THE GREATEST GRIEVANCE OF IRELAND. best of men have for ages been crying out,. for reform and improvement in Ireland-and all that we have done has been to augment the army and the police. Mr. FRIPP has made his Munster Girl standing at her In fact the Monster Evil of Ireland is just England door in an attitude of melancholy meditation. The and nothing more. It is purely the direct consequence Daughter of Ireland ponders on the condition of her of the infamous neglect, incapacity, and indiffercountry. The hue of its prospects is conspicuous in the ence of our Government. That incapacity and insadness of her face. She sees misery around her and difference lost us America. They are ruining Ireland, before her. She looks for signs of hope, but she sees India, and our Colonies, just in the same way. Every none. Who does? Ireland is wretched, ill cultivated, day brings to light some new scene of the most undisunited, a prey to famine and faction. What is the doubted misgovernment, or rather no government at power that should change this condition? It is England. all in one quarter or another. We now discover that When England took away the government from Ireland, the splendid empire of India is gradually extending its she was bound to govern well herself. If she took away jungles instead of its cultivation; that its ancient that government because it was bad, she was bound to growth of cotton is transferred to our rivals-the Amegovern better. She has not done it. Her government ricans; that its sugar growth and manufacture are has consisted of only two things-neglect and oppres-dropping into decay, while our manufacturing districts sion. Her science of policy has been to do nothing. If at home are steeped in distress for want of sufficient she have at any time roused herself, it has only been markets and cheap raw material. A pamphlet, just publike a drowsy country schoolmaster who nods in his lished by Mr. Gilpin, Bishopsgate-street, called "A few chair, and when awoke by the riot of his pupils, starts Words on the Hudson's Bay Company, and a Statement up and lays about him with his stick; thrusts half a of the Grievances of the Native and Half-Caste Indozen culprits under the stairs-his prison,-and then dians, opens up another of those immense scenes of nods again. What has England done but coerce, or at misery and wretchedness, wrong to humanity, and daleast attempt it? Coerce a quick-sand, gather water mage to our finances, which are to be found in every into a bag, mercury into a sieve, the wind into a net, quarter of the globe where we have territories. The and shut up fire in a tar warehouse to keep it from do- history of Ireland is being repeated in India, in Austraing mischief. To quieten Ireland, the only way was tolia, in Africa, and in Northern America, and unless take away the disturbing causes, the combustible materials. There would soon be quiet if there were no suffering. The conduct of England towards Ireland is just of a piece with that of other wiseacre nurses who, when their charges scream because they are suffering excruciation in their vitals, slap them on the backs and shake them, to use their own phrase, into penny-pieces, in their anger, instead of giving them something cordial and soothing. the English people arouse themselves, unite themselves, and with a strong and prompt hand place an efficient Government where a Government should be-the ruin and calamities which have swept over us this year, are but a faint foreshadowing of what will assuredly follow. What are we about then-and what do we mean to do? The evils of Ireland are well known-why don't we apply a remedy? A new Parliament has met—and what do we see? Why, just the old hocus-pocus game The great grievance of Ireland-the Monster Griev-playing again, that has been played by so many Parliaance is just England itself. The curse of Ireland is ments before. All talk and no work! As if Ireland bad government, and nothing more. And who is the were to be cured by talking. As if long speeches were cause of this?-Nobody but England. Who made Ire- the only remedies for long sufferings. But talking won't land a conquered country? England. Who introduced give Ireland a new and sound law of Landlord aud all the elements of wrangling, discontent, and injus- Tenant; it won't cultivate the millions of acres of waste tice? England. Who set two hostile churches, and two lands; it won't educate the people; it won't compel hostile races, Celts and Saxons, together by the ears in the landlords to employ the poor on the neglected soil; that country? England of course. Her massacres, it won't reduce the monstrous rents of the cottiers her military plantations, her violent seizure of and small farmers; it won't remove a lazy and usurpancient estates, her favouritism, her monstrous lawsing church from being an eye-sore and a thorn in the and modes of government, were the modern emptying flesh to all the Catholic population; it won't give hope of Pandora's box-the shaking out of a bag-full of Kil- and scope to industry; it won't cure the flux of Ireland kenny cats on the soil of that devoted country. The by which all its produce is carried out of the country consequences are exactly those that we have before us. instead of being eaten in it. In a word, it won't subWretched Saxon landlords who have left one fourth of the stitute food for famine, pastures for bogs; corn-fields country uncultivated, and squeezed the population to for wastes of heather; and a peaceable and happy podeath by extortion on the rest. A great useless church pulation for one grown desperate, exactly on the prinmaintained on