[74] After the adoption of free trade the prices of foreign produce fell still further, and their consumption since Rowland Hill drew up his estimates has grown enormously. With increase of business following on increase of consumption, came necessarily increase of employment and of national prosperity. So also when the old postal system was abolished, and the business of the Department advanced by leaps and bounds, a very large addition had to be made to the number of employees. That fact is obvious, but another, perhaps because it is less obvious, is but little known. “The introduction of penny postage,” wrote my father in 1869, “was really followed by a reduction in the hours, and an increase in the remuneration to nearly every man in the Department, save only the Postmaster-General and the Secretary”—himself. In some quarters the reverse was erroneously believed to be the case.—“Life,” ii. 345.
[75] Chap. i. p. 50.
[76] “When at length I obtained precise information, I found that in taking care not to make my estimate too low, I had made it considerably too high; and I think the history of this rectification too curious and characteristic to be omitted. Two years later, the Parliamentary Committee appointed to consider my plan ordered, at my suggestion, a Return on the subject, when, to my surprise and amusement, the Report of the Post Office gave as the cost of the mail the exact sum estimated by me—viz., £5. Struck with this coincidence, the more so as I had intentionally allowed for possible omission, I suggested the call for a Return in detail, and, this being given, brought down the cost to £4, 8s. 7-¾d. In the Return, however, I discovered an error, viz., that the charge for guards' wages was that for the double journey instead of the single; and when this point was adjusted in a third Return, the cost sank to £3, 19s. 7-¾d. When explanation of the anomaly was asked for, it was acknowledged by the Post Office authorities that my estimate had been adopted wholesale.” (Rowland Hill in the “Appendix to the Second Report of the Select Committee on Postage, 1838,” pp. 257-259.) In estimating the real cost of a letter between London and Edinburgh we must therefore seek for a fraction still smaller than the one indicated by my father's calculations.
[77] “Post Office Reform,” p. 19.
[78] “Post Office Reform,” pp. 24, 25.
[79] This proposal was by no means received at the outset with universal favour. When the public was notified, after Government's acceptance of the plan of postal reform, of the advisability of setting up letter-boxes, many people—the majority, no doubt—adopted the suggestion as a matter of course. But others objected, some of them strongly; and one noble lord wrote in high indignation to the Postmaster-General to ask if he actually expected him, Lord Blank, “to cut a hole in his mahogany door.”
[80] “Post Office Reform,” pp. 45, 94-96.
[81] Among these he included small orders, letters of advice, remittances, policies of insurance, letters enclosing patterns, letters between country attorneys and their London agents, documents connected with magisterial and county jurisdiction, and with local trusts and commissions for the management of sewers, harbours, roads, schools, charities, etc., notices of meetings, of elections, etc., prices current, catalogues of sales, prospectuses, and other things which, at the present time, are sent by post as a matter of course.
[82] Cobden was even more optimistic. In a letter to Rowland Hill he said: “I am prepared to find that the revenue from the penny postage exceeds, the first year, any former income of the Post Office.”
[83] It was in 1838 that the mails began to go by rail.