hoped that in the meantime no attempt would be made by
the Right Honourable Gentleman to give effect to his two-
penny proceeding.—(Laughter.) Having elicited that dis-
cussion, he would beg the leave of the House to withdraw his
motion.

Mr. H LIME, in reference to the charges on petitions, said
that the one that he had presented in the early part of the
evening had come to him yesterdny charged with postage; it
had been marked " Refused" at his house, and had then been
sent down to the House of Commons that day; a whole day
had been thus lost, and much trouble given. He thought
that the Post-office should determine at once to charge all pe-
titions weighing above six ounces, or to remit the amount.
He must, say, however, that he had never known an instance
of a charge for a petition in which the money paid was not
returned on the circumstances being made known to the Post-
office authorities.
Sir GEORGE SINCLAIR corroterated the statment of
the Hon. Member for Kilkenny, that in every instance the
money charged on petitions had been returned.
The motion was then, by leave, withdrawn.
DAY MAIL TO SCOTLAND.

Mr. WALLACE again rose to comment on another peti-
tion which he had presented from the constituents of the Right
Hon. Gentleman then in the chair. He thought that the great
constituencies of Edinburgh and Glasgow had been hardly
dealt with in not having a day mail, when Dublin, Manches-
ter, Birmingham, and other places, had been allowed the
benefit arising from this recommendation of the Post office
Commissioners. But these Commissioners had also recom-
mended that Edinburgh and Glasgow should be included in
the arrangement. He had been assured that the day mail to
Dublin had been established at the request of the Irish Go-
vernment. To this he had no objection ; but if the Irish Gu-
vernment had the power of controlling the Post-office authori-
ties, and of preventing the extension of a similar advantage to
other parts of the kingdom, he did most seriously complain.
He must insist that many of the recommendations of the Post-
office Commissioners had not been complied with, and one—
the most necessary of any to remedy the defects of the pre-
sent system—the recommendation of placing the whole of
the Post-office matters in the hands of Commissioners, had
been, if not entirely overlooked, at least disregarded. The
change had been recommended in the report of July, 1835 ;
but the report had not been circulated till 1836: how it had
been kept back, or by whom, he did not know ; still it was not
delivered. In February, 1836, the Chancellor of the Exche-
quer had been asked whether he intended to carry into effect
this recommendation? His answer was, that he intended to
introduce a measure founded upon the report. It was not,
however, till nearly the end of the session, the Bth of July,
that a Bill was introduced ; it then passed through several
stages in that House, and reached the other House on the 4th
of August, and was on the 12th of August thrown out of the
House of Lords, because there was not sufficient time at that
late period of the session to give due consideration to so im-
portant a subject. Thus, although the Bill was promised in
February, it was not begun till the Bth of July—one month
only before the end of the session—and did not reach the
Lords till within the last six days, and this was all the time
which was afforded for deliberation on this great alteration.
He feared that it was the amount of patronage at the disposal
of the Government which they were most unwilling to part
with, and which rendered them careless of the inconve-
nience experienced by the public. In 1837 they were pro-
mised that the Bill should be reintroduced. They all knew
that the death of the Sovereign caused an abrupt termination
of the session ; still more than two months of the present ses-
sion had already elapsed, and the Bill had not yet been repro-
duced. He did not see why a preference should be given to
the northern parts of England and to Dublin over Scotland,
and he thought that, in justice to the manufacturers of that
country, they ought to have equal facilities in the receipt of
their foreign correspondence. There were other general mea-
sures recommended by the Commissioners which had not been
adopted. He should, however, conclude with moving for
some returns which would show the real state of the case, and
bring the whole question fairly before the House and the coun-
try. But he could not help adverting specifically to one great
advantage which the Sunday mail possessed : it took down
into the country the whole of the correspondence which came
up on the Saturday night, and if the mail were granted to
Edinburgh, the Saturday's letters would reach that city
thirty-six hours before the present time. If a day mail were
established the constituencies of Scotland would be able to
read the debate of that night—if it were worth reading—
( Hear, hear, hear, and laughter)—twelve hours sooner than
they could by the present arrangement. He recommended
also, that instead of starting an additional mail-coach to
carry the morning mail, the effect of which was to cheat
the turnpike trusts of the tolls, they should employ the regular
coaches, of which many were constantly running to Birming-
ham ; and he contended that there was no fear of the loss of
the mail bags by these public conveyances, although they did
carry so many passengers, for he had himself seen a mail-
coach carry seven outside passengers, without danger to the
bags; and it was established last year before a Committee of
that House, that in Ireland, where the bags were forwarded
by public passenger conveyances, very few, if any, robberies
took place. He complained of the limitation of the franking
time in London to 10i- hours, whilst it was 24 hours in the
eountry ; and of the Post-Master General's circular, stating that
the boxes for the reception of letter.; for the morning mail
would be open at the Houses of Parliament till six o'clock in
the morning, when the Houses were shut at that hour ; and
eluded by moving for " A return, in abstract, of the recom-
mendations contained in the ten reports of the Post-office Com-
missioners ; specifying, Ist, what recommendations had been
carried into full effect : 2dly, what recommendations had been
partially adopted; and, idly, what recommendations had not
been acted upon; together, with the date of the report, the
date when the reccommendations were adopted, and the names
of the Commissioners appended to the report."
