IV. For the purposes of this Act, the word "newspapers" shall be held to mean periodicals published not less frequently than once in each week, and containing notices of passing events, or any such newspaper published fortnightly or monthly at the time of the passage of this Act.
V. Periodicals printed and published in this Province other than newspapers, when specially devoted to Religious and to General Education, to Agriculture or Temperance, or to any branch of Science, and addressed directly from the Office of Publication, shall be transmitted from the Post-Office where mailed to any other Post-Office in this Province free of postage.
VI. Letters and other mailable matter addressed to or sent by the Speaker or Chief Clerk of the Legislative Council or of the Legislative Assembly, or to or by any Member of the Legislature at the seat of Government, during any session of the Legislature, or addressed to any of the Members or Officers in this section mentioned, at the seat of Government as aforesaid, during the ten days next before the meeting of Parliament, shall be free of postage.
VII. So much of the twelfth section of the Post-Office Act, passed in the session held in the 14th and 15th years of Her Majesty's Reign and chaptered 71, as requires the Postmaster General to make to the Governor General of this Province, annually, certain Reports for the purpose of being laid before the Provincial Parliament at each Session thereof, for the year ending the fifth day of April previous to such Session, is hereby repealed; and it shall, hereafter, be the duty of the Postmaster General to furnish such Reports annually so that they may be laid before the Provincial Parliament within ten days after the assembling thereof, and such Annual Reports shall be made up to the thirtieth day of September previous to each Session.
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X. This Act shall take effect on and from the first day of August next.
Although the enactment clause made the above Act operative on 1st August, 1857, because of which we should not expect it to affect the Postmaster General's report for the year ending 31st March, 1857, yet we find
this report dated 30th September, 1857, thus including the year and a half from 1st April, 1856. Among other items of interest in this report we find the following:—
There is very material economy of labor to the Department in dealing with letters pre-paid by stamp as compared with letters on which the postage is collected in money, as well as a manifest gain to the public, in the increased facilities which pre-payment by stamp enables the Post Office to afford for posting and delivering letters so pre-paid.
It is gratifying, therefore, to observe that the use of stamps is gradually gaining ground, encouraging as it does the hope that it may be found practicable and expedient ere long to make prepayment by stamp the prevailing rule in Canada, as it has for some time been in the United Kingdom, in France, and in the United States.