§ The EARL of CLARENDONlaid upon the Table papers relating to the postage convention between Great Britain and Prussia, and additional articles relating to the postage convention between this country and France, and also copies of Treasury warrants relating to postage arrangements between this country and Denmark and Prussia.
LORD BROUGHAM, with reference to the subject of the papers laid on the Table, would call the attention of their Lordships to the mode in which the postage was regulated with some of those countries with which we had entered into conventions for the arrangement of postage. It was not now necessary to previously pay the postage of letters to France or Belgium, nor was it necessary to previously pay the postage of letters from those countries to this; and one result which he found to arise from that arrangement was, that he received every morning a large packet of letters from France without any previous payment, which he considered to be a great hardship in some cases. Those of their Lordships who might not have necessarily so much communication with France as he had, could not feel it equally; but he assured them that he felt it severely. Within the last four or five days he had received four or five letters which were superscribed in characters that looked like the handwriting 501 of friends; but some of them were merely circulars describing goods which persons had for sale. He could not have discovered that fact until he had opened the letters, and the only revenge he could obtain was, to send them back directed to the parties who had forwarded them.
§ The EARL of CLARENDONI paid 1s. 4d. this morning for a printed account of a styptic.