CORRESPONDENCE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1530, 8 November 1883, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

[TO THE EDITOR.] Sir.—l beg your kind permission to lay before your readers a few remarks on • a great public and important question, and in doing so I would state that I have lived in New Zealand many years und having a goodly number of friends in various parts of the world my correspondence has been rather, I may say, unusually large, and I have contributed to a great extent to the postal revenuo of the colony; In the beginning of my colonial life I paid as much as one shilling and sixponce for a letter from Home to the colony; and up to the present time I have continued to pay the rates of postage that havo from time to time been levied on the public, which, in many cases, I consider are far too high, especially our colonial postage. I consider, sir, that we want an individual like the lato Sir Rowland Hill, at Homo some years ago, to bu connected with our Postal Department here; and such measures as he succeeded in bringing about in England, and which he (Mr Hill) worked for from about the year of 1824 (if I mistake not) up to about 1830. I refer, sir, to the penny postage system, and although he was ridiculed and laughed at at first, his • scheme was found to work much good to the Government, and lie lived to see it carried out with full practical effect, and ho received the thanks of the House of Commons and a knighthood as a remuneration for his labours. lam of opinion that the time has arrived when we should have the penny postage system carried out in Now Zealand, I think the sphere seems to be something unreasonable when wesee letteis' sent from, this colony to Adelaide, Victoria and Sydney for two pence, that we should be charged the same ■sum in the colony, and I think too the sum of three pence for our English letters. I have heard it suggested to be one penny, but I do not concur with that suggestion. At all events, sir, these are matters which I consider need to be attended to, and if they were I havo no doubt whatever, but if tlio system I have proposed were carried out, the postal monetary receipts of tho Postal Department would soon be greatly increased/ and tho inhabitants of the colony exceedingly convenienced. J may hopo to live to see a reform in these matters, because I beliove it to be much needed. I am, &c., Thomas William Shutb.