The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-12-31 00:00:00

sions of the postage iota, to be signed by my lords, and in-
serted in the Gazelle, pursuant to the provisions of the act,
2 and 3, let Vic. cap. 52.
My lords, in earrying. the reduced rates of postage into ope-
ritioni.feel it tbeir paramount duty to provide against any
dis-
arrangement:Which a giect influx of letters posted at the last
moment might occasion in the business of the post-Wee.
Whilst their lor4ships are mostunwilling that there should
be any positive curtailment of the time allowed to:the public
in posting letters, their lordships feel it necessary, in the tirst
instance, at least, to hold out an inducement to the public not
to delay the posting of letters to a late period; by, restricting
the benefit of the full reduction to those letters which strait be
posted early. And their lordships with this view, are pleased
to authorise the Postmaster-General to close the letter boxes
throughout London at live o'clock ; and in the country an
hour or half an hour earlier than atpiesent, according to the_
dirmtmstances of each 'Oven. •
• My lords direct that thefees for late letters be charged as
follows . • • _ - -
From the future hour. of closiugeacit box,..until the present
hour, one penny per letter; ,Or- pkikeitt4iith6ut: regard to its
weight ; and after the present hout of eloping each 'oux, two-
pence per letter or packet, except where a larger fee is now
established, in which case the present fee will continue.
Instruct the Postmaster-General to make arrangements
for carrying to tte general revenue the fees for late letters,
at the same time submitting for the consideration of this
board, any cases for compensation which he inay consider
necessary.

RAILWAY INTELLIGENCE.

GRAND JUNCTION AND MANCHESTER
EXTENSION RAILWAYS.

. We have before noticed the agreement between these two
companies to be the running in..of the Manchester and Bir-
mingham line at Crewe, with Permission to leave it again at
Stafrom, should the promoters wish to carry it from thence
on to Rugby. The tolls, we understand, are made extremely
favourable. If the Manchester line joins at Crewe the tolls
are to be four-fifths of a Benny per passenger per mile, and
the same. for a ton of goods per The Manchester
pany are to be at no expense for maintenance .or watching-of
wav,_ or water ; or use of stations,excopt they want new ones,
..which hey must build. They, have, in fact, nothing to find
but their own engines, carriages, coke, and men to.go with
them. Upon the same terms theA:4rand4unction are to run
on:the MaacheSte-r Extension when.made.
If the _Manchester join at Stone, they'wouLl have, in plaCe
of four-fifths, to pay one penny.—.-Railway Magazine,
[The information which we give above, (and which. we do
not find in any local paper) appears to have been comrauni-
cated ofiicialiy. So far as it goes we have no doubt of its
correctness, but the shareholders may possibly think that
the abandonment of 60 or 70 miles of railway, for which an
act of parliament has been procured at an expense little short
of J.:200,000, is an affair of sufficient moment to require fur-
ther explanation.. We have heard many rumours on the sub-
ject,' which, acting upon the principles we hare laid. down
fair our guidance, we do not consider it prudent to notice,
but trust to receive for our next something which-we can lay
before the public with confidence in its accuracy.]

WEEKLY RETURNS OF TRAFFIC ON RAILWAYS

• N AN! E Passel'. aloe IP. mile P. mile Passeng.
hers. "Y'lpr. wk. p. day. per day,
Birmingham — 12675 t, I
South-Western.... 239411 411 6
Great Western, 250941 81 114
Greenwich
Manchester &Leeds 9,455 55211 41 -- 1351
Biriningh. & Derby 855 22 3
York &N. Midland 2,0421 3981 -
Croydon 8,039 4511, 43 6 • 11484
Midland Counties 2,6161 2t17.1' 17.4 21- 374
Eastern Counties
.4,043 5774
GlasgoW Si. Ayr 1,305 • "2174
Ulster —

RAILWAY T:

'RAVELLING.

