Her Majesty's Mails

From the data which Mr. Hill was enabled to gather--for accounts of any sort were not kept as accurately at the Post-Office then as now, and there were no accounts of the number of inland letters--he estimated the number of letters passing through the post. He then took the expenses of management and analysed the gross total amount. He proved pretty clearly, and as nearly as necessary, that the primary distribution, as he termed the cost of receiving and delivering the letters, and also the cost of transit, took two-thirds of the total cost of the management of the Post-Office. Of this sum, the amount which had to do with the distance letters were conveyed, Mr. Hill calculated at 144,000l. out of the total postal expenditure of 700,000l. Applying to this smaller sum the estimated number of letters--deducting franks and taking into account the greater weight of newspapers--he gave the apparent average cost of conveying each letter as less than one-tenth of a penny. The conclusion to which he came from this calculation of the average cost of transit was inevitable, and that was, that if the charge must be made proportionate (except, forsooth, it could be shown how the postage of one-tenth or one-thirty-sixth of a penny could be collected) it must clearly be uniform, and for the sake of argument, and not considering the charge as a tax, or as a tax whose end was drawing near, any packet of an equal weight might be sent throughout the length and breadth of the country at precisely the same rate.