§ MR. BOWYERsaid, that a great deal 212 of dissatisfaction existed among the persons employed by the Post Office, and a Committee had been appointed to inquire into their grievances. Owing, however, to some difficulty in regard to their powers, two of the Committee had resigned, and the remaining Members became paralysed in their functions. The Committee had since been reinforced by two gentlemen from the Treasury, and resumed its labours. For some reason or other, however, this Committee did not enjoy the confidence of the persons employed in the Post Office, many of whom had declined to carry their complaints before it. The appointment of the Committee, and the invitation addressed by the heads of departments to their subordinates to bring their complaints before it, must be regarded as an acknowledgment on the part of the Government that grievances did exist. A public meeting of Post Office employés was held a short time ago to petition Parliament with regard to some of the grievances under which they laboured, and he could not deny that the wording of some of the Resolutions and the language used by some of the speakers who supported them were somewhat stronger and less delicate than was desirable. Still these poor men had substantial hardships to complain of, and the Government ought not to criticise too closely the expressions which had fallen from some of them in the heat of the moment. He was informed that four persons in the employment of the Post Office had been suspended for the part which they took in the proceedings of the meeting. Now, this raised a grave question in a constitutional point of view. The right of petitioning Parliament belonged to every citizen of this country, and ought to be held sacred. The punishment of these men, therefore, for exercising a right which the constitution conferred on them was scarcely justifiable. He would be told, no doubt, that these men were not entitled to take the course they did because the Government had already appointed a Committee to consider their case; but he maintained that if the Committee did not possess their confidence they had a right to appeal to Parliament to redress their grievances. He wished to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, Whether these men have really been suspended, and whether, if they have, the Government will not take their case into consideration with the view of reinstating them?
§ MR. LAINGregretted that he could not 213 give as specific an answer to the question of the hon. Gentleman as it would have been his duty to do had he received notice of it. It was certainly true that considerable discontent had existed among a large number of the servants of the Post Office, especially in the letter-carriers' department. It was also true that a Committee of the superior officers of the Post Office was appointed some time ago to investigate the complaints of these men. In consequence of a difficulty which arose as to the instructions given to the Committee, and the resignation of some of the Members in consequence, their labours were suspended, and owing to Lord Elgin's departure for China some delay occurred in pursuing the inquiry. On the Duke of Argyll being appointed head of the Post Office the Committee of the superior officers was reconstituted as a Commission, with full powers to make ample inquiry into the grievances of the letter-carriers and others, and with the addition of an element independent of the Post Office, in the shape of Mr. Hamilton, Assistant Secretary to the Treasury, and Mr. Stephenson, the chief clerk of the department of the Treasury connected with the Post Office. The Commission so constituted had for the last fortnight been actively engaged in the investigation. They had taken great pains to make themselves acquainted with all the circumstances of the case, and had on one or two occasions visited the Post Office about four o'clock in the morning, in order to see how the work was conducted of which the men complained. Every opportunity had been given to the men to state their grievances, and there was no ground for the statement that the persons employed in the Post Office did not generally repose confidence in the Commission. On the contrary, he had reason to believe that the Committee of the superior officers of the office, as originally constituted, did command the confidence of the men, and that the discontent arose from the suspension of that Committee, and the apprehension that no investigation was to take place. The inquiry by the Commission would be thoroughly searching and impartial. In a large body of men, such as was employed at the Post Office, it was essential that discipline should be maintained. Among a large number of men there would always be a few disposed to be agitators, and if, after a Commission of this sort was appointed, a number of the men held a meeting to induce their fellow-servants not to go before the Commission to state their case 214 fairly and fully, it was necessary for the preservation of discipline that such conduct should be marked by suspension. He was not in possession of information which would enable him to state as a matter of fact that the men had been suspended, but he thought it extremely probable that they had been, and, from his own experience in the management of large bodies of men connected with railways, he thought that such a step could hardly be avoided. The Commission would shortly conclude their investigation, and their Report would, no doubt, be laid before the House. He trusted that such measures would then be taken as would remove all reasonable grounds of discontent among the servants of the Post Office.
§ MR. BOWYERsaid, he did not complain that disapprobation had been expressed of a meeting the object of which was to induce the servants of the Post Office not to go before the Commission, but that men had been suspended for exercising the constitutional right which every subject possessed of petitioning Parliament.