The Sun.
London, England, 1860-03-30 00:00:00

FIiIDAY EVENING, MARCH 30, 1860.

it may be expected with entire confidence that the
question of the cession will not be resolved but with
the participation of Switzerland, in accordance with
her, and with a due and honest regard for her in•
terests France certainly will not refuse her friendly
concurrence as a good neighbour towards the at-
tainment of that object.
You are requested to read this note to the Mi-
nister of Foreign Affairs; and to leave a copy with
him.

" Receive, &c.,
" fn the name of the Swiss Federal Council,
" FRET. 1-lErtosE, President of the Confederation
" SCIIIESS, Chancellor or the Confederation."

- - -
TUE GENERAL POST-OFFIOE.

(Concluded from Ike Times of March 29.)

The article in our impression of the 29th on this
subject merely pointed out the deficiencies which
attract notice even from the least observant visitor
to St. Martin's-le-Grand. The cause of them are,
however, less apparent until the whole postal sys-
tem is scrutinised, when we at once see that the
shortcomings which occasionally so puzzle the
public are due entirely to the most anomalous mis-
management. Letter-carrying, our readers must
remember, was made a Government monopoly at a
time when, for State reasons, it was thought ad-
visable that the authorities should have some check
upon private and public correspondence, and when,
in fact, no other machinery existed or could then be
relied on for the transmission of letters safely. Both
these reasons, however, have long since ceased to
have any weight,—first,. because the carriage of
public letters—the newspapers—has passed into
the hands of the news-agents ; and, secondly,: be-
cause the greatest machine of all for rapid com-
munication, the electric telegraph, and also the
railway parcels' post, is entirely in the hands of
private individuals. To these causes_ may be at-
tributed the opinion which has latterly grown up
extensively, that the carriage of letters, like mail
contracts, should be also entrusted to private com-
panies, and that the Government should not wring
a profit larger than the paper duty from their
having a legal monopoly of the means of meeting
the chief daily want of the age. At all events,
there are few who will not agree that when the
profit is so great the service should at least be well-
conducted and made in all things subordinate to
the convenience of the public.
The carriage of newspapers, though not claimed
as an exclusive right by the Legislature, was at
first obtained by extraordinary pecuniary facilities
being granted for their transmission through the
post. Thus, while one scale of charges was adopted
for the private letter, another and a much lower
one was provided for the public or " news-letter,"
as papers were then called. By the carriage of
these latter papers, then, the post-office gradually
ceased to be apolitical organ for giving Government
control over the correspondence of the country, and
assumed its modern aspect of a State machine, for
the rapid and cheap transmission of private letters
and public intelligence. In this state the penny
postage was introduced, at once granting an im-
mense boon to all classes, though it was attended
with some drawbacks, which it may be worth while
now to glance at for an instant Since the penny
postage there has been an immense increase in the
business of the General Post-office, an increase
which daily continues, though there has been no
corresponding extension of the system or ally sim-
plification of arrangements for meeting that extra
duty. The authorities could not evade their direct
responsibility in the matter of letters, but have met
it as best they could, which, as we think has been
already shown, is badly enough. Ne wspapers, how-
ever, were very differently circumstanced from
letters. Latterly, they have always been looked
on with a disfavour that has steadily increased,
for the simple reason that their sorting and
despatch gave a great deal of trouble, while
the proceeds of their impressed stamps went
altogether to another department. As this feel-
ing of disfavour was safely indulged in it gave
rise to restrictions on their postal transmission,
which has gradually created out of doors a sort of
independent post by means of news agents, who
were compelled to undertake their transmission for
the sake of despatch in the first instance, and now,

