The following is the commencement of a leading article on the Penny
Postage, contained in the "_Times_," of Saturday, 9th August, 1851:--
"A traveller sauntering through the Lake districts of
England some years ago, arrived at a small public-house
just as the postman stopped to deliver a letter. A
young girl came out to receive it. She took it in her
hand, turned it over and over, and asked the charge.
It was a large sum--no less than a shilling. Sighing
heavily, she observed that it came from her brother,
but that she was too poor to take it in, and she
returned it to the postman accordingly. The traveller
was a man of kindness as well as of observation; he
offered to pay the postage himself, and in spite of
more reluctance on the girl's part than he could well
understand, he did pay it, and gave her the letter. No
sooner, however, was the postman's back turned, than
she confessed that the proceeding had been concerted
between her brother and herself, that the letter was
empty, that certain signs on the direction conveyed
all she wanted to know, and that as they could neither
of them afford to pay postage, they had devised this
method of franking the intelligence desired. The
traveller pursued his journey, and as he plodded over
the Cumberland fells, he mused upon the badness of a
system which drove people to such straits for means
of correspondence, and defeated its own object all
the time. With most men such musings would have ended
before the close of the hour, but this man's name was
ROWLAND HILL, and it was from this incident and these
reflections that the whole scheme of Penny Postage was
derived."
I should be glad to know if there is any doubt as to the truth of this
statement, as I fancied it had been contradicted. Could any of your
Correspondents oblige me by giving me information on the subject, I
should feel obliged.