Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/590

Rh 568 P O S T-O F F I C E [HISTORY. ferred that, if the charge for postage Avere to be made proportionate to the whole expense incurred in the receipt, transit, and delivery of the letter, and in the collection of its postage, it must be made uniformly the same from every post-town to every other post-town in the United Kingdom, unless it could be shown how we are to collect so small a sum as the thirty-sixth part of a penny. And, inasmuch as it would take a ninefold weight to make the expense of transit amount to one farthing, he further in ferred that, taxation apart, the charge ought to be pre cisely the same for every packet of moderate weight, with out reference to the number of its enclosures. At this period the rate of postage actually imposed (be yond the limits of the London district office) varied from 4d. to Is. 8d. for a single letter, which was interpreted to mean a single piece of paper not exceeding an ounce in weight ; a second piece of paper or any other enclosure, however small, constituted the packet a double letter. A single sheet of paper, if it at all exceeded an ounce in weight, was charged with fourfold postage. The average charge on inland general post letters was nearly 9d. for each. Apart from the necessary commercial evils of an excessive taxation, the effects upon the postal service itself were injurious, on the one hand, a complicated system of accounts, involving both great waste of time and great temptation to fraud in their settlement, and, on the other, a constant invitation to the violation of the sacredness of correspondence, by making it part of daily official work to expose letters to a strong light expressly to ascertain their contents. These mischiefs it was proposed to remove by enacting that the charge for primary distribution, that is to say, the postage on all letters received in a post-town, and delivered in the same or in any other post-town in the British Isles, should be at the uniform rate of one penny for each half-ounce, all letters and other papers, whether single or multiple, forming one packet, and not weighing more than half an ounce, being charged one penny, and heavier packets, to any convenient limit, being charged an additional penny for each additional half-ounce. And it was further proposed that stamped covers should be sold to the public at such a price as to include the postage, which would thus be collected in advance. 1 By the public generally, and pre-eminently by the trading public, the plan was received with great favour. By the functionaries of the post-office it was at once denounced as ruinous and ridiculed as visionary. Lord Lichfield, then postmaster- general, said in the House of Lords that, if the anticipated increase of letters should be realized, the mails would have to carry twelve times as much in weight, and therefore the charge for transmission, instead of being 100,000 as then, must increase to twelve times that amount. The walls of the post-office would burst; the whole area in which the building stood would not be large enough to receive the clerks and the letters. 2 The latter part of this prediction indeed has been abundantly verified, but not within the period or under the circumstances then referred Parlia- to. In the course of the following year (1838) petitions mentary W ere poured into the House of Commons. A select com- 10111 mittee was appointed, which reported as follows : &quot;The principal points which appear to your committee to have been established in evidence are the following: (1) the exceed ingly slow advance and occasionally retrograde movement of the post-office revenue during the. . . last twenty years ; (2) the fact of the charge of postage exceeding the cost in a manifold proportion ; (3) the fact of postage being evaded most extensively by all classes of society, and of correspondence being suppressed, more especially among the middle and working classes of the people, and this in consequence, as all the witnesses, including many of the post-office 1 Post-Office Reform, 27 sq. 2 Mirror of Parliament, debate of 18th December 1837. But Lord Lichfield was an excellent public servant, and many reforms were made by him. authorities, think, of the excessively high scale of taxation ; (4) the fact of very injurious effects resulting from this state of things to the commerce and industry of the country, and to the social habits and moral condition of the people ; (5) the fact, as far as conclusions can be drawn from very imperfect data, that whenever on former occasions large reductions in the rates have been made, these reductions have been followed in short periods of time by an extension of correspondence proportionate to the contraction of the rates ; (6) and, as matters of inference from fact and of opinion (i. ) that the only remedies for the evils above stated are a reduc tion of the rates, and the establishment of additional deliveries, and more frequent despatches of letters ; (ii.) that owing to the rapid extension of railroads there is an urgent and daily-increas ing necessity for making such changes ; (iii.) that any moderate reduction in the rates would occasion loss to the revenue, without in any material degree diminishing the present amount of letters irregularly conveyed, or giving rise to the growth of new corre spondence ; (iv.) that the principle of a low uniform rate is just in itself, and, when combined with prepayment and collection by means of a stamp, would be exceedingly convenient and highly satisfactory to the public.&quot; During the session of parliament which followed the presentation of this report about 2000 petitions in favour of uniform penny postage were presented to both Houses, and at length the chancellor of the exchequer brought in a Bill to enable the treasury to carry that reform into effect. The measure was carried in the House of Commons by a majority of 100, and became law on 17th August 1839. A new but only temporary office under the treasury Natu was created to enable Rowland Hill to superintend (al-f re though, as it proved, under very inadequate arrangements) form the working out of his plan. The first step taken was to reduce, on 5th December 1839, the London district postage to Id. and the general inland postage to 4d. the half-ounce (existing lower rates being continued). On 10th January 1840 the uniform penny rate came into operation through out the United Kingdom, the scale of weight advancing from Id. for each of the first two half-ounces, by gradations of 2d. for each additional ounce, or fraction of an ounce, up to 16 ounces. The postage was to be prepaid, and if not to be charged at double rates. Parliamentary franking was abolished. Postage stamps (see below, p. 585 sq.) were intro duced in May following. The facilities of despatch were soon afterwards increased by the establishment of day mails. But on the important point of simplification in the internal economy of the post-office, with the object of reducing its cost without diminishing its working power, very little was done. In carrying out the new measures the officers were, as the chancellor of the exchequer (Baring) expressed it on one occasion, &quot; unwilling horses.&quot; Nor need a word more be said in proof of the assertion than is contained in a naive passage of Colonel Maberly s evidence before the postal committee of 1843. &quot;My constant language to the heads of the departments was, This plan, we know, will fail. It is your duty to take care that no obstruction is placed in the way of it by the heads of the department, and by the post-office. The allegation, I have not the least doubt, will be made at a subsequent period, that this plan has failed in consequence of the un willingness of the Government to carry it into fair execu tion. It is our duty, as servants of the Government, to take care that no blame eventually shall fall on the Government through any unwillingness of ours to carry it into proper effect. &quot; And again: &quot;After the first week, it was evi dent, from the number of letters being so much below Mr Hill s anticipations, that it must fail, inasmuch as it wholly rested upon the number of letters ; for without that you could not possibly collect the revenue anticipated.&quot; The plan, then, had to work in the face of rooted mis trust on the part of the workers. Its author was (for a term of two years, afterwards prolonged to three) the officer, not of the post-office, but of the treasury. He could only recommend measures the most indispensable through the chancellor of the exchequer ; and, when Goulburn succeeded