Page:The Post Office of India and its story.djvu/76

54 by municipalities to be allowed to scrutinize the parcel post have been strenuously opposed. The thin end of the wedge has, however, been introduced at Delhi, where lists of insured parcels are supplied to the municipality, which makes its own arrangements for ascertaining the contents from the addressees. The practice is wrong in principle, because it is a breach of the confidence which the public place in the Post Office on the understanding that no information of any kind regarding postal articles is imparted except to the persons immediately concerned, and any measure which tends to shake the confidence of the public in the secrecy of the Department is to be strongly deprecated. A great deal of fuss was made in Simla some years ago about this very matter on the ground that the local traders suffered from people purchasing goods outside the municipality and getting them in by post. When an inquiry was held, it was found that the large majority of parcels received by post were addressed to the firms in the town, a discovery which put a sudden stop to the agitation. It is very doubtful if the Parcel Post at the present rates pays the Post Office, and where places are situated some distance off the line of rail and have to be reached by foot lines it is quite certain that every parcel is carried at a loss. Unfortunately these are the very places where people make the greatest use of the Parcel Post; the tea planters of Assam, for example, getting their whisky, jam and other stores in this way from Calcutta.

A further agitation is now afoot to have the weight of parcels brought down to eleven pounds, which is the maximum weight for a foreign parcel and is also the limit of weight in England. This, on the whole, is as much as the Post Office can be fairly expected to carry, but