Page:The Post Office of Fifty Years Ago.djvu/28

 cases, there was much speculation as to what remissions of taxation might be granted. This seemed to Sir Rowland Hill to afford a good opportunity for pressing for a reduction in the rates of postage (the high rates then levied being, in fact, a heavy tax on all commercial and social communications), and in order to satisfy himself what reductions might be possible, he set to work carefully to ascertain the actual cost which the Post Office had to incur in the collection, conveyance, and delivery of letters, and it was in the course of this analysis that he discovered the startling and hitherto unsuspected fact that the actual cost of conveyance per letter, from one post town to another, was not, as had hitherto been supposed, a large fraction of the total cost incurred, and roughly proportionate to the distance the letters were carried, but was so exceedingly small that it might fairly be disregarded, and that a uniform rate of postage, with all its manifold advantages of simplicity, was not only practicable, but even fairer than one in any way dependent upon distance.

How Sir Rowland Hill arrived at this discovery, and demonstrated that by improved arrangements the lowest rate of postage then charged—viz., one penny—would suffice for all inland letters of moderate weight, even for those carried the longest distance, will be gathered from a perusal of his pamphlet.

Uniformity of postage, doubtless, at the present