the property of the ejected Catholics-- ciple that wolves and bears are desperate, because they who do as men are sure to do, kick at robbery, and feel are ravenous with hunger. it daily making their gall doubly bitter. And then we shake our heads and sagely talk about race. If the race be bad-why have we not taken pains to improve it? Why, for scores of years, did we forbid them even to be educated? Why do we complain of their being idle and improvident, and helpless, when we have done everything we could to make them so? Are our Ministers and Parliaments any better? Are they not just as idle, and improvident, and helpless, as it regards Ireland? Has not this evil been growing these three hundred years? Have any remedies been applied but those of Elizabeth, and the Stuarts and Straffords, the Cromwells, and Dutch Williams? Arms and extermination? We have built barracks instead of schools. we have sown gunpowder instead of corn-and now we wonder at the people and the crops. The wisest and A truly able Parliament and Ministry would at once set about and act. They need not want for guidance and example. Lord George Hill has given them all that. He has done in little at Gweedore, what they ought to do at large. He has turned one of the most barren, miserable, degraded districts of Ireland, into a scene of industry and content. Let our Ministers do as he has done. Let Lords John Russell, and Lansdowne, and Palmerston, and the rest of them, forget their cumbrous and useless titles, and stick their simple names over the shop-doors of Ireland, as he did," G. A. Hill, licensed to sell tea, coffee, groceries, etc." Let them do that, and their success will be like his. In the first year (1840) this noble shopkeeper only returned about £160 in his shop, four years afterwards, the returns were upwards of £2000! The people could not believe that Lord George was a lord, because he thus turned shopkeeper, talked familiarly with them, and above all, spoke Irish! One sees plainly what an idea they have of a lord; as some great, stuck-up, idle, and useless thing! And surely, as far as Ireland is concerned, most justly. Lord George Hill has made a quay and opened a ship traffic with England; has attacked all those lazy, dogged, and mischievous prejudices about holding and enclosing of lands, which elsewhere occasion daily assassinations. But no one has attempted to assassinate him, or his agent, because they let it be plainly seen, that they have the people's real interest really at heart. This sensible proposition was at once adopted; and now, depend upon it, the work of the Sewerage will be done! Why not apply the same rational system of action to the far more crying condition of Ireland? But if the only art of British Government is to be the art of getting over a session without doing anything, it would be a great saving to do without a Ministry at all. It surely is a poor equivalent for the enormous expense of the English Government, to present us with nothing but an enormous mass of speeches, that we have neither time nor inclination to read. The paper on which they are printed, would be all the better for the butter shops, without them, and it would be impossible for England or Ireland to be worse, if no Parlia ment sate, and no speech was made. "Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!" her cabin door, and unite with that which is evidently We turn our eyes again on the daughter of Ireland at the language of her soul." Alas! what hope!" W.H. Let our Government do the same. Let them send out improvement, conciliation, and opportunity of work, hand in hand with a proper authority-and what We regard this feature of our affairs, as the most Lord George Hill has done in one district, they may do melancholy than can possibly exist. It is one that in all the rest. There is no mystery in the matter, ought to fill every sensible man with the deepest anxthere is no need to talk of political science or any iety; and the whole united energies of the nation other grave humbug. All that is wanted is, to buckle should be called forth to put a stop to useless debates, to, and pass those plain and practical acts, which must and to insist on some instant and practical measures. be passed before Ireland will be any better for us. The continuance of such a state of things as has long No talking will do it. Our Ministers and our Parlia-prevailed in Ireland, and is becoming every day more ment might just as well attempt to plough up the waste extensive in England, is a frightful evidence of the imlands of Ireland with their noses, pick up the stones becility of Government, and the apathy of the people. from them with their teeth, and lick up the bog-water Never was there such a time for God or demon to thun with their incessantly wagging tongues. They should der forth over our heads the cryact, and the people should be up, and by hundreds of public meetings and remonstrances compel them to act. The curse of this country is, that it is practical in everything but the most essential thing of all-its government. If a ship become leaky, its owners don't get up a cabal about it, and raise a great talk, and make tremendous speeches about its condition. They get it at once on the stocks; a whole regiment of shipwrights are paying away at it with their hammers; probeing and sawing, new planking and caulking, and anon, away she goes again, over the seas, as sound and gallant as ever. If the dry rot gets into a house we don't assemble all the street, and shake our heads, and make long faces, and stand gossiping like so many cackling geese over it. The evil is known; the remedy