The Life of Sir Rowland Hill and the

APPENDIX I. 471
points affecting receipt, viz., the postage of the Government corre-
spondence, and the proceeds of the impressed stamps on newspapers,
and the one point affecting expenditure, viz., the expense of the
packet service.
As regards the Government correspondence.
It is alleged that, under the old system, this was carried free.
Now the fact is, that under that system the departments of probably
the largest correspondence, viz., the Customs, the Excise, and the
Stamps and Taxes, paid the postage of all their letters, while some
other departments, though less strictly dealt with, paid at least for
their foreign correspondence. The aggregate of such payments
amounted, on the average, to about ^45,000 per annum.*
Now, seeing that, since the adoption of Penny Postage, the non-
official correspondence has increased nearly eight-fold, it may well be
doubted whether, had the old system continued, the official corre-
spondence would not have so increased as to raise the expenditure
from ^45,000 per annum to at least equality with the ^110,000,
the present average, f
As regards Newspapers.
As, under the old system, the proceeds of the impressed stamp
did not enter into the accounts of the Post Office, so, for the purpose
of comparison, they must be excluded now the ; only question,
therefore, is, whether the Post Office should now be credited with
the revenue derived from the adhesive stamp as applied to news-
papers. This claim has teen contested on the ground that, as under
the old system newspapers were carried free, so the same service
should be reckoned as performed now on the same terms ; and it has
been naturally supposed that the effect of recent changes has been to
reduce the number of newspapers transmitted under the impressed
stamp, the decrease being counterbalanced by the use of the adhesive
stamp for which, therefore, in the be made.
comparison, no claim should
Now, the fact is that, notwithstanding the option now ghen, the
* "Eighth Report of