Mr. HUME, in seconding the motion wished to ask a
question of the Right Hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the
Exchequer. He was satisfied that there was only one mode
of removing the anomalies which at present existed, and the
cause of complaint of the Hon. Member for Greenock, and
that mode was by the adoption of the plan suggested by the
Commissioners, by!changing the Postmaster-General's office.
and allowing it to be executed by Commissioners. He hoped
that no delay would take place upon this subject, and that the
same excuse would not be furnished to the Lords as had been
given in 1836 for rejecting a Bill of so much importance, be
cause it reached them only within a week of the close of the
session. It should be recollected also that our Post-office es-
tablishment annually taxed the public to the amount of two
millions and a half, and cost more than any other similar esta-
blishment. There was, therefore, no excuse for delay, and he
would conclude by asking the Right Hon. Gentleman when
intended to bring in his Bill for carrying into effect the Com-
missioners' recommendations ?
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER did not
rise to object to the motion of the Hon. Member, but he must
express his opinion of the Hon. Member's unfairness in giv-
ing notice of one motion and then bringing forward another.
The Hon. Member had given notice that he should call upon
the House to " consider the petition from Edinburgh, pre-
sented sth February, for establishing a morning mail to Scot-
land." Instead of confining himself to this, he had made a
distinct charge against the Government, and concluded with a
motion for returns of what had been effected towards carrying
out the Commissioners' Reports. Such a course of proceed-
ing was neither fair nor just, and nothing but the disposition
felt by the Government to give every information relative to
the Post-office precluded him from giving a direct negative to
the Hon. Member's proposition.--( Hear, hear.) He hoped
the time would come when that House would not discuss a
subject already referred to a Committee.—( Hear, hear.)
If the House not only exercised, which it ought and was
bound to do, a general superintendence over the administra-
tion as carried on in the different departments of the Govern-
ment, but descended to the inquiry whether a twopenny-post
box should be opened in one place or another, he thought
that they would not only be wasting the public time, but be
also consuming the patience of the House ; and not all the
mails which should convey the records of that discussion would
raise Hon. Members in the opinion of their constituents, or
the general character of that House.—( Hear, hear.) There
was one subject mentioned by the Hon. Member to which he
must specifically refer. The Hon. Member, in showing that
the Government had overlooked the Report of the Commis-
sioners recommending an alteration in the present constitucion
of the Post-office, went logically to work to prove his state-
ment by recapitulating from the votes of that House the steps
which bad been taken by him (the Chancellor of the Exche-

quer) in introducing- a Bill wh:ell had foeglit through t.,iat
House for giving effect to the Commissioners' recommenda-
tions, and which had been lost in another place. How, there-
fore, they could be proved to have overlooked the Report
would require more ingenuity than was possessed by the
Honourable Gentleman —( Hear, hear.) It certainly was
his intention to introduce a Bill on this subject, contain-
ing enactments in the spirit of the alterations recommended
by the members of Commission.—( Hear, hear.) With re
spect, however, to the establishment of a day mail, which
made a most important change in the arrangements of
the Post-office, and which would only be effected by a
great increase of expense, could anything be more rea-
sonable or more just than that they should try an ex-
periment in the first instance in a place where it was
likely to be successful, and that they should wait to see
the result of that experiment before they extended the
plan ? It must be observed also that it was only to a por-
tion of the correspondence that a day mail was likely to
be of any use. Whether letters were received at twelve o'clock
at night or at six o'clock in the morning, was of no earthly
importance—it was only near the extremity of the line, there-
fore, and in the neighbourhood of London, that the day mail
would be of value. If the Hon. Member considered likewise
the entire alteration which was taking place in the country
with regard to the whole system of coach communication, and
the lines of railroad which were being established throughout
the country, he would not, as a man of common sense, wish
that they should enter into changes which would entail enor-
mous charges on the public, till they saw what permanency
would be established. The Western Railway, for instance,
was likely to be completed, and would the Hon. Member wish
the Government to establish a double line of communication?
