Cheap Postage--Rowland Hill--His Plan Proposed in 1837--Comparison
of the Old and New Systems--Joshua Leavitt--Money-Orders, Stamps,
and Envelopes--The Free Delivery--London District Post--Mr.
Hume--Unjust Treatment of Mr. Hill by the Government--The National
Testimonial.
A sketch of recent British Reforms, even as imperfect as that I am
attempting, would be defective without some notice of one of the
greatest blessings of the age--CHEAP POSTAGE. Not only Britain, but
Europe and America, (for they have in some degree partaken of its
benefits,) are indebted to Mr. ROWLAND HILL for this measure of human
improvement and enjoyment. There are two aspects for contemplating this
reform. The one, to go into heroics on its vast social, political,
commercial, and moral advantages; the other, to go into tables of
figures. The former may be called the poetic, the latter, the
mathematical, view. I shall avoid both of these extremes.
The high rates of British postage, down to 1840, and which were adjusted
much on the same scale as ours, were a dead weight on correspondence.
For thirty years previous to that time, the gross receipts of the
post-office had remained nearly stationary. Thus, the amount of
correspondence by mail continued about the same during a period in which
the population of the country increased fifty per cent., commerce and
wealth in a nearly equal proportion, and knowledge among the masses, and
the facilities of transmission, to even a larger degree. These facts
arrested the attention of many minds. But the sagacious Rowland Hill
probed to causes and devised remedies. He published his scheme for
postal reform in 1837. Its outlines were these. The controlling idea of
the post-office establishment should be, the convenience of the people,
and not Governmental revenue. It was extortionate for the Government to
tax as much for carrying a letter from London to Edinburgh, as a
merchant charged for transporting a barrel of flour. The chief labor
being expended in making up, opening, and delivering mails, therefore
the fact, whether a letter was carried one mile or one hundred miles
made comparatively little difference in the expenditures of the
department. The number of pieces of which a letter was composed should
not regulate the rate of postage, but weight should control. As much
postage was lost on letters which were never called for, therefore there
should be a distinction between prepaid letters and others; and in large
towns there should be a free distribution of prepaid letters, by
postmen. There should be no privileged class, with permission to use the
post-office free of charge. Guided by these principles, Mr. Hill
recommended a uniform rate of postage for all distances--a postage of a
penny per half ounce, on letters, if prepaid, irrespective of the number
of pieces, and two pence if not paid till delivered, the rate increasing
as the weight advanced--a free delivery of prepaid letters in large
towns--total abolition of the franking privilege. His scheme embraced
great improvements in other respects, such as envelopes, stamps,
post-office money-orders, &c. He also insisted, that the increase in the
number of letters under his scheme would be sufficient in a few years to
carry the net income as high as under the old system.
Now, all this seems very simple and plain--so simple and plain, that
those who hourly enjoy its benefits never think of the times when it
absorbed a day's wages of a poor Irish laborer in London to send a
letter to his wife in Cork, informing her that he was well, and hoped
these few lines would find her enjoying the same blessing--when a
commercial house in Liverpool paid a yearly tax to the post-office
sufficient to discharge the salaries of its clerks--when an editor,
happening to be absent from the metropolis, wrote his leaders, to avoid
triple postage, on very thin folio post, with very close lines, to the
great disgust and vexation of compositors and proof readers--when love
letters and money letters were peered into by gossiping and rascally
postmasters, to see whether they were double--when a manufacturer, who
could send a ream of paper a hundred miles for six pence if it went in
the coach box, must pay a shilling per sheet if it went in the coach
bag--when a luckless neighbor, about to take a journey of business or
pleasure, must conceal his departure to the last moment, or be laden
with a portmanteau full of letters, to "save postage"--when--but there
is no end to the absurdities, annoyances, and extortions of the old
system. And who thanks the genius and perseverance of Rowland Hill for
exposing and exploding this relic of the times of the Stuarts, and
introducing a reform worthy of the noon of steamers, railways, and
electric telegraphs? It is so simple! Columbus is almost as sure of
immortality for teaching a bevy of courtly buffoons how to make an egg
stand on end, as for giving a new world to Ferdinand and Isabella. It
looked very simple--especially _after it was done_. So did the discovery
of the magnetic needle and the new world. It is the capacity which
conceives how simple things, which produce great results, can be _done_,
that is entitled to be called genius. He is both a genius and a
practical man who can first conceive and then execute. And such a man is
Rowland Hill.
