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    UNIVERSAL PENNY POSTAGE

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    No. 127—1.

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    Ar06303

    Universal Penny Postage

    UNIVERSAL PENNY POSTAGE

    Universal Penny Postage

    It is not seldom a quick way of settling a question with men who have a livelier sense of words than thoughts , to exclaim , " Well , of all the things I ever heard of , " or « Of all the notions that ever entered a man ' s

    head , " & c . & c , and so dismiss the poor proposition , as the barrister in the jest-book does the witness he could say

    nothing against , " There , you may get down from the box , Sir : —a pretty fellow that . Lord Lichfield , for a

    statesman , really seems a little too much given to this gratuitous sort of logic . He thinks of jumping to a conclusion by merely willing it , after a fashion

    that would never have got the family of Anson ennobled , had they taken it in their heads to make a voyage round the world by a like magical process . The noble

    Postmaster-General electrified the House of Lords with the declaration , that of all _" visionary" schemes , that of Mr Rowland Hill for the distribution of letters is the most so . Now when the

    names of the merchants , bankers , men of science , and tradespeople of the metropolis , persons of all sides of politics _* who petitioned in favour of Mr Hill ' s scheme , are

    called to mind , and all the in telligent and the practical wri

    Universal Penny Postage

    ters upon the matter , this declaration of his Lordship appears not exactly bashful ; nor wanting in a gallant defiance of any perils to be hereafter encountered by mistakes of his own .

    Let us bestow a few words on the objections of Lord Lichfield . He says _> that people would object to any taxation for the secondary distribution of letters . In case our readers

    should not recollect what is meant by primary and secondary distribution , we will explain it . Letters delivered on the high direct mail-roads , as from London to Edinburgh , belong to the primary distribution . Letters delivered at a

    post-town , and transferred across the country to villages and thinly populated places , belong to the secondary distribution . Mr It . Hill has shown

    beyond a doubt , that the cost of conveying a letter to Edinburgh , even at the present time , and by the present machinery , does not amount to half a

    farthing , in fact only to l-36 th of a penny . Consequently , whatever is charged above l-36 th of a penny is tax . But letters going out of the direct road cost much more . And , though few iu number , they require for their transmission a special agency , which could deliver many

    No. 127—1.

    No . 127—1 .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 1, 1837, page 65, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/mrp_01071837/page/63/