HC Deb 23 June 1910 vol 18 cc597-612

Postponed Proceeding on Question, "That a sum, not exceeding £12,128,256 be granted to His Majesty to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1911, for the salaries and expenses of the Post Office, including Telegraphs and Telephones."

Debate resumed.

Mr. MORTON

I would like to add my contribution to what has been said of the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Henniker Heaton) and the great services which he has rendered the country during many years in connection with postal reform. We are all in favour of getting a universal penny post. So satisfied are we with what happened with regard to Imperial penny postage that we are all anxious to see this idea carried out, and are not unwilling to pay for it. But what I wish to urge to-night is the desirability of establishing a penny post with France. One of our reasons for pressing forward this matter is that the late Postmaster-General told us we must take one step at a time. One step has been taken since he told us that. We have got the penny post to the United States, and it has been a great success, and has greatly pleased all those who have anything to do in business or otherwise with the United States. The next step we want the Postmaster-General to take is to give us a penny post to France. We are all anxious to have a penny post to the whole Continent, but bearing in mind what we have been told as to taking one step at a time we desire now to press the French case. It is an extraordinary thing that letters can be carried long distances of 12,000 miles and upwards for a penny, while for the short distance of twenty or thirty miles 2½d. is charged. That is an extraordinary way of carrying on business, and is an anomaly that no sane man can understand. The Post-master-General says that we cannot afford the reform that I ask for, as it would cost too much money, but I cannot find that the reforms that have been granted in recent years have cost any money at all. The returns of the Post Office show that both the gross and the net receipts have increased since we obtained these reforms, and there is no reason to think that a different result will follow the granting of a penny post to France, Germany, Belgium and Holland. It is stated that we make a profit of nearly £4,000,000 per annum out of the Post Office. We have no business to make a profit out of the Post Office at all. The profits, such as they are, ought to go to improving the service, cheapening the postage, and giving us other facilities, and no doubt in some cases in giving better pay to the employés. It has been mentioned that although there has been no decrease in net profits during the period in which we gave the reforms that have been referred to, yet in the same period we gave an increase of wages amounting to something like £800,000 per annum. If these Post Office officials are not properly paid now I should like to see them properly paid and not overworked, because we are all glad to acknowledge their services in every way that is right and proper.

Still, while services are properly paid for, we must not forget the public who find the money, and I do not find that they will object to the money being found for an extension of postal facilities either in the shape of a penny post or otherwise. You get your main profit from the City of London and from the big cities. If you consult London you will find that everybody is in favour of the universal penny postage and any other facility you can give for the benefit of business and trade, while at the same time promoting a better feeling among the nations. I trust the new Postmaster-General will inaugurate his years of office—as we hope it may be—by taking a common-sense and proper View of this matter, by looking at the gross receipts and the net profits, and by treating the Department as a whole, putting loss in one direction against gain in another. The Finance Minister in the Canadian Parliament, in a speech he made a few months ago about the postal service in the Dominion—where they have long distances to contend with, which is a difficulty that does not exist here—said that the more facilities there were provided the more profit the Department made. No doubt the idea was that the Post Office should be treated not merely as a profit-making business, but for the good of the people all round. There is no doubt also that we still need a good many reforms in the Post Office, as anyone may gather in travelling about the country. I have no doubt that if the Postmaster-General were to increase facilities in the country he would find that the gross receipts would be 20 per cent. more than they are now without having to spend much money to gain that increase.

