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    Untitled Article

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    Untitled Article

    with that elsewhere , or at other times , —they can be conveyed still more rapidly ; that cheap as the price of postage is in comparison with the advantages it affords , it may be still cheaper ; that facile as communication is between all parts of the kingdom , it may be still

    more facile ; and that all the benefits resulting from that constant interchange of information , interests , and sympathies , may be proportionately increased . Letters are to

    newspapers what conversation is to public speaking ; and our excellent post-office arrangements have been no mean auxiliary to a free press in advancing

    the social and political condition of the people , as well as their commercial

    interests . Improvements in pnnt- % ing , particularly the use of steam , have so far extended the sale of books and periodicals , that the humblest individuals can command the services of

    the ablest , most powerful , and most instructive writers ; while , on the other hand , the mutual instruction which it is the function of the post-office to facilitate , has received no new imjpulse . The returns of the jaccounts show no increase in

    Ithe use of the post-office on the jpart of the increased populattion . Mr Hill has shewn us tthe way to an increase of power iin the mode of transmitting [ letters , which may be compared tto the introduction of steam in printing , at the same time that tike proposes to adopt that mode-[• ration of price which has so

    Untitled Article

    much conduced to extend the benefit of books and cheap periodicals . He finds that the charge'made for postage is out of all proportion with the actual expenses of the department ,

    and that the monopoly thus enjoys a tax , or profit , much above the ordinary rate ; and that a very considerable part of the expenses actually incurred arises from the defective and

    clumsy mode of sorting the letters , and checking the

    accounts . We must not , however , look for these reforms from the present officers of the establishment . The Postmaster-General sees nothing but the wild •» • « -m . ir ttiiia

    and visionary in Mr Hill ' s plan , —he is the Ossian of the post-office , according to the noble functionary's wonder-struck language . The Postmaster-General can imagine nothing which differs from the routine

    to which he has been accustomed . Mr Hill proposes to have open shops to receive the letters ; buthowisitpossible to trust them to anything but little slits outside shop-windows ? Mr Hill proposes that letters should be sorted in part as they are be sorted in part as they are

    received , —either according to districts , or alphabetically , — that they should , in fact , never be allowed to get into the disorder from which so many men are now employed to extricate them , night and morning ; but do we not now , and have we

    not always , under our u wise forefathers" of the post-office , let them all get higgledy viggltdv ) like Graciosas fea-

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    206 The Two Postages—Twopenny and Penny .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 1, 1837, page 206, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1835/page/62/