Note 597 — VI INTERNATIONAL RATES

"The British Post Office itself is unable to agree with the New Zealand Government that the sacrifice of net postal revenue involved would be 'temporary in duration and inconsiderable in amount.'

"The experience of the British Post Office in connection with the Imperial Penny Postage Scheme shows that if the increased cost of dealing with increased quantities of postal matter be taken into account, as it should be, the department has not recovered, and cannot recover, the loss of net postal revenue involved by the reduction of the Imperial letter rate, which was estimated in 1898 at £108,000 for the first year.

"Recent calculations show that, in the case of a letter for a foreign country, the expense to the Exchequer can be taken at about one penny per half-ounce rate, and in the case of a letter for a Colony, where a long sea transit is generally involved, at about a penny farthing, excluding the heavy cost of subsidized packet service."—Papers laid before the Colonial Conference, 1907: Memorandum by General Post Office (Cd. 3524), p. 499. It was estimated that the introduction of universal penny postage, together with the ounce unit (vide supra), would involve an initial loss of £610,000 a year. Ibid., p. 500.