POSTAL COMMUNICATION WITH NEW ZEALAND.

Auckland Chronicle and New Zealand Colonist, Volume 2, Issue 42, 23 May 1844, Page 3

POSTAL COMMUNICATION WITH NEW ZEALAND.

We think it due to the public, and only .fair play to the department' concerned, to insert the . following statement which has reached us from a quarter on which we can rely : The circumstances detailed in the Launceston. Advertiser, referred to in the city article of The Times of the 16th inst, so far from •establishing the charge of carelessness in the manner in which the mails are transmitted to the Australian colonies,” prove, on the contrary, that the Post-office is the only secure medium for the transmission of* correspondence forwarded by private ships, as will be shown by the followiug explanation. The bag for New Zealand on board the ship New York Packet, which was violated, and the contents destroyed by lhe surgeon, Dr. Nugent, was not a mail made np at the Post Office, but was the broker’s or ship’s bag, as it is termed, containing the letters deposited at the broker’s office before the departure of the vessel. Four mails were made up at the P ° t-office, and despatched by this very vessel, all of which were duly delivered to the Postmaster at Wellington, (lie place of destination, on the day of the ship’s arrival, alter a passage of 4 months and 13 days; tiie Po-tmtster’s written acknowledgment of the receipt of each mail having long since been returned to this,country.' The ship-letter majls despatched by the Postoffice to Australia, and to every other part ot the globe; are made up with as much care as those fbiwtfided by tbetpackets, being*wellVeCUfrea and sealed with the official seal ; a foirn de-cribing the particulars accompanies each mail, which, when signed by the receiving Postmaster, is retained to London by the first opportunity, and any mail remaining unacknowledged becomes the object of early inquiry. The commanders are fully in* strncted as to their responsibility for the safe and immediate delivery of the Post-offioe mails infrnsted to their charge, and are well aware of 'the heavy . penalty attaching to any failure in this respect.

During the past year no less than 1,624 boxes and well secured packages, containing mails for the Australian colonies and New Zealand, were despatched from the Post-office, for almost the whole of which acknowledgments have reached this country,