His pamphlet, of 1837, soon attracted the attention of the nation. The
next year, several hundred petitions in favor of his plan were presented
to Parliament--a select committee was appointed to collect facts--a
hundred witnesses were examined--and a report, embodying a great variety
of important information, was published, filling three volumes of the
Parliamentary papers. After much deliberation, his scheme, having
suffered considerable mutilation, was adopted in 1839, to take effect
early in 1840. In its actual workings, though crippled by half-hearted
officials, it has exceeded the expectations of almost everybody except
its sagacious originator, working out, during nine years, before
millions of eyes, the problems he solved twelve years ago in his closet.
In 1839, the last year of the old system, the letters passing through
the British post-office numbered about eighty millions. The average
postage was seven pence per letter. The first year of the new system,
the number reached one hundred and seventy millions. It steadily
advanced, till, in 1848, it had risen to three hundred and fifty
millions. The gross receipts of the department in the latter year about
equaled those of 1839. The net income of 1839 was about a million and a
half sterling; that of 1848, about three-fourths of a million. The
increased expense, and consequent diminution of net revenue, under the
new system, are owing to the increase of business on old post routes,
the opening of new routes, and great improvement on both. The net
revenue increased from 1840 to 1848, a period of eight years, one-fourth
of a million. Hence, it is safe to presume, that in a few years more, it
will equal that of 1839. What a demonstration have we here of the much
controverted proposition, that a great diminution in the cost of that
which the public needs will so increase consumption, that revenue will
not be the loser, while convenience will vastly gain? But, discard the
principle of revenue, and make the post-office simply support itself,
and England might probably in a few years reduce the rate of postage
one-half, while transmitting a mass of letters which would almost defy
enumeration. This more than realizes the brightest visions of Mr. Hill.
But, the money view of this great reform is a paltry view. It is well
said by Mr. Joshua Leavitt, in his admirable American pamphlet on Cheap
Postage: "The people of England expend now as much money for postage, as
they did under the old system; but the advantage is, that they get a
great deal more service for their money, and it gives a spring to
business, trade, science, literature, philanthropy, social affection,
and all plans of public utility."[7] Probably the corn laws were
repealed two years sooner, because of cheap postage.
[7] Mr. Leavitt is probably better acquainted with this subject than any
other man in America, and his valuable writings are doing much to
prepare the public sentiment to demand the full measure of this reform.
Nothing can exceed the convenience of the money-order, the stamp, and
the envelope branches of the system. The money-orders are drafts by one
post-office upon another, for sums not exceeding L5. They are a sort of
post-office bill of exchange, and are largely employed in the
transmission of small sums by mail. In 1847, the number issued in
England alone was 810,000, amounting to L1,654,000. The department
charges a trifling commission for the order--say 3_d_ for L2. In a
country where the brokers are Jews, and the smallest Bank of England
notes are L5, this arrangement is very beneficial to the poor. The label
stamps, which prepay letters, are convenient to all classes. They are of
all rates, and, being first prepared by the department, are kept on
sale, not only at all the post-offices, but by shop-keepers of all
sorts. They are used, not only to pay postage, but as small change.
Indeed, they are used as a kind of circulating medium. The number sold
in a year is counted by millions. The envelopes, stamped by the
department, and sold like simple stamps, are used not only to enclose
letters, but by all sorts of persons and associations, for circulars,
advertisements, &c., these being printed on the inside of the envelopes
after they are stamped. The great majority of letters are prepaid,
because of the diminution in the rate of postage. _Gentlemen_ everywhere
always pay their own postage, when writing on their own business. In
England, they also enclose a stamp to prepay the answer. Large
commercial houses cause their address to be printed on stamped
envelopes, and then send packages of these to their correspondents, to
be used when needed.
