No accounts of the number of docu ments passing through the Post-office were kept until very lately. Founded upon a very careful examination of the best data, the numbers were estimated in 1838 to be as follows :— Yearly Average Yearly Description of Number of rate per Letters. Letters. Letter. nue.
Packet and abipletters 8,523,572 23'15 369,346 inland letters above 4d. . 46,378,800 9'22 1,782,191 Ditto, not exceeding 4d. . . . 8,153,200 3'5 75,151 London let ters. . . . 11,837,952 2'32 114,758 Country penny post letters . . . 8,030,412 1 33,483 Total . . 74,923,836 7•60 2,374,923 Parliamentary franks 4,813,448 . . . . Official franks, for pub lic purpoees . 2,109,010 . .
Public statutes . . 77,542 . . . .
Newspapers . . . 44,500,000 . . .
Total of documents transmitted by post . . . 126,423,836 . 2,374,923Unappropriated . . • • • 4,641 Total revenue from letters, 1837 .. . . . 2,379,564 (See Notes to' Postage Report,' pages 4 and 6.) The chargeable letters in the mails leaving London were found to weigh only 7 per cent. of the whole weight of those mails. The total weight of the chargeable letters and franks carried by the thirty-two mails leaving London was only 2912 lbs. Deducting one-half as the weight of the franks and franked docu ments, the weight of all the chargeable letters was only 1456 lbs., being 224 lbs. less than the weight which a single mail is able to carry. The average weight of the thirty-two mails was found to be as follows :— erage of 32 Mails. Bags weighed . . . 68 14 Letters, including franked letters and documents 91 RA Newspapers . . . 304 60; 463 100The management of the conveyance the mails by sea and land is subject, of course, to those constant changes which arise out of the improvements daily taking place in the various modes cf transit. Certain packets are exclusively controlled by the Admiralty, to whost: charge they were removed in 1837; others still remain with the Post-office. Contracts for the conveyance of the mail bags to the Continent are made between the Post-office and the proprietors of cer tain steam-vessels. The Post-office, more over, has the power of sending a bag of letters in any private ship.
The inland correspondence is carried on by railroads, by four-horse and two-horse coaches ; by cars in Ireland, by single horse carts, on horseback, and foot.
The number of miles travelled over in England and Scotland by the mail coaches in 1834 was 5,911,006, and in 1839, 7,377,857. The average speed in England was si miles per hour ; greatest speed 161 miles ; slowest 6 miles. The
average mileage for four-horse mails in England was lid. ; and in Ireland 2id. per English mile. The system of mail coaches owed its origin to Mr. Palmer, who, in 1784, laid a plan before Mr. Pitt, which was adopted by the govern ment, after much opposition from the functionaries of the Post-office. Mr. Palmer found the post, instead of being the quickest, nearly the slowest convey ance in the country ; very considerably slower than the common stage-coaches. The average rate of speed did not exceed three miles and a half per hour. Whilst coaches left London in the afternoon and reached Bath on the following morning, the post did not arrive till the second afternoon. Slowness was not the only defect ; it was also irregular, and very insecure. The robbery of the mail was very common. Mr. Palmer succeeded in perfecting the mail-coach system, and in greatly increasing the punctuality, the speed, and security of the post and the revenue of the post-office.
Mr. Rowland Hill's Plan.--In 1838 Mr. Rowland Hill privately submitted to the government a plan for the improve ment of the post-office, and subsequently published his views on the subject in a pamphlet under the title of Post office Reform—its Importance and Practi cability.' The main features of Mr. Hill's plan were-1, a great diminution in the rates of postage ; 2, increased speed in the delivery of letters ; and, 3, more fre quent opportunities for their dispatch. He proposed that the rate of postage should be uniform,to be charged according to weight, and that the payment should be made in advance. The means of doing so by stamps was not suggested in the first edition of the pamphlet, and Mr. Hill states that this idea did not originate with him. It originated inci dentally (as stated by Mr. Hill) in a sug gestion of Mr. Charles Knight to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to have a stamped penny cover for the postage of newspapers, when it was contemplated to abolish the newspaper stamps. A uniform rate of a penny was to be charged for every letter not exceeding half an ounce in weight, with an additional penny for every additional ounce. Mr. Hill discovered the justice and propriety of a uniform rate in the fact that the cost attendant on the transmission of letters was not mea sured by the distance they were carried. He showed on indisputable data that the actual cost of conveying letters from Lon don to Edinburgh, when divided among the letters actually carried, did not ex ceed one penny for thirty-six letters.