The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1897-08-10
OLD POSTAGE USAGES.
EngIand's Mail Service Sixty
Years Ago.


/ throne. says the Fortnightly Review,
there were no telegraphs in this coun-
| try and few railways. The mails were
/ forwarded by coach, and the postage
rates were to all but the well-tO-do pro-
/ hibitive 1t cost from I'D TO Is Sd TO
! send Single" letter under an ounce
! in weight from one part of the king
! dom to another. There were some 40
! charges, varying according to distance,
| ire average rate being Sd, or half the
days wage of a labOrer. single
! letter meant single piece of paper
| adhesive envelopes had not been in
vented), and the addition of a second
scrap of paper made the letter ''dou-
BILE" one. The postage was paid on de-
livery by the recipient; and as no
credit was given, the incdrsion of a
postman into a poor neighborhood was
watched on all sides with fear rather
than hope
Coleridge, the poet, saw a poor wo-
man declining to accept a letter on the
score Of inability to pay. The good
natured bard doubtless with some diff
ficulty) found the required ninepence,
despite the woman's remonstrances.
When the postman had gone away she
showed Coleridge that the letter was
but blank sheet of paper. Her broth
er had arranged to send her at inter
walls such a sheet, addressed in a GER
tain fashion, as evidence that all was
well with him, and she as regularly, af-
ter inspecting the address, refused to
accept it. Some humOrist, on one occa-
sion, sent out large numbers of letters,
each on a sheet as large as a table
cloth, all of which had to be delivered
as single" missives.
This system practically stified writ
ten intercourse among the working
class but the rich and highly placed
entirely escaped postal taxation. The
privilege Of franking covered the cor
respOndence not only of Ministers,
Peers and members of Parliament, but
of their relatives, friends and acquain-
tances. While in one year early in the
Queens reign no less than 7,400, 900
letters were franked, a single London
firm paid ELL 900 for postage, and a
writer in "The Quarterly referred
fippantly to so slight and rare an in
cident in a laborer's life as the receipt
of a letter. Among the packets"
franked was a grand piano. An army
of clerks was employed to fix the
charges to be collected, and the postal
revenue remained stationary between
1915 and 1885, although in the same
period the population increased from
10. 500 900 to Is 800 000
Moved by this state of things, Par
lament in 1889 adopted Rowland Hills
nf i,,Io
postage, which came into operation on
January 10, 1910. The writer possesses
a copy of The Quarterly Review of
1899, in which a contributor (believed
to be Croker) fiercely denounces the
scheme. will the clerks" he says, |
write only to their fathers and girls
to their mothers? Will not letters of
romance or love, intrigue or mischief,
increase in at least equal proportions?
We doubt whether social and domes-
tic correspondence will be more than
doubled. A gigantic exemplification of
the old proverb-Penny wise and
pound foolish etc.
Macaulay says that the penny post |
when first established was the object |
Of violent invective, as manifest con- |
trivance of the Pope to enslave the |
souls of Englishmen. 1t was described |
as "sedition made easy" The postal |
who in 1884 had opposed |
the institution of mail coaches, were |
enemies of penny postage. |
The Postmaster-G General of 1889 Uord |
based his objections on the |
curious ground that the building at ST. |
Martin 's-le-Grand would not be large |
The Secretary, Colonel Maber
ly, constantly repeated, This plan we
know will fall
AS we know, it succeeded, and the |
penny rate has been generally adopted |
in Europe, as well as in the United
States The number of letters rose
from $4,000, 900 in 1887 to 299 ,000,0 in
1S47; and for the year ending on
March 81, 1897, they must be about
1 900, O00, 600 The postal surplus was
in 1889 FL $50 $40, and 1S96'97 1882 |
133 The number of letters, which was |
in 1887 about per head and in 1854 Is |
per head, is now II per head.