LORD CAMPBELLsaid, he wished to call the attention of his noble Friend the Postmaster General to the illegibility of the Post Office stamps on letters. He had before directed his noble Friend's attention to the subject, and he knew that he had been exerting himself to the utmost, with a view to the marks being rendered sufficiently legible. This was sometimes very important for the administration of justice. He (Lord Campbell) had seen the greatest inconvenience resulting from the circumstance that, in the cases to which he referred, the marks were mere blotches, and wholly illegible; and, in a recent trial, at Edinburgh, the necessity for improvement was manifest, it being very important in that case, to ascertain when a particular letter passed through the Post Office. The French letters were stamped in a much 1285 better manner than our own, and he did not see why there should be such a difference. He would, therefore, ask his noble Friend what hope there was of any improvement?
THE DUKE OF ARGYLLsaid, that, in consequence of his attention being directed to this subject, by his noble and learned Friend, he had made inquiries respecting the stamping of letters, and he had ascertained that the real difficulty arose from the great amount of stamping done by manual labour. If his noble and learned Friend were to visit the Post Office at six o'clock, he would witness the marvellous rapidity and accuracy with which the process of stamping was effected on hundreds of thousands of letters. It was very desirable to keep the box open to the latest possible moment, and the pursuit of this object left scarcely sufficient margin for stamping. An infinite number of suggestions, with respect to the stamping of letters, had been sent to the Post Office within the last few months, very much in consequence of the observations made by his noble and learned Friend. There was no doubt that manual labour could never effect the purpose so perfectly as a machine; and he was happy to state, that a machine had been invented by a gentleman connected with the Post Office, which promised to produce a great amendment. The superiority of the foreign stamps might be attributed to the comparatively small correspondence with which foreign post offices had to deal, and, still more, to the use of letter-paper not so highly glazed as that generally used in this country.