Many others were in progress ; and with respect to the Bir-
mingham mail, he did not think that they could find contrac-
tors who would do anything for nothing, for the number of
coaches was already so much reduced as to render travelling
very inconvenient at the present moment; and the Post-office
had a difficulty, even after paying double the ordinary contract
price, to find contractors. The full establishment of the day
mail would require the re-modelling of the whole mail esta-
blishment, and he thought that Government was acting more
prudently by not saddling the country at once with an enormous
mass of charges, but by seeing the results of what had been
already done. The Hon. Member for Greenock seemed to
suspect that the Government never consulted the convenience
of the public ; but he must observe that the interest of the
Government was directly the reverse of this, for the more
letters passed through the Post-office the more correspondence
took place ; and the more the public convenience was con-
sulted the more income would it produce and the greater
would be the public revenue.—( Hear, hear.)
Mr. W. D. GILL ON thought that they ought to facilitate
by every means in their power the transmission of letters and
newspapers. The Right Hon. Gentleman had objected to
the expense of establishing daily mails, but he thought that
having sent them to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, and
Ireland, it would not be any great stretch of generosity to ex-
tend them to Scotland The same mail would carry the
Scotch as carried the Birmingham letters. At Warrington
now two snails met and ran together to Carlisle, where they
separated, one going to Edinburgh, the other to Glasgow; by
letting one coach carry both bags to Carlisle, and by making
the second coach meet the day mail, both might be carried
without the addition of a single coach. From Carlisle there
were already two day mails, so that with the same establish-
ment the greatest increase of assistance might be afforded
to the mercantile interests of Scotland. He thought
that his Honourable Friend had been hardly dealt with
when he had been accused of wasting the time of the
House, for he ( Mr. Gillon) considered this a most important
subject. Whether he (Mr. Gillon) should succeed or not in
the motion which he intended to bring forward for the
equalization of the taxation on tile various methods of inter-
nal communication, he must remark on the great absurdity of
charging any duty on carriages carrying the snails, for the
mileage duty was repaid by the public in the shape of an in-
creased rate of contract, and the public were clear losers by
the poundage. Valuable evidence was given before the com-
mittee of last year by Sir Edward Lees that great advantage
had been experienced in Ireland from the establishment of
mails carrying passengers and paying no duty, and no rob-
beries had been effected on these mails, whilst many had been
committed on the single-horse or foot posts. By these means
also posts and conveyances for passengers had been established
on the cross-roads of Ireland, whilst they were very deficient in
all the cross-roads in England and Scotland.—(Hear.)
Sir GEORGE SINCLAIR was of opinion that the esta-
blishment of a day mail would be a great recommendation
to the people of Scotland, and that it might be obtained at
a comparatively trifling expense. He would call the atten-
tion of the House to the present position of the two penny
postmen employed in London. They had recently had some
additional onerous duties imposed upon them, without their
receiving any additional pay.
Mr. F. BARING said that he had no doubt that the esta-
blishment of the day mail would be of great use to Edinburgh,
but it was a matter in which he thought this House would
not interfere. With regard to the wages paid to the two-
penny-post letter-carriers, he was of opinion that the pay
which they received was a sufficient remuneration for their
services, although it was true that their duties had of late
been increased by an arrangement recently made in the Post-
office. At the same time, however, additional hands had been
employed, and means had been adopted by which they would
be entitled eventually to some remuneration : this was by their
becoming entitled on long service, to some extra pay. The
plan bad been adopted by the Treasury, in obedience to a sug-
gestion which he had thrown out ; and a mode of classification
had been taken by which good servants of the longest standing
would be the best paid. With regard to the general question
of increasing the pay of letter-carriers, he was of opinion that
any alteration in the present system was unnecessary.
