Notes and Events.

Manawatu Herald, 23 July 1896, Page 3

Notes and Events.

Mr Henniker-Heaton is a most pushing man in postal matters in England, fie has been explaining to an interviewer his further ideas on postal matters and also some solid facts. Thus, from the Home country 800,000 persons emigrate to Canada, America, and Australia. To these, he thinks, cheap postage is of moment, as the English-speak-ing races remitted to Great Britain in 1892 £2,458,576 for their friends and relatives residing there. Last year, continued Mr HennikerHeaton nine million newspapers and book-post packages went to Australia and only two and a half million letters. He wants letters carried at only the same price of a newspaper which is eight times its weight. A copy of the Times, weighing four ounces can be sent to Australia for one penny and a letter of tbe same weight costs one shilling and eightpence ! Both bags are thrown into the same hold. The cost of carrying a letter halfway round the globe, by railway and steamer is but the fraction of a penny. The late Mr Cecil Raikes admitted that the actual cost of conveying a letter by sea for any possible distance does not exceed one farthing, so that tbe Post Office would get three farthings. At one penny, a letter, of an half-ounce weight, the freight would be at the rate of £297 per ton t " Trilby. 1 ' The biggest thing the Harpers have done has been the

publication of "Trilby." Their treatment of Dv Maurier over this book is one of the handsomest things that can be placed to the credit of the publishing fraternity, says an American paper. When the novel was submitted to them they made the author the offer of a royalty on each copy, with other offers for the serial rights and the pictures. Dv Maurier preferred to sell it outright for a lump sum and asked, it is said, for £2000, which the Harpers, rather against their wishes, paid him. Subsequently when the book attained such widespread popularity, and over 100,000 copies had been sold, the firm reckoned up the sum which Dv Maurier would have received had he accepted their original royalty offer. They found that he would have been £8000 better off, and, though they were nnder no moral or legal obligation to do so, they sent him a cheque for the sum named. The announcement that the Guthrie had arrived at Sydney with 4700 tons of new season's teas, of which 125 tons are for New Zealand, led us to turn up a parliamentary paper entitled " Consumption of Articles in common use." From it we find that last year some 4,472,---5281bs of tea was consumed by the 740,699 persons inhabiting the colony. A rough statement can be made that 2000 tons of tea are required this year, so that the 125 tons of tea just to hand, which sounds large to people who buy their ona pound of tea regularly every week, is but a small instalment of what is to follow. Verily the active Prohibitionist has much to answer for. Fancy, for instance, if calculations were made as to how the money spent in tea were used for other purposes, as the teetotallers argue a* to the money spent in beer, how rich we might all become. We admit, at the present duty charged the expenditure per head, for tea, only amounts to close on 2s 7d, but then the duty on tea only ranges from threepence to sixpence per lb, whereas on beer it is charged at the rate of one shilling and sixpence to two shillings per gallon, and then the average per head is only placed at ninepence. The Government have only to reverse the duty to 1 enable the present reprovers to be reproved.