UNIVERSAL PENNY POSTAGE

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIX, Issue 8149, 25 May 1906, Page 7

UNIVERSAL PENNY POSTAGE

_ + • The English delegates to the Postal Conference at Rome seem to have given no support to Sit Josbph iWard's proposal for a system of unlveraal penny postage, although Mr Henniker Heaton, ever untiring in the cause of postal reform, earnestly pressed the new British PostmasterGeneral to instruct his delegates to "back up" the representatives of New Zealand. Mr Heaton, it must be admitted, was not very hopetul about the British official attitude. The fact tint it had been left to THE MOST REMOTE of the British self-governing State to lend the way had its signifloauoe, and Mr Heaton oonaidered that the conservatism of the Imperial Post Office was deplorably indicated in the fact that it was content to be represented at ihe Corferenoe by A NUMBER OP MINOR OFFICIALS whose experience, however large, had certainly not been oonduoive to the encouragement of initiative and radical) reforms. ,? "England's ' delegates," he said, "are picked members of the s'-'oretary'a stafE, versed in postal history, masters of the neoessary data, trained in the most uxaoting of oontroverieal schools—the daily defence of oar COMPLICATED POSTAL CODE against an infuriated public Such champions are not to be intimidated by the attitude of this or that State, whose yearly output of foreign lettexß would not, fill a couple of oar mail vane. 1 * And yet it is diffloult to see how the British Post Office, having conceded Imperial penny postage, should oppose the universal penny post. As Mr Heaton said, if it was right to institute the one it could not be wrong to promote the other. ♦The distances will be less under universal penny postage," he declared, "and the benefit to British commerce far more considerable. If (as is conceded ;in every countInghouse and editorium) the cheapening of postage to and from the ooloniea STIMULATES TRADE with the colonies, a similar stimulus to our foreign trade must re ault from cheaper postage to and from foreign countries." It would cost England about £25,000 in the flrac year, we are told, to establish penny postage to the United States, and £12,0050 to all foreign countries. In the third or fourth year there would be a profit. Meanwhile this question of high importance to the Empire, to quote Mr Heaton again, was left to "a Bmall assemblage of foreign gentlemen of the subordinate official type to decide, without much regard to argument or remonstrance."