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Hawke's Bay Weekly Times, Volume 1, Issue 18, 20 May 1867, Page 115

■< * (Joes nofc now-.applyi-.as.the Government has reduced the postal charge via “namatetlie same u via Suea-viz., Id.

. J Then we have a sum of £3,200 a year for the General Post -Office Department. This'sum doeß npt sound large compared with those that have gone before it, but a very slight examination will show that it is one of the meat serious items after all. In

every part of the country there are Postoffices -with "clerks more or less ■ efficent, who are day by. day employed in doing the work of .'the department.. .The meu make up'the mails, .sort the mails,, deliver the attend to the money oiders, and, in short, do the work. There is an office

of this kind and clerks of this kind in Wellington ; but there is a second office there also, which costs £3,200 a year to maintain it. The work of this office is to make work for the others. The things to which the clerks costing £3,200 a year devote themselves is writing letters about the veriest trifles to all the offices iu the country, or filling an endless variety of the very silliest returns which the working clerks are forced to make out. We have

known a correspondence extending over months, and including scores of letters, about a postage stamp which had not been obliterated by some accident. We know at this moment of returns that have to be

made up whenever a mail of any sort goes out of an office, showing how many have sixpenny, how many threepenny, and. .how many twopenny and penny stamps upon them. This is to give employment to the central office, with its £4,200 worth of clerks, and it has, amongst other trifling disadvantages, this one of forcing the offices to close "every mail a good deal sooner than need otherwise be the case. Such, then, are the character of the returns made to the public for this vast postal expenditure. As a rule, a large part is useful to nobody, and nearly all the remainder useful only to a class.