Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1897-07-30
OLD POSTAL ITSAGES.
CURIOUS PHASES OF THE MAIL sERv-
 ICE SIXTY YEARS AGO.

Rates on Ordinary Letters In England
 Were Almost Prohibitiss-Adoption os
 the Penny Post and the Queer Argu-
 nients Against It.
 When Queen Victoria ascended tbs throne. there were no telegraphs in this country and few railways. The mails were forwarded by coach and the post- age rates were to all but the well to do prohibitiye, It cost from 4d. to 1s Sd. to send Il single letter under an ounce ill weight from one part of the kingdom to another There were. some 40 charges, varying according to dis tance, the average rate being 9d.. OF half the days wage of laborer. A single . letter meant single piece of paper (adhesive envelopes had not been inyentea), and the addition of a second scrap of paper made the letter a 'sdou- ble' one. The postage was paid on de- livery by the recipient, and as no cred it was given the incursion of postman into poor neighborhood was watched on all sides with fear rather than hope.
 Coleridge, the poet, saw poor wom- all declining to accept a letter on the score of inability to pay The good natursd bard fdoubtless with some diff oulty1 found the required ninepence, despite the woman's remonstrances. When the postnlan had gone away. she showed Coleridge that the letter was but blank sheet of paper Her brother had arranged to send her at intervals such a sheet, addressed ill certain fashion, as evidence that all was we'll with him, and she as regularly, after inspecting the address. refused to accept it. Some humorist on one occasion sent out large numbers of letters, each on 4 sheet as largo as q tableeloth, all of which had to be delivered IS single missives
 This system practically stified written intercourse among the working class and pressed with severity upon the middle class, but the rich and highly placed entirely escaped postal taxation. The privilege of franking covered tue core spondence not only of ministers, peers and members of parliament but Of their relatives, friends and aeqnaint- anees. While i'll oue year early in the queen $ reign no less than 400, GOO letters were franked, single London firm paid annually q ,000 for postage and writer ill The Quarterly referred f1ippantly to so slight and rare an in- cident ill Il laborer 5 life as the receipt of t letter ? Among the packets franked was I grand piano. An army of clerks was employed to fix the chargeA to be collected, and the postal revenue remained stationary between 1915 and 1885, although ill the same period the population increased from 19, 50a, 900 fc %, GOO, GOO.
 Moved by this state of things, parlia- ment ill 1889 adopted Rowland Hills proposal of uniform inland penny post age, which came into operation on Jan, 10, tS40. The writer possesses q copy of The Quarterly Review of 1S39, iIl which a contributor (believed to be Croker) fiercely denounees the scheme s'Will clerks, he says. write only to their fathers and girls to their mothers? Will not letters of romance or love, intrigue or mischief, increase i'll at least equal proportions? We doubt whether social and domestic correspondence will he more than doubled. A gigantic exem- plifieation of the old proyerb--Penay wise and pound foolish, , etc.
 Macaulay says that the penny post, when first established, was the objeet of violent invectiye, as manifest con trivance of the pope to enslaye the souls of Englishmen. It was described as "sedition made easy. The postal au- thorities, who is l7s4 had opposed the institution of mail coaches, were i'm. placable enemies of penny postage The postmaster general of 1889, Lord Lieh- field, based his objections on the curi- ous ground that the building at St. Mar tin s-1e- Grand would not be large enough. The secretary, Colonel Maber ly, constantly repeated, "This plnn we know will fail. '
 As we know, it succeeded, and the penny rate has been generally adopted in Europe as well as i'll the United States The number of letters rose from 80, GOO, GOO ill 1S31 to 299, 100000 in 1S47, and for the year ending on March S1, 1897, about 1900, GOO, 000. The postal surplus was in 1889 q ,659, ,5l0 and ill 1S96-7 @, e32, lS3 The number of letters, which was in 183f about per head and in 1854 , per head, is now 77 per head. --Fortnightly Review.
 High Titles Without Cost.