1. Palmer’s adoption of mail-coaches, though accompanied with repeated advances of postage, increased the number of letters three-fold in twenty years. And
2. The new facilities of transmission afforded by the Manchester and Liverpool railway, increased the number of letters between the termini nearly fifty per cent. in six years; postage remaining the same.
3. Although not substantiated before the Postage Committee, it is understood that the recent establishment of a morning mail from London to Brighton has produced a similar effect.
4. It appears from the valuable work of M. Piron “Sous Directeur des Postes aux Lettres,” that a reduction in the time of transmission from Paris to Marseilles, from 118 to 68 hours, has doubled the number of letters.
Reduction of Postage.
This is relied upon as by far the most efficient cause of increase in the number of letters.
It has been found that the decrease of price in any article of general demand, so far from lessening the amount of the public expenditure on such article, has always increased it.
1. “The price of soap, for instance, has recently fallen by about one-eighth; the consumption in the same time has increased by one-third. Tea, again, the price of which, since the opening of the China trade, has fallen by about one-sixth, has increased in consumption by almost a half. The consumption of silk goods, which, subsequently to the year 1823, have fallen in price by about one-fifth, has more than doubled. The consumption of coffee, the price of which, subsequently to 1823, has fallen about one-fourth, has more than tripled. And the consumption of cotton goods, the price of which, during the last twenty years, has fallen by nearly one-half, has in the same time been fourfolded.”—Post Office Reform, p. 70.
2. The sale of newspapers for the twelve months before the late reduction in stamps was—