The post office and its story an interesting account of the activities of a great government department

Rowland Hill was appointed to a post at the Treasury in 1840, in order to superintend the introduction of his scheme. He retired, however, in 1842, after Lord Melbourne's Ministry went out of office. On the return of the Liberals to power in 1846 he was appointed one of the Secretaries to the Postmaster-General, and in the same year he was presented by the public with £13,360 in gratitude for his services. In 1854 he was made Chief Secretary of the Post Office, and in 1862 he received the honour of knighthood. When he retired from the Post Office in 1864 he received from Parliament a grant of £20,000, and he was also allowed to retain his full salary of £2000 a year as retiring pension. In 1864 he received the degree of D.C.L. from the University of Oxford, and in 1879 he was granted the freedom of the City of London. He died in August of the same year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Many and great were the reforms introduced into the Post Office during Sir Rowland Hill's period of service as Secretary. In his letter of retirement addressed to the Lords of the Treasury in 1864, he gave an account of his stewardship in a statement entitled “Results of Post Office Reform.” If we quote largely from this document it will be to show what Sir Rowland Hill claimed to have done, and it will also help the reader to understand from his own experience how far the Post Office has advanced since Sir Rowland Hill's day. First of all, Sir Rowland claimed “a very large reduction in the rates of postage on all correspondence, whether inland, foreign, or colonial. As instances in point it may be stated that letters are now conveyed from any part of the United Kingdom to any other part— even from the Channel Islands to the Shetland Isles— at one-fourth of the charge previously levied on letters passing between post towns only a few miles apart, and that the rate formerly charged for the slight distance— viz. fourpence— now suffices to carry a letter from any part of the United Kingdom to any part of France, Algeria included.”