We feel perfectly assured that we never shall have an effective postal communication with Australia, until we cease to regard that important colony as a mere calling-station for our East Indian mails. Its increasing commerce with the mother country demands that it should have a mail service distinctly its own, conducted with no other view than to promote the convenience of that commerce, and of the people of the colony. How then is this to be provided most economically, and, at the same time, most effectively? The latter is the main question. We ought scarcely to think about cost in the effort to improve the postal facilities of a possession which, we have seen, took from us last year upwards of fourteen millions sterling of British produce and manufactures. Past experience has, we think, shown sufficiently that the object in view can never be obtained by steaming round the Cape of Good Hope. The shortest passages as yet attained by that route were performed by the “Golden Age” in 61 days, and by the “Argo” in 64 days. The noble steam-ship “Great Britain,” in the last trip made the distance to Melbourne in 65 days. The Australian Steam Navigation Company, which promised so largely, failed most unequivocally. The first of their ships, the “Australian,” took 44 days to reach the Cape; the “Sydney” took 54 days; the “Melbourne” took 75 days; and the “Adelaide” took 77 days. Of the two last vessels’ voyages the _Melbourne Argus_ remarked at the time:— “The preposterous length of the voyage is a minor evil in comparison with the anxiety which haunted this community for weeks in the case of the last two steamers. We were almost on the point of giving up the ‘Adelaide’ for lost, when the lumbering old hulk was reported at last to have rolled into Adelaide.... The mischiefs inflicted upon the mercantile community here, by the detention of the ‘Adelaide,’ and the fears for her safety, have been intolerable. Mails have been postponed—goods have arrived before the advices or bills of lading had come to hand—correspondence has been confused, and business transactions have been utterly deranged. It is most provoking to think that a steamer holding the Government mail contract, and for which the mails have been kept back for several weeks, should leave London on the 11th of December, and arrive in Port Philip on the 11th of May following—a period of five months precisely!”