A.D. 1839.] ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PENNY POSTAGE. ject. Sir Robert Inglis observed that from time immemorial education had been connected with religion, and if the clergy of the Church of Rome were ever again in the ascendant, he believed they would be the last in the world to relinquish the office of educating the people. Considering the turn that the education question afterwards took in Ireland, the opinions expressed by Mr. O'Connell in this debate are not without interest. They had, he said, tried the efficacy of the exclusive principle, in order to prevent the advance of Catholicity: nevertheless, Catholics multiplied in Ireland, and even increased in England. "The advocates of exclusion did not, indeed, burn; they did not introduce Spanish law into this country; but they acted upon principles fatal in politics and unsound in religion. Properly speaking, such sentiments were anti-religious, for though hypocrites could be made by force, converts could be made only by persuasion. It was hoped that, at the normal schools, the education of the pupils might be carried on in common. It was considered that youth should not be separated in the business of education, that they might be reconciled to each other's presence in their early days, and meet on other points than those of repulsion. Sacred heaven! why might they not meet on other points than those of difference and hostility? Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Spring Rice, Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Mahon, Mr. Baines, Mr. Lytton, Mr. Sheil, and Mr. Goulburn continued this very interesting debate, in which the principles of the union of Church and State and the rights of conscience were ably discussed. The House at length divided, when the grant was voted by a majority of only two. 441 of the duties imposed upon me, and more especially of that which binds me to the support of the Established Church, I shall always use the powers vested in me by the constitution for the fulfilment of that sacred obligation. It is with a sense of that duty that I have thought it right to appoint a committee of my Privy Council to superintend the distribution of the grants voted by the House of Commons for public education. Of the proceedings of this committee annual reports will be laid before Parliament, so that the House of Lords will be enabled to exercise its judgment upon them; and I trust that the sums placed at my disposal will be found to have been strictly applied to the objects for which they were granted, with due respect to the rights of conscience, and with a faithful attention to the security of the Established Church." The year 1839 will be always memorable for the establishment of the system of a uniform penny postage, one of those great reforms distinguishing the age in which we live, which are fraught with vast social changes, and are destined to fructify throughout all time with social benefits to the human race. To one mind pre-eminently the British empire is indebted for the penny postage. We are now so familiar with its advantages, and its reasonableness seems so obvious, that it is not easy to comprehend the difficulties with which Sir Rowland Hill had to contend in convincing the authorities and the public of the wisdom and feasibility of his plan. Mr. Rowland Hill had written a pamphlet on Post Office Reform in 1837. It took for its starting point the fact that whereas the postal revenue showed for the past twenty years a positive though slight diminution, it ought to have showed an increase of £507,700 a year, in On the 5th of July the subject of education was intro- order to have simply kept pace with the growth of duced to the notice of the Lords by the Archbishop of population, and an increase of nearly four times that Canterbury, who defended the Church, and objected to the amount in order to have kept pace with the growth of giving of Government grants in a manner calculated to the analogous though far less exorbitant duties imposed promote religious dissent. He was answered by the Mar- on stage coaches. The population in 1815 was quis of Lansdowne. The Bishop of Exeter, the Bishop of 19,552,000; in 1835 it had increased to 25,605,000. London, and several other prelates addressed the House, The stage coach duties had produced in 1815, £217,671; and gave their views on this great question. The Arch-in 1835 they produced £498,497. The net revenue arising bishop of Canterbury had brought forward a series of resolutions embodying the Church views of the subject. These Lord Brougham vigorously opposed. The House divided on the previous question, when the first resolution, the only one put to the vote, was carried by a majority of 111. This resolution condemned the order in council, and in consequence of it, the Lords went in a body to the Queen to offer their remonstrance against the proposed change in the mode of distributing the grant. Her Majesty was pleased to reply in the following terms:-"I duly appreciate your zeal for the interests of religion, and your care for the Established Church. I am ever ready to receive the advice and assistance of the House of Lords, and to give to their recommendations the attention which their authority justly deserves. At the same time, I cannot help expressing my regret that you should have thought it necessary to take such a step on the present occasion. You may be assured that, deeply sensible from the Post Office in 1815 was £1,557,291; in 1835 it had decreased to £1,540,300. In 1837 there did not exist any accurate account of the number of the letters