[307] In 1854 the average weight of the mails which left London daily was 279 cwt. of which 219 cwt. consisted of newspapers.
[308] Only some 150 copies of the Daily Mail are delivered in London by the post each day.
[309] "There is no reason whatever why the Post Office should charge a man threepence or fourpence for a book and a halfpenny for these vast trade circulars, and it would be the simplest, as well as the wisest and most beneficial of reforms, to bring the book post down to the newspaper level."—H. G. Wells, Mankind in the Making. London, 1914, chap. ix.
The following further suggestions by Mr. Wells are reprinted here for the consideration of postal reformers. Their adoption involves merely an extension of the principle of State benefit.
"Now, in the first place, the post office as one finds it in Great Britain might very well be converted into a much more efficient distributing agency by a few simple modifications in its method. At present, in a large number of country places in Great Britain, a penny paper costs three-halfpence including the necessary halfpenny for postage, and the poorer people can afford no paper at all, because the excellent system in practice abroad of subscribing to any registered periodical at the post office and having it delivered with the letters has not been adopted. Government publications and Government maps, which ought also to be obtainable at a day's notice, through the Post Office and post free, have to be purchased at present in the most devious way through a remote agent in London. There is no public reason whatever why a more intimate connection should not be established between the Stationery Office and the Post Office."—Ibid.
"It would be the simplest thing in the world to have a complete, business-like catalogue of Government publications, kept standing in type and reissued and reprinted quarterly, distributed to every post office, and by its means one ought to be able to order whatever one wanted at once, pay for it on the spot, and get it delivered to any address in Great Britain in the next twenty-four hours."—Ibid.
[310] Report of Special Committee, House of Assembly, Lower Canada, 11th February 1832, p. 10.
[311] Sir Francis Freeling replied to the petition. He said the practice of his Deputy in North America was not illegal, but was based on an Act of Parliament authorizing certain of his officers to circulate newspapers by post; that as it had been in existence since the first establishment of the Post Office in the colony, the petitioners must have entered into the business with a full knowledge of the charge to which their publications would be subject if sent by post; there was no stamp duty in the colonies to give the publishers a right to free transmission; and, moreover, the amount of the charge was less than the similar charge in the United States.
[312] "Mr. Howe was very loose, and rarely took any steps to obtain or enforce the payments of the amounts due to him for the transmission of Journals through the Post....
"I cannot look upon it as the mere collection of a private source of emolument to the officer, but I conceive that the Department is interested in the question not only inasmuch as the amount received from this source goes in aid of a larger salary to the officer, but that whenever the time comes that the substitution of a postage rate on newspapers supersedes the present mode of sending them, a due enforcement of such rate will be most unfavourably received, if a free transmission has been previously permitted from the negligence of the party to whom the collection of the charge was deputed and whose perquisite it was."—Report of Mr. Page, 1842 (British Official Records).