COLONIAL PENNY-POSTAGE.

’I shall write to every one in turn, but it is expensive sending to many at once,’ says one of the poor needlewomen, whom Mr Sydney Herbert’s Female Emigration Fund has enabled to obtain a comfortable home at Adelaide.  Well might she complain of the expense.  When at home, she could send a letter to the most distant corner of the United Kingdom for a penny.  In Australia, she finds that the cost of sending a letter to her mother in London is a shilling.  It is strange that the colonists do not make an outcry about so extravagant a charge.  Of all the anomalies in English legislation, our colonial postage-system is certainly one of the most glaring; and yet, in the midst of so much effort for emigration and colonisation, hardly any one seems to be aware of it.  The people of England, Ireland, and Scotland have, for the last twelve years, enjoyed the incalculable benefits of Penny-Postage, but they have never thought of extending its blessings to their fellow-countrymen, scattered abroad among our various colonies over the whole surface of the globe.

Under the old dear system, the cost of sending a letter home from any of the colonies was not felt so much as it is now.  The emigrant, before he left home, had always been accustomed to pay from 9d. to 1s. 2d. for letters from distant parts of the United Kingdom, and he could not complain at finding the postage from Canada or Australia to the mother-country only a little dearer.  But the case has been entirely changed since Rowland Hill’s plan came into operation.  What seemed a moderate rate before that great improvement took place, is now an exorbitant charge, which no working-man will pay very frequently.  In this, as in most other affairs, it is not the actual but the comparative cost of the article which makes it seem dear.  To a person who has recently left his native land, and who is probably still suffering from homesickness, a letter from any beloved friend or relative is worth far more than many shillings; indeed, the value cannot be estimated in sterling coin.  But, unfortunately, the first mode in which the emigrant discovers that the social luxury of correspondence has advanced 1100 per cent. in price, is not in the tempting shape of a letter from home.  He must first write to his friends before he can expect them to write to him, and that is a task which nine persons out of ten, on the most charitable calculation, are very strongly tempted to procrastinate, from day to day, even without any pecuniary obstacle.  But how much stronger the temptation to put off the writing of ‘that letter’ from day to day for weeks, and at last for months, when the poor emigrant, still struggling with difficulties, finds that, instead of only a penny for each letter, he must now pay a shilling?  What wonder though many thousands, who have left friends and relatives behind them, all anxiously on the outlook for some tidings of their welfare, should defer the task of writing home for a month or two, finding it so dear; and, having got over the first few months, gradually become careless, and never write home at all?  There are few people who have not known many instances of this kind; and we have little doubt that it is owing mainly to this cause that they have given up all correspondence with the old country.