transmitted through the General Post Office. Mr. Hill, however, was able to prepare a sufficiently approximative estimate from the data of the London district post, and from the sums collected for postage. He thus calculated the number of chargeable letters at about 88,600,000; that of franked letters at 7,400,000; and that of newspapers at 30,000,000-giving a gross total of about 126,000,000. At this period the total cost of management and distribution was £696,569. An analysis of the component parts of this expenditure assigned £426,517 to cost of primary distribution, and £270,052 to cost of secondary distribution and miscellaneous charges. A further analysis of the primary distribution expenditure gave £282,308, as the probable outgoings for receipt and delivery, and £144,209 as the probable outgoings for transit. In other words, the expenditure that hinged d. upon the distance the letters had to be conveyed was ounce, being charged one penny, and heavier packets to £144,000; and that which had nothing to do with dis- any convenient limit being charged an additional penny tance was £282,000. Applying to these figures the esti- for each additional half-ounce." And it was further mated number of letters and newspapers-126,000,000-proposed that stamped covers should be sold to the public passing through the office, there resulted a probable at such a price as to include the postage, which would average cost of of a penny for each, of which thus be collected in advance. was cost of transit, and d. the cost of receipt, delivery, &c. Taking into account, however, the much greater weight of newspapers and franked letters as compared with chargeable letters, the apparent average cost of transit became by this estimate about d., or less than the tenth of a penny. A detailed estimate of the cost of conveying a letter from London to Edinburgh, founded upon the average weight of the Edinburgh mail, gave a lower proportion still, since it reduced the apparent cost of transit on the average to the thirty-sixth part of a penny. By the public generally, and pre-eminently by the trading public, the plan was received with great favour. By the functionaries of the Post Office it was at once denounced as ruinous, and ridiculed as visionary. Lord Lichfield, then Postmaster-General, said of it in the House of Lords, "Of all the wild and visionary schemes I ever heard, it is the most extravagant.” On another occasion, he assured the House that if the anticipated increase of letters should be realised, "the mails will have to carry twelve times as much in weight, and therefore the charge for transmission, instead of Mr. Hill inferred that if the charge for postage be made £100,000, as now, must be twelve times that amount. proportionate to the whole expense incurred in the receipt, The walls of the Post Office would burst; the whole area transit, and delivery of the letters, and in the collection in which the building stands would not be large enough of its postage, it must be made uniformly the same from to receive the clerks and the letters." In the course of every post town to every other post town in the United the following year (1838) petitions were poured into the Kingdom, unless it could be shown how we are to collect House of Commons. A select committee was appointed, so small a sum as the thirty-sixth part of a penny. And which held nearly seventy sittings, and examined nearly inasmuch as it would take a nine-fold weight to make the eighty-three witnesses in addition to the officers of the expense of transit amount to one farthing, he further department. Its report (one of the most instructive and inferred that, taxation apart, the charge ought to be pre- best arranged works of its class, as the report of the cisely the same for every packet of moderate weight, Revenue Commissioners was one of the worst), after without reference to the number of its inclosures. carefully stating the questions which had to be conAt this period the rate of postage actually imposed (be-sidered, and the course of inquiry which had to be yond the limits of the London District Office) varied from pursued, thus proceeded :— fourpence to one and eightpence for a single letter, which was interpreted to mean a single piece of paper, not exceeding an ounce in weight. A second piece of paper or any other inclosure, however small, constituted a double letter. A single sheet of paper, if it at all exceeded an ounce in weight, was charged with fourfold postage. The average charge on inland general post letters was nearly ninepence for each letter. Apart from the evils of an excessive taxation, with its multifarious results in checking communication, hampering trade, and creating an illicit traffic in letters which involved systematic deception, the effects upon the postal service itself were most injurious. On the one hand there was a complicated system of accounts, involving both great waste of time and great temptation to fraud in their settlement; on the other, a constant invitation to the violation of that first duty of postal officers-respect for the sacredness of correspondence, by making it part of their daily work to expose letters to a strong light, expressly to ascertain their contents. "The principal points which appeared to your committee to have been established in evidence are the following:-First, the exceedingly slow advance, and occasionally retrograde movement, of the Post Office revenue during the last twenty years; second, the fact of the charge of postage exceeding the cost in a manifold proportion; third, the fact of postage being evaded most extensively by