The following statement of the total number of passengers-
conveyed on various lines of railway in the year 1838, is taken
from the second report of the ComMittee of the House of
Commons :—Liverpool and Manchester, 609,336 Grand
Junction, 445,290 ; London and Birmingham, 459,385 ; Lon-
don and Greenwich, 1,544,266 ; Newcastle and Carlisle,
196,051: Stockton and Darlington, 2`28,946; Dundee and
Newtyle, 59,682 ; Durham and Sunderland, 77,421 ; • Edin-
burgh and Dalkeith, ' 299,201 ; Garnkirk -and Glasgow,.
128,373 ; Leeds and Selhy, 90,637 ; Leicester and Swinilino•-
ton, 23,053 Paisley and Renfrew, 143,180; Dublin and
Kingstown, 1,141,679 ; Bolton and Leigh, 86,320; -

CHARGE FOR C...k..RRYING PARCELS BY RAILWAY
• -The Leeds.Mereury has thrown out a hint in reference to
the reduction of postage, which we hope will be acted upon
•by railway managements. The adoption (says our contecn—
porary).4the.authorities, of the General Post-office, of the
principle of charge by weight, makes them common carriers,
and brings the, Post-office into direct competition with other
.rapid modes of-conveyance. The :pest Of the smallest parcel
from London ..to_ Leeds., by .the Express or Union coach, is
2s. 4d.'; by the -Manchester coach and railway, 4s. The
charge for a parcel by post, with the utmost possible certainty
of secure and. prompt delivery, is, under half an ounce, 4d.
under an ounce, Bd., under two -ounces,.if prepaid, Is. -Id.,
and so on. The -result of this c*petition, even before the
establishment of a uniform penny- postage, is sufficiently ob-
vious. The. most profitable branch of the trade, the carriage-
of small parcels, will he monopolised by the post-office and
the railway proprietors will have to convey, at a small charge
per cwt. a post-office bag containing perhaps fifty small par-
cels, which singly would have yielded them, say 3s. each.
But the remedy is In the hands of the parties aggrieved, and
is equally obvious. Let them meet the post-office (which
purchases a commodity of them wholesale, and undersells
them, in the retail market), as they can with advantage, on
the-common ground at low charges. With the increase that
might fairly he reckoned upon, one shilling, or even six-pence
for a London parcel under one pound weight, would he a
remunerative price.; and the experiment should not be de-
layed until the habit of sending packages by post has been
eXtensively formed.—Railway Tinges. , . • •

It is stated that the receipts of the. Loudon and Birming-
ham Railway, from Ist July to 31st December, will exceed
X3-10,000,,w.hilst thoep 9f tile.&.: year, upon which a
tlrt tirend 1111. per stet' e wasp iiWWPC, -"rhe
increase is nearly .i£10,41.10, an. the '4):ewca,stle and Cal-11,1e
Railway the fratfie,-in coriespixidiiii-petiods'oPolle year, has
increased from ;C0,493 to :.79,211,.0.r"fyrty per &lit..
. .
•
DISCOVERY NOt,3.NG WOMAN SERV tNG
ASA SALLOR ON BOARD TIIE ROBERT SMALL,
.LAST IN DI A

Extract of a letter. from an. officer of the Robert Small,
dated in, that ship, off the Cape of Good Hope, the 20th of
October, 1839. The Robert Small sailed. from London last
August.
"A very singular case has been discovered on board our
ship. We have detected a young lady in the person of .a
sailor, who has done duty with our crew fnlm the time we
left the Thames unit it was found that she belonged to the
fair sex.

Ele.r name is Mary Anne Arnold. She is the daughter
of the lute Lieutenant Arnold, of the Royal Navy, who served
in that capacity on board the Ganges and Prince Regent
men-of-war. Being a man of dissolute habits, he lost his
commission in consequence, after which he resided with-his
wife at Sheerness, where, by continuing his habits of dissipa-
tion, he and his family were reduced to great distress. By
the intercession of some friends, Mr. Arnold was admitted a
.pensioner in Greenwich Ilespital, in which asylum he died
recently. During the latter interval, and after her husband's
death, Mrs. Arnold live d at Sheerness, supporting• herself
and her children by manual labour until the summer of 1833,
when, after great exertion in the harvest field, she was at-
tacked by bilious fever and died, leaving her children totally
unprovided for. Mrs. Arnold's furniture was sold to pay
the expenses of her funeral, and some charitable neighbours
took the orphans into their house and supported them for a
time.

