"Sixpence," says Mr. Brewin, "is the third of a poor man's income; if a gentleman, who had 1,000l. a year, or 3l. a day, had to pay one-third of his daily income, a sovereign, for a letter, how often would he write letters of friendship! Let a gentleman put that to himself, and then he will be able to see how the poor man cannot be able to pay Sixpence for his Letter."
READER!
If you can get any Signatures to a Petition, make two Copies of the above on two half sheets of paper; get them signed as numerously as possible; fold each up separately; put a slip of paper around, leaving the ends open; direct one to a Member of the House of Lords, the other to a Member of the House of Commons, LONDON, and put them into the Post Office.
Reproduced from a handbill in the collection of the late
Sir Henry Cole, K.C.B. By permission of Lady Cole.
Should any reader desire to inform himself with some degree of fulness of the stages through which the Penny Postage agitation passed, he cannot do better than peruse Sir Henry Cole's Fifty Years of Public Work.
The Postmaster-General, speaking at the Jubilee Meeting at the London Guildhall, on the 16th May last, thus contrasted the work of 1839 with that of 1889: "Although I would not to-night weary an assemblage like this with tedious and tiresome figures, it may be at least permitted to me to remind you that, whereas in the year immediately preceding the establishment of the Penny Postage the number of letters delivered in the United Kingdom amounted to[5] 76,000,000, the number of letters delivered in this country last year was nearly 1,600,000,000—twenty times the number of letters which passed through the post fifty years ago. To these letters must be added the 652,000,000 of post-cards and other communications by the halfpenny post, and the enormous number of newspapers, which bring the total number of communications passing through the post to considerably above two billions. I venture to say that this is the most stupendous result of any administrative change which the world has witnessed. If you estimate the effect of that upon our daily life; if you pause for a moment to consider how trade and business have been facilitated and developed; how family relations have been maintained and kept together; if you for a moment allow your mind to dwell upon the change which is implied in that great fact to which I have called attention, I think you will see that the establishment of the penny post has done more to change—and change for the better—the face of Old England than almost any other political or social project which has received the sanction of Legislature within our history."
Among the Penny Postage literature issued in the year 1840 there are several songs. One of these was published at Leith, and is given below. It is entitled "Hurrah for the Postman, the great Roland Hill." The leaflet is remarkable for this, that it is headed by a picture of postmen rushing through the streets delivering letters on roller skates. It is generally believed that roller skates are quite a modern invention, and in the absence of proof to the contrary it may be fair to assume that the author of the song anticipated the inventor in this mode of progression. So there really seems to be nothing new under the sun!