Sir Rowland Hill: The Story of a Great Reform

by Eleanor C. Hill Smyth

In his pamphlet Rowland Hill dwelt upon this fact of increased consumption following on decreased price. It was clear, then, that the taxes for remission should be those affording the greatest relief to the public accompanied with the least loss to the Revenue; and that scrutiny should be made into the subject in order to discover which tax, or taxes, had failed to grow in productiveness with increase of population and prosperity. The test showed that, whereas between 1815 and 1835 the nation had added six millions to its numbers, and that trade had largely increased, the postal revenue was rather smaller in the later than in the earlier year. During the same period the revenue from the stage-coaches had grown by 128 per cent. In France, where the postal charges were more reasonable, the revenue of the Department had, in the same twenty years, increased by 80 per cent.

Reform in our own postal system was obviously a necessity.

But the fiscal loss to the country, as shown in the state of our postal revenue, serious as it was, seemed to Rowland Hill a lesser evil than the bar, artificial and harmful, raised by the high charges on correspondence, to the moral and intellectual progress of the people. If put upon a sound basis, the Post Office, instead of being an engine for the imposition of an unbearable tax, would become a powerful stimulus to civilisation.

Still delving among the Parliamentary Blue Books, he further gathered that the cost of the service rendered—that is, of the receipt, conveyance, and distribution of each ordinary missive sent from post town to post town within the United Kingdom—averaged 84/100ths of a penny only; 28/100ths going to conveyance, and 56/100ths to the receipt and delivery, collection of postage, etc. Also that the cost of conveyance for a given distance being generally in direct proportion to the weight carried, and a newspaper or franked letter weighing about as much as several ordinary letters, the average expense of conveying a letter chargeable with postage must be still lower, probably some 9/100ths of a penny: a conclusion supported by the well-known fact, already alluded to,[75] that the chargeable letters weighed, on an average, one fourth only of the entire mail.

He also found that the whole cost of the mail-coach service for one journey between London and Edinburgh was only £5 a day.[76] The average load of the mail diurnally carried being some six hundred-weight, the cost of each hundred-weight was therefore 16s. 8d. Taking the average weight of a letter at a quarter of an ounce, its cost of carriage for the 400 miles was but 1/36th part of a penny—in the light of Rowland Hill's amended estimate actually less. Yet the postage exacted for even the lightest “single” letter was 1s. 3-½d. The ninth part of a farthing—the approximate cost of conveyance—is a sum too small to be appreciable, and impossible to collect. Therefore, “if the charge for postage be made proportionate to the whole expense incurred in the receipt, transit, and delivery of the letter, and in the collection of its postage, it must be made uniformly the same from every post town to every other post town in the United Kingdom.”[1] In other words, “As it would take a ninefold weight to make the expense of transit amount to one farthing, it follows that, taxation apart, the charge ought to be precisely the same for every packet of moderate weight, without reference to the number of its enclosures.”[77]

The custom of charge by distance seemed self-condemned when a simpler mode was not only practicable but actually fairer. Now, with increase of the number of letters the cost of each was bound to diminish; and with reduction of postage, especially the great reduction which seemed easy of attainment, increase of number could not fail to follow.

The simple incident of the falling apple is said to have suggested to Newton the theory of gravitation. So also the discovery that the length of a letter's journey makes no appreciable difference to the cost of that journey led Rowland Hill to think of uniformity of rate; and in that portion of his “Life” which is autobiographic he said that the “discovery” that such a rate would approach nearer to absolute justice than any other that could be fixed upon was “as startling to myself as it could be to any one else, and was the basis of the plan which has made so great a change in postal affairs” (i. 250).

Mention has already been made of the time-wasting and costly mode in which, during or after delivery of the letters, the postage had to be collected, necessarily in coin of the realm. In rural districts the postman's journey, when twofold, doubled the cost of its delivery, its distance, and its time-duration. The accounts, as we have seen, were most complicated, and complication is only too apt to spell mismanagement, waste, and fraud. Simplicity of arrangement was imperative. But simplicity could only be attained by getting rid of the complications. The work must be changed. Time must be saved, and unprofitable labour be done away with. But how? By abolishing the tiresome operations of “candling” and of making the “calculations” (of postal charge) now inscribed on every letter; by expediting the deliveries, and by other devices. Above all, the public should learn to undertake its due share of work, the share non-performance of which necessitated the complications, and swelled the expenses. That is, the sender of the letter should pay for its transit before the Post Office incurred any cost in connection with it, only, as under the existing system and in numberless cases, to meet with a refusal on the part of the should-be receiver to accept it.

In other words, prepayment must be made the rule. Prepayment would have the effect of “simplifying and accelerating the proceedings of the Post Office throughout the kingdom, and rendering them less liable to error and fraud. In the central Metropolitan Office there would be no letters to be taxed, no examination of those taxed by others; no accounts to be made out against the deputy postmasters for letters transmitted to them, nor against the letter-carriers. There would be no need of checks, no necessity to submit to frauds and numberless errors for want of means to prevent or correct them. In short, the whole of the financial proceedings would be reduced to a single, accurate, and satisfactory account, consisting of a single item per day, with each receiver and each deputy postmaster.”[78]

Distribution would thenceforth be the letter-carriers' only function; and thus the first step towards the acceleration of postal deliveries would be secured. And while considering this last point, there came into Rowland Hill's mind the idea of that now common adjunct to everybody's hall-door—the letter-box. If the postman could slip his letters through a slit in the woodwork, he need not wait while the bell or knocker summoned the dilatory man or maid; and his round being accomplished more expeditiously, the letters would be received earlier.[79] The shortening of the time consumed on the round would unquestionably facilitate the introduction of those hourly deliveries in thickly populated and business districts which formed part of the plan of postal reform.