No one requires to be told that, taking the whole mass of the population, there were but few persons sufficiently intimate with the great ones of the earth to obtain franks. The less fortunate were therefore driven to expedients of their own to evade a pressure which they were unable to bear. Illicit agencies for
PRINCE ALBERT’S MUSIC ROOM, BUCKINGHAM PALACE.
the transmission of letters at a cheaper rate were formed in various parts of the kingdom, and these were much employed by mercantile and manufacturing firms, who saved largely by the device. People lower in the scale exercised their wits in a number of contrivances, which were often extremely ingenious, and which it is impossible either to defend, or seriously to accuse. Newspapers were marked with strange dots and other understood symbols, which conveyed a few general facts from the sender to the recipient. Sometimes two or three words were written on one of the margins; but this was very likely to be detected. A much safer plan was to despatch a blank sheet of paper duly directed, the mere sight of which would sufficiently assure B, who received, that A, who sent, was alive and well. The letter could then be at once returned to the postman, on the plea that the postage could not be afforded. An incident of this nature came under the observation of Coleridge when wandering about the
MR. (AFTERWARDS SIR) ROWLAND HILL.
Lake district in the days of his early manhood; and there can be little doubt that the same thing was frequently done in many successive years. The evils of the Postal system were slightly mitigated by these stratagems, but only slightly; and, as a rule, the poor were almost entirely deprived of the knowledge of one another, if fifty miles or so separated the brother from the sister, or the mother from the son.
Nevertheless, the revenue suffered from the several schemes for evading the high rates of postage. Between 1815 and 1835 the population of Great Britain increased thirty per cent.; education had made some progress; and travelling was so much more common that the stage-coach duty (though the railway system had begun by the latter year) had increased one hundred and twenty-eight per cent. Yet during the same time the receipts of the Post Office underwent no augmentation whatever, if, indeed, they did not fall off. It is clear, therefore, that the secret and illicit post must have enjoyed a good deal of patronage, though rather in the middle than the lower class. The objections to the Postal system were many and glaring. It was needlessly onerous, the average charge on every letter throughout the United Kingdom being as much as sixpence-farthing; it encouraged fraud; it hindered the natural intercommunication of the poor; it was capricious and uncertain in its operation; and it included a great deal of most offensive spying, to ascertain whether suspected letters contained more than the regulation number of pages. Still, owing to the force of habit, it survived years of obloquy, until a genius arose capable of organising a better method.
Mr. Rowland Hill (subsequently Sir Rowland) was the third son of Mr. Thomas Wright Hill, of Kidderminster, and afterwards of Birmingham, and brother of Matthew Davenport Hill, an eminent lawyer, politician, and reformer, whose name is identified with the more humane treatment of juvenile offenders. Delicate in health from his childhood, young Rowland showed a premature genius for figures, and a still greater genius for organisation. In 1833, when about thirty-eight years of age, he was appointed Secretary to the South Australian Commission, and was largely instrumental in founding the colony of South Australia. It was about this time that his attention was first directed towards the Postal system, and early in 1837 he published a pamphlet on “Post Office Reform: its Importance and Practicability.” He had observed that the number of letters passing through the post bore a ridiculously small proportion to the number of the population. His mathematical mind induced him to make calculations as to the cost of conveyance; and he found that the expense of transit on each individual letter between London and Edinburgh—a distance of four hundred miles—was not more than the thirty-sixth part of a penny. Indeed, the cost was but little enhanced by distance; and Mr. Hill therefore came to the conclusion that, if the rates of postage were reduced to the lowest, if the despatch of letters were made more frequent, and the speed of conveyance were increased, the revenue would gain instead of lose, to say nothing of the social boon.
Starting from his well-ascertained datum, that thirty-six letters could be carried from London to Edinburgh at a cost of a penny, Mr. Hill strongly urged the desirability of adopting a uniform rate of postage within the limits of the United Kingdom. That this rate should not be more than a penny, followed naturally from the proved facts of the case, and from the obvious justice of giving the public the advantage of a cheapness which would actually benefit instead of injuring the revenue. Nevertheless, the opposition to be encountered proved very serious and harassing. All the persons engaged in the old system were pledged to resist the new; and it appears to have been really thought that a Penny Post would entail such difficulties in its organisation as to be practically impossible. The Postmaster-General, Lord Lichfield, declared in the House of Lords that the proposed scheme was the wildest and most extravagant he had ever known. In the opinion of this official, and of several others, the necessary expenses would be absolutely overwhelming, while, owing to the immeasurable increase of correspondence, no building would be large enough to receive the clerks and the letters. This very argument, however, clearly implied that there was a public want which the existing system did not supply. On the other hand, many believed that there would be very little increase in the number of letters, and that there was, in fact, no real demand for any change whatever.
Some persons, from whom a greater liberality might have been expected, were as antagonistic to the scheme as if they had been Post Office officials. The Rev. Sydney Smith, who had been a reformer in his earlier days, but who was now getting old, spoke of the plan as “nonsensical,” and as needlessly entailing a loss of a million to the revenue. Rowland Hill, however, was not a man to be deterred by any amount of difficulty. He had convinced himself, and ultimately he convinced others, that letters might be sent to any part of Great Britain and Ireland for the sum of one penny, and that yet there would be a profit of two hundred per cent. The uniformity of charge would in itself save a large amount of time and trouble; and if the postage could be paid in advance, there would be a still further gain in general convenience. The idea of a penny letter-stamp was suggested to Mr. Hill by a proposal put forth some years before by Mr. Charles Knight, the eminent author and publisher, who thought that the best way of collecting a penny postage on newspapers would be by the use of stamped covers. This plan was ultimately adopted for letters, and people at the present day, if they think at all upon the subject, are astonished how their forefathers could have gone on from year to year without a method at once so cheap, so simple, and so admirably adapted to the necessities of the case.
As Mr. Hill was not himself a member of Parliament, it was essential to his scheme that