Page:The Post Office of Fifty Years Ago.djvu/87

Rh additional charge of one thirty-sixth part of a penny would amply repay the expense of transit. If, therefore, the charge for postage 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 can be shown how we are to collect so small a sum as the thirty-sixth part of a penny.

Again, the expenses of receipt and delivery are not much affected by the weight of each letter, within moderate limits; and, as it would take a nine-fold weight to make the expense of transit amount to one farthing, it follows that, taxation apart, the charge ought to be precisely the same for every packet of moderate weight, without reference to the number of its enclosures. Having ascertained that the actual expense of conveying the letters from post-town to post-town forms so small a fraction of the whole apparent cost of primary distribution, it will be well to examine the other items of expenditure more minutely, with the view of discovering how far they are to be considered as the natural and necessary cost of distributing the correspondence of the country, and how far they result from the Post Office being made an instrument of taxation.

The items of expenditure now to be brought under consideration are those which are classed at p. 14,