is known; we send off for the carpenter and the bricklayer, and out with the diseased timber, and in with new; we open up ventilation, and all is right. But when a national dry rot has got into Ireland, and a leak into our treasury, our Ministers and Parliament, instead of doing what every other person in the country would do,-set proper men to do the obvious and needful work, get together like a lot of Lapland witches, and pretend to cure the evil by selling wind. How long is this to last? How long do we, as a people, mean to suffer it? The empty talk is again going on. Not a remedial measure is proposed, and at the end of the session, we will venture to assert, that Ireland will be just as much benefitted by it as she has been by all the other Parliaments that ranted out their appointed periods, and are forgotten. A DAY AND NIGHT AT THE GENERAL POST- BY GEORGE REYNOLDS. "It has often struck me, that some pains should be taken to make the main features of the Post Office system intelligible to the people."---Rowland Hill's Speech at Liverpool, 1847. The importance of the postal regulations of this country, it is scarcely possible for us, fully, to estimate. Every section of society, and every individual, from the prince to the peasant, are participators in the benefits, social, moral and commercial, bestowed by that most valuable department, the Post-office. True it is, much has been done through the medium of the Press in the great work of public enlightenment and improvement; but what would those efforts have been, had not such movement been aided by the facilities furnished through postal communication? The glow of If our present Ministers understand the real question social enjoyment, arising from silent and secret converof Ireland, if they feel themselves able to deal with it,sation with absent friends, would have been but and mean to deal with it, let them at once bring into very imperfectly known had it not been for Parliament a clear, practical, common sense, and effi- this excellent establishment; nor would the rare cient set of measures. If they cannot, let them confess their inability, and give way to better men. Till they do this, they are plainly nuisances, impostors, and costly incubi on the country. The only thing that we have seen that looks like a bit of ordinary statesmanship; of doing, in fact, something for their money, is in the case of the London Commissioners of Sewers. The new Commission of the Health of Towns has recommended to them to set aside the former 671 Commissioners, whose doings have been a national disgrace and a most monstrous job, and to replace them by 23! feelings arising from true friendship, have ever warmed into such holy fervour, had the means of correspondence by letter never existed amongst us. Languidly, indeed, would the great work of ameliorating the conditi on of the masses proceed, had we still to learn the efficacy of that one simple ingredient in the cup of human happiness,-the expression of our wishes, to distant parties, through the medium of our present admirable and economical postal arrangements. As it is most probable, however, that the majority of the readers of HOWITT'S JOURNAL, readily admit the value of the "Penny Postage," and the national utility measure 9 Queen Anne, cap 10, which for many year of its regulations, we need not now use any arguments formed the basis of all postal regulation. That, howto shew its continuance to be indispensable to our wel-ever, was subjected in succeeding reigns, to many modififare, as a nation, both at home and abroad. In the cations and changes, until the statute giving to the counpresent paper, therefore, our object will be to furnish try the "Penny Postage," was enacted and then the prinsome select information as to the progress of the Post- ciple contained in the 9th of Anne was abandoned. The office since its establishment; and to exhibit the present graduated rate system was abolished; one uniform dispractice with respect to the correspondence with which tance-charge was authorised, the amount being reguit is entrusted. The method of "getting out the duty," lated by an increase of weight only. This preparatory -as the work of the department is technically called-act (2 and 3 Vic. cap. 52) was confirmed on the 10th of will be detailed as simply as possible, so that the un-August, 1840, by the 3 and 4 Vic. cap. 96; and initiated may be enabled to understand the multifarious duties to be performed upon a letter, from the time it is posted to the period when it may be delivered into the hands of the party for whom it is intended. Besides this, it is our design, not merely to observe the duty in the case of the correspondence treated with in the inland "outward" and "inward" offices, and in the London district post department, but in the course of our "day and night" notices, we shall endeavour to describe the business performed in the Secretary's, the Solicitor's, and other subordinate offices, where a continued round of duty is going on, of a different deseription to that in the inland offices of receipt and despatch, but partially arising out of, and strictly connected with, the general duty of the department. ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POST-OFFICE. With reference to the origin of postal communication in this country, we have no authentic record. Certain, however, it is as we glean from papers in the Rolls, Record, and Parliamentary-offices-that payments to Nuncii for the conveyance of letters were made so early in British history, as the reign of the monarch John, when the state correspondence was so forwarded, and also the communications of the most influential nobles of the land at that time. Fixed posts, where relays of horses were kept, were set up in the reign of the second Edward; which movement towards a system, was materially perfected during the sway of Edward IV, as we learn, that, during the war in Scotland in 1481, that monarch established certain posts, twenty miles apart. The riders handed the letters from one to the other, and thus something like expedition was gained. At the close of the fifteenth century, the post may be considered to have been, comparatively, established; and without doubt it was then freely used. 警 The first statute we read of, fixing a post "rate" on the conveyance of correspondence, is that of 2 and 3 Edward VI. cap. 3, passed in the year 1548. This rate was one penny per mile for the hire of horses. Thomas Randolph is spoken of by Camden, as being the first "Chief Postmaster of England" in 1581;† but the earliest mention of the duties and privileges of a Postmaster was made in the reign of James I. Subsequently the privilege of " 'posting" was farmed by Quester, Frizell, Witherings, Prideaux, and others; nor was it until 1656, that any-thing like a decided measure for the establishment of a Post-office was adopted. In that year an Act was passed "to settle the postage of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and for the erecting of one General Post-office, for the speedy conveying and re-carrying of letters by post, etc.' The act provides also that there should be "one officer styled the Postmaster General of England, and the Comptroller of the Office." This statute was succeeded by the important amended by a most valuable auxiliary statute, passed on the 22nd of July, 1847, which provides for the carrying out of a variety of facilities, stipulated for as absolutely necessary, some years before, by the originator of the Penny Postage plan, Mr. Rowland Hill, who was shortly previous to the passing of this last measure, appointed"Secretary to the Post-master General." Prior to the introduction of the uniform rate, and the present weight charge, there were delivered in the United Kingdom, in one week, the estimated number of 1,585,973 letters, including "franks," or free letters, or about 80,000,000 per annum. From the latest Return to the House of Commons, on the motion of Mr. Warburton, with reference to this subject, it appears, that for the week ending the 21st of April, 1847, the numbers delivered were 6,148,876, or about 320,000,000 per annum-a clear four-fold increase! The immediate loss to the revenue upon the introduction of the measure was considerable, being upwards of one million of money; and the cost of management, not, however, to be attributed but in a partial degree to the operation of the penny postage, has increased from £686,768 3s. 6d. in 1839, to £1,138,745 2s. 41d. in 1847.† The net revenue, notwithstanding this enormous additional outlay, continues to improve, the amount in 1841 being £410,028, while in the year ended January 5th, 1847, it reached £724,757 8s. 5d. EARLY MORNING DUTY. We must beg leave to take our readers with us so early as four o'clock in the morning to the General Postoffice, in St. Martin's-le-grand, shortly after which hour we shall observe omnibuses laden with mails arriving from all the principal termini of the railways. From the great trunk lines of the London and North Western, the Great Western, the South Western, Dover, Eastern Counties, and Brighton, several hundred bags are bronght, and the internal business of the office commences at half-past four. First, we will take our stand in the " Tick-room," where the guards deliver the bags, and where men are stationed to call out the name of the post-town, which they find upon the label at the corner of each bag. These being called over, and all checked by the clerk to guarantee the office and the public against loss, and to exonerate the guard, the bags are forwarded from the Tick-room into the Inland Letter Sorting-office, by the messengers, who distribute June 30th, 1847. + Though we do not consider that the revenue of the Postoffice ought to be regarded as a fiscal tax, it is really to be hoped Mr. Hill will endeavour to discover how it is that such an enormous additional expense appears under the head of "Cost of Management." Something is wrong somewhere; especially when we hear, week after week, from the provinces, It will be perceived that the above rate was levied for of facilities being denied where they ought to be granted. The horse-hire: the first letter rate was fixed in 1635. + Randolph was, no doubt, master of the "rides" or posts. opening of new and costly rooms at the General Post-office in London, which can be but temporary, only tends to swell this cost, without a just and proper equivalent for the outlay. 