APPENDIX G.
EXTRACT FROM THE “GREENOCK ADVERTISER,” OF FRIDAY, MARCH 8th, 1850.
Testimonial to Robert Wallace, Esq., late M.P. for Greenock. The Pioneer of Postage Reform.
Rowland Hill, Esq., said,—Ladies and Gentlemen, the Committee for promoting Mr. Wallace’s Testimonial having done me the honour to invite me to take a part in this day’s proceedings, I felt bound, at whatever inconvenience to myself, to attend and to repeat the testimony which I have always gladly borne to the great and important aid afforded by your late representative, my esteemed and venerable friend Mr. Wallace, in the promotion of Penny Postage. (Applause.) With the view of enabling you fairly to estimate the value of Mr. Wallace’s important services, it will be necessary to take a brief review of his career as a Post Office Reformer. I need not remind you that Mr. Wallace entered the House of Commons as your representative in the year 1833. At this time the Post Office was considered by the public nearly perfect. But although several improvements had been effected under the administration of the Duke of Richmond, probably no department of government had, during the previous twenty years, improved so little, and yet no department had been so free from attack and complaint. It is true that the Commissioners of Revenue Inquiry had a short time before, with great ability, exposed much mismanagement in the Post Office, and had recommended various improvements (some of which were afterwards taken up by Mr. Wallace, and some still later by myself), but these exposures and recommendations, buried as they were in ponderous parliamentary reports, attracted little attention from the public, who still continued to view the Post Office as a vast and mysterious, but nearly perfect, machine. (Hear, hear.) I can scarcely think, however, that it could have been so viewed by the Government. They must, one would think, have been impressed with the remarkable fact that, since the close of the war, notwithstanding the great increase of population, and the still greater increase of commercial activity, the revenue of the Post Office, whether gross or net, had not increased at all. (Hear.) Such was the state of things when Mr. Wallace, in the year 1833, first roused the attention of Parliament and the public to the urgent necessity for reform in the Post Office, which he attacked with that perseverance and energy which distinguished all his proceedings; and, not satisfied with attacking abuses, Mr. Wallace, even at this early period of his parliamentary career, recommended an important improvement, which subsequently, as part of the plan of Penny Postage, was carried into effect with great advantage to the public. The improvement to which I allude was the substitution of charge by weight for charge by enclosure. (Applause.) In the year 1834 Mr. Wallace proposed in Parliament several other important measures, among which were the following:—1st. The opening to public competition of the contract for the construction of the mail coaches. This measure, which was soon after adopted, effected a saving of £17,218 a-year. 2nd. The consolidation of the London General and District Post Offices. This measure subsequently formed part of the plan of Penny Postage, and was partially carried into effect, with most advantageous results, about three years ago. Much, however, still remains to be accomplished. 3rd. The appointment of a Commission of Inquiry into the management of the Post Office. This recommendation was acted upon early in the next year (1835), and the Commission continued its labours till 1838. In the interval the Commission issued no less than ten reports, and it is fairly entitled to the credit of much of the subsequent improvement in the Post Office. During the year 1835, Mr. Wallace appears to have suspended his exertions in Parliament, thinking probably that he should more effectually serve the cause to which he had devoted himself by assisting in the investigations of the Commission. Accordingly, I find him giving evidence before that body, in the course of which he recommended the following improvements among others:—1st. The establishment of day mails, which subsequently formed part of my plan, and has been carried into effect with great advantage to the public and to the revenue. 2nd. A reduction in the rates of postage. 3rd. More frequent communication between places, Mr. Wallace expressing an opinion, since confirmed by experience, that the revenue, as well as the public, would be benefited thereby. In 1836 Mr. Wallace resumed his labours in Parliament, recommending among other measures:—1st. A reduction of the rates of postage, naming 8d. or 9d. as a maximum. 2nd. The registration of letters, since carried into effect with advantage both to the public and to the revenue. (Applause.) 3rd. That the postage charge should be regulated by the distance along the shortest practicable road, instead of being determined, as it then was, by the circuitous route through which the Post Office might, for its own convenience, carry the letter. It is now difficult to believe that only a few years since a system so monstrous as that which Mr. Wallace successfully attacked should have been suffered to exist for a single day—a system under which 6d. or 8d. was sometimes charged on letters passing between places not more than as many miles asunder, merely because the Post Office, for its own convenience, preferred to carry the letters round about. (Hear.) I have now arrived at the period when my intercourse with Mr. Wallace commenced; and in order that you may form a just appreciation of the valuable aid afforded me by Mr. Wallace, it is necessary to consider well his position and that of the Post Office at this time. By four years of incessant attacks, Mr. Wallace had destroyed the prestige once enjoyed by the Post Office, and had thus exposed it to the wholesome influence of public opinion; in addition to which he had effected some important improvements. By these means he had made the subject of the Post Office his own, and was by general consent the Post Office Reformer of the day. It was therefore in his power greatly to aid, or greatly to discourage, the exertions of others. (Cheers.) In this year (1836), through the intervention of one of my brothers, then Inspector