The ATTORNEY-GENERAL said that he felt that he
ought not to allow this subject to be discussed without expres-
sing a hope that the °fliers of her Majesty's Government,
within whose province the matter lay, would give the subject
their most serious and speedy consideration. He had no-
doubt the establishment of a day mail to Ireland was most
useful ; arid he had no doubt that it was proper that it should
be seen whether the plan with regard to that portion of the
kingdom succeeded before it should be carried into effect with
reference to another portion of the kingdom. It had suc-
ceeded, and why was it not adopted now with regard to Scot-
land ?—( Hear.) The line was already formed to Liverpool,
and the mail might be conveyed on without much additional
expense. Not only Edinburgh but the whole of Scotland was
interested in the matter.

Mr. WALLACE replied, and expressed his satisfaction at
the mode in which the discussion had been carried on.
The motion was then agreed to.
REAL PROPERTY LAW.
The ATTORNEY-GENERAL said, that in rising to
move for leave to bring in several Bills to amend the law as it
at present stood with regard to real property, he should feel
it necessary to occupy the attention of the House only for a
few moments. The Bills which he now proposed to introduce
were substantially the same as those which had been intro-
duced in a former Session, and they were founded on the re-
port of the Real Property Commissioners. The first was a
Bill to facilitate the enfranchisement of lands of copyhold and
customary tenures. He had wished to abolish the tenures
altogether, as he knew they were attended with very great
inconvenience, in producing disputes between the lords of
manors and others, but he was not bold enough to bring in a
measure so sweeping in its provisions. His Bill was there-
fore only to facilitate the enfranchisement of lands. The
second Bill was introduced with a view of remedying some
of the inconveniences with regard to copyhold tenures, such as
holding courts, making surrenders, and with regard to leasing
copyhold lands ; and it was entitled a Bill for the Amendment
of the Law relating to Lands held by Copy or Court-roll.
The third Bill was to authorise the identifying or ascertaining
the boundaries of manors and lands, where such boundaries
were confused or unknown. The limits of manors he knew
were ill-defined, and with a view to their being properly
settled he proposed that referees should be appointed to
ascertain them. The fourth Bill was for abolishing customs
relating to lands in certain cases. He desired that the ge-
neral law should be that of primogeniture, but there were
some cases in which it was proper that the old law should
be continued. In the case of the custom of gavelkind,
which existed in the county of Kent, he did not propose any
alteration. It was, in his opinion, mischievous, for the
effect of it was that in the event of the death of a man with
seven sons and seven daughters, his property would not go
to the eldest son, nor would it be equally divided among his
children, but it would be parted among the seven sons, and his
daughters would not receive anything. The people of Kent,
however, were satisfied with the custom, and it would be
better to allow it to remain. He had wished to abolish
heriots altogether, as well as copyholds, in accordance with
the Bill he had formerly brought before the House ; but he
felt that he could not now extend his proposed measure so far.
The only other subject to which his Bills referred was the
law of escheat. He desired to bring in a Bill which would
very much modify the existing law ; but he did not think that
it was necessary now to go into the particulars of it, but hoped
that the second reading would not be opposed when the Bill
might be referred to a Select Committee of Members ; and
he hoped that those Gentlemen who were connected with the
legal profession would give him their assistance.
Mr. GOULBURN did not oppose the motion of the
Learned Attorney-General; but he was glad to find that he
had omitted in his Bill the Clause which had before been
introduced with regard to compensation for heriots; for he
thought that that could never be persevered in with any
prospect of success. The Learned Attorney-General had
thrown out that it was his intention to call upon those Ho-
nourable Members connected with the legal profession who
were in the House to afford their services on the Select Com-
mittee. Now, with all respect to those Honourable and
Learned Members, he would' suggest that the Committee
should not be entirely formed of such persons, but that some
of those Alemhers of the House who were acquainted with the
subject of manors generally should be also selected ; for he
was of opinion that the legal Gentlemen would suggest merely
those amendments which affected the technical portions of
the law, and which would facilitate the transfer of large
properties, but which would not touch upon the real justice
of the case.
Mr. AG LIONB Y hoped that the Learned Attorney-Ge-
neral would not confine his Bill to defining the limits of
manors only, but that lie would direct his attention also to
lands within manors.—Leave was then given to hr:nrg iu
the Bills.

DUTY ON BRICKS.
Mr. FORBES moved for a return of the amount of duty
paid upon bricks in England, Scotland, and Ireland, respec-
t vely, in each of the last five yeas ending the sth of January,
1838, specifying the number of bricks supplied to each county,
together with a return of the expenses incurred in_ collecting
the duty.
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER said that
for some years past a regular system had been carried on by