THE PENNY POST.

Otago Witness, Issue 3467, 24 August 1920, Page 48

THE PENNY POST.

It is gone for the present at least, like many other good things of which the great war has deprived us. Now that wo have lost it we realise as we never did before what a good thing it was. Now not only does a letter cost twopence instead of the penny we were used to till _ the war upset things; its weight limit .is halved, so that' a letter of two ounces and over costs four times what it did a few years ago. What a boon that four-ounce standard was to lengthy letterwriters and to literary people writing for the press, as well as to tne business world! Of course, the Government must get revenue some way, and higher scales of pay for civil servants must mean extra taxation, but it is regrettable that a thing so universally beneficial as the postal service should be burdened with extra charges. However, our Government is Only following the example of the British Government; indeed, I suppose most countries have raised their postal rates. Not so many years ago we had to pay twopence for letters to be delivered peyond the local post office district, so it was a great step when our Government followed the example of Britain in establishing a general inland penny post, and postal service within the British Empire and in communicating with the United States and several other countries. In Britain the penny post had been so long enjoyed that people regarded it. as one of the sureties of British life, for it dates back to the third year of Queen Victoria's reign, when, through the enterprise and ability of Rowland Hill, the British postal system was reorganised and brought into the form in which, with slight alterations, it has since existed.

It would be interesting to trace the evolution of the postal system. It is a comparatively recent development of modern civilisation, being dependent on a large reading and writing public. Of course, in any civilised community there must be methods of conveying intelligence between distant places by messages or letters; but in primitive times regular systems of communication were organised and carried on for the benefit of sovereigns, great men, or trade corporations. A national postal service is a product of a highly evolved civilisation. In the days of the latter Roman republic and of the Roman Empire, when communication was facilitated by good roads to a far greater extent than was reached in modern Europe till within the last century or two, it is probable that the exchange of letters was also better provided for than it was in modern times before the great industrial developments of the eighteenth century. It seems that in mediaeval England private letters were often conveyed by the Government couriers, the Government presumably being ready to lighten the expenses of the service by carrying letters for money. On the Continent the great universities had postal systems of their own; so had the great mercantile guilds. The letters were carried by couriers on horseback, and over the bad roads of the period transit was very slow. In Great Britain the union of England and Scotland, bringing need for better communication between north and south, gave a stimulus to the postal service. Among various improvements enacted under James I it was directed that every postmaster should keep at least two horses for the special conveyance of Government letters, and should forward these within a quarter of an hour of their receipt, and that the posts should travel at a rate of not less than seven miles an hour in summer and five in winter. There seems to have been a good deal of confusion between the respective fights of the Government and of private services at this time and till much later. In London a surprisingly modern postal service was established shortly before the revolution of 1688, which provided for

hourly - collections, 10 deliveries daily in the business part of the city, and six in the suburbs, the charge being a penny a letter; this system, however, was shortlived. Little improvement in the country service was made till the establishment of mail coaches in 1784, which made the carriage of mails both speedier and safer. Highwaymen still continued to be a danger, though less than to the couriercarried mails. And the horseback courier continued to distribute mails along the by-roads. Some readers will remember Cowper's picture of the arrival of the postman on a winter afternoon: Hark! 'tis the twangling horn. O'er yonder bridge He comes, the herald of a noisy world, With spattered boots, strapped waist and frozen locks, News from all nations lumbering at his back He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch, Cold and yet cheerful, messenger of grief Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some, ! To him indifferent whether grief or joy. j Perhaps it was not a daily mail, since j the poet so eagerly speculates on what > world news the important budget may | contain, but, of course, in those days of j tardy and irregular overseas communication receipt of news from India and the | colonies would be uncertain. And it was j the time of the American War of'lnde- ! pendence, of East India Company expanI sion, and of Warren Hastings. ."But oh, the- important budget, ushered in With such heart-shaking music, who can say What are its tidings? have our troopa awaked ? Or do they still as if with opium drugged Snore to the murmurs of the Atlantic wave ? Is India free? and does she wear her plumed And jewelled turban with a smile of peace, Or do wo grind her still? For rapid carriage of mails by land. and regular transport by sea the world had to await the development of steam locomotive power some half a century later. Then caine the electric telegraph and submarine cables. Many New Zealanders can recall the days when the receipt of intelligence from Europe or America was a matter of many weeks or months. Before Rowland Hill's postal reforms the charge for letter carriage varied according to distance. It might within Great Britain amount to Is 8d for a letter not above an ounce in weight, while the aVerage inland charge was ninepence. This made it impossible for poor people to exchange letters. Members of Parliament and other privileged people were empowered to frank correspondence; readers of old novels such as Jane Austen's will remember allusions to this practice. While the cheap post has been of immense economic, social, and educational service, it probably has been unfavourable to good letter writing. When people wrote few letters they gave more time and thought to those they did write; but, of course, the general hurry and complexity of modern life leaves most people little time or inclination to cultivate the art of letter writing. Women, perhaps, are still the best of letter writers, but how different is the hastily dashed off letter of the modern young woman from that of the carefully studied, lengthy epistle of the woman of a century back! The fact that many novels of the eighteenth century, Richardson's especially, are written in the form of letters, is symptomatic of the predominant part letter writing played in the lives of leisured and fairly educated people of that period. True, we have a few modern stories told in letters, as, for instance, that charming book by the authoress of "Elizabeth and her German Garden." entitled, I think, "Letters of Fraulein Schmidt to Mr Anstruther." i>ut these are exceptional cases. TSTo good comes wholly unalloyed ; with the many gains of modern facilities of communication comes the drawback that we hear at once of all disasters and dangers, real or conjectured, j from all parts of the world. We can no longer rest in peaceful ignorance ■ of distant woes and terrors. But again, how much anxietv and suspense we are often spared by our post and our telegraph. All means of bringing human, beings into communication with one another must in the main make for the world peace that still, alas, seems a dream. Dear books, magazines, and newspapers and lessened postal facilities are unfortunate retrograde results of the present economic disturbance, which, it is to be hoped, will not be for long. -