10.0 P.M.

The official mind gets into a groove, and nothing short of an earth-quake will turn it out of it. That is one of the difficulties in the way of reform, and in the way of a universal penny post. I trust, however, that the Postmaster-General will endeavour to do something in the direction I have indicated, because I am sure it would please the whole country, and add greatly to the creation of a better feeling between us and other nations, while at the same time assisting trade. There are one or two other matters to which I wish to call attention —one is the halfpenny postcard. In all other countries you get the postcard for a halfpenny, and I hope after what we have heard to-night the Postmaster-General will at least make that reform, and make it at once. The hon. Member for Canterbury complained about the course adopted by the Post Office in regard to their responsibility for the act3 of Post Office servants. I notice in our Government Departments that they set themselves above the ordinary law, and they tell us that the Crown may do wrong, but that wrong is right as far as they are concerned. After all the Post Office is a great trading concern, and I should like them to show an example to business people by not claiming to be irresponsible for the acts of their servants, but that they should be responsible in the same way as are ordinary business people. There can be nothing more absurd than that a public department should claim the right of the Crown to do wrong. We are rather in a backward condition in the northern corner of the Island in regard to facilities afforded. The late Postmaster-General, it is true, did a good deal for us in that part of the country during the last four years and I hope that questions which are brought forward in the future will receive the same liberal attention. The Prime Minister, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, told this House that in future from that date they would give a postal delivery to every part of the United Kingdom not less than three times a week. Now there is a number of places where they have only got two deliveries a week, or only one. I call the Postmaster-General's attention to that fact, and I hope the promise which the Prime Minister made will be fulfilled as speedily as possible. Then there is the difficulty with regard to the telegraph service. "We nearly always have to give a guarantee for what is called loss on the service. I admit that the telegraph service is not a paying concern, like the Post Office, but the Prime Minister, in the same speech which he made when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer a few years ago, told us that the Treasury would pay two-thirds of the guarantee. He added except in very special cases.

In my Constituency there is a district where neither the late nor the present Postmaster-General would agree to the two-thirds guarantee. Surely if any exception ought to be made it should be to scattered communities like those of Sutherlandshire. There are about twenty miles in the district mentioned where they have no means of telegraphing for a doctor, or anything they may want in a hurry. I am sorry to have to mention this matter. I got on very well with the late Postmaster-General, and if I possibly could I would not trouble the House as to this question of telegraphs. It is my duty to my Constituents to mention these matters, and those who do not know Sutherlandshire cannot quite understand why such things are wanted. If they visited the county they would know how pressing are the wants of the people, and how pleased they are to get this little assistance in carrying on their business.

[Attention called to the fact that forty Members were not present. House counted, and forty Members being found present]—

I trust the right hon. Gentleman will take a friendly view of these matters. The late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman told us to colonise our own country, and it is by the postal, telegraph, and other reforms that we can do so, and in that way prevent depopulation. The Assistant Postmaster-General told us that the Post Office was taking over the National Telephone Company at tramway prices. As far as I understand, that is not quite correct, but part of the service will have to take it over as a going concern. I am not so-certain that the taking over is going to be a success. Very possibly we may get from the frying-pan into the fire. I hope and trust we may have a good service, because anybody who has anything to do with business must know that a good telephone service, properly looked after, is of immense use to the public.

Mr. CARLILE

There is one point to which no reference has been made, and upon which I feel that a word or two might be said, perhaps, with advantage. The Post Office is conducted as a business affair, on business lines, and we have heard from one or two speakers of the great profits which it acquires for the State. In one particular it is singularly wanting in its business-like arrangements, and that is that it is generally known that no valuation of the Post Office property has been made, and yet to any man who has any knowledge of business it must be perfectly clear that unless a valuation of its assets is made from time to time, there can be no proper or reliable calculation as to the depreciation of that property, and therefore the accounts may show a condition of inflated profits which the actual circumstances of the property as a whole do not warrant. That does not apply to other Departments of the State. The property of the War Office or of the Admiralty is valued, and the depreciation charged; but in the case of the Post Office, where one would think that such a practice was pre-eminently necessary, it does not obtain. This is a matter of vital importance, and the present moment is one at which the subject will perforce come under the attention of the Postmaster-General in connection with the acquisition of the undertaking of the National Telephone Company. When that undertaking; is acquired there will be a valuation of the property taken over, and if the right hon. Gentleman would now take the necessary steps to obtain an actual valuation of the Post Office property, when the telephone property is taken over the whole could be grouped together, and careful calculations made as to depreciation. We should then have, not, as we have at present, an unsound balance-sheet in connection with the Post Office, but a sound balance-sheet, in which depreciation would find its place, as it does in any other business concern.

