number of letters increased from 76 millions to 169 millions. The new scheme was received with general approval by the country; but not so by the Government and the Post-office authorities, who regarded it as suicidal, and most probably likely to be very injurious to the revenue. And certainly these views were not unreasonable. The average charge for a letter in 1837 was tenpence: it was evident, therefore, that to arrive at the same result when reduced to a penny, the number of letters must increase tenfold – whereas in the first year they had only doubled; and even now that the letters have increased to the enormous amount of 1333 millions, it is a question whether, when we consider the increase of population and popular education, the revenue has not suffered by the change, although the net revenue is this year £2,687,000. But in 1837 the change was dreaded by the authorities for other than financial reasons. Lord Lichfield, the Postmaster-General at that time, described the scheme as "wild, visionary, and extravagant." The walls of the Post-office, he added, would burst; the whole area on which the building stands would not be large enough to receive the clerks and the letters. In the first instance a fourpenny rate was proposed; but this did not meet the views of either party, and in 1840 a uniform penny rate was adopted.
That the penny postage has added to the happiness and comfort of the nation, and greatly benefited all the commercial classes, cannot be doubted; and yet it took many years before its opponents were fairly convinced of its advantages. While the number of letters increased rapidly, the expenses of the Post-office at first increased still faster. The walls of the post-offices did not burst, as Lord Lichfield predicted, but everywhere enlarged accommodation had to be found. Railways supplanted the mails, at an enormous additional expense. For instance, in 1844, a coach-proprietor in the north of England actually paid to the Post-office department the sum of £200 annually for what he considered the privilege of conveying the mail twice a-day between Lancaster and Carlisle; now the Post-office pays the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway £18,000 annually for the same service, and the entire sum paid to the railway companies in 1863 does not fall far short of the whole of the Post-office expenses in 1839.
The progress of the Post-office since the final establishment of the penny post has exceeded all the most sanguine expectations. Between 1839 and 1880, day-mails, rural posts, and free deliveries were established on an enlarged scale. In 1840 the number of rural post-offices was 3000; they now exceed 8000. As to free deliveries, it has been promised that soon the "most remote and inaccessible parts of our country, the nooks and crannies of the land, will possess the rural postman." When we recollect the work done in the post-offices, it is something quite extraordinary. The Post-office is not only responsible for all home and foreign correspondence; but every postmaster has charge of the Book-post department, the Telegraph, the Money-order Office, the Savings Bank, and now the Parcel Post. A post master or mistress now, in any considerable village, must find their day pretty well occupied, and have little to devote to the shop in which formerly it was in general situated – placed so that those who came to post letters or buy stamps