• "` Mary Anne, the subject of the present statement, was
ten years old when her mother died. Partly by labouring in
the fields, and partly by going on errands, she at first sup-
ported herself, and contributed to the sustenance of her little,
sister, who was only eight months old when her mother
died. Mary Anne next obtained permanent employment in
a rope factory at Sheerness, where she earned 2s. 6d. a week.
Going frequently in boats, and amongst the shipping, she -
found that boys of her age, who went to sea, earned more
money, were better fed, ' thought more of,' and in every way
in a superior condition to her ; and upon this Mary Anne
determined to renounce the petticoats, and. to become a
sailor. Borrowing an old jacket, trousers, and shirt from a
boy of her acquaintance, to whom she said she was going to
have a lark in them, she took leave of the rope factory-and
the owner of the clothes, without the ceremony of a farewell,
and succeeded, to her great joy, in getting employment, as a
cabin boy in the William, a Sunderland collier, then lying at
Sheerness. Mary Anne was kindly treated, and she conti-
nued to do the miscellaneoui hard work of a collier's cabin
boy abow and abaft for two years and two Months, to the
satisfaction of:six captains, who successively commanded
the William during that period. A seventh captain came,
and this time man and boy did not like each other, so Mary
Anne for ever abandoned the coal-marine and its Macke-
moor service, and on the, 211 of October, 1838, she entered
as cabin boy at Shields, on board the brig Annie, bound for
London and Quebec. She made several voyages in.this ves-
sel. Unfortunately, the Annie was wrecked off Blakeney,
in the-last equinoctial gales ; but, the. caPlain and crew had
the hick to escape, after enduring 4,-reht hardships. Return-ing to Shields, Miss Arnold entered again as -a cabin boy in
the Choice, bound for London, with stores for the Robert
Small, East Indianian, in which ship she next succeeded in
getting, an engagement as a sailor boy: the day before she
sailed from London. .

• " She has well done her work as a strong, active boy in-.
this ship- I have seen Miss Arnold amongst the. first aloft
to reef the wizen top gallant sail, daring a heavy gale, in the
Bay of Biscay. When we crossed the equator, she under-
went the ceremony of tarring anti; shaving its roughest.
form., On the 20th September last, some of the crew ex-
pressed suspicions. to Captain Scott that the boy Arnold was
girl . , . • •
. .
• " The captain upon this ordered the
.surgeon to c.tarnitie:
the „youngster. The surgeon did so, and declared that".he,
was a girl Miss Arnold then gave the foregt3ing. ,h4totsr,
herself. The captain, and all the passengerS and" Crew,
praised and pitied her. She was at once .preVailed-upon to.
.abdicate; the sailor's jacket and trousers, and resume the
clothes proper to her sex. _ She now appears a pretty bash
ful girl of nearly 15 years of age. The lady passengers have
'given her lots of presents. Iler hair is already getting long,
Anti I Suppose she will soon think of -ringlets. Captain Scott
behaves' in the kindest manner to her, and he has promised
that she-shall receive her pay just the same as if she were to
continue to do a you/11g mariner's duty during the whole
passage out and home. Miss Arnold is, though rather bash-
ful, considering the short time she has had to learn ladies'
ways, like other heroes and heroines, capable of being drawn
out. I frequently see her surrounded by applauding listeners
while she pitches a long yarn about ' the clangers of the sea.'

" Our heroine has two brothers older than herself; one is
boatswain of the Royal Adelaide, the other is carpenter on
board the Britannia, stationed at Portsmouth. The latter,
she says, knew that she had turned sailor, and he approved
of the metamorphosis when he saw her in the trust and
occupation of cabin boy on board the William."

.Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cain-
bridge and Prince George are expected to honour the Duke
and Duchess of Buckingham with a visit at Stowe, the se-
cond week in January. The principal state apartments are
undergoing re-embellishment, previous to the arrival of the
royal visitors. His grace has refurnished the mansion in a
style of great splendour since has
accession to the dukedom,
and many improvements are in progress on the, splendid
domain, under the superintendence of the noble duke. The
ornamental gardens alone, laid out by Lord Cobham, cost
half a million. •

The period fixed upon for the embarkation of the next In-
dia detachments, from Gravesend, is the latter part of next
month, or the commencement of February, at the very latest.
The combined strength of these detachments will not exceed
1,750 rank and file, the distribution of which, for the three
presidencies, will- probably he upon the following scale;--
For Bengal, about 730 men; for Madras, 400; for Bombay,
620—total, 1,750. The Cou►; of Directors are now taking
up vessels- for the conveyance of -these troops. The num-
ber of of6ders by whom they are to be accompanied has not
yet been determined on.--United Service Gazette,