The Sun.
London, England, 1839-04-02 00:00:00

THE POST••OFFICE.

(From the Times.)
If we examine the scale of human existence from the
highest to the lowest point, we shall not discern one gra-
dation in its range, that would not be bettered in some
degree by the adoption of a uniform low rate of postage,on
the plan of Mr. Rowland Hill. We make no exceptions.
not even Members of either House of Parliament ; for
although the privilege of franking may minister a little to
their pride of place, yet it is attended with considerable
trouble and annoyance, which they all feel more or less
after the novelty is worn off, gnd in their private rela-
tions they are losers by the present system, as well as
the other classes of the community.
To the poor and necessitous of every description it
would be an especial blessing, by the facilities it would
afford to the dissemination of truth, and the consequent
exposure of cruelty and abuses in the management of all
our charitable institutions. The advantages that would
accrue to the people from the introduction of an uniform
rate are forcibly stated in the beginning of the third Re -
port on Postage by the Select:Committee of the House
of Commons, which commences as follows :
" Your Committee have entered upon the inquiry
which has been entrusted to them, with the deepest
sense of its vast importance to the public ; since, in the
management of the Post office and the regulation of the
postage rates depends, in a great measure, the entire
correspondence of the country ; and in that correspond-
ence is involved whatever affects, interests, or agitates
mankind ; private interests, public interests ; family,
kindred, friends ; commercial business, professional
business ; literature, science, art, law, politics, educa-
tion, morals, religion. Every rank and class have an
interest in the safe, speedy, and economical transmission ,
of post-office communications."
This is well stated, and plain enough, we should sup-
pose, to the dullest capacity ; yet when we turn to the
evidence given by Colonel Maberly we find that when
the question was put home to him, what reasons he had
to offer against 'the adoption of an uniform rate of
postage for inland letters, his answer was, " that he
did not think the public would ever submit to it."
,When the Secretary to the Post-office made that
answer he must have known, or at least it was his
business and his duty have known, that the Se-
lect Committee before whom he was undergoing
examination at the time had been appointed by
the Government as a concession to public opinion,
which had been most strongly expressed in the
House of Commons in favour of the identical
change, which he, in his official capacity, declared
that he did not believe the people would ever submit to.
Where have we grounds for supposing that any one ob-
jects to the uniform rate ? We have not a single peti-
tion against it in Parliament—not one meeting, public or
hole-and-corner, " out of doors ;" nor arc we aware that
our brethren of the press have, in any instance, expres-
sed an unfavourable opinion the subject. The ques-
tion then rests on the sole ipse di.rit of the Post office
Secretary, that the people would refuse the boon that
they are now so clamourous to obtain, as spoiled children
break toys they have been crying for. The people reason
very differently, and would act very dfferently, from the
manner which Col. Maberly has supposed. They appreci-
atethe advantapswhich they would derive from auniform
rate too well to be seduced into any false notions about
relative distance. Their object is to know accurately,
in the quickest and cheapest manner, what is doing at a
distance, to ascertain the state of trade—the appearance
of the crops—the scale of prides and of markets—and
to hear of the welfare of their relatives and friends in
the remote parts of the country. If they can get this
information forwarded 400 miles for one pi nny, or even,
perhaps, for twopence, not one of them will grudge
paying the same amount for letters received from or
transmitted to their correspondents nearer home.
In cases of this nature men do not grudge relatively
but positively—they do ue not consider so much the
amount which their neighbours have to pay for letters,
as they are guided by a consideration of what they have
to pay themselves, and if they were to find their corres-
pondence to all parts of the country carried by the Post-
office at an uniform rate of one penny, or say even two-
pence for a time, we do not believe there would be a
single grumbler on that point in the kingdom. But if
it be a dread " that the people would never submit
to it," which prevents the Post-office authorities
from recommending the Chancellor of the Exche-
quer to adopt a low uniform rate of inland postage,
we say in that case, let all doubts be put to rest at
once, by submitting the question to the test of ex.
periment ? If that be done, and the result justify
the prediction of Colonel Metberly, then the people
will have themselves to blame, and we shall say that
wonders will never cease. But the supposition involves
such a palpable absurdity that it cannot be thought
upon with gravity, for there is abundant evidence
that the people are anxiously and impatiently looking
forward to the adoption of the plan of Mr. Rowland
Hill, from the Land's-end to John-o'-Groats. We trust
that the Government will concede this demand in due
time and with proper spirit. Resistance cannot be long
successfully maintained, and they ought at least to make:
a virtue of necessity. When it is done, we hope it will
be done altogether ; and that they will make no half-
and-half-measure of the matter ; for, keeping in view
such reduction as may be made " without injury to the
revenue," we are confident that the safe plan is to make the
reduction at once to one penny, and to hale that penny
paid in advance. It seems that in the year 1710, there
were only two rates, 3d. and 4d. ; 3d. for letters under
eighty miles, and 4d. for distances beyond eighty. Colo-
nel Maberly conceives that the alterations which were
then first introduced, arose from the complaints against
those rates, and hence he founds an • argument in
support of his opinion that the public would not now
submit to an invariable rate of postage. If
Queen Anne were to open her eyes and look at
England now, she would not know it to be the same
country. The railroad and the steam-engine have worked
miracles, and letters are carried to Constantinople, and
even across the Atlantic, in about the same time that
was occupied in travelling between London and Edin-
burgh about the period of the Scottish union. It is a
mere begging of the question, then, to say that because
the people may perhaps—for we have no evidence on
the subject—have objected to pay 3d. and 4d. for letters,
or two rates in the year 1710, that they will entertain
objections to pay one uniform rate in the year 1839, when
their letters will be transported by the mail trains at the
rate of nearly thirty miles an hour, and by the coaches at
an average certainly of not less than ten miles an hour.
In the year 1784, that is more than seventy years after
the period referred to by Colonel Maberly, we see it
is stated by Mr. Rowland Hill, " that the usual rate of
progress in the conveyance of the mail was about three
miles and a half an hour," and our astonishment there-
fore is, not that the people may have objected to the
rates of postage of that day, but that by such tardy
means of conveyance they should have sent so many
letters as to produce, at that period, a net revenue to
the Exchequer of 150,0001. per annum.
The state of the country, the knowledge of the
people, and the means of transport are now so superior
in every respect to what they were in the year 1710,
that no satisfactory conclusions can be drawn from
such means of comparison ; and as they appear to
have formed some of the main stays of Colonel Ma-
berly's opinion, we would advise him to alter his course
without loss of time, and instead of nibbling longer at
a great principle by bit-and-bit reforms, come manfully
forward in a manner becoming his station, and give
his best assistance to the success of a measure which
must be attempted soon, whether the Postmaster-Ge-
neral likes it or not.