GENERAL POST OFFICE, ST. MARTIN’S LE-GRAND, IN 1837.
This building, erected in the reign of George IV., is still used as the central office for sorting and forwarding the mails.
MAIL COACHES LEAVING THE GENERAL POST OFFICE, 1837.
From a print of that date.
Such being the case for reform from a popular point of view, it was hardly less urgent from a departmental one. The Post Office had then, as it has now, a monopoly of conveying correspondence; but the high rates charged had driven people to various means of infringing that monopoly. There had arisen all sorts of illegal and clandestine enterprises for carrying letters at cheap rates. It had been proved before the Committee which considered Mr. Hill’s scheme that five-sixths of the correspondence between London and Manchester had been smuggled for many years; one great firm having despatched sixty-seven letters by unlawful agency for every one that went through the Post Office. Between 1815 and 1835 the population had increased by thirty per cent., and the stage-coach duty by 128 per cent., yet the revenue of the Post Office had remained stationary.
The proposed reduction from an average rate of sixpence farthing to one penny was certainly a startling one. The Committee above referred to had recommended an uniform twopenny rate, but Spring Rice told the House of Commons that he had become convinced that the loss to the revenue (for no practical man, except, perhaps, Rowland Hill himself, doubted that loss there must be) would be less from a penny rate. He estimated in his Budget the sacrifice at about £700,000.
GENERAL POST OFFICE—NEW NORTH BUILDING.