The free delivery of prepaid letters in the large towns is astonishingly
perfect. Almost a stranger among the two millions of London, I once
received a letter at my lodgings, from a correspondent to whom my city
address was unknown, in three hours after its arrival at the
post-office. The postman, when I was in London three months before, had
delivered letters to my address, and he now recollected the name and
number. Besides the "General Post," which delivers letters coming from
the country and foreign parts, there is connected with the department in
London, a machine of curious contrivance, and great exploits, called the
"District Post." It covers a circle of some twelve miles, from the
center, and delivers letters which originate and end within the circle,
ten times a day, at dwellings, shops, and offices. In 1848, the number
delivered by this post was nearly fifty millions. To these must be added
at least a hundred and twenty millions for the General Post, making an
aggregate of a hundred and seventy millions of letters delivered in
London annually, by the post-office department, a large proportion of
which, being prepaid, are delivered free! But there is no end to those
statistics, and I leave them.[8]
[8] I have not attempted in this chapter to do more than give
_statistics_ in "round numbers," nearly approximating to precision.
The committee, when presenting to Mr. Hill, in 1846, the National
Testimonial, had ample grounds for pronouncing his reform "a measure
which has opened the blessings of a free correspondence to the teacher
of religion, the man of science and literature, the merchant and trader,
and the whole British nation, especially the poorest and most
defenseless portion of it--a measure which is the greatest boon
conferred in modern times on all the social interests of the civilized
world." The veteran reformer, Joseph Hume, in a letter to Mr. Bancroft,
then our minister at St. James, dated in 1848, says: "I am not aware of
any reform, amongst the many reforms I have promoted during the last
forty years, that has had, and will have, better results toward the
improvement of this country, morally, socially, and commercially."
And how has the benefactor of a great and powerful nation been treated
by the British Government? He has shared the general fate of useful
inventors and reformers. At the outset he was ridiculed as a dreamer, an
enthusiast. After a conviction of the utility of his plan had penetrated
the masses of the people, Parliament mutilated it, supplying the
exscinded parts with uncongenial inventions of its own. When even thus
much of his plan was adopted, he was permitted to have but slight
influence in working it out in practice. He should have been appointed
Postmaster General; but that station belonged, by prescription, to the
nobility--to some Lord Fitztoady or Earl Muttonhead, who could hardly
tell a mail bag from a handsaw. Liberal Whig though he was, the great
reformer was placed, by a Whig administration, in a minor place, where
he could exert only a subordinate influence over postal affairs. And
after six years of incessant labor and anxiety, which had impaired his
health and wasted his fortune, the Peel government turned him out,
though he entreated the Premier to allow him, at any pecuniary sacrifice
to himself, to remain and aid in working out his plan. Being now
embarrassed in his circumstances, a national subscription in his behalf
was started, the net proceeds of which amounted to L13,360. It was
presented to him, in 1846, at a public dinner, accompanied by many
honeyed words. The reply of Mr. Hill was modest. He gave ample credit
for the aid he had received from others in carrying his plan through
Parliament, and specially named Messrs. Wallace and Warburton, members
of the committee of 1838, Mr. Baring, the then Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and Lords Ashburton and Brougham. He delicately alluded to
his proscription by the Peel administration, and pointed out the
improvements necessary to give complete efficiency to his reform.
Thirteen thousand pounds, for devising and introducing a measure which
has carried blessings to every princely mansion and peasant cabin in
three kingdoms! Why, if Rowland Hill had patented a first class washing
machine, he could hardly have made less money out of it. Thirteen thousand
pounds from a people that smothered the "Divine-Fanny-show-her-legs," as
George Thompson called her, with bouquets and bank notes. But if his
cotemporaries do not requite his services, posterity will do justice to
his memory.