Her Majesty's Mails

Baring, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, proposed a Committee "to inquire into the present rates or modes of charging postage, with a view to such reduction thereof as may be made without injury to the revenue; and for this purpose, to examine especially into the mode recommended, of charging and collecting postage, in a pamphlet by Mr. Rowland Hill." It was noticed that most of the members nominated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer were favourable to the Government, all but two--Lord Lowther and Sir Thomas Fremantle--having voted for the Ballot. The Conservatives did not grumble, however, as on this subject the Government was conservative enough. The Committee sat sixty-three days, concluding their deliberations in August, 1838. They examined all the principal officers of the Post-Office and the Stamp Department, and eighty-three independent witnesses of different pursuits and various grades. The Post-Office authorities were specially invited to send any witnesses they might choose; and as the Postmaster-General and the Secretary of the Post-Office objected to the penny rate as likely to be ruinous to the revenue, and to the principle of uniformity as unfair and impossible, we may be certain that the witnesses sent were judiciously chosen. The examination was by no means ex parte, but seems to have been carried on with the greatest fairness. Those members of the Committee who were particularly pledged to the protection of the revenue, as well as Lord Lowther--who had a thorough knowledge of the subject from having sat on a previous Commission--appear to have missed no opportunity of sifting the opinions and the statements of each witness. The members of the Committee did their work, altogether, with zeal, great discrimination, and ability. The plan and the favourable witnesses stood the scrutiny with wonderful success; and Mr. Hill himself bore up, under what George Stephenson regarded as the greatest crucial test to which mortal man can be subjected, with tact and firmness, fully proving, in evidence, the soundness of the conclusions on which judgment had to be passed.