also ,for the sake of economy, This aid, which it
certainly had no right to expect, has emboldened
the Post-office to add yet ansther restriction tend-
ing to get rid of newspapers altogether. Recourse
has been had to the curious artifice of pretending
not to be able to distinguish between a newspaper
and any other printed matter, and so to get a book
post established, which has been gradually worked
up'to a small parcels' post, and which is now, in
fact, a small parcels' post altogether. Newspapers,
which in the first instance were not distinguished
from letters and were entitled to the same despatch
in transmission, have thus been gradually turned
over to the book or small parcels' post, and so left
entirely to the convenience of the office as to the
price and rate of forwarding. Any one who will
take the trouble to visit St. Martin's-le-Grand will
find that in practice there is not the least
difficulty in distinguishing between newspapers
and books sent by post, though it is stated thatthe
great difficulty does exist in distinguishing between
a book sent through the book post and a letter or a
parcel that should be charged according to the
letter rate of postage. So nice, indeed, is the dis-
tinction between these two that in a number of
instances the doubt can only be resolved by open
ing and inspecting the contents of the letter or
parcel in question.
Being a Government department, the Post-office
has also used, or rather abused, its authority from
time to time to fix most arbitrary rules of transmiEs
sion and standards of weight levelled at the daily
press especially, the power of which has been as
little liked by successive Administrations as i's
immense circulation has been inconvenient to the
Post-office. So it has come to pass that for all
practical purposes the transmission of news, while
it is stilt fresh and valuable to the public, has been
choked off from the General Post-office altogether,
which prefers, to that important function of its
duties, the profits to be obtained by competing
with the carriers of the country in transmitting
every conceivable description of small parcel under
rates obtained from the railways for the carriage
of letters and papers only. Of all the immense
number of daily papers sent from London each
morning the Post-office only takes from 6,000 to
7,000, by its early mails, and even of this number
it not unfrequently happens that many are left be-
hind. The cheap papers and the high-priced are
alike sought to be excluded from the use of this
establishment by a tariff, which is either an entire
prohibition in the case of penny papers, or a most
severe restriction with the other journals. To check
the use of the Post-office when most required, the
old twopenny rate, abandoned on all other corre-
spondence, is still specially retained on papers
postedfor delivery in the metropolis—that is, within
three miles of the Post•office—viz., the penny im-
pressed stamp paid to the Stamp office, and the ad-
ditional penny on delivery. Like all over-severe
enactments, this de facto prohibition in the case of
several journals defeats itself, for, as we have said,
a number of these papers are posted at Greenwich,
and thus the Post-office merely reaps this extra
trouble of their longer transmission without any
extra fee at all. The impressed stamp on the news-
papers is not now obliterated in passing through
the post. If under Mr. Gladstone's proposed ar-
rangement each paper is to have a common penny
stamp affixed, its obliteration will become impera-
tive; and, as there is not a sufficient amount of
space at St. Martin's to meet this great increase of
work, it will, it seems, be almost necessary to ex-
clude newspapers from the use of the post entirely.
The recent attempt to save labour in the letter de-
partment of the office by making the public to affix
the initials of the postal district has proved almost
a failure for letters posted in London. At the Ge-
neral Post-office it is stated that the sorters never
NOW look at the initial letter at all, and that, when
they do so, the public, in a large proportion of in-
stances, were found to have affixed wrong initials,
which led to the letters being missorted and
delayed in consequence, while there are
actually
instances
of
letters marked N.W. and S.W.,
being sent to North and South Wales. For
letters coming to London which are sorted in
the trains the initial letters may to a certain
extent render the duties of sorters easier, and
therefore enable more profit to be derived from
the Po-t-office by its employing a fewer number
of hands. But this most short-sighted system,
which leads to neglect of efficiency in order to wring
from the establishment the greatest amount of pro-
fit to the Government is one which the public are
scarcely called upon to further, for it has already
been pushed to the utmost limit to which it is en-
durable for the employes, and no further saving can
be effected in the department save by sacrificing the
interests of the public. Nearly 90 per cent. of those
employed by the General and district post-offices in
the metropolis fill the subordinate positions of mes-
sengers, letter-carriers, or sorters, and the hours of
labour of these unfortunate functionaries have been
so much increased, while their rate of remuneration
has been so diminished, that the positions we have

