Penny postage

“ Brooks, the Home Missionary at Birmingham, a very intelligent, active and benevolent man. He tells me that penny postage is producing excellent effects as regards the poor, inducing large numbers, even among the adults, to learn to write, and that their correspondence is increased, he thinks, a hundred-fold. He thinks requiring prepayment by stamps (the postmasters being obliged to sell even a single stamp) will not interfere with the correspondence of the poor, who are rather proud of sticking the Queen’s head on their letters. ”

“ I am sure your Lordship will believe me incapable of dealing lightly with that connection with the Post Office on which I set so great and just a value. To devise and bring into operation, so far as it has been effected, my system of Penny Postage, has been the cherished object of the best years of my life, interest in its progress, whether I am an instrument or not in promoting it, will ever retain the firmest hold on my mind, and would suffice to keep me in any course, but one which I feel to be inconsistent alike with my private and my public duty. ”

“ My Lord Duke,—At the request of the Mercantile Committee on Postage, I have the honour to submit for your Grace’s consideration a few facts in support of the Bill for the establishment of a uniform penny postage, which it is expected will shortly be brought into the House of Lords.
“The evidence which has been given before the Select Committee on Postage proves that the Post Office revenue has scarcely increased at all for the last twenty-four years.
“That the present high rates lead all classes, except those allowed to frank, to evade postage to an enormous extent. ”

“ It is to be feared that to this very day the “advocates” remain as obstinately unconvinced as ever:—
“March 12th, 1842.—Penny Postage is safe. Sir Robert Peel, in announcing his financial measures last night, states that he does not intend to advance the rate, at least at present. He speaks highly of the social advantages of Penny Postage, and expresses an opinion that the measure has not yet had a full trial. But he states, erroneously, that the cost of the packet service defrayed by the Admiralty exceeds the Post Office net revenue.” ”

“ The facilities it has afforded for epistolary intercommunication are so wonderful and self-evident, that we who benefit by them are blinded to the hidden impulses it has given to social improvement and to commerce. Regarded only as the origin of the present money-order system, penny postage has occasioned the exercise of prudence, benevolence, and self-denial; it has, in many instances, stopped the sufferings of want by timely remittances ”

“ The public, satisfied with having obtained the adoption of the penny rate, the reform in which it was most interested, bestirred itself little in advocacy of those further improvements in which its interest was less direct and far less obvious; many persons, indeed, regarding penny postage pure and simple as the be-all and [462] end-all of the matter. ”

“ The agitation to extend penny postage beyond the limits of the British Isles is much older than many people suppose. Far back in the 'forties Elihu Burritt [192] strove long and manfully in the cause of “ocean penny postage”; and in my father's diary, [Pg 230] under date 5th March 1853, it is recorded that the Postmaster-General received a deputation “which came to urge the extension of penny postage to the Colonies.” [193] It was a reform long delayed; and as usual the Post Office was reproached for not moving with the times, etc. ”

“ Sir Rowland Hill stood up, and remained standing, till his Lordship requested both to be seated.
He had not the fault of most enthusiasts, who look in others for a zeal as ardent as that which animates themselves. He found it somewhat hard, indeed, to understand how any one could be indifferent to the statistics of Penny Postage, and help watching the rise in the number of letters and the postal revenue with as much interest as Englishmen, on a wet day, watch the rise in the weather-glass. ”

“ I cannot touch upon this subject without mentioning the remarkable fact that, whereas the introduction of penny postage was really followed by a reduction in the hours of work, and at the same time by an increase in the remuneration to almost every man in the department, save only the Postmaster-General and the Secretary, an impression has very generally prevailed, and still, I believe, remains in many quarters, that the truth is the very reverse. ”

“ Free delivery was rapidly extending throughout the United Kingdom. At the present day (1868) the work is so far advanced that to many readers the very term “free delivery” must have lost its significance. Formerly, to every office there were limits, sometimes narrow ones, beyond which delivery was either not made at all, or made only at an additional charge, generally of one penny per letter, an arrangement nowise interfered with by the simple establishment of penny postage. ”

“ As much more than half the present generation have had no experience of any other system than that of [238] penny postage, it must be difficult, if not impracticable, to give an adequate conception of the state of things at the time referred to, of the height and variety of rates charged, and of the multitudinous shifts resorted to for their evasion. The law gave the Post Office a monopoly, and respect for the law is considered characteristic of our countrymen ”

“ This I conceive to have been a main cause of delay in the recovery of the gross revenue.
4th. Above all, the execution of my plan was, during the early years of penny postage, entrusted almost entirely to men whose official reputation was [348] pledged, not to its success, but to its failure. Even after I entered the Post Office, near the close of the seventh year of penny postage, obstacles were so continually thrown in my way that for many years I could do comparatively little to promote the measure ”

“ His labours have produced more beneficial results than may strike persons at first sight. It is quite clear that the facilities which the penny postage has given to the transactions of commerce, and to all communications connected with business, must have been infinitely advantageous to the industry, and, by that means, to the general revenue of the country. ”

“ On the following day the public anxiety relative to the House of Lords showed itself in a petition “signed by the Mayor and upwards of twelve thousand five hundred of the merchants of the city of London, which the Noble Lord who presented the petition understood had been signed in twelve hours,” praying that no temporary deficiency of revenue might delay the establishment of penny postage. ”

“ Commercial transactions as to very small79 amounts were chiefly managed through the post: small money-orders were constantly transmitted from town to town and from village to village, the business of the money-order office having increased twentyfold. No men are more indebted to the system of the penny post than literary men, publishers, and printers,—manuscripts and proof-sheets now passing to and fro from one end of the kingdom to the other with care, cheapness, and celerity. Common carriers, too, are greatly benefited by the penny postage. ”

