“Not exceeding 4 oz. in weight, 1d.
For every additional 2 oz., ½d.”
“Get that into your mind,” the Guide seems to say, “and you will find that you have mastered the most useful fact in the whole system.” There are, of course, numerous qualifications to this rule arising out of the necessities of the Service. We may admit that there are perhaps too many of these in the Post Office system, and that it might be in the end cheaper for the Department to take more risks, but we can certainly see a good reason for the following:—
“No letter may exceed two feet in length, one foot in width, or one foot in depth.”
But there is an exception even to this: the British Government has a way of contracting itself out of its own regulations, and official letters are carefully excluded from the application of this rule. The mere layman feels annoyed at this; he usually pictures the Government as a designing body which is always “on the make,” and has certainly not yet arrived at the truth that the State represents him even in small matters connected with Post Office revenue.
Everybody knows a postcard can be sent for a halfpenny, but you will be wrong if you think this is because it is a small thing, and that the Post Office charges are in proportion to the size of an article. Indeed the Guide will tell you plainly that if you reduce the card in size below 4 by 2½ inches it will be treated as a letter. This does not seem logical to many plain Britons, who think that half a postcard ought naturally to be a farthing. They don't appreciate the difficulties arising out of the carriage of diminutive articles.
The Halfpenny Packet Post requires careful consideration before we venture to experiment with its privileges. Many people regard it only as a trap to enable the Post Office to charge excess fees on delivery. But if the Post Office Guide is at your elbow you will be able satisfactorily to circumvent the designing officials, and moreover you will find abundant opportunities in your daily correspondence to economise your expenditure by the use of this post. Circulars, printed visiting cards, Christmas, New Year, Easter and birthday cards may, it is generally known, be sent by the post, and a bit of writing is allowed. Now it is this “bit of writing” which is the problem both to officials and to the public. Mr. Henniker Heaton recently stated that there are only two persons in the Post Office who know what can and what cannot be sent by halfpenny post, and these two disagree. Five thousand persons, he tells us, were fined one penny each because their lodge treasurer wrote “With thanks” on his receipts; five thousand other innocent persons were similarly fined because the word “Gentleman” was affixed in writing to the concluding words of the circular. In another halfpenny post case we are told that twenty thousand recipients of a circular were fined one penny each for the reason that a date was underlined in red pencil. I do not know what truth there is in these charges, but if correct, the Post Office certainly was obeying “the letter” of the regulations. It is a matter of opinion whether it would not have been better to carry out “the spirit” more generously. For the Guide tells us that there may appear in writing on the document, dates, hours and particulars of times, names, addresses, and description of parties, the place, character and objects of meetings or appointments. And there is a delightful permission for “formulas of courtesy or of a conventional character not exceeding five words, or initials.” Some officials take this rule very seriously. They have bestowed as much ingenuity upon its interpretation as commentators have done on texts of Scripture. I have before me a report from a Superintendent on the question “whether 'With love' and similar expressions on Christmas cards might be regarded as forming a dedication.”
“Upon inland cards it is considered that, bearing in mind how manifold are the forms that formulas of courtesy and of convention take, and that no definitions thereof have been framed, such words could reasonably be regarded as partaking of the nature of the above-described expressions. It is also the opinion that inasmuch as the terminology of dedications is subject only to the laws of decent expression, &c., the phrase may be taken as permissible in such addresses. The discussion of the point before has not come under note.”
I think the complaint that “no definitions of formulas of courtesy have been framed” is a delightful touch, and the Superintendent is to be congratulated on a masterly statement of the situation. Paradoxes and epigrams are clearly disallowed at the low price of one halfpenny, and on the whole we may fairly conclude that when an expression of love is priced as low as one halfpenny, and is in an unfastened envelope, it is purely conventional, and should not contravene either the letter or spirit of the regulations.
In the regulations for the Newspaper Post there is less opportunity for casuistry. You are bound down to one formula only if you must write something on the packet other than the address. You may write “With compliments,” but any stronger form of expression will be charged as a letter. This is an excellent way of teaching people that there is a cash value to be put on even professions of friendship. Perhaps we may be allowed to notice in the minute regulations which are hedged round the halfpenny post the jealousy of the profit-making official of a postage which is not particularly remunerative. And a moment's consideration will show us that, if much latitude were allowed to the public in what they could write in a halfpenny packet, there would be a considerable reduction in the number of profitable penny letters. People who complain are really demanding halfpenny postage instead of penny postage for letters, and this of course could be secured to-morrow if the nation is prepared to pay an increased income-tax for the privilege. And if the nation will consent to charge the expense to imperial taxation there is no reason why we should not have free postage as well.