The Sun.
London, England, 1838-12-26 00:00:00

POST-OFFICE REDUCTIONS.

Amongst other arrangements for affording increased fa-
ciltiies to commerce through the means of the Post-office,
some reductions in the rates of postage, according to a cer-
tain scale, have been conceded upon letters and packets,
containing patterns or samples of goods ; on British plan-
tation accounts, and on deeds from the colonies and foreign
parts ; and on books, pamphlets, other printed papers, &c.,
arriving from the'colonies or foreign countries, subject to
regulations for preventing the clandestine despatch of letters
in such packets, which are to be opened at the Post-
office if in town, or if in the country in the presence of the
postmaster or one of his clerks, in default of which no
relief from the former rates of postage is to be allowed, and
letters found so inclosed will be subject to the charge of
full postage. So far as they go these regulations must be
regarded as substantial improvements, and an acceptable
release to all interested from burdensome charges and other
inconveniences of the old system ; it is therefore the more
to be regretted that such improvements should only be
carried into effect by halves when once resolved upon and
the principle or expediency admitted ; for it will be ob-
served that the relief is limited to letters, packets, and
parcels arriving from other parts only, to the apparent al-
though not formally expressed exclusion of similar articles
despatched from hence to the same countries, so far as the
Post-office here is concerned, for in the case stated it can-
not and does not pretend to interfere further than as re-
lates to British postage. It is sufficiently obvious that,
to select the one example only, the option of despatch-
ing patterns or samples of goods to the colonies or
foreign countries at an easier rate of postage must be quite
as advantageous to the merchant or manufacturer as that of
receiving them now conceded, and the wonder is that so
simple a fact should not have been apparent to the Post-
office authorities in the first instance. It is a matter of
not unfrequent occurrence that by the previous despatch of
patterns and samples, and their inspection in the foreign
market on receipt, goods and commodities forwarded in bulk
on venture, are disposed of long previous to arrival out,
which but for the prior exhibition of the samples so sent,
might have lost the market when a demand existed at the
precise moment, and which, through the delay of wait-
ing for the goods in bulk by a slow sea voyage, might be
otherwise supplied and a glut created by other arrivals of
the like commodities in the meantime ; so also orders are
frequently obtained by patterns despatched abroad and
there approved, in much the same way as practised among
wholesale drapers, by post and through travellers with their
books of patterns among country shopkeepers.
As it was not unreasonable to suppose that the distinc-
tion seemingly drawn could not seriously be contemplated,
but might be referable to some oversight or obscurity in
the wording of the regulations themselves, applications
have been made to the Post-office by parties in the city to
ascertain whether they did not refer to the transmission
" outward" of packets and letters made up as required,as well
as to those " homeward," and the reply was, that they applied
only to the latter. So the matter rests at present.

DECAY OF THE STOCKING TRADE.

(We copy this speech from the Manchester Times, which

was merely mentioned in our Saturday's report.)
Mr. W. RAWSON rose to correct an error into which
Mr. Cobden had fallen, in stating the proportion of the
cotton hosiery yarn spun by the people of Saxony. His
statement might indeed be correct as to the period, which
was but recent, when he was in the country. But he could
not tell what a day would bring forth, for a Saxon gentle-
man had told him a few days ago, that they were now
spinning nearly all their hosiery yarn. He was himself a
sufferer from this turn of affairs, and a gentleman had told
him at the conclusion of the last week's meeting, that a
sufferer was not a guod judge in his own case. Now he
thought that the bare fact that suffering existed was a sure
proof of the reality of the evils of which they complained.
From 1815 till 1820 he had been engaged in furnishing the
Saxon market with cotton hosiery when they were
obliged to yield in the battle of competition.
From 1820 to 1833 they had struggled on, but at the
latter period they had lost all the South American conti-
nent in every article of cotton hosiery made by the Saxons.
In fact they could not stand before Saxony a single mo-
ment after she had entered the field of competition. In
consequence of our long wools they had not much inter-
fered with the Leicester manufacture, which consisted of
worsted and woollen hosiery. But Mr. Smith, in his late
visit to Leicester, was informed that woollen and worsted
yarns had been purchased there, by the Saxons, suffi-
to employ 10,000 stocking-makers for a year. He
believed he could not be contradicted when he asserted,
in reference to our cotton hosiery, that not an article in
that line had been sold, during the last three years, from
one extremity of South America to the other, at a loss of less
than 30 per cent. From 1834 Saxony had, in this depart-
ment, commanded every market in the world. It; as we
had seen, they could beat us in our own market, after
paying the importation duty of 25 per cent., it was evi-
dent we eould not have the slightest chance when we met
then on common ground. After what he had seen last
week of Saxon manufactures, and comparing them with
what they were in 1814, he felt like a person awakening
from a feverish dream. They could sell us goods of equal
quality to ours at little more than half our price. He had
given orders for a lot of goods from their market, which he
would have at the proportion of 35.3 d. to ss. duty paid. They
were a kind of goods on which about 80 per cent. of the
Whole value was expended in labour ; and it was cheap
labour arising from the cheapness of food, that caused
thie, to us, alarming difference in price. In the hosiery
trade, with which he was connected, this element ope-
ratel to a greater extent than in many others, but he
and others in that trade, were only a little in advance
of the rest in the road to ruin. They might be com-
pared to persons living in a valley, in which an alarm-
ing flood was rising. The inhabitants of the table lands
around were sceptical as to the progress of the flood, so
long as it did not threaten immediately to invade their
own dwellings. Unfortunately for them, they lived far
in the valley, but he would tell those who might think
themselves secure, that the rising tide would soon reach
them also. This overwhelming tide of foreign competi-
tion would continue to advance so long as the cheap food
of
lfaohreoiogrn.ersletawabolueldd taheetmuntiloylhvoerkheatttehralffntrh ethmoney n price
of
turers of Nottingham, engaged in foreign trade, to throw
their machinery into the Trent than to employ it while they
laboured under their present disadvantages. But it required
a great deal of moral courageonly
the
to
advancetake such
guard, a stepo:d theas that.
They were, however, evil,
if not determinedly met, would speedily overwhelm them
all. With all due deference to the merchants of Man,
chester, he thought the thundering of their labouring wains,
incessantly pushing through their streets to convey the pro-
duce of their spindles to the looms and workshops of the
foreign manufacturer, seemed as if destined to apt 44 a
understood, After tho
oc3otnotninnudainl
gnfioanetitsowr,hineoht
htnod be understood,
brought before them, to
talk of any thing less than coMplete abolition would be a
mockery to the branch of manufacture in which he was
engaged, and a false beacon of delusion to those in other
I
d- p eo
lo 4
inghns who 01 indulge in 1415 e
conf

---tertatned 4 party yes,
George Wombwell
tordl‘ajyr:

We are happy in being enabled to state, that the
turnout of the bricklayers in this town is now at an end.
After a five or a six weeks' struggle,
the workmen have
wisely abandoned their claims, and have gone to work at
their original wages. It will be well for them if, In many
instances, their places are not already filled with new hands;
or by strangers, who have been
induced to come here in
consequence of the local differences, This ever has been
and over will be, the result of a struggle such as has cha-
raoteriled the tnrn-ont,—Liverpool Standard,