all classes of society, and of correspondence being suppressed, more espeally among the middle and working classes of the people-and this in consequence, as all the witnesses, including many of the Post Office authorities, think, of the excessively high scale of taxation; fourth, the fact of very injurious effects resulting from this state of things to the commerce and industry of the country, and to the social habits and moral condition of the people; and, fifth, the fact, as far as conclusions can be drawn from very imperfect data, that whenever on former occasions larger reductions have been made in the rates, these reductions have been followed in short periods of time by an extension of correspondence, proportionate to the contraction of the rates. And as matters of inference from fact and of opinion: first, that the only remedy for the evils above stated is a reduction of the rates, and the establishment of additional deliveries and more frequent dispatches of letters; secondly, that owing to the rapid extension of railroads, there is an urgent and daily increasing necessity for making such changes; thirdly, that any moderate reduction in the rates would occasion A.D. 1839.] RESULTS OF THE PENNY POSTAGE SCHEME. loss to the revenue, without in any material degree diminishing the present amount of letters irregularly conveyed, or giving rise to the growth of new correspondence; fourthly, that the principle of a low uniform rate is just in itself, and when combined with prepayment and collection by means of a stamp, would be exceedingly convenient and highly satisfactory to the public." During the session of Parliament that followed the presentation of this report, about 2,000 petitions in favour of penny postage were presented to both Houses, and at length the Chancellor of the Exchequer brought in a bill to enable the Treasury to carry it into effect. The measure was carried in the House of Commons by a majority of 100, and became law on the 17th of August, 1839. A new but only temporary office under the Treasury was created, to enable Mr. Hill to superintend (although, as it proved, under very inadequate arrangement) the working out of his plan. The first step taken was to reduce, on the 5th of December, 1839, the London district postage to one penny, and the general inland postage to fourpence, the half ounce, except as respected places to which letters were previously carried at lower rates, those rates being continued. On the 10th of January, 1840, the uniform penny rate came into operation throughout the United Kingdom; the scale of weight advancing from one penny for each of the first two half-ounces, by gradations of twopence for each additional ounce or fraction of an ounce, up to sixteen ounces. The postage was to be prepaid, or charged at double rates, and Parliamentary franking was abolished. Postage stamps were introduced on the 6th of May following. The facilities of dispatch were soon afterwards increased, especially by the establishment of day mails. But on the important points of simplification in the internal economy of the Post Office, with the object of reducing its cost, without diminishing its working power, very little was done. In carrying out the new measures, the officers were, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Baring) expressed it on one occasion, "unwilling horses." Nor need a word more be said in proof of the assertion than is contained in a passage of Colonel Maberly's evidence before the Postage Committee of 1843:-" My constant language to the heads of the departments was, This plan we know will fail. It is your duty to take care that no obstruction is placed in the way of it by the heads of the departments and by the Post Office. The allegation, I have not the least doubt, will be made at a subsequent period, that this plan has failed in consequence of the unwillingness of the Government to carry it into fair execution. It is our duty, as servants of the Government, to take care that no blame eventually shall fall on the Government through any unwillingness of ours to carry it into proper effect." And again:-" After the first week, it was evident, from the number of letters being so much below Mr. Hill's anticipations, that it must fail, inasmuch as it wholly rested on the number of letters, for without that you could not possibly collect the revenue anticipated. Very formidable are the prophets, who can scarcely, 443 under the limitations of average humanity, avoid promoting in their daily avocations the fulfilments of their own prophecies. The plan, then, had to work in the face of rooted mistrust on the part of the workers. Its author was (for the term of two years, afterwards prolonged to three) the officer, not of the Post Office, but of the Treasury. He could only recommend measures the most indispensable through the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and when Mr. Goulburn succeeded Mr. Baring, the Chancellor was very much of Colonel Maberly's way of thinking. It happened, too, that Mr. Hill's scheme had to be carried through at a period of severe commercial depression." Nevertheless, the results actually attained in the first two years were briefly these: first, the chargeable letters delivered in the United Kingdom, exclusive of that part of the Government's correspondence which formerly passed free, had already increased from the rate of about 75,000,000 a year to that of 208,000,000; secondly, the London district post letters had increased from about 13,000,000 to 23,000,000, or nearly in the ratio of the reduction of the rates; thirdly, the illicit