of Prisons for Scotland, I applied to Mr. Wallace for the loan of any books he might possess relating to the Post Office, and he very kindly lent me various Parliamentary reports and returns. (Hear, hear.) These documents afforded me essential aid in the work which I had long meditated, but in which I then for the first time earnestly engaged. The result was a thorough conviction in my own mind that the inland rate of postage ought to be the same for all distances, and that provided the postage of letters were prepaid, the rate might be reduced as low as 1d. throughout the United Kingdom. (Applause.) I did not, however, (and I distinctly stated as much at the time), reckon on effecting so vast a reduction without a considerable loss of net revenue, though I did calculate on eventually obtaining as large a gross revenue as before. But the greatest difficulty of my task had still to be overcome. That difficulty consisted in the apparent hopelessness of convincing others that results so startling, and primâ facie so paradoxical, could really be derived from a careful examination and accurate appreciation of the facts of the case. Entertaining these apprehensions, and having regard to Mr. Wallace’s position as the leading Post Office Reformer of the day, I was exceedingly anxious as to the view which he might take of my plan. I felt that its success or failure would greatly depend on his verdict. Accordingly, at the beginning of 1837, I sent Mr. Wallace a copy of my pamphlet (which, in the first instance, was printed for private circulation), and waited in the greatest anxiety for his opinion. It came couched in kind and encouraging language, conveying his hearty concurrence in the main features of the plan, and I at once felt that a most important advance had been made. It is impossible to speak too strongly of my obligations to Mr. Wallace at this time. Many a man circumstanced as he was would have treated me as an intruder—as one coming to poach on his warren; but Mr. Wallace, so far from evincing any jealousy, at once gave me all the advantage of his position, and before the public had declared in favour of my plan, he had adopted it with all his accustomed heartiness. (Applause.) Almost immediately on the issue of my pamphlet, both Mr. Wallace and myself were examined by the Post-Office Commissioners with reference to the application of my plan to the London District post—a measure which the Commissioners recommended, though unfortunately their recommendation was not adopted by the Government. From this time the progress of public opinion in favour of the plan of Penny Postage was so rapid, that before the end of the year Mr. Wallace had succeeded in obtaining the appointment of a committee of the House to investigate its merits. Of this committee Mr. Wallace was the active and indefatigable chairman. It continued to sit throughout the session of 1838, in the course of which it examined no less than eighty-three witnesses; and the labour to the chairman, whose duties were by no means confined to the sittings of the committee, was most severe. The result of the investigation is well known, but it may not be in the recollection of this meeting that the committee having been nominated by Government, which was then unfavourable to Penny Postage, contained several members who were, ex officio, opponents of the measure, and that the resolution establishing the vital principle of uniformity of rate was carried only by the casting vote of the chairman. (Hear, hear, and applause.) Had Mr. Wallace given his casting vote on the other side, or even withheld it, the adoption of Penny Postage would probably have been delayed for years,—possibly the plan might have been altogether abandoned. The Report of the committee, one of the ablest documents ever laid before Parliament, gave an extraordinary impetus to the demand for Penny Postage, and in the session of 1839 upwards of 2,000 petitions, with more than a quarter of a million of signatures (though a large proportion of the petitions being from corporate bodies bore only a single signature each), were presented to the House of Commons alone; and before the end of the session, and within the short space of two years and a-half from its announcement, Penny Postage became the law of the land. (Applause.) During the greater part of this period (at least so long as Parliament was sitting) I was in almost daily communication with Mr. Wallace. The labour which we both had to go through was enormous; and I never shall forget how much I felt cheered and encouraged to persevere, by his own hearty, earnest, and confident manner of encountering the difficulties and disappointments necessarily incidental to so vast an undertaking. (Loud applause.) It would ill become me to speak of the commercial and social advantages which have resulted from Penny Postage. Under its operation, the number of chargeable letters has increased from 76 millions to 337 millions per annum, and though the net revenue, owing to the enormous cost of railway conveyance and other causes into which I cannot with propriety enter, is much less than my estimate, the gross revenue has realized that estimate, being now nearly, if not quite, as great as before the reduction of the rates. But whatever may have been the sacrifice of revenue, most people now readily admit the benefit to the nation at large has been cheaply purchased. (Cheers.) The advantages of cheap Postage however are by no means confined to this country. Our example has been followed, more or less closely, by several of the nations of Europe, and by the United States of America; and it is most gratifying to know that cheap Postage is gradually extending over the civilized world. The manner in which Mr. Wallace, the earliest Post Office Reformer of the present generation, has laboured zealously and successfully to bring about these happy results, has been shown by the statement of facts with which I have felt it my duty to trouble this meeting, and I earnestly hope that the people of this great country, who so munificently rewarded my exertions, will recognise also the claims of Mr. Wallace, and will step forward to cheer in the decline of life a man so justly entitled to our respect and gratitude. Mr. Hill then sat down amid hearty demonstrations of applause.