Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/49



E now come to a Birmingham reformer who may well be called the great Political Economist of Human Nature. Rowland Hill virtually commenced life in Birmingham, and here not only taught mathematics in his father's school, but learnt to apply them to a system which has brought more comfort and happiness than arithmetic can measure, not only to all the millions of the British empire, but to all the divided families of the civilized world. It is not in arithmetic, nor rhetoric, nor poetry, nor prose to give a complete idea of the benefits The Penny Post of England has conferred upon all classes of the people. Owing to the circumscribed area of "the three kingdoms," this postal system works more nearly like one of the great and beautiful agencies of Nature than anything else a human government ever put its hand to. Indeed, it works