conveyance of letters was substantially suppressed; fourthly, the gross revenue, exclusive of repayments, yielded about a million and a half per annum, which was sixty-three per cent. on the amount of the gross revenue of 1839, the largest income which the Post Office had ever afforded. These results, at so early a stage, and in the face of so many obstructions, amply vindicated the policy of the new system. But by its enemies that system was loudly declared to be a failure, until the progressive and striking evidence of year after year silenced opposition by an exhaustive process. The Parliamentary proceedings of 1839 were closed by an elaborate review of the session by Lord Lyndhurst, which he continued annually for some time while the Liberals were in power. This display took place on the 24th of August, when the noble and learned lord moved for a return of all bills that had arrived from the House of Commons since the commencement of the session, with the dates at which they were brought up. After directing the attention of the House to the Irish Municipal Corporations, the affairs of Canada, the recommendations of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and the administration of justice, to which their special attention had been directed in the speech from the throne, he passed under hostile review the whole conduct of the Ministers during the session. He gave a history of the household question. He stated that the out-going administration actually carried on the negotiation with their successors, and the result was this, that the Cabinet whose resignations had been just accepted advised Her Majesty to reinstate them in their offices, for that was the constitutional inference of the conduct they had pursued. A proceeding like that had never before taken place, and he trusted in God it would never occur under any circumstances again. Adverting to the recent police acts, Lord Lyndhurst said they had "Encyclopædia Britannica," vol. xvili., p. 412 become necessary, in consequence of disturbances for which the Ministers were deeply answerable. It was they who first aroused the people; it was they who first sent forth the watchword, "Agitate, agitate, agitate!" and they it was who were responsible for the consequences that had followed. Agitation was convenient, to place them in power; agitation, up to a certain point, was necessary to maintain them there: they wished the flood to go so far, and no farther, and that there its proud waves should be stayed. But it was much easier to raise than to control the tempest. Unprincipled men made use of the multitude for their own ambitious purposes, and for the attainment of their own personal objects. They rode into power upon the shoulders of the people, and then it became inconvenient that those tumults and that violence to which they owed their elevation should be continued; then it became necessary to coerce and restrain; and then the deluded followers found out for the first time the duplicity and unworthiness of those whom in former times they eulogised and extolled. Lord Melbourne repelled this attack on his administration with great spirit and effect. He remarked that the main business of the Legislature, after all, was not to make laws, but to consider the estimates, to watch the public expenditure, to retrench what was superfluous, to correct what was amiss, and to furnish the Crown with those supplies and subsidies which it thinks it necessary to afford. But when noble lords looked at the volume of acts they had framed, they would find it sufficiently bulky, and perhaps sufficiently faulty in its nature to produce an additional crop of statutes in the next session. Language of the grossest kind had been applied by the noble baron to the transactions which had grown out of the Jamaica bill. He used the word "intrigue." "I have heard that word from many quarters," said Ford Melbourne; "I have heard other mean, base, and vile expressions applied to the conduct of that measure through the other House. I utterly deny and repel the word. I say that there was no intrigue, no mismanagement, neither was there anything mean, base, or perfidious in the whole of the transactions which then took place. I do not like to be betrayed into the language of strong asseveration, because truth does not require such language; but I utterly disclaim the imputations and insinuations thrown out by the noble and learned lord." Lord Brougham expressed an opinion that the country wished for the return of the Conservatives to power, because they would be compelled to grant useful reforms and measures of administrative improvement, which the present Cabinet had neither the means of carrying nor the will to introduce. The Duke of Wellington assured Lord Melbourne that his only wish had been to see a Government in the country, and he hoped that the noble viscount would now turn over a new leaf, and really govern the country in future. The 27th of August being the day appointed for the prorogation of Parliament, the Queen, escorted by the great officers of State, took her seat in the House of Lords, when the Speaker of the House of Commons, accompanied by some of the members, presented himself at the bar, and mentioned to Her Majesty the principal results of a most laborious session-the City Police Bill; the bill for the improvement of the discipline of prisons; the bill for enabling the magistrates to organise a constabulary force wherever it might be called for by the circumstances of the district; the bill for suppressing the Portuguese slave-trade, and the reduction of the postage. The Queen then