66 them at tables, represented by an alphabetical letter, tain bankrupt's correspondence is in future to be taken' around the spacious rooms. There they are opened by or letters re-directed in cases where persons have rethe different clerks, denominated the " openers,' most moved from their former residences. Imperfectly adof whom are junior officers. Upon close inspection we dressed letters he has to send to try at streets of the find that this description of the duty is simultaneously same name in different parts of the metropolis: abateperformed: for while at one table the large Birming-ments in cases of overcharge he has also to attend to; ham bag is being opened, at others, the Brighton, Glas- make search in the "Dead letter register" for letters gow, and Edinburgh, with the Irish and Channel Islands addressed to persons gone away and left no address,' mails. Thus the duty is continuously kept down, until and a variety of other duties of a minor, but not of a the whole of the 960 arrivals from the English deputies, less important character, both to the service and the colbesides the Irish, Scotch, French, and continental mails, lection of the revenue. which have reached the office during the preceding While all this is going on, other persons are employed night, are all opened. As soon as the clerk has cut in the rectification of " mis-sorted" or "blind letters. the string, he turns upon the table the whole of the let-The amount of charge to each man is also made out, and ters; while he pours the newspapers into baskets for other messengers to take away to the sorters. When the letters arrive in London they bear impressed, upon the seal side, a stamp in black or blue ink, which specifies the town at which, and the day when they were posted. When handed to the London stampers, they have put upon them if pre-paid or labelled, another stamp in red ink, and if unpaid in black, denoting the day they ought to be delivered. These detective dated stamps are exceedingly useful in cases of enquiry as to misdelivered or detained letters, and in legal proceedings they frequently prove most valuable in fixing guilt upon the proper party. entered in the check-books by clerks appointed for that purpose, that the Superintending President may be duly debited by the Receiver-General, the men being called upon to pay in the revenue they collect, three times a-week. Happily this part of the business is not nearly so extensive as heretofore, and it is a certain fact that the optional payment of postage will not be long permitted to exist (on inland letters at least) as the cost of collection on unpaid letters seriously detracts from the net revenue by increasing the cost of stationery and labour, while it materially retards the duty, both in the country and London offices. Independently of all this duty, there are engaged both on The operation of stamping having been performed, we the lower and upper floors, a variety of officers whose are led to notice one of the most interesting divisions of duty it is to divide and assort the provincial newspathe duty, the assortment of the vast body of corre-pers for the metropolitan morning delivery, in a similar spondence, strewed as it appears to be over the whole way to that in which the letters are divided and asof the office, the letters alone covering many hundred sorted, so that the despatch may be uniform and the square feet of desks and tabling. After the clerks have delivery simultaneous in every part of this great city. examined the letters for the purpose of ascertaining Pouches and "State Papers," and ambassadorial dewhether the postage stamps have been properly oblite-spatches, intended for Her most gracious Majesty the rated by the provincial post-masters, that the registered Queen, His Royal Highness Prince Albert, any member letters have been duly entered upon the local bill, and of the Royal Family, the Ministers of State, or the fothe amounts of charge accurately made out, the letters reign Plenipotentiaries, are separately attended to by are carried over to the assorting tables in the gross. the Clerks of Official correspondence," and their asThere those intended for the London delivery are sepa-sistants. At the close of the duty the bags are "made rated, first into divisions numbered consecutively from up," and conveyed in carts in the charge of special one to fifteen, each division embracing a certain por-messengers, by whom they are delivered at the several tion of the metropolis, or a peculiar class of correspond-offices in Downing-street, Somerset-house, the AdmiThis having been done, these same letters are ralty, and other Government offices. All the business gathered, or in official phraseology" collected," and of stamping and assorting having been gone through, the men begin to tie up their bundles, and deposit them in large canvas bags. In a few minutes afterward the their walks, those to the nearest on foot and the others departure bell" is rung, and the letter-carriers hasten to in "accelerators," projected in 1829 by Mr. Critchett, the then Inspector of Letter-carriers. ence. taken to an officer denominated the "district sorter. He divides them into walks, representative of the plots By the arrangements, just concluded, between the French Government and the English Post-office, despatches from France and via France from the Continent, are received in London and delivered in the Metropolis twice a day. Letters and Newspapers are now despatched from London every Morning and Evening. (Sunday excepted.) This is one of the best of our modern postal improvements. In the discharge of the above duty there are employed in this section of the establishment alone, several presidents, about 100 clerks, 60 messengers, 120 sub-sorters, 9 assistant-inspectors of letter-carriers, and nearly 300 letter-carriers. It is estimated that in the 50,000 newspapers pass through the office, independcourse of this "early duty" alone, 80,000 letters and ently of some thousands more which are forwarded by the morning mails. MORNING MAILS During the time the above duty is proceeding, and as the arrivals from the several branch offices and receiving houses are brought into the office, the process of stampinn and sorting the letters and newspapers sent per morning mails irom London to the provinces, is going on. According to the latest list published by the authorities, letters, newspapers and publications (To be continued.) |