Elihu Burritt

“ And the next year this great reform was realized, and Penny Postage became a power in the land and one of the great social forces of the world. Although so many and strong prescriptive interests, and so many hereditary and ancient customs and habits were arrayed against it, they yielded to its own inherent truth, right, and reason. In fact, no other reform so radical and sweeping was ever carried through all the stages of its progress to its full consummation in such a brief space of time. ”

“ We now come to one of the great poets of that nature that surrounds, embosoms, sustains, and delights the human, and is to universal humanity what the physical being of man is to his mind. Such a poet was born in Birmingham, and his name was David Cox. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Although the portraiture of Nature's face is different from the portraiture of human faces in this respect, that it changes little from year to year and century to century, whereas the human countenance is soon changed and soon disappears, never to be reproduced, still it is a delight to see the features that a landscape, we know well, presented to the artist half a century ago ”

“ As no history is so liable to be lost sight of and unappreciated as that of the lives of living men, a few facts connected with the life and labours of this benefactor of his country and his race may be properly stated here. ”

“ BIRMINGHAM REFORMERS AND ARTISTS—ROWLAND HILL AND THE PENNY POST—DAVID COX AND HIS PAINTINGS.
WE now come to a Birmingham reformer who may well be called the great Political Economist of Human Nature. ”