Mr. BYLES

The Debate, though long, has not been too long, as this is the one annual occasion on which the relations of this great Department of the State and the public can be considered and discussed. The statement of the Postmaster-General about the work of his Department was, it goes without saying, extremely interesting. A less competent Minister than my right hon. Friend could not fail to make the annual statement of the Post Office a fascinating story to whatever audience he addressed, because there is perhaps no Department of the State which touches the people more universally or at more points. My right hon. Friend took what I may call the traditional view of the duties and relations of his Department. He seemed to think that the Post Office was a proper source of State revenue. I cannot agree with that view. I am one of those who hold that the Post Office has no business to make a profit out of those for whom it works. Something like, I suppose, £5,000,000 per annum is obtained from the people who use the services of the Post Office. [An HON. MEMBER: "£3,000,000."] I understood my right hon. Friend to say that the concessions and increased facilities which had been granted by his predecessor, and the increased and improved conditions which had been conceded to 200,000 postal servants, or to many of them, amounted to £1,250,000. I understood him to say that that is about 25 per cent. of the total profit of the year. That makes £5,000,000.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

Perhaps I did not make myself quite clear. I said the Post Office surplus had been reduced by £1,000,000. There has been a certain increase in profit owing to the growth of business. Concessions have cost about £1,200,000, but the net reduction of the Post Office surplus has been about £1,000,000. Five years ago the surplus was a little over £4,000,000. Now it is a little over £3,000,000.

Mr. BYLES

I am extremely glad to find that it has been reduced to £3,000,000, because to that extent the weight of my objection is also reduced. As the right hon. Gentleman has told us, by concessions and increased facilities to the public, and the improved conditions of service of those who work in the Post Office, a million of what had been revenue had been surrendered. But I would like to ask what better could possibly be done with a surplus of profit made by the Department than to extend facilities to the public on the one hand, and on the other to improve the conditions of those who earn the money? It seems to me that that is the proper way to spend it. I hope that the process of reducing the profit, which was so generously begun by my right hon. Friend's most able predecessor, will be continued by him during the time that he is at the head of the Department.

There is one other aspect of this same point. The right hon. Gentleman had addressed to him by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Henniker Heaton) and also by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Hythe (Sir Edward Sassoon) some powerful arguments in favour of extending penny postage to European countries—to the world indeed, by-and-bye—but, at any rate, at present to our neighbouring country, France. He told us that the cost, the sacrifice which the State would have to make to extend penny postage to Europe—to Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, France, and Germany, which were the countries specially named—would amount to £400,000 per year. He has just told us that even the diminished profit accruing to his Department is £3,000,000 per annum. What is £400,000 of that? What better could be done than with a small portion of the £3,000,000 of money than to extend facilities to the public to correspond with any of the countries of Europe more cheaply. More than that, let me point out that half of that £400,000 would go into the pockets of the people who send letters from this country to the Continent, and the corresponding half would go into the pockets of chose who send letters from the Continent to us.

There is one other reason why I am strongly in favour of this. Reference was made to the date when Imperial penny postage was established. One of the reasons given for that extension, and one of the advantages obtained by that extension as was admitted and, indeed, vaunted by my right hon. Friend the Postmaster-General, was that it promoted good feeling between us and remote parts of our Empire, and we were told that it tended to draw communities nearer and closer to one another. That is exactly the object we should set before ourselves in endeavouring, by the surrender of this £400,000 of our profit, to increase the concord and the international good feeling between ourselves and other countries of Europe, and to draw them closer to us so that we might make a harmonious federation, or, at all events, that we might tend in the direction of the federation of the European States. What is £400,000 to the House of Commons? Have we not been voting millions and millions away during these last few days? £400,000 is about one-sixth the cost of a "Dreadnought," and we are going to build five "Dreadnoughts" this year. Every shilling of the £400,000 that would be spent in establishing European penny postage would tend to the promotion of good feeling and friendly intercourse and international amity, whereas in the judgment of many of us the spending of six times that amount on one "Dreadnought" and thirty times that amount on five "Dreadnoughts" would have the exactly opposite effect.

