The Press.
London, England, 1855-02-03 00:00:00

T H E

PRESS.

as is natural, you triumph greatly. You say, " the
" uniform penny postage on letters imposes the
" same postage on a letter going across the street as
" on one going across the kingdom, rendering all

" Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland a greet
" lohs to the Post-otfice, while the populous districts
" of the country return a great profit ; yet nobody
" thinks of denouncing this system as unequal er
" oppressive."
Perhaps not; for there is no class of persons
whom these regulations absolutely cut off from a

profitable and creditable employment as the writers
and proprietors of low priced journals are cut off by
the stamp duty. There may be inequality—there is
not injustice—at least, in any practical and palpable
form. I will grant you that the establishment of a

post-office in some small and remote Highland
village, where the service must be carried on at a
loss, is an undue favour to the place thus alcommo-
dated—a sacrifice made partly to practical con
venience, partly to unity of system. But the penny-
post system was established on a principle of which,
while citing its practical application, you do not
seem aware—one which may be shortly embodied in

the folowing proposition :
"That in countries where the average density of
0 population exceeds a certain limit the cost of trans-
" mitting letters is affected only in an infinitesinally
" small degree by the distance to which they are
" transmitted."

Or, in more popular, though in less precise terms,
the chief expense of the Post-office, when dealing
with great masses of letters, consists in sorting and
arranging them—not in the actual conveyance of
them by railroad, coach, or mail-coach, insomuch
that where the letter-writing population is very
dense, and the amount of correspondence to be dealt
with consequently very considerable, the latter item
of expense (the cost of conveyance), when compared
with the former (the cost of arranging and sorting),
becomes indefinitely small, and, as being inappre-
ciable, may be struck out of the calculation. It is
thus approximately, though not perfectly, true that
the expense to Government of sending a letter across
the street is the same as that of sending it across the
country ; and the precedent, or parallel, which you
attempt to find for the unequal incidence of the
newspaper stamp charge disappears accordingly.
But again : your analogy, even were it accepted as
good up to this point, breaks down where you need it
most. You justify the unjust stamp duty by what
you (I think mistakenly) assume to be the not
less unjust letter duty. But remember that the very
point for which we are contending is, and always has
been, conceded in the case of letters. No person,
so far as I know, has ever proposed a uniform letter
stamp for all weights as well as all distances. Yet
this is the boasted uniformity of the newspaper-
stamp system. When a half-ounce letter and an
eight-ounce parcel shall be charged alike, then, and
not till then, may the one abuse be pleaded as excus-
ing the other. But is this likely to happen?
Nay, even the absurdity which I have hero called
into imaginary existence furnishes only half a
parallel to that which is the cause of my writing.
For even thus, a person who did not send any letter
by post, but communicated with his friend solely
through notes sent by private hand, might escape
untaxed. But the stamp law, while charging one
newspaper proprietor ten times as highly as another
in proportion to the amount of postal service re-
quired by each, forbids any to escape from the bur-
den, however willing such person might be to forego
the advantages of the post-office on condition of
being released from its charges.
Thirdly, you appeal to the precedent of the stamp
on receipts imposed last year. A plea which, as
addressed to Mr. Gladstone may be a powerful
argumentum ad lwminem, has with me, on that score,
little weight. If the law which you are calling on
the Chancellor of the Exchequer to maintain be con-
trary to right, t. 9 between man and man, it is no
vindication that the Minister to whom you appeal
has perpetrated another wrong of the same kind.
Where a demonstrable certainty exists, no authority,
no precedent, no force of public opinion, avail to
make it untrue. The united voice of the whole