§ MR. HENNIKER HEATON (Canterbury)I beg to ask the Postmaster General whether he can state the amount paid last year for the conveyance of the Australian mails on twenty-six occasions by ordinary express train from Naples to Calais; whether he can state the amount which would have been payable if those mails had been sent by the special express service from Brindisi to Calais; whether he can state, or estimate, the weights of letters and other mail matter respectively which arrived from Australia by the last Orient Steam Navigation Com- 1114 pany's vessel at Naples, and which were transmitted overland to Calais for London; and whether he will take into consideration the fact that the amount paid for letters by the special train from Calais to Brindisi, and vice versa, is ten francs eighty cents, per kilogramme, against four francs per kilogramme for letters charged by ordinary express train from Naples or Brindisi to Calais, and also to the fact that the Australian mails arriving in Naples, and forwarded thence by the ordinary express trains, arrive in London from two to four days under contract time?
§ MR. FORWOOD (who replied)The answer to the first paragraph is £5,265; to the second £10,089; to the third, letters and postcards 1,4691bs. 7oz., other articles 14,1261bs. 2½oz.; to the fourth, the amount paid for letters by the special train is not exactly ten francs eighty centimes a kilogramme, but ten francs forty centimes. The contract with the Orient Company is not for delivery in London, but at Naples. The average period of arrival at Naples before contract time in 1891 was two days nine hours, and of the Peninsular and Oriental at Brindisi two days two hours. The conditions of the service are not identical.