Uniform Penny Post
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The Uniform Penny Post was a component of the comprehensive reform of the Royal Mail, the UK's official postal service, that took place in the 19th-century. The reforms were a government initiative to eradicate the abuse and corruption of the existing service. Under the reforms the postal service became a government monopoly, but it also became more accessible to the British population at large through setting a minimum charge of one penny for carriage and delivery between any two places in the United Kingdom irrespective of distance.
Richard Cobden and John Ramsey McCulloch, both advocates of free trade, attacked the Conservative government's policies of privilege and protection, including their archaic postal system. McCulloch, in 1833, advanced the view that "nothing contributes more to facilitate commerce than the safe, speedy and cheap conveyance of letters."[1] The campaign for cheap postage was actually initiated by Robert Wallace, who in 1835 argued before a governmental Commission set up to investigate the problems, that greater use of the mailing system would lead to increased revenue for the government.
Rowland Hill expounded his concept for the reformed service at a meeting of the Commission on February 13, 1837, and published a famous pamphlet Post Office Reform: its Importance and Practicability late that year.
Hill called for official pre-printed envelopes and adhesive postage stamps as alternative ways of getting the sender to pay for the postage, at a time when prepayment was optional. He also called for a uniform low rate of one penny per half-ounce a letter to anywhere in the United Kingdom.
Previously, postage had depended on distance and the number of sheets of paper; now one penny could assure delivery of an envelope and the letter it enclosed anywhere in the country provided together they satisfied the weight condition.
This was a lower rate than before, when the cost of postage was usually more than 4d. The reform did not settle the issue of who paid for the postage as it still remained optional for a number of years in spite of Hill's efforts as Secretary to the Post Office to alter the situation.
The lower cost made postal communication more affordable to the increasing numbers of people capable of reading and writing as a consequence of public education.
The uniform penny postage service was inaugurated with a postage-prepaid envelope (on the face of which was a printed elaborately pictorial illustration to discourage counterfeiting) on 10 January 1840, four months before stamps were issued on 6 May 1840. Financially the penny post scheme was a disaster. More than 30 years elapsed before revenues were back to the pre-1840 level. The real benefits were the stimuli and support that the availability of cheap letterpost communication gave to the development of transport links, education, commerce and social cohesion.
[edit] References
- ^ Howard Robinson, The British Post Office; a History. Princeton, Princeton Univ. Press. (1948)
