Page:The Post Office of Fifty Years Ago.djvu/101

Rh By the above estimate it appears that, if the correspondence of the country increase four-fold, i.e. amount to about 500,000,000 of letters, newspapers, &c., (see p. 11,) then upon the proposed arrangements the cost of primary distribution within the United Kingdom will amount to £651,248 per annum, producing an average cost per letter or newspaper of 32 hundredths of a penny, or one farthing and three-tenths of a farthing.

When it is considered that the mere transit of a letter by the mail-coaches costs practically nothing, and that the penny posts, of which there are about 200 in England alone, are stated by Sir Francis Freeling to be in many cases very profitable, even though these pence have to be collected from house to house, there is nothing very surprising in this result. The following facts may be stated in corroboration of its accuracy.

The average cost of managing the twopenny post of London, notwithstanding the large allowance of weight, and the expensive manner in which the establishment is conducted, is only 34 per cent. on the receipts, or about two-thirds of a penny per letter.

The distribution of the Penny Magazine is exactly parallel with the proposed primary distribution of letters. The magazine is sent to every part of the kingdom, and in considerable towns is delivered