Page:The Post Office of Fifty Years Ago.djvu/154

86 If we might safely infer a general rule from these facts, it would appear that, to say the least, the increase in consumption is inversely as the squares of the prices. And a calculation founded on this rule would lead us to expect that, if the proposed average reduction in postage, viz., from 6d. to 1d. per letter, were effected, the number of letters would increase thirty-six fold; and perhaps it is not altogether beyond the bounds of possibility that a very long course of time should bring us to some such a result. Indeed, when we consider the immense increase which has taken place in travelling by water, wherever steam-boats have been brought into operation, and when we consider that the advantages which have led to this increase, viz., greater speed and certainty with reduced charges, are equally secured by the arrangements here proposed, this result is not quite so extravagant as might at first sight appear. Still, for many reasons, it would be quite erroneous to admit even the remote possibility of such an enormous increase into any practical consideration of the subject; nor indeed is there any temptation to speculate on such distant chances. A reference to the table which precedes these observations will show, that an increase not more than a sixth part of that, the remote possibility of which has just been glanced at, would be sufficient to retain the revenue in its present state, while a yet smaller increase is all that has been counted upon as probable.

It is important to observe that that increase in the number of letters which would sustain the revenue in its present state, does not require any addition to the present actual expenditure in postage. All that is necessary to secure the revenue from any diminution is, that the public should be willing to expend as much in postage as at present. Now it would be very difficult, perhaps impossible, to point out any instance in which a reduction in the price of any particular article has not eventually, and even speedily, been followed by such an increase in demand, as