Major ARCHER-SHEE

There is one thing that has not been mentioned in the course of the Debate, and that is as regards the pensionable age of Post Office officials. I think the pensionable age at the Post Office is too high. Neither in the Army, Navy, nor police is it so high, and this is a grievance which is felt by a large number of Post Office employés. Matters such as telegraphists in the central office, postal sorters, and the enlargement of the Metropolitan area are administrative details which should be left to the Department. I think the Postmaster-General is entitled to the support of the House in the administration of his office. The only point I would make in reference to that is that last year the Postmaster-General said he would convey to the Prime Minister the preponderating opinion of the House that a board of arbitration should be appointed, and I hope we shall hear something from the Postmaster-General on that subject. I also wish to allude to the employment of ex-soldiers in the Post Office. We have heard in a great many Debates in this House soldiers alluded to as if they were people ostracised from our national life. Last year there was a good deal of criticism about the employment of ex-soldiers instead of ex-telegraph messengers and district messengers. It seems to me that ex-soldiers, young men of twenty-six and twenty-seven years of age, who had spent the best years of their life in the service of the State had a far greater claim to be employed by the Post Office than telegraph boys or messenger boys. We know how the opposition to the employment of ex- soldiers arises, for it has its origin in the political pressure brought to bear in the constituencies, and it is a sort of reflex wave from the anti-military cant which unfortunately pervades a certain portion of our nation. I strongly urge the Postmaster-General at the commencement of what may be a distinguished period in his career to consider very carefully the claims of ex-soldiers to further consideration at the hands of the State. Another point I wish to bring forward is the fact that ex-soldiers are not allowed to count their former service for pensions. I think men who have served many years in any branch of the service of the State should be allowed to count that portion of their service in any other Civil Service employment they take up afterwards. I hope the Postmaster-General will consider that point very carefully, because nothing tends to promote recruiting and the encouragement of one great service of the State so much as a feeling that they will be treated with justice and impartiality when they retire into civil life.

Mr. DENMAN

I should not have intervened in this Debate had it not been for a particular observation made by the hon. Member for Canterbury. If the Committee will pardon a junior Member making a personal observation, I would like to say that I share the regret which has been expressed that the speech we heard from the hon. Member for Canterbury to-day is the last speech he will deliver on postal subjects in this House. Those who have worked with the hon. Member feel a very special regard towards him. We do not find ourselves in agreement with a great many of his statements and a great many of his points of view, but we always have for him something of the fundamental and underlying affection we feel for the British weather, for instance. He was almost an integral part of the Post Office. We expected certain points of view from him whenever he spoke, and there were moments when we felt we had to put up our umbrellas to protect ourselves against him; but still, on the whole, we enjoyed the weather he gave us.

The particular remark to which I refer is one where I am afraid his memory must have played him false. He stated that it was only after he had obtained financial guarantees that he was able to force the Post Office to accept the offer of the United States for the penny postage. The President of the Board of Trade is not here this evening to deal with that particular observation, but I saw a great deal of those negotiations, and I think it is only fair to him that I should again deny what has already been denied publicly—that that is a correct account of the transaction. It was the President of the Board of Trade who initiated the negotiations with the United States for the reduction of the postage, and I do not think it is quite fair to make the statement that such a peculiar form of pressure was put upon him as an hon. Member coming and saying he had financial guarantees.

Mr. MORTON

But everybody knows the names of the men who offered the guarantees.

Mr. DENMAN

No conceivable number of names of men who offered guarantees would ever affect the Postmaster-General's decision. The only point of a guarantee is a guarantee which we would accept. It was not accepted, and obviously it could not be accepted. Therefore there was nothing in those guarantees which weighed with the right hon. Gentleman. I desire also to traverse the argument put forward by a number of Members on both sides of the House, who have expressed a very earnest desire for an immediate procedure by the Postmaster-General to reduce the postage rate to France. In the first place, it is impossible, I think we all agree, to reduce the rate to France alone. No matter how distinct the act of amity was towards France, it would obviously toe a hostile act towards those other nations to whom we did not reduce the rate. There is a good deal of confusion with regard to the economic effects of this particular postage. Recollect that there must ever be under present conditions a profitable transaction. We are increasing annually our postal communications with France, and we make a small profit on each letter. If the postage is reduced there will clearly be a loss. Now, who pays that loss? There is that amount less brought into the Exchequer.

Mr. BYLES

Call it diminished profits.

