The Sun.
London, England, 1867-02-26 00:00:00

Ocean Penny Postage.

The following letter has been forwarded to us by
Gerard Ralston, Esq., Consul-General of the Re-
public of Liberia, who, we are truly glad to see,
moving in this most important matter :
Sir,--It is of the utmost importance that the In-
ternational postage between England and America
should be reduced.

It is now £3,584 per ton, whilst merchandise can
be carried for £3 or £4 per ton by any or all of the
20 steamers which plied between the two countries
in the month of December last.
Why should there not be a daily mail (excluding
Sundays) per month ?
At a penny per half ounce letters the charge will
be nearly £3OO per ton.
Let the present domestic postage of the British
Isles be continued at ld. per half ounce.
Let the ocean postage be ld. per half ounce, and
let the American domestic postage be ld. per half
ounce.

This will make 3d. per half ounce from London
to San Francisco, whilst the present charge is 12d.

A threepenny rate must not be considered unrea-
sonably low, when it is known how much more
cheaply a steamer of 1,500 or 2,000 tons can carry
freight than a railway train, and also when it is
known that letters across the North American con-
tinent are carried chiefly by horse conveyance
instead of railways. If the British Post-office make
a clear revenue of two millions sterling, principally
out of letters under half an ounce, and if the Ame-
rican Post-office receives back nearly its outlay from
a three cents postage on half ounce letters, although
carried 4,000 miles from New York to the Pacific
Ocean, principally through an inhabited country,
what immense revenue might not be expected from
the one penny ocean rate ? Reduce the present
Bkd. rate to Id. across ocean (the cheapest convey-
ance in the world), and instead of the paltry eight
millions (more or less) now passing from shore to
shore, there will be scores of millions of increase
of letters through the post offices of England and
America. Before the French postage was reduced
there were about ten millions carried through
France ; now, in 1866, there are 500,000,000 ! So
in England before the reduction there were
76,000,000, now there are 750,000,000 ! In the
United States the fact is equally remarkable. So if
you reduce the rate from Is. to 3d., you will soon
have the gigantic proportions of the present
domestic English service. I know an English
merchant who sends 12 light letters to New York
or Boston under the envelope for ls. postage,
whilst if the postage was reduced to 3d. he would
send each individual letter under one envelope, and
thus the post-office would receive 36 pence instead
of 12 pence now obtained. It will be perfectly safe
to entrust the mail bags to the 29 respectable
e
captains of the steamers now plying between the
British and American shores, and pay them a
moderate compensation instead of continuing to pay
tnc. The American
to ier
li:cnagnla
Post-office
os
fora small
now
com-
pensation. richly-endowed Cunard steamers the heavy rate
of gi pe e
and back
em-
ploys the immense fleet of the Inman line and the
Bremen and Hamburg lines to carry the mail bags America
The service is perfectly well
Add such of the well-conditioned t s eamers men-
tioned above, and have a daily mail between
the
two countries, and both will be benefited to the
greatest degree. Adopt the Ocean Id, postage,
and all the continental letters will go through the
English Post-office instead of goi •ng through the
French Post-office.

It is not wise for a Government to insist on
surplus revenue from. the Post-office. If it gets
back its expenses, it ought to be satisfied. Nothing
promotes commercial and international relations so
much as cheap postage. It may be considered the
greatest economical blessing that can be conferred
on nations. If it be considered that Id. per ounce
be too low, let it be ld. per ounce (the French
weight for the postage), or £6OO per ton. This is
a compromise that will satisfy the public, for it IS