A PENNY POST-OBIT.
My dear Friend,—I write you this letter to explain to you why you have next to nothing to pay for it. The Government has settled the business; and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has resolved to set his revenue a going by the Post. We are to pay a penny for a letter, which is expected to have upon it the stamp of the Post Office, and of public approbation at the same time. I hardly think it will. Some of the community are looking dull about it already. There is a pence-ive air about the two—I beg pardon, the—one penny postmen, which strikes every one. They intimate that it is gammon to load a man with an additional hundredweight of paper, and to call that a reduction of public duty. It clearly affects people of that stamp; and the public surmise it may even touch the Newspapers. In short, they say that the Times will be quite altered by the Post. Ladies generally seem to like the idea, but there is a visible depression in the mails. Many a coachman has been thrown off his guard, and surprised into a most determined alteration of carriage. The Government will be a political mid-wife, engaged in an everlasting delivery. London is already afflicted with a metropolitan rheumatism, produced by the introduction of fresh draughts into passages, the carpenters having cut holes in all the street-doors. Sanguine people, however, retain their knockers, in the hope of getting the reward offered for the discovery of perpetual motion! They say there is to be an issue of more than a million of letters a day; but men are a little at issue about this. There must be some truth in it, however, as two thousand counters have been engaged,—one thousand to count them, and the other to count them upon. Sorters of all sorts are employed. At the Post Offices, at all hours, the pigeon holes will be surrounded by carriers. The poor fellows will be like muskets, perpetually going off. Rowland Hill has invented this scheme; but the postmen do not complain of him so much as of the other hills they must trudge over with their great bags of letters. The only district there is any contention for is Bag shot heath, once famous for highwaymen; they say, however, that we are all highwaymen now, and do nothing but make them "stand and deliver" from morning till night. Some mercantile quarrels have sprung out of the new regulation. For instance, there is a good deal of milling among the paper-makers. The march of paper will be prodigious—the French say we shall have none left, that it will be all papier marché! Men, women, and children are to write—right or wrong. Enjoinments to this duty—now the other duty is off—press from all quarters. "Be sure you send me plenty of notes," says the son, departing for College. "Write to me often, Billy, do," asks the affectionate mother of her school-going child. Love-letters, containing mutual pledges, will be popped into the post by thousands; and hearts gone passed redemption will be slipped recklessly through a hole in the door. It is uncertain whether orators will not cease spouting, and singers write the notes which they formerly would have uttered. Ironmongers are looking up—and forgery is going on famously—in consequence of the great demand for steam steal pens. Manifold-writers are quite exhausted. I confess, I do not like the system myself—as it's Hill's, it has its ills; any good in it will appear on an examination—
Post Mortem.