Mr. DENMAN

Well, you have a diminished amount of profits to the extent of £400,000. That sum has to be recovered in some way. If you take it out of the general revenue of the country—paid by the taxpayers in general—whose advantage is it? Are we to understand there is a large and enthusiastic correspondence between the working class here and that of France? It is perfectly obvious that those who will chiefly benefit are the commercial and the wealthy classes. I ask the House to realise this, that you are putting a burden on the general taxation of the country merely for the advantage of the commercial and the wealthy classes. The Postmaster-General has referred to the enormous commercial transactions which pass through the Post Office but I doubt if he has ever been confronted with a more difficult task or one involving more trouble to the internal organisation than this. I only hope his term of office may be sufficiently prolonged to bring to an end this very important transaction.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

There are two Committees of the Whole House which deal with matters of finance. The Committee of Supply has to decide what money has to be spent, and the Committee of Ways and Means decides how the money is to be raised. The Committee of Supply, in which we meet to-day, is accustomed to deal with the problems before it with a lordly generosity and in a spirit of easy spending. On the other hand, the Committee of Ways and Means, which is called upon to decide taxation, is disposed to regard these problems with an air of rigid economy. This might seem strange, in view of the fact that the two Committees are really the same body of men on different occasions, but there really is no reason for surprise, because, as a rule, they are different hon. Members who speak with generosity on one occasion to those who speak on another occasion in a spirit of niggardly cheese-paring. I venture to submit to hon. Members that they should invert their accustomed roles, and that my hon. Friends the Member for Sutherlandshire and the Member for Sal-ford, and other hon. Members who have been speaking to-day of the delights of spending, should, instead of speaking on Thursday afternoon in Committee of Supply, attend the Committee of Ways and Means when the Chancellor of the Exchequer is propounding a new scheme of taxation and preach their doctrines there. On the other hand, the hon. Gentleman the Member for King's Lynn (Mr. Gibson Bowles) and those who speak in favour of economy should attend on Thursdays and support the Minister of the day when he is resisting an increase of expenditure. With regard to my hon. Friend the Member for Sutherlandshire (Mr. Morton), he rebuked me for being less docile and less amenable than my right hon. Friend and predecessor. My lot is hard indeed, because my predecessor was in office four years, and I have been in office four months. During those four years he dealt, I have no doubt, with all the applications of my hon. Friend which were reasonable. During that period my hon. Friend made to my predecessor, let us say, four proposals for telegraph and postal facilities in his district. Three of them were reasonable and well founded, and were immediately met by my predecessor, and the hon. Member was left with his one bad proposal. He puts it before me, and because I take the same view which my predecessor adopted, then he says, "I was able to go to the President of the Board of Trade when he was Postmaster-General, and I got three concessions from him, but when I go to the present occupant of the office I cannot get even one." I am sure the Committee will sympathise with me in the hard duty which is imposed upon me in continuing the resistance of my predecessor to the small proportion of bad cases which my hon. Friend has had to present.

Mr. MORTON

I do not want to be misunderstood in any way. My complaint was that the right hon. Gentleman had doubled, or nearly doubled, the demand of his predecessor for a particular line.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

I am not sure but I rather think there was some extension suggested when the case was put forward on the second occasion. I should like to say, with regard to the pledge of the Prime Minister when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, that it was a conditional pledge in regard to the guarantee. I do not say my mind is closed against the proposals of the hon. Member, and since he has been good enough to give me an invitation to visit his constituency to survey myself the route where he desires a telegraphic line to be erected, I shall be very glad if opportunity should offer in the summer to visit that part of the country and acquaint myself with the density of population of the district which he speaks. Then the matter could be looked into.

There are several other points which have been raised, some of which were answered by anticipation in my opening remarks and others were dealt with by the Assistant Postmaster-General. There are a few points however which have been left over. The hon. Member (Mr. Rea) made one or two criticisms, some of them useful criticisms, of the telephone service which is now given. He complained that there were frequently considerable delay in telephoning telegrams under the new sytem which is now being tried in various districts. These cases, I am sure, must be exceptional, for I am informed that the average time that is occupied between the receipt of a message at the post office and its delivery to the addressee is only four minutes, which of course compares very favourably indeed with the time of delivery required when the message is sent by hand. My hon. Friend complained also that he could get no detailed information from the Post Office as to how the number of calls on his telephone was calculated. He was merely told by the Post Office that an automatic machine was employed, and the automatic machine registered so many calls. I do not see what else the Post Office could say. Obviously, these calls had to be registered by an automatic machine which works on the principle of a meter, and the only information which can be given to the subscriber is that during such and such a period of time the automatic machine has registered so many calls. If the subscriber doubts the accuracy of the record of the meter all he has to do is himself to keep a check account of each call that has been made, either by himself, which may be easy, or by his servants, which may perhaps introduce further elements of difficulty.

