rough the medium of guarantee and
their own deposits in a benefit-fund, it seems to us that the good
conduct of the men towards their 'fares' must be effectually secured.
The other company proposes to have two classes of vehicles--one at 8d.
and the other at 4d. a mile; and it contemplates the use of a
mechanism for indicating the distance passed over. We most earnestly
hope that both companies will succeed in establishing themselves and
carrying an improvement so important to the public into effect.

COLONIAL PENNY-POSTAGE.

'I shall write to every one in turn, but it is expensive sending to
many at once,' says one of the poor needlewomen, whom Mr Sydney
Herbert's Female Emigration Fund has enabled to obtain a comfortable
home at Adelaide. Well might she complain of the expense. When at
home, she could send a letter to the most distant corner of the United
Kingdom for a penny. In Australia, she finds that the cost of sending
a letter to her mother in London is a shilling. It is strange that the
colonists do not make an outcry about so extravagant a charge. Of all
the anomalies in English legislation, our colonial postage-system is
certainly one of the most glaring; and yet, in the midst of so much
effort for emigration and colonisation, hardly any one seems to be
aware of it. The people of England, Ireland, and Scotland have, for
the last twelve years, enjoyed the incalculable benefits of
Penny-Postage, but they have never thought of extending its blessings
to their fellow-countrymen, scattered abroad among our various
colonies over the whole surface of the globe.

Under the old dear system, the cost of sending a letter home from any
of the colonies was not felt so much as it is now. The emigrant,
before he left home, had always been accustomed to pay from 9d. to 1s.
2d. for letters from distant parts of the United Kingdom, and he could
not complain at finding the postage from Canada or Australia to the
mother-country only a little dearer. But the case has been entirely
changed since Rowland Hill's plan came into operation. What seemed a
moderate rate before that great improvement took place, is now an
exorbitant charge, which no working-man will pay very frequently. In
this, as in most other affairs, it is not the actual but the
comparative cost of the article which makes it seem dear. To a person
who has recently left his native land, and who is probably still
suffering from homesickness, a letter from any belov