Her Majesty's Mails

Thus, an Edinburgh letter, costing the Post-Office an infinitesimal fraction of a farthing, was charged one shilling and three-halfpence to the public, while a letter for Louth, costing the Post-Office fifty times as much, was charged to the public at the rate of tenpence! Nothing was clearer, therefore, that if Mr. Hill's propositions were opposed (and his opponents did not advocate the payment according to the actual cost of transit), that those who were adverse to them must fall into the absurdity of recognising as just an arrangement which charged the highest price for the cheapest business! At first sight it looked extravagant, that persons residing at Penzance or near the Giant's Causeway, at Watford or Wick, should pay equal postage for their letters. The intrinsic value of the conveyance of a letter, it must be admitted, is a very different thing from its cost, the value being exactly equal to the time, trouble, and expense saved to the correspondents, of which, perhaps, the only measure appeared to be the actual distance. Looked at more narrowly, however, in the clear light of Mr. Hill's investigations, it became obvious that it was really "a nearer approximation to perfect justice"[85] to allow distant places to feel the benefits of the measure; passing over the little inequalities to which it might give rise; while all might pay such a sum as would cover the expenses in each and every case.[86] Mr. Hill succeeded likewise in proving many of the facts adverted to in the preceding chapter. He showed that the high rates were so excessive (not only varied according to distance, but doubled if there was an enclosure, with fourfold postage if the letter exceeded an ounce in weight) as greatly to diminish, where they did not absolutely prevent, correspondence. Not only so, but the high rate created an illicit traffic, involving all classes of the country in the meshes of a systematically clandestine trade. These facts and their results on the public revenue shine out of the pamphlet as clear as noonday.