THE AUSTRALIAN POSTAL SERVICE.

Otago Witness, Issue 362, 6 November 1858, Page 3

THE AUSTRALIAN POSTAL SERVICE.

(From the Home News, 16th August.)

The present state of the Australian postal question, as it is now entitled to be called from the protracted deliberations bestowed upon it, may be pretty clearly collected from the particulars we have put together concerning it. It seems, if some authorities are to be believed, that the notion of an alternate service by the Suez and Panama routes has been abandoned by Government, yet, that, notwithstanding that determination, a number of gentlemen, infiuentially connected with Moreton Bay, New South Wales, and New Zealand, have prepared a memorial to the Colonial Secretary, setting forth the impoitance and necessity of establishing an alternate communication via Panama, for the use of the colonies in which they are directly interested. We apprehend that the choice of routes, important as the consideration is, yields in imnWiate interest to the certain establishment of some one route by which the communications with our colonies may be, at all events, kept up with regularity, if not with all the despatch or convenience that could be desired. It is idle to discuss two routes before we have got one ; or to insist on the merits of Panama, about which there is much doubt, while we are suspended over Suez, about which there is no doubt at all. The fault of our Government is, not that it hesitates in establishing separate routes to each of the colonies, but that it delays in establishing a single route to any. Certainty, regularity, and despatch by any one route is the desideratum. According to existing appearances we are as far from the attainment of this end as ever, in spite of the pleasant promises of the now secretary. The Colonial Office and the Admiralty cannot agree. Australia, therefore, must wait. In the meanwhile trade suffers, emigration checks its eager flow, and a thousand interests, public and private, are kept in abeyance. Our only hope rests on the absolute necessity of doing something, and doing it soon. It is one of the many golden opportunities of Lord Derby's administration ; and if Ministers be not disposed to take advantage of it for the sake of the colonies, they will, probably, see the wisdom of doing so for their own.

Postal Communication with Australia.— A meeting of the Australian Association was held on July 291h, at the London Tavern, for the purpose of considering the question of postal communication between the mother country and Australasia generally. It is interesting to draw attention to this circumstance, inasmuch as all the resolutions passed confirm the views we have taken of this important subject. The substance of the whole proceedings may be said to consist in the expressed determination of the meeting to urge the necessity of only one route — that by Suez, and of the establishment of a fortnightly communication. True it is that gentlemen connected with New South "Wales endeavourrd to impress on the meeting the value of and necessity for a postal route via Panama, but the ultimate division on the question showed that a mere section alone desiied the establishment of this means of intercourse. Indeed, the seeietury himself, Mr. Youl, said " the Government had stated they were o-nly prepared to pay the subsidy for one route, and that they did not see the necessity for any other;" while, in full connimation of this expressed opinion, and of our oftrepeated views and statements, the meeting resolved, " That the unsatisfactory working of the

former experiments by the route via Suez is so clearly traceable to mismanagement "and want of experience, that its effective operation is undoubted, if undertaken by competent parties, possessed of the necessary means, and that nothing should be allowed to supersede the service by that line "—" — namely, via Suez. Respecting the Panama route, Captain Parfitt, a gentleman of great nautical experience in the Australasian seas, expressed his conviction " that a fortnightly communication, via Suez, might be carried out at the same cost as a monthly communication via Panama." Furthermore, the secretary said that " if they had the two routes, letters starting on the Ist of the month by Panama would reach the colonies at the same time as letters posted on the IGth would arrive by the Suez route." It is clear that the Government must at once act in this matter.