Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/424

 charges led to all kinds of illicit conveyance. Five-sixths of the letters from Manchester to London did not pass through the post office. The natural result was a steady falling off in the revenue. Hill from his childhood had seen the burden on the poor of the high charges, and had often been witness of his mother's dread lest a letter should come with heavy postage to pay—for very few letters were prepaid—at a time when she had not a shilling in the house. One day in such an alarm he had been sent out to sell a bag full of rags, and had brought back 3s. The statement in Miss Martineau's ‘History of England,’ ii. 425, that Hill was moved to action by Coleridge's story of the device by which a poor woman obtained news of her brother, is untrue. His father had often maintained that postage was too high even for the sake of the revenue. As early as 1826 Hill had devised, but had not published, a scheme for a travelling post office, by which the letters could be sorted on the road. In 1835 the large surplus in the revenue set him and his brothers speculating on the best way of applying it in the reduction of duties. It was then that his thoughts were first turned earnestly to the post office. He noticed that its revenue, whether gross or net, in the previous twenty years, instead of increasing with the increase of population and wealth, had diminished, whereas in France, where the rates were lower, there had been in the same period a large increase. Convinced that a great reduction could be made with advantage to the revenue, he next examined what changes in the rates it would be most expedient to make so as to secure the maximum of advantage to the public with the minimum of injury to the revenue. He tried in vain to get admission into the London post office, so as to study its working; in fact he never was inside any post office till his scheme was adopted. He had to seek his information in the blue-books, especially in the ‘Eighteenth Report of the Commissioners of Revenue Inquiry.’ ‘Provided with over half a hundredweight of this raw material, he began that systematic study, analysis, and comparison’ which after months of labour brought out the facts on which his scheme was based. He first found out that there were three great sources of expense: First, ‘taxing’ the letters, that is ascertaining and marking the postage on each, for there were upwards of forty rates on single inland letters alone; second, the complication of accounts arising from this system, postmasters having to be debited with unpaid postage on letters transmitted to their offices, and credited with their payments made in return; third, the collection of the postage on delivery. From these facts it was clear that a vast economy would be effected if prepayment, which was very rare, was made a custom. He next examined the cost of the actual conveyance and distribution of letters, and made his great discovery ‘that the practice of regulating the amount of postage by the distance over which an inland letter was conveyed, however plausible in appearance, had no foundation in practice, and that consequently the rates of postage should be irrespective of distance.’ This discovery was only arrived at after the most laborious calculations, and was as startling to himself as it was to the general public. The cost of conveying a letter from London to Edinburgh, for which 1s. 4½d. was charged, was only one thirty-sixth part of a penny. As the expenses for the receipt and delivery of all letters were the same, however long or however short a distance they travelled, it followed that a uniform rate would approach nearer to absolute justice than any other rate that could be fixed. The two chief parts of his plan, therefore, were a uniform low rate and prepayment. He embodied it in a small pamphlet, entitled ‘Post Office Reform: its Importance and Practicability,’ which he marked ‘private and confidential.’ The title of ‘uniform penny postage,’ which he had first thought of, he rejected, lest its apparent absurdity should ruin its chance of success. In January 1837 he submitted it privately to Lord Melbourne's government, in the hope that it would carry conviction and be adopted. He was sent for by the chancellor of the exchequer, Spring Rice, but no result followed. He thereupon published his pamphlet, with additions, under the title of ‘Post Office Reform, &c., second edit.’ This led to his examination before a commission of post office inquiry, which was then sitting. It was before this commission, on 13 Feb. 1837, that he described his invention of the adhesive postage stamp—‘a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp, and covered at the back with a glutinous wash.’ He had borrowed the notion from Charles Knight's proposal in 1834 that the postage on newspapers should be collected by means of stamped wrappers. James Chalmers [q. v.], for whom this suggestion has been erroneously claimed, did not experiment with it till the November of 1837. The proposed reform quickly caught the public attention; it was ridiculed by the official world, but was supported by such men as Brougham, Hume, Grote, O'Connell, Cobden, and Warburton, and by the corporation of the city of London. On 23 Nov. 1837 a parliamentary committee was appointed to examine into the scheme. It worked through