D.0.9.4 REPORT—1852. 
In conformity with this recommendation a letter was addressed to the 
Lords of the Treasury by the Earl of Rosse, as President of the Royal So- 
ciety, in concurrence with Lord Wrottesley as Chairman of this Committee. 
. To this letter no reply has as yet been received. 
With the view of promoting the same general object, viz. the cheap and 
rapid international communication of scientific publications, it was resolved 
that Lord Wrottesley should address, and he addressed accordingly, a letter 
to the Earl of Malmesbury, as Secretary for Foreign Affairs, of which the 
following is a copy :— 
“March 15, 1852. 
‘*My Lorp,—As Chairman of a Committee composed of Members of both 
Houses of Parliament, selected by the British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science, to watch over the interests of science and inspect the various 
measures from time to time introduced into Parliament likely to affect such 
interests, and which met for the first time on the 3rd of February last, I ant 
requested to represent to your Lordship the great inconvenience to which 
the cultivators of the various branches of science in this country are now ex- 
posed by the extravagant charges levied by Foreign Governments on the 
conveyance by post of Presentation Copies of Scientific Publications sent from 
this country to eminent scientific men, pursuing similar branches of science 
in foreign parts ; and I am further directed respectfully to request your Lord- 
ship, by negotiating Postal Conventions or otherwise as you shall think pro- 
per, to endeavour to prevail on the governments of other countries to afford 
greater facilities for the transmission by post of such publications. 
“ The undersigned believes that he cannot better illustrate the extent of 
the evils complained of than by subjoining the followiug list of charges for 
the conveyance by post to the various countries named therein, of a commu- 
nication printed in the Philosophical Transactions for 1851, and which was 
conveyed by our own post office to every place within the United Kingdom 
at a charge of 8d. :— 
t eatin 4 eo: 
To Modena... o.oo VE oe tae Benin. oe ere Gat 
CEG: 10 ew ces, weer 15 0 Neenerp fe. iar. eee 
Wittar, . ae ee 18 4 Dreikcen 2, eee rg 
Turin (2S prussels, oo) yee 5 O 
Padua 18 4 Cadiz. 2...) eae 7 4 
Bonn ao Goranen: 2), ee 
“Your Lordship will at once perceive that such charges as these are far 
beyond the means of many of the most distinguished cultivators of science, 
who are absolutely disabled thereby from forwarding by post to their friends 
abroad the copies of their scientific memoirs which are presented to them 
gratuitously for the purpose of distribution by the respective societies, to 
which such communications are sent and in whose Transactions they appear. 
“ From this cause, combined with the duties levied at the Custom House on 
similar publications imported from abroad, at present the interests of science 
are very injuriously affected, for it happens continually, to use the expressions 
of the Treasurer of the Royal Society in a letter addressed to the under- 
signed, ‘ That a quantity of intellectual labour of a very high class is un- 
productively consumed in doing over again in one country that which has 
already been done in another, from the want of a more rapid interchange of 
knowledge.’ 
“Mr, Rowland Hill of the Post Office Department, has suggested a mode 

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