The Westport Times. THURSDAY, JUNE 17, 1869.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 518, 17 June 1869, Page 2

The Westport Times. THURSDAY, JUNE 17, 1869.

Complaints, more frequently oral than written, but usually very emphatic, have on numerous occasions been rnado to us with regard to a deficiency in our local postal arrangements—namely, the want of a town delivery of letters. In two separate forms apologies for such a delivery do exist. Those having regular correspondence passing through the Post Office may either pay for the convenience of a box at tho office, or they may pay for the services of a private and irresponsible, if faithful, town deliverer. In either case, it will bo observed, the characteristic of the arrangement is that the public, not the Post Ofiico, provide and pay for the convenience afforded. If these were the terms upon which the Post Office Department enjoyed the monopoly of conveying the mails of the country, there would be little occasion to grumble. But theoretically, and in most other places practically, it is the work of the Post Office to deliver as well as to receive letters and newspapers —to he a perfect medium of communication between tho writer of correspondence and the person to whom such correspondence may be addressed, or, at least, to be as perfect a medium of communication as circumstances may render possible. That circumstances both permit and justify a town delivery in Westport has been amply illustrated by statistics of the work of the office which we recently published. Tho fact is amply illustrated otherwise by the every-day experience of persons residing in town or by their constituents in the country. Under the very natural impression that what is enjoyed in much smaller and inferior towns exists also in Westport, letters of considerable importance have been forwarded to residents of the township, and, by failing to be delivered, the utmost inconvenience has been caused. The same has, no doubt, been the ease in many more instances than have been brought under our notice. In fact, the inconsistency of the Department doing only half of its legitimate and universally recognised work must, of necessity, be the source of misunderstandings and mistakes, resulting in considerable public inconvenience. And, apart from the inconvenience, the public have really no right to be

called upon to pay charges in excess of those represented by the postage fixed by the law. The Post Office is certainly not slow to engage in the probably, to it, amusing, but, to others, annoying entertainment of " straining at gnats" whenever a steam-boat captain or agent fails in the respect due to Her Majesty and Her Majesty's mails. But, inside its own sphere, the Post Office can " swallow camels " wholesale ; and this method of making the public do its own work, or pay for it " through the nose," is one among a series of illustrations of the Department's stretch of conscience and its power of " swallow."