The hon. Member for Westmoreland raised another point which has been dealt with—the question of the use of lifts by postmen who are required to deliver letters at the top of large blocks of buildings. My predecessor, amongst very many measures that he took to promote the comfort and well-being of the staff, took this matter also in hand, and made every effort to induce the owners of these blocks of flats or offices to allow the postmen to be taken up to the top in the lifts and then to walk down delivering their letters on the way. I am glad to say these efforts have met with a very ready response. In the provinces with very rare, perhaps no exceptions, the request from the Postmaster-General has been acceded to. In London gradually, by the use sometimes of arts of persuasion, the owners of these buildings, with the exception of a handful, have all been induced to give these facilities, and I am now taking steps to bring pressure, even more effective than the arts of persuasion, upon the few who still remain recalcitrant and who refuse to the postmen those very reasonable facilities which, I think, on the ground of humanity, any owner of a flat or set of offices ought to be readily willing to grant. The hon. Member (Mr. Seddon) raised the special case of a mail cart driver suffering from an infirmity who had done his work efficiently, but who, when owing to Post Office pressure the conditions of employment in his town were improved, was dismissed by his employer. I will consider whether it is not possible to make representations to the contractor. I have no power to require the employment of any individual, but I will consider whether I cannot make representations to the contractor in question. The hon. Member for St. Albans (Mr. Carlile) made some criticisms of the finance of the Post Office. He said it is very unsound, that we have no valuation of Post Office property, and that we make no provision in the annual balance-sheet for depreciation; and he was surprised that this matter had not been raised previously in the discussions on the Post Office. The reason for this practice is very simple. The buildings of the Post Office have no capital account. All the buildings have been provided out of revenue. If, m the first instance, you provide buildings out of revenue, and then put by a depreciation fund, you would be paying for the same thing twice over in the yearly accounts. In regard to telegraphs it is different. There was a sum of £10,000,000 paid for the telegraphs when they were taken over from the telegraph companies, and the extensions made shortly afterwards. In respect of the telegraphs there is a capital account, and the original valuation is known. With respect to telephones, similarly there is a capital account, and there is a depreciation fund covering a comparatively short period—a period of about fifteen years—to repay the expenditure of the Post Office capital account for telephones.

Mr. CARLILE

It is still equally necessary that we should know what property we have in the hands of the Post Office. Although it may have been paid out of revenue at the time of the purchase, that does not affect the importance of having a valuation.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

The Post Office might, of course, undertake a valuation of its own property in addition to all the other classes of valuations which are now being undertaken by the State, but it would be an exceedingly expensive undertaking to value the enormous plant of the Post Office and the vast buildings in London and all parts of the country, and the outcome of it would be, I think, of very little value, certainly not of such value as to justify the cost caused by the enterprise. The hon. Member for Rochester (Mr. Forde Ridley) raised the question of the classification of the offices at Rochester and Chatham for the purposes of the scales of pay under the Hobhouse Committee's Report. As the hon. Member is aware, the scales are based partly on the cost of living, which is practically the same in Rochester and Chatham, and partly on the importance of the offices. Large offices—offices with much work requiring higher officials and a high standard of efficiency—should receive larger rates of pay than smaller offices. It is regulated by the number of units of work. In Rochester it is ISO units, and in Chatham the number is 304. Consequently, under the scheme recommended by the Hobhouse Committee, the Post Office at Rochester falls into one category and the Post Office at Chatham into another. It may be that criticism might justly be levelled against the whole scheme, but I do not wish to enter into that at the present time. But if the scheme, partly based on the units of work, is to prevail, there is reason for differentiation. The towns have a distinctly different character. One of the towns mentioned is a barrack town and the other an agricultural and cathedral town. In the case of Devon-port and Plymouth they are very much of the same type. It only remains for me to thank the Committee very cordially for their criticisms on the Post Office, for criticisms are helpful, and also for their words of appreciation of my Department and the able staff which it comprises, and for the kindly references which have been made to myself.

And, it being Eleven of the clock, the: Chairman left the Chair to make his Report to the House.

Resolution to be reported upon Monday next; Committee to sit again upon Monday next.

ADJOURNMENT.—Eesolved, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Master of Elibank.]

Adjourned accordingly at Three minutes after Eleven o'clock.