PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

Otago Witness, 1 June 1910, Page 85

PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

ROWLAND HILL AND CHEAP POSTAGE. In the Otago Daily Times the other day I saw that Mr Henniker Heaton, of penny postage fame, was endeavouring to get penny postage inaugurated between England and. France, and in advance of his cause he gave the following figures : "England to Fiji, 11,000 miles, postage, a penny; England to the Society Islands, 11,500 miles, postage, a penny; England to France, 21 miles, postage, two pence halfpenny," or 150 per cent. more. I suppose you know something of the rule of three, so work this sum: "If it costs 2£d to send a letter 21 miles, how much ought it to cost to send it 11,500 miles?" Dosen't it work out to something between £5 and £6? Of course, that is absurd, though it is the principle asserted by the Hon. J. A. Millar in passenger rates on our railways. Young folk have no idea of the great advance made in postal facilities in recent years. It isn't long since it cost sixpence to send a letter Home from New Zealand ; this was reduced, if I remember rightly, to fourpence, then to twopence halfpenny, and then to a penny, at which it will probably stand for many years to come. But this isn't my theme to-day. When I read of the rate to France my mind flashed back to Rowland Hill, who was the first to introduce a cheap national system, and I thought that a few notes on this gentleman and his postal reforms would be interesting. I think, however, that I'll extend my notes to two or three Chats, because I may not confine myself to postal matters. It is generally the custom in writing the biography of a person to give a list of ancestors, sisters, cousins, auntfi, etc. Well, I am not going to do that except to a small extent. The Hills have occupied a prominent and honourable position in public life for three and a-half centuries or more, and from the brother of Sir Rowland Hill, mercer, and Lord Mayor of London in 1549, there have descended three Rowland Hills—a preacher, a warrior, and the statesman of penny postage fame; the warrior, says Napier in his "Peninsular War," would have taken command at Waterloo if Wellington had fallen. On both sides, Rowland Hill's ancestors to have been of stern Puritan extraction, theologically narrow, inflexibly honest, terribly in earnest, of healthy life, fine physique,—nonagenarians not infrequently" : and one of the Hills has left a graphic description of what this .strait-laced Puritanism meant —on a Sunday, at any rate. "The windows of the house, darkened by their closed outside shutters, made mirrors in which he saw his . melancholy face reflected; his toys were put away; there were three chapel services, occupying in all some five and a-half hours, to which he was taken, and the intervals between each were filled by long extempore prayers and sermonreading at home, all week-day conversation being rigidly ruled out." And the laws in those days were as severely repressive as the religion of the Puritan element. At the beginning of last century there were about 150 offences punishable by death; and in 1822 SiT Rowland Hill, travelling from Birmingham to London by coach—no trains in those days, —saw one day 19 bodies strung up in a row at Newgate, and on another occasion 22. The Hills were evidently sturdily independent and unconventional. Rowland's father kept a school, and his three sons as they grew up helped in the teaching; but the school was managed as a little republic, with the pupils electing their'own. judge an<? jury. THE OLD POSTAL SYSTEM. Before I make any reference to postal reform, for which Rowland Hill was responsible, let me give you an idea of the disabilities people were under with the old system. Fourpence carried a letter 15 miles only, the average for all letters working out to about a letter. This meant that a note posted was equal to about a third of an ordinary workingman's daily wages. One writer says: "Of a gentleman whose income was £IOOO a year—about £3 a day—what would he have said if he had had to pay a third of that day's income to post a letter, or on receiving one?" A package of 21b sent from Deal to London cost over £6, which was four times the fare of an inside passenger travelling between the same two places; but a worse case occurred in Ireland, where a package sent from one Irish town to another paid postal instead of parcel rates, and the charges ran up to £ll, for which the mail coach, carrying seven passengers and luggage, could have been hired! One would think that such extortionate rates would have been prohibitive. So they were in a large number of instances, but the disabilities were partly overcome by the franking system and by letter smugglers. THE FRANKING SYSTEM. Members of the two Houses of Parliament and many officials had the right of writing their signatures on the letters or envelopes—l'll explain the difference further on,—and in 1838 about 7,000,000 franked missives went through the post. Of these nearly 5,000,000 were double letters, about 2,000,000 were eight-fold, and some 70 odd thousands thirteen-fold—-what "fold" means I'll also explain later on. The noi'mber of franks that could be issued by anyone was supposed to be defined, but M.P.'s signed franks by the packet, and gave or sold then- to friends and others. Illiterate servants getting low wages often had franks given them, which they sold. One banker, in one year, sent 103,000 franked communications through the post office. Sometimes the names were forged of those who had franking privileges. ''.-. '.'. ; " _TttE.; : .SMUGGLING'.SYSTEM..; i-;se p2i;alty-tor-smuggling was

£5 an offence, and £IOO a week as long as it was kept up, letter smuggling became a recognised industry. One caught . had been in the habit of smuggling 60 a ; day, and another when caught had 1000 | in his bag! Twelve men smuggled letters ! from Walsall to Birmingham at Id each ; ' five Glasgow merchants admitted smuggling from three to eighteen for every one on which postage was paid ; and the • first steamer crossing the Atlantic took five letters in the official post bag and tan thousand which had not seen the Post Office! Though mail bags did not pass very often between London and Edinburgh, one bag for London, had one letter in it! And so on. Towns of thousands of people had no post office at all. Of course, many spoke out strongly against the iniquitous system. One said, "It is commercial suicide to restrict the free distribution of letters" ; another, "We are cut off from our relations by the high rates of postage" ; and another, "Postage is one of the worst of our taxes . it' is, in fact, taxing the conversation of people who live at a distance from each other. . . . You might as well tax spoken words." THE NEWSPAPER TAXES. About the same time the newspaper taxes were, to our minds, almost unbelievable, and I fancy if they were reintroduced now our editor and the whole of the staff would be thirsting for someone's blood. Every ■ newspaper sheet had to be taken to the ! Stamp Office and a tax paid on it, varying with the times, of frorr a penny to fourpenoe ; then the sheet was stamped and returned to the newspaper office to be printed upon. What a contract it would be to cut up into sheets the 10 miles or more of paper each issue of the Witness takes, get them stamped, return them to the Witness Office, and print them ! But that wasn't all. There was ■ duty of from to 3d a lb on the paper—weigh a Witness and see what that comes to, — i and a tax of from a shilling to half a crown on each advertisement! —count the Witness ads and see what that amounts to. I thought it worth while to add this note on newspapers, if only to make you feel thankful that you live in a time when postage is so low and newspapers so cheap. I'll take up the question of postage again next week.