ROWLAND HILL

Evening Star, Issue 21565, 10 November 1933, Page 1

ROWLAND HILL

PENNY POSTAGE MEMORIES While pursuing the history of the Garth family, in which—together with that of the Brooke sisters, of the Vinceys, of Mr Laclislaw and of Ur Lydgate—l have lately been immersed, I came upon an incident which throws a very vivid light on certain modern advantages which our predecessors of a century ago did not enjoy (writes Mr E. V. Lucas, in the London ‘ Sunday Times ’). The postman, arriving (in chapter 40) at Mr Garth’s house, delivered nine letters, for which, says the author, he was paid three and twopence. Now, there’s a pretty state of affairs —three and twopence for nine letters, and the recipient to find the money! And this was, we know, almost exactly-/ a hundred years ago, because in the next chapter, Mr Raffles, on leaving Mr Riggs, the toad-faced man, “ took the new-made fairway, observing to his fellow-passengers that he considered it pretty well seasoned now it had done for Huskisson ’ —that unfortunate statesman having been run down at Liverpool, at the official opening of the Manchester-Liverpool line on September 15, 1830. _ In the eighteen-thirties, then, English people receiving letters had to pay for them, either by weight or distance, or both, and to pay before they could possess and read them; which suggests that the office of postman was an even more responsible one than it is to-day. The country charges, so far as I can ascertain, ranged from fourpence to one and eightpence for a single sheet, while the average was ninepencc. So far had I written, thinking only of other shafts of light upon English life which are cast by Middlemarch—such as, for instance, the habit of the gentlemen of. Coventry (for it was that Warwickshire town, I have always understood, which stood as a model for the novelist) of bringing their ridingwhips into the drawing room; and then came our own Postmaster-General’s 1933 report to send my thoughts back to letters again and in particular to Rowland Hill’s great reform; for in this document Sir Kingsley Wood indicates that in spite of the increase in revenue in his department, no return to penny postage, of which he is persoally in favour, can yet be expected. Sir Rowland Hill, to whom the invention of penny postage was due as long ago as 1840, was a, very remarkable man, beginning his altruistio career at a strangely early age, and when only twelve becoming a teacher of others. It was as a school master that he first caught public attention, the original character of his Hazelwood system attracting the notice and approval of such eminent socioligists as Jeremy Bentham and Joseph Hume, while 'Dr Arnold studied it some time Jfefore he went to Rugby. One of the peculiarities of Hazelwood was the absence of corporal punishment, and another the opportunity afforded every boy of cancelling bad marks by doing some useful work in play time. TEACHING TO INVENTION. From teaching, Rowland Hill turned to invention. He considered the fantastic possibility of propelling steamboats by a screw. He actually- devised thirty-five years before it Was adopted a rotary * printing press. It was possibly because of the’hostility of his constant enemy, the Government, to this machine, that the great reform connected with his name came about, for at that time every newspaper was printed on a separate sheet on which a penny stamp had already been impressed, and on a continuous scroll this would be impossible. When Hill said, that he would make it possible by an additional mechanical process, he was forbidden to. One of his early recollections of his infancy, where poverty prevailed, was of his mother s fear of not having enough money in the house, to pav for a- letter, should one arrive; and now on every hand he was the witness of the burden which was still weighing so much more heavily on the poor, who had no friends among members of Parliament with franking facilities, than on the rich, who had. With a thoroughness not common to the English character and never surpassed, he began to analyse the whole postal system, very quickly discovering that “the practice of regulating the amount of postage by the distance over which an inland letter was conveyed, however plausible in appearance, had no foundation in practice, and that consequently the rates of postage should be irrespective of distance.” The cost, for instance, of carrying a letter from London to Edinburgh, for which one and fourpence halfpenny was charged, was less than one thirty-sixth part of a penny! As for the logic of Hill’s case, it was irrefutable, but the Government resisted to the very last ditch. In 1840, however, as I have said, he won, and it is sad to think that such s victory ever had to be abandoned. What nobody seems to know to-day is the extent to which potential letter writers are holding their hands because they don’t like the extra 'halfpenny stamp. If these potential letter writers, having held their hands fbr so long, refuse to communicate with their friends by pen any more, it is clear that to return to penny postage would be a financial mistake. And it is also to b« remembered that since penny postage went out there has been an enormous advance in telephony. I do not mean by the word advance that to telephone has become any pleasanter or that blunders and delays are fewer; but tlia G.P.O. lias issued on all sides incitements to the public to speak rather than write, and it' is therefore natural to assume that correspondence is on the wane. If I personally would rather spend a quarter of an hour in forming words with my own right hand, ami then address an envelope and stick a penny halfpenny stamp on it, than go to the trouble of dialling in order to converse for two minutes, it means nothing; for in such matters as these I am not typical. There is no doubt that more and more people use the telephone, and will do so, and this being the case, the telephone accounts being I remunerative, the return to penny postage "may easily arrive only when the moon turns blue.