Her Majesty's Mails

It was shown beyond all dispute, that the scheme had almost entirely prevented breaches of the law, and that if any illicit correspondence was carried on, it was simply and purely in matters where the question of speed was involved; that the evils, amounting to social prohibitions, so prevalent before the change, had been, for the most part, removed. Commercial transactions, relating even to very small amounts, were now managed through the post. Small orders were constantly transmitted; the business of the Money-order Office having increased almost twenty-fold--first, from the reduction of postage in 1840, and then from the reduction of the fees in November of the same year. These orders are generally acknowledged. Printers send their proofs without hesitation;[104] the commercial traveller writes regularly to his principal, and is enabled for the first time to advise his customers of his approach; private individuals and public institutions distribute widely their circulars and their accounts of proceedings to every part of the land. Better than any account that we might give of the reception of this boon by the country, and the social and commercial advantages which were immediately seen to follow from it, we may here give some account of the correspondence which flowed in upon Mr. Hill between 1840-1842, and which he read to the select committee appointed to try the merits of his scheme.