he story of Penny Postage and its inception by Sir Rowland Hill is full of romantic interest, and that great social reform, introduced more than fifty years ago, has unquestionably spread its beneficial influence over every country in which a postal system of any kind exists.
The Hill family were, we know, in those bygone days far from being well off, and were often hard put to to find the money to pay the high postage on letters which they received. Born in 1795, Rowland Hill was considerably past middle life before he entertained any idea of practising his reforming hand on the Post-office, and had passed a busy existence chiefly as a schoolmaster, in which capacity he had indulged in many schemes, scholastic and otherwise, with more or less success. At the time that his attention was first directed to Post-office matters, he was employed as Secretary of the Commissioners for the Colonisation of South Australia. He was no doubt attracted to the subject of postal reform by the frequent discussions which were then taking place in parliament in regard to the matter. Mr Wallace of Kelly, the member for Greenock, who was the champion of the cause in the House of Commons, was fierce in his denunciation of the existing abuses and irregularities of the post, and subsequently proved a strong and able advocate of the scheme for postage reform.
Once arrested by the subject which has since made his life famous, Rowland Hill went to work in a very systematic manner. Firstly, he read very carefully all the Reports relative to the Post-office; then he placed himself in communication with Mr Wallace and the Postmaster-general, both of whom readily supplied him with all necessary information. In this manner he made himself acquainted with his subject, with the result that, in 1837, he published his famous pamphlet on Post-office Reform: its Importance and Practicability, the first edition being circulated privately amongst the members of parliament and official people; while some months later a second edition was published which was given to the public.
We have to remember that at this time the postage charges were enormously high, that they depended not upon weight alone, but also upon the number of enclosures, and that they varied according to distance. Thus, for example, a letter under one ounce in weight and with one enclosure (that is, sheet or scrap of paper) posted in London for delivery within the metropolitan area, or even, we believe, fifteen miles out, cost 2d.; if for delivery thirty miles out, 3d.; eighty miles out, 4d.; and so on. Again, as showing how the charges according to enclosure operated, a letter with a single enclosure from London to Edinburgh was charged 1s. 1½d.; if double, 2s. 3d.; and if treble, 3s. 4½d. Moreover, the charges were not consistently made, for whereas an Edinburgh letter (posted in London) was charged 1s. 1½d., a letter for Louth, which cost the Post-office fifty times as much as the former letter, was only charged 10d.
The public, however, found means of their own of remedying the evil, which, if not wholly legitimate, were under the circumstances to be regarded with some degree of leniency. Letter-smuggling was a not unnatural result of the high and disproportionate charges referred to, and was almost openly adopted to an extent that is hardly credible. Thus, many Manchester merchants—Mr Cobden amongst the number—stated before the Post-office Inquiry Committee appointed in 1838, their belief that four-fifths of the letters written in that town did not pass through the Post-office. A carrier in Scotland confessed to having carried sixty letters daily for a number of years, and knew of others who carried five hundred daily. A Glasgow publisher and bookseller said he sent and received fifty letters or circulars daily, and added that he was not caught until he had sent twenty thousand letters otherwise than through the post! There were also other methods of evading the postage rates at work. Letters were smuggled in newspapers, which in these days passed free within a stated period through the post, the postage being covered by the stamp-duty impressed on the papers. Invisible ink, too, was used for inditing messages on the newspapers themselves; while the use of certain pre-arranged codes on the covers of letters was likewise systematically adopted, the addressees, after turning the letters over and learning from the covers all they desired to know, declining to take in the letters on the ground that they could not afford to pay the postage.
The system of 'franking' letters in the high-postage days led to an appalling abuse of that privilege, which belonged to peers and members of the House of Commons. It was no doubt originally allowed to enable members to correspond with their constituents; but under the circumstances it is perhaps not surprising that the plan soon became abused, and was ultimately used to cover all kinds of correspondence, not only members' but other people's as well. At one time, indeed, all sorts of curious packages passed free under the franking privilege, such as dogs, a cow, parcels of lace, bales of stockings, boxes of medicine, flitches of bacon, &c. Sometimes, indeed, franked covers were actually sold; and they have even been known to be given in lieu of wages to servants, who speedily converted them into ready money.
This abuse, taken together with the illicit traffic in letters, so openly and widely carried on, formed of course a most important argument in favour of the proposals for cheap postage formulated by Rowland Hill, and no doubt did much to damage the cause of his opponents. But there is one other abuse to which Londoners were subject which may just be mentioned. At that time the Twopenny Post was in operation in the English metropolis, and would have fairly served the inhabitants in postal matters if it had not been for the practice which existed of allowing commercial houses and other firms who were willing to pay for the privilege to have their letters picked out from the general heap and delivered by special postmen, and so enable them to get their correspondence an hour earlier than those who did not pay the 'quarterage,' as it was called, of five shillings (per quarter), and which, it appears, went into the pockets of the postmen concerned, many of whom, we are told, and it can easily be understood, thus made incomes of from three to four hundred pounds a year. However beneficial such a system was to commerce and trade in London, it operated most unfairly on ordinary correspondents, and it was certainly not the least of the evils which the introduction of Penny Postage swept away.
It is not necessary to enter at any length into all the arguments that weighed with Rowland Hill in propounding his great scheme. It need only be very briefly stated that the great point to which he applied himself was the cost to the Post-office of receiving, transmitting, and delivering a letter. Having roughly and, as subsequently proved, not inaccurately calculated the average postage at sixpence farthing per letter, he then went to work to ascertain the expenses of management; and the result of his investigations showed that, no matter what distance had to be traversed, the average cost of each letter to the government was less than one-tenth of a penny! From this there was only one conclusion that could well be forced on his mind, and that was a uniform rate of postage. Having solved this great problem, there were many other matters of adjustment and improvement to which his attention had to be given. He was, for example, not long in deciding that the charge according to enclosures was an iniquitous one, and that a just and fair tax could only be made according to weight. Then, again, he clearly saw that the principle of throwing the postage on the recipients of letters was an improper one, while it was also a burden on the Post-office employees. The prepayment of postage became necessarily a feature of his plan; but he experienced some difficulty in arriving at a feasible method of adopting it. At first he considered that this might be carried out by payment of money over the counter; but he subsequently came to the conclusion that the purposes of the public and the Post-office would be better served by the use of some kind of stamp or stamped covers for letters, and this arrangement he brought forward and fully explained before the Commissioners of Post-office Inquiry, referring to it as 'Mr Knight's excellent suggestion.' Charles Knight had suggested the idea of stamps for prepayment in 1833-34. The following extract from the Commissioners' Report, which gives a brief description of the proposed arrangement, may perhaps be read with interest at the present time:
'That stamped covers, or sheets of paper, or small vignette stamps—the latter, if used, to be gummed on the face of the letter—be supplied to the public from the Stamp-office, and sold at such a price as to include the postage. Letters so stamped to be treated in all respects as franks. That each should have the weight it is entitled to carry legibly printed upon the stamp. That the stamp of the receiving-house should be struck upon the superscription or duty stamp, to prevent the latter being used a second time. The vignette stamps being portable, persons could carry them in their pocket-books.'