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A Popular Scheme. The attitude of our countrymen towards the general penny-postage rate is beyond all question favourable. A glance at the long and brilliant array of names on the enclosed paper, published in the Times of Oct. 10th 1905, will suffice to show how widely and enthusiastically the scheme is supported. " The idea," said the Times, " steadily and deservedly grows in public favour. Every one can see its personal and commercial uses; every one can imagine in some degree the enormous boon it would constitute to the folk of modest means. . . . Here in England we shall not stand in need of much detailed reasoning to convince us of the genuine advantages promised by such a scheme." I have before me a resolution passed by the Common Council of the City of London on Oct. 19th, 1905, as follows: — " That this Court, fully appreciating the great advantage to commerce, international concord, and social intercourse, which would result from the extension of the penny postal system, desire* to express its hearty support of the movement now being organized to secure its future universal adoption; and further expresses its earnest hope that His Majesty's Government will take into its favourable consideration the best means of accomplishing an object so well calculated to promote the best interests of the Empire." Before long I hope to send you a general resolution to the same effect, of the Municipal Councils throughout the kingdom. KoREidN Support. Foreign opinion, so far as it has been elicited, is also decisively in favour of worldwide penny postage. The European commercial class, as might be expected, sees in it a peaceable extension of workable area, equivalent to the conquest of a new Morocco or China, for trade. Foreign statesmen, publicists, and other thinkers recognise its vast potentialities for the promotion of friendly intercourse; while the working-men of all lands intuitively hail it as a sorely needed stimulus to productivity, an impartial, all-round influence for good. The suggestion has not, so far, been rapturously welcomed by foreign Governments; but their acceptance of it is merely a question of time, and the approval of it by a single great Power will decide the rest. More than one American Postmaster-General has advocated foreign penny postage, when the loss on free, or almost free, transmission of American book-post matter has been put an end to. And the German Emperor has declared that if we establish penny postage to the United States Germany will do so—he might have said must do so. The cogent logic of the subjoined appeal of eading German commercial men cannot have failed to impress a monarch so sagacious : — [From the Great Merchants of Germany.] " A petition in favour of a reduction of the postage-rates within the limits of the Universal Postal Union :— " On the 6th of June of the present year 1905 the Association of Senior Merchants of the City of Berlin submitted the following petition to the Secretary of the German Imperial Post Office—that is, the German Postmaster-General : — " The postage-rates now in use throughout the Universal Postal Union have for the main part been established by the Postal Treaty of Berne in 1874 and the Universal Postal Treaty of Paris in 1878. They are thus for nearly three decades in use. During this period, as is proven by the statistics, the international postal affairs have vastly increased, and it appears that the moment has again arrived when a reform, in the sense of a reduction of the postage-rates throughout the Union, might be introduced. " It has ever been considered as the greatest merit of Dr. Yon Stephan, the former PostmasterGeneral, that he took an active part in the organization of the Postal Union, with its —for those days—cheap uniform rates. In a like manner, the present German Postal Administration might obtain for itself both the praise of the country as well as that of the outside world if it would take the lead in recommerfding a universal reduction of the present postal rates. The idea of such a reduction is all the more feasible as agreements have been formed in the course of the last years between the postal authorities of Great Britain and Ireland on the one hand and those of the British colonies on the other, in consequence of which the penny postage, which was valid only for postal intercourse between Great Britain and Ireland, has been extended over almost the whole British Empire. This is in reality and with due reference to the enormous development of British settlements in all quarters of the globe, a reduction having already a certain universal character, and which must be looked upon as a precursor for the general introduction of a similar reduction of the world's postage-rates. As long, however, as this advantage only redounds to the benefit of England and its colonies, the other countries are in a disadvantageous position, and the longer this differentiation is kept up the more keenly this disadvantage will make itself felt, and will prove an obstacle to the development of international trade. " For Germany in particular the question of the postage-rates is of a greater importance in consideration of the fact that our position on the world-market will be a decidedly more unfavourable one than hitherto owing to the new commercial treaty. " Our petition to Your Excellency is, then, to this effect, that you will propose at the next Congress of the Universal Postal Union a general reduction of the universal postage-rates, probably to those rates in use now for the inland service of the individual countries, and that you will begin with the preliminaries for such an agreement at once. Independently, however, whether such an

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