A screed that has near broke the Dictionar's back,
Fu' o' dove-in and dear-in, and thoughts on the shearin'!!
Nae need noo o' whisp'rin' ayont a wheat stack.
Auld drivers were lazy, their mail-coaches crazy,
At ilk public-house they stopt for a gill;
But noo at the gallop, cheap mail-bags maun wallop.
Hurrah for our Postman, the great Roland Hill.
"Then send round the liquor," etc.
The advantages resulting from a rapid and cheap carriage of letters must readily occur to any ordinary mind; but perhaps the following would hardly suggest itself as one of those advantages. Dean Alford thus wrote about the usefulness of post-cards, introduced on the 1st October 1870: "You will also find a new era in postage begun. The halfpenny cards have become a great institution. Some of us make large use of them to write short Latin epistles on, and are brushing up our Cicero and Pliny for that purpose."
Unlike some of the branches of post-office work, other than the distribution of news, either by letter or newspaper, the money order system dates from long before the introduction of penny postage—namely from the year 1792.