mentioned no longer offer inducement's for men of
average education and good character to enter them
at all. We know very well the maxim that labour
always commands its price, and it is because we are
impressed with the truth of this axiom, and know
that when a fair remuneration is not paid neither
good men nor good work are to be got, that we
direct attention to the dealings of the Post-office
authorities in this matter. The three classes we
have named number about 4,000 men; the first
class, that of messengers, receive 103. a-week ; the
second, letter-carriers, from 18s. to 235. ; the third,
the sorters, from 30s. a-week to £2. Of this num-
ber nearly 3,000 are letter-carriers or messengers ;
for, in order to reduce still further the expense and
increase the profit to the establishment, a number
of the sorters have been made to do what was for-
me :1y clerks' work, while the letter carriers and
sorters are employed indiscriminately in either sort-
ing or taking out the mails. Let us take the ease of
the letter-carriers and sorters. These men come to
the Post-office at 5 in the morning, and work at sort-
ing the letters and papers till 8, some of them find-
ing time in the interval to swallow down their break-
fasts in the shape of a lump of dry bread. At 8 o'clock
they have to take out the letters for delivery till 11
or 12, and they are then supposed to have the inter-
val between 12 and 5 in the evening to themselves,
though they must not be out of the way, as they are
held to be liable for duty when called upon. •At 5
they return to the Post-office, where they again sort
the letters, and again at 8 take them out for deli-
very till 9 or 10. Nominally the messengers are
not supposed to sort or take out letters at all, but in
fact, as these men are employed at only 10s. a week,
their number has been increased, and they discharge
each duty as much as the letter-carriers themselves.
The great chiefs of the Post-office, indeed, endea-
vour to excuse this dreadful system of underpay-
ment by asserting that those employed at 10s. can
make a shilling a night extra by over-hours. _ But
in effect this is denied by the working chiefs of de-
partments, who allege that the men cannot always
find :this extra work to do, and that, as an over-
tasked and ill-fed man has not an inexhaustible
fund of energy in him, those who do work over-
hours one night are next day unable to get through
their regular labour, and the public service suffers
in consequence. A oin, it is said that the letter-
carriers de facto work at tailoring or job-work of
various kinds in the interval they are supposed to
have to themselves between 12 and 5 in the day.
But this, if true, only shows that the men are driven
to seek other aids, besides their regular Govern-
ment duty in the Post-office, to keep life and soul
together. The wages were formerly some three or
four shillings a week higher, but, without the least
reason assigned, they have been reduced, and the
characters of the class of persons employed have
sunk in proportion. Hard-worked and ill-paid,
the men are discontented and sullen—they are
indifferent to the proper performance of their
duties, and hold the threat of dismissal in utter
disdain, feeling sure, as they say, that even
stoncbreaking on the roadside would not be harder
labour, and scarcely less remunerative. These
things have borne their natural fruits, and there
is no concealing the fact that Post-office robberies
arc certainly not on the decrease, though they are
less discovered than formerly, notwithstanding
the immense extent to which the system of
espionnage has been developed. It may seem in-
credible, yet we are informed on the most reli-
able authorities that there is scarcely a person
at the General Post-office, from letter-carriers up to
heads of departments, who has not at some time
or other been suspected and placed under the sur-
veillance of Post-office detectives. Many, indeed,
have even been actually searched for missing letters
specially marked, and sent through' their division to
detect their supposed felonies. No one can tell with
accuracy the extent to which this espionnage has
been carried. It is only felt to be everywhere, and
shrewedly guessed to cost a far larger sum for its
maintenance than would, if divided among the
salaries of the subordinate officials, be sufficient to
secure men of a higher class and better character'
As it is, even this all-pervading system of detec-
tives fails, as we have said, to cheek peculation. The
Custom-house used to hold it as a principle that
when the duty on any article was more than 30 per
cent. it was impossible to prevent smuggling; and
so, we suppose, even the most jealous system of
police will fail to prevent robbery when ill-paid
men have letters passing through their hands
directed to bankers, and which their experience
teaches them often contain large sums in cheques or
notes. We need scarcely say that the system of
inadequate remuneration is by no means confined to
the subordinates, for Post-office payment of all
kinds is proverbial, though in the case of the clerks
and others the feeling it excites is simply one of
deep discontent, and of course it never manifests
itself in peculation. But this discontent has passed
into a feeling much deeper than is generally im-
plied by the term, and we may be said to speak in
the names of two-thirds of those employed at St.
Martin's-le-Grand when we state that the great
wish there now is for a Parliamentary inquiry into
the whole postal system, both as regards the in-
terests of the public and the interests of those em-
ployed. If any member of the House will take the
trouble to visit the Post-office and investigate this
matter for himself for a few days, he will find that
want of room, want of improved system, and want
of a properly paid and efficient staff, are fast giving
rise to such disorganisation as almost calls for the
interference of the Legislature. Unless some such
step is taken the public may depend that the mis-
management and discontent which have been so long
accruing will continue to show themselves even
more rapidly than of late, and till one of the most
important of our national institutions loses all claim
to the character of efficiency.