“ Whatever is new is sure to be opposed, apparently on no other ground than that of novelty, and in this bearing men are often not unlike some of the lower creatures in the scale of animated nature, that start and fly from things which they have not seen before, though they may have no more substance than that of a shadow. However this may be, the Penny Postage measure has produced stupendous results. In 1839, the year before the reduction of postage, the letters passing through the post in the United Kingdom were 82,500,000. ”

“ The steel pen, sold at the rate of a penny a dozen, is the creation, in a considerable degree, of the Penny Postage stamp; as the Penny Postage stamp was a representative, if not a creation, of the new educational power. Without the steel pen, it may reasonably be doubted whether there were mechanical means within the reach of the great bulk of the population for writing the three hundred and thirty-seven millions of letters that now annually pass through the Post Office. ”

“ Uniformity of postage, doubtless, at the present time, seems to most persons so completely in accordance with the fitness of things, that it may appear strange when we state that in 1837 it was so startling an innovation that, when publishing his pamphlet, Sir Rowland Hill thought it prudent to reject a suggestion to entitle it "Uniform Penny Postage," fearing lest the mere title should cause people to throw away the pamphlet unread, as something too ridiculous to deserve perusal. ”

“ The plan by which Mr. Rowland Hill, in his pamphlet of 1837, proposed to carry out in practice his uniform penny postage scheme was, shortly stated, first, simply to pay the penny or money with the letters; but secondly, and more especially, by stamped sheets of letter paper, and stamped wrappers or covers. "Let stamped covers and sheets of paper be supplied to the public, from the Stamp Office or Post Office, or both, and at such a price as to include the postage." ... ”

“ If so, the effective saving will be enormous.”
[78] It may be added that this expectation was confirmed by the event.
“March 8th, 1848.—The Postmaster-General, in speaking of the many improvements which I have effected, remarked the singular absence of all complaints from the public, though some [of the improvements] are more or less restrictive.”
Among the means formerly taken to account for the existence of a revenue under what it regarded as the ruinous system of penny postage, the Post Office had uniformly maintained that a large profit was obtained in the Money Order Department. ”

“ Later, however, the improvement began to be manifest:—
“April 6th, 1842.—The [Post Office] revenue accounts show an increase of £90,000 on the year.... The Post Office revenue is the only department ... which does not show a deficiency on the quarter, a phenomenon which puzzles the Tory papers amazingly.”
It had already been shown in the statement made by Sir Robert Peel on March 12th, 1842, that a strong disposition existed somewhere to make the loss resulting from the adoption of penny postage appear as large as possible, nor could I doubt as to the quarter in which this disposition existed. ”

“ Judiciously thinking that it would be better for the House to leave the details of the measure in the hands of Government, he demanded for the Treasury the power at once of fixing the rates of postage, of ordering payment by weight, of making prepayment compulsory, and of establishing the use of stamps. He concluded by moving the following Resolution:—
“That it is expedient to reduce the postage on letters to one uniform rate of a penny postage, according to a certain amount of weight to be determined ”

“ Again, he proposed that the contract for the construction of mail-coaches should be thrown open to public competition; a measure which being soon afterwards adopted, effected a saving of more than £17,000 per annum. He also urged the consolidation of the London General and District Post Offices; a measure which subsequently formed part of the plan of penny postage, though not carried into effect until many years afterwards; and, lastly, he urged the appointment of a Commission [259] of Inquiry into the management of the Post Office ”

“ In dealing with the question of the rates of postage, the delegates had before them the various representations from the several provinces as to the desirability of establishing, if possible, a low uniform rate of postage; and the success of penny postage in Great Britain and of the rates adopted in the United States in 1846 encouraged the belief that a low uniform postage would not only confer immeasurable commercial and social benefits, but would within a reasonable time be productive of a revenue ample for all the needs of the service. ”

“ From 1827 he memorialised the post office for a system of inland penny postage, together with a proportionate reduction (to 3d. per ounce) for ocean postage, a subject on which he corresponded with Elihu Burritt and other American philanthropists. In 1851 he advocated a reduction in the postage of printed matter, and his persistent efforts at postal reform were recognised in 1883, when a testimonial of 400l., towards which the government contributed 50l., was presented to him. ”

“ There is something very pleasing, not to say fascinating, in his appearance and manner.” Mr. M. D. Hill replied, “I was very glad to hear you were able to go to the Fishmongers’, and very much amused to find that you consulted Garibaldi on Italian Penny Postage. When you go to heaven, I foresee that you will stop at the gate to inquire of St. Peter how many deliveries they have per day, and how the expense of postal communication between heaven and the other place is defrayed.” ”

“ The expense of the packet service, which was said to swallow up the whole of the revenue now derived from the [461] Post Office, had no more to do with the penny postage than the expense of the war in Afghanistan or China. It was as distinct from the Post Office as the expense of the army or navy.”
At a subsequent period, as will appear in its proper place, I was called upon to expose the fallacy more in detail; but everybody knows that an error once adopted is slow of eradication. ”

“ After a while, warmth [359] seemed to abate, the tone became moderate, and at length the farewell was given, Lord Melbourne, re-entering by the folding-doors, with the remark, “Lichfield has been here; I can’t think why a man can’t talk of penny postage without going into a passion.”
Next day, August 5th, Lord Melbourne proposed, in a long speech, the second reading of the Postage Bill. He fully admitted that the income of the country fell short of the expenditure—allowed that there was great uncertainty as to the fiscal results of penny postage ”