read the speech from the throne, in which she expressed her satisfaction with the performances of the session, and especially with the measure for the reduction of the postage, which, she trusted, would be a relief and an encouragement to trade, and that, by facilitating intercourse and correspondence, it would be productive of much social advantage and improvement. Referring to the prosecution of the Chartists, the Queen said:-" It is with great pain that I have found myself compelled to enforce the law against those who no longer concealed their design of resisting by force the lawful authorities and of subverting the institutions of the country. The solemn proceedings of the courts of justice, and the fearless administration of the law by all who are engaged in that duty, have checked the first attempts at insubordination; and I rely securely upon the good sense of my people, and upon their attachment to the constitution, for the maintenance of law and order, which are as necessary for the protection of the poor as for the welfare of the wealthier classes of the community." On the return of Lord Melbourne to power, considerable alterations took place in the construction of the Cabinet. The Marquis of Normanby changed places with Lord John Russell, who went to the Colonial office. Mr. Francis Baring was made Chancellor of the Exchequer in the place of Mr. Spring Rice, who was raised to the peerage, by the title of Baron Monteagle, and was soon after appointed Comptroller of the Exchequer, with a salary of £2,000 a year; Sir John Newport having retired from that post on a pension. Mr. Paulet Thompson succeeded Sir John Colborne, afterwards Lord Seaton, in the government of Canada. The Earl of Clarendon became Lord Privy Seal, and Mr. Macaulay Secretary at War, with a seat in the Cabinet in the room of Viscount Howick, who had quitted the administration because he had disapproved of the political import of the changes taken altogether, and they were unalterably fixed without seeking his concurrence. Mr. Charles Wood, the brother-in-law of Lord Howick, also resigned shortly after, and was replaced by Mr. Moore O'Ferral as Secretary of the Admiralty. Mr. Wyse became one of the Lords of the Treasury, and Mr. Sheil Vice-President of the Board of Trade, at the head of which was Mr. Labouchere. The proceedings of Parliament having ceased to occupy public attention, the time had come for political demonstrations of various kinds through the country, giving expression to the feelings that had been excited by the state of public affairs and the conduct of the Government. The first and most remarkable of A.D. 1839.] BANQUET AT DOVER TO THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 445 these was a banquet, given at Dover, on the 30th of unbounded gratitude. And I am, therefore, asked to August, to the Duke of Wellington, as Lord Warden of do this service, as if to show that no difference of the Cinque Ports, at which nearly 2,000 persons sat opinion upon subjects, however important-no long down to dinner. The toast of the day was proposed by course of opposition, however contracted, upon publio Lord Brougham, who occupied a peculiar position, as a principles-not even long, inveterate habits of public Liberal ex-Chancellor opposing a Liberal administration, opposition-are able so far to stifle the natural feelings and wishing to see them supplanted by their Conserva- of our hearts, so far to obscure our reason, as to prevent tive opponents. He was greeted with tumultuous cheer- us from feeling, as we ought, boundless gratitude for ing when he rose to propose the health of the Duke of boundless merit. Neither can it pluck from our minds Wellington. The speech was very eulogistic, adapted that admiration proportioned to the transcendent genius, entirely to the atmosphere of excitement in which it in peace and in war, of him who is amongst us to-day; was delivered. "Although no man," observed Lord nor can it lighten or alleviate the painful, the deep Brougham, "on such an occasion is entitled to enter- sense, which the untired mind never can get rid of, tain any personal feelings on his own behalf, it would be affectation, it would be insolent ingratitude, were I not to express the sentiments which glow within my bosom at being made the instrument of making known those feelings which reign predominant in yours. Enough, however, of myself. Now for my mighty subject. But," he continued, "the choice you have made of your instrument-of your organ, as it were, on this occasion-is not unconnected with that subject, for it shows that on this day, on this occasion, all personal, all political feelings are quelled-all strife of party is hushed; that we are incapable, whatever may be our opinions, of rerusing to acknowledge transcendent merit, and of denying that we feel the irresistible impulse of VOL. VII.-No. 350. when it is overwhelmed by a debt of gratitude too boundless to be repaid. Party-the spirit of partymay do much, but it cannot operate so far as to make us forget those services; it cannot so far bewilder the memory, and pervert the judgment, and quench and stifle the warmth of the natural affections, and eradicate from our bosoms those feelings which do us most honour and are the most unavoidable, and, as it were, dry up the kindly juices of the heart; and, notwithstanding all its vile and malignant influence on other occasions, it cannot dry up those juices of the heart so as to parch it like very charcoal, and make it almost as black. But what else have I to do? If I had all the eloquence of all the tongues ever attuned to speak |