MISCELLANEA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume II, Issue 81, 24 July 1852, Page 9

MISCELLANEA.

Elihu Burrits's Ocean Penny Postage Scheme.—A numerous meeting has taken place at Manchester, to hear Mr. Elihu Burritt's explanation of his plan of an Ocean Penny Postage. Mr. Alexander Henry, M.P., Mr. Heald, M.P., Mr. Bazley, President of the Chamber of Commerce, and several leading citizens, were present. Mr. Burritt explained that his plan

simply contemplates the charging of a penny for the single service of transporting the letter from shore to shore, between Great Britain and

any country beyond the seas ; one penny for its mere conveyance from Liverpool to New York,

Southampton to Bombay, from Dover to Calais, from Hull to Peterburg, and vice versa. Thus the postage on a letter from any town in the United Kingdom to any part beyond the seas would be twopence —one penny for the inland route, and a penny over the ocean. If all other countries should adopt an inland penny postage like England, then the charge for a letter from any town in Great Britain to any town in the

civilised world would be threepence.

To make

the project pay, there must be twice as many letters as now between Dover and Ostend, three times as many between Dover and Calais, four times as many between New York and Liverpool. At present the cost between London and Paris is 10d., and of this price 6id. goes for the sea voyage. If the 6}£d. were reduced to Id., and the whole postage to 4J-d., would not the letters to Paris double themselves ? With respect to American correspondence, Mr. B.urritt said there are about 400,000 persons emigrating from Europe to North America in one year; they are rapidly increasing, and in three years they will amount to a million. Now these persons, of all others, are the least able to pay the heavy charges upon the letters which they send to or receive from their friends. Is it not fair to assume that these millions of people who emigrate to North America during the next three years would write, if the ocean penny postage were established, at least two letters per head annually to their friends in Europe, and receive two in return ? From this source alone

there would be four millions of letters a-year, or twice the number that annually cross the Atlantic. These two sources alone would quadruple the number of letters now conveyed between Great Britain and North America; and that increase is all that is needed to produce as much revenue as the existing charge. The number of. inhabitants residing at California during 1850 probabfy averaged 125,000, all of whom left friends in the United States or Europe, and were anxious to hear from them by every steamer. For every letter they posted or received they were charged Is. Bd.; notwithstanding this heavy charge, they sent and received 150,000 letters. , Is it not fair to assume that 400,000 emigrants ; who went out last year would write two fetters

each to their friends in Europe if the ocean

penny postage were established. Mr. Henry, M.P., gave his opinion, without any doubt , whatever, that, after a short period, the penny rate would he a paying one.

Intrepidity of British Soldiers.—From some error, a sergeant and sixteen privates of the Thirteenth Volunteers got on the wrong side of what appeared a small chasm, and went against a height crowned by the enemy, where the chasm suddenly deepened so as to be impassable. The company from which the sergeant had separated was on the other side, and his officer, seeing how strong the hillmen were on the rock, made signs to retire, which the sergeant mistook for gestures to attack, and with inexpressible intrepidity scaled the precipitous height. The robbers waited concealed behind a breastwork on a landing-place until eleven of the party came up, and then, being seventy in number, closed on them. All the eleven had medals, some had three; and in that dire moment proved that their courage at Jellallabad had not been exaggerated by fame. Six of them fell dead, and the others being wounded, were shoved back over the edge and rolled down the almost perpendicular side of the hill; but this did not happen until seventeen of the robbers, and their commander were laid dead above. There is a custom with the hillmen, that when a great champion dies in battle, his comrades, after stripping the body, tied a red or green thread round his right or left wrist according to the greatness of his exploit; the red being the most honourable. Here those brave warriors stripped the British dead, and cast the bodies over; but with this testimony of their own chivalric sense of honour and the greatness of the fallen soldiers' courage, each body had a red thread on both wrists. They had done the same before to the heroic Clark, whose personal prowess and intrepedity had been remarkable. Thus fell Sale's veterans ; and he, as if ashamed of having yeilded them precedenceon the road to death, soon took his glorious place beside them in the grave. Honoured be his and their names ! — Sir Charles Napier's Administration of Scinde.

Ease tor Man.—By the year two thousand, says an American paper, it is probable that manual labour will have utterly ceased under the sun, and the occupation of tlie adjective " hardfisted" will have gone for ever. They have now in New Hampshire, a potatoe-diggin'g machine, drawn by horses down the rows, which'digs the potatoes, separates them from the dirt, and loads them into the cart, while the farmer walks alongside, whistling " Hail Columbia," with his hands in his pockets.

