§ MR. HENNIKER HEATON (Canterbury)I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he has been informed that there is an urgent and increasing demand for some means of prepaying the postage on replies to letters of inquiry sent to British Colonies and Foreign Countries, and of remitting the price of a newspaper or other article of small cost; whether, seeing that, inland United Kingdom stamps call be obtained in small quantities at various post offices in the Colonies for transmission to England, he will consider the expediency of opening an office at St. Martin's-le-Grand, and in each of the great mercantile centres of the United Kingdom, at which Foreign and Colonial stamps shall be 491 sold to a limited amount for transmission to the Colonies and Foreign Countries, or received in exchange for stamps of the United Kingdom at a small profit in either case to the Post Office, with a view to facilitate epistolary communication, the ordering of samples, and the opening of commercial transactions between this country and the Colonies and Foreign Countries; and whether any solution of the difficulty alleged to exist in connection with the Institution of a common international stamp has yet been devised?
§ MR. HANBURYThe Postmaster General has not been informed, and is not aware that there is an urgent and increasing demand for some means of prepaying the postage on replies to letters of inquiry sent to British Colonies and Foreign Countries, and of remitting the price of a newspaper or other article of small cost. As I stated, in reply to a similar question asked by the hon. Member on the 22nd of August 1895, he does not feel that he would be justified in making arrangements for the sale of Colonial stamps, for which he believes that there is no effective demand here. The Postmaster General is not aware that any solution has yet been devised of the difficulty attending the institution of a common international stamp.