Prudence and Improvidence.—No great benefit will accrue to.the working classes of this country — such as every well wisher of their class would wish them to enjoy—unless they take advantage of their improved physical condition to raise themselves socially, mentally, and morally, and thereby politically. And, in" order to do this, they must all husband their recources: there is no other way by which a man, or any class of men, can raise themselves, except by providence,, forethought, and saving. The world has been always divided into two classes —those who have saved and those who have spent —the thrifty and the extravagant; and the building of all the houses, the mills, the bridges, and the ships, and the accomplishment of all great works which have rendered man civilized and happy, has been done by the savers, the thrifty ; and those who have wasted their resources have always been the slaves of those who have been thrifty. It has been the law of nature and of Providence that it should be so ; and I should a great imposter if I promised any class that they would advance themselves if they were improvident, thoughtless, and idle. See what is going on in another country —Ireland—where there is almost a whole class who are just now being exterminated : there are honourable exceptions amongst them, I know ; but go back to their past history, and read the book of Sir Jonah Barrington, and you will see how they mortgaged their estates'for claret, locked their friends in their castles, tapped a barrel of wine, and would not allow them to leave till it was gone; how they cut down the trees for the timber, so that in some districts you cannot see one for miles ; and they would have taken the very soil, too, if they could have sold it. And now the paupers are actually crowding these castles, —some of the proprietors reduced almost to paupers themselves, — and their mansions and castles made the recepticles of paupers, who are crawling about on their terraces, and rambling about in their shrubberies, presenting a scene of retribution, in many instances of righteous retribution, such as should lie an example and a warning to all classes in this country. — Richard Cobden.

The late Marshal Soult.—The cordial recognition of the merits of the deceased French marshal, by the metropolitan journals which have narrated the most striking events of his lengthened career, does honour to the English press. In these biographical notices there has been no sign of reluctance to admit the excellences and attributes so often displayed against our own troops. There is somethng peculiarly grateful in the hearty tribute thus paid to an old antagonist, whose utmost powers and best skill have been arrayed in hostility agninst us, and whose briliant career presents some striking resemblances to that of our ' great captain.' The year 1769 will be ever remembered as that in which Napoleon, Mehemet Ali, Soult, and Wellington were born, not to mention men such as Scott, Chateaubriand, and others, whose greatness was of a different order. The military laurels, of the old marshal and ' the old duke' were gathered in at the same period, and ended with Waterloo, the after life of each being devoted to a different, yet not less distinguished sphere. The last few years of Soult were devoted to retirement and quiet, which few men had more deservedly earned. His life, which began during the monarchy, in whose service his first years were passed, extended through three great revolutions, and all the stormy events to which they gave birth; his country at its close being as far from peace as ever, and even Paris itself, while his remains were unburied, in a state of siege!

Fatal Fight with Negroes at Lagos.— Official information has been received at the Admiralty of a desperate and fatal fight with the negroes at Lagos by the Niger ship's company, in which affair Messrs. Dyer and Hall, mates of the Niger, were killed ; and nine men were also killed and wounded. It appears that for some time there has been a display of some very ill-feeling between those on the coast who are desirous of suppressing slavery, and a party whose " occupation has gone," by the activity of cruisers in putting down the slave trade. The former party have been zealous in their endeavours to prevent the latter from bringing slaves from the interior to the coast market; and the slavers, on the other hand, have attempted by every means to coerce our friends, until at length they have come to blows. The Niger, cruising on the coast, determining on a demonstration against the blacks, landed her boats to protect our allies and to drive off their enemies, when a bloody encounter ensued, and the seamen and marines of the Niger, being overpowered by numbers, were obliged to retreat, fighting their way to their boats, with the disastrous casualties above reported. The commander-in-chief, Commodore Bruce, in the Penelope, 16, steam frigate ; Captain Lyster with the Sealark, 8, and one or two other men of war, arrived off Lagos, from Ascension, after the fight, and remaining there, despatched the Niger to Sierra Leone, to complete provisions, and to take down a detachment of the West India regiment, when it was expected the Commodore would commence active operations against the slave-dealing wretches, and, it is hoped, will inflict upon them such a chastisement as shall avenge the deaths of the gallant officers and seamen of the Niger, and shall finally put a finishing stroke to slave-deal-ing in that part of the coast

Authorship of Junius' Letters.—A fresh candidate for the authorship of Junius' Letters has been brought forward, in the shape of no less a person than Thomas Lord Lyttelton, —his backer being an anonymous writer in the Quarterly Revietv. This article has made a very great sensation in the world interested in such matters, and the everlasting question seems again likely to be discussed with pristine vigour. The writer in the Quarterly has received a letter from Mr. Macaulay, in which, after doing full justice to the great research and logical power of the article, and admitting that the coincidences were most extraordinary, he still declares that his belief in Sir Philip Francis being the real Simon Pure remains unshaken. Mr. Justice Talfourd, on the other baud, wrote to the author to state his conviction that no intellect could stand out against the arguments advanced for Lord Lyttelton. Mr. Lockhart takes the same view ; but Mr. John Wilson Croker remains firm to his old theory that the authorship of Junius has never been discovered, and probably never will. We believe that the writer in the Quarterly has been put in possession of all the papers belonging to the Lyttelton family, and that a very elaborate biography of the curious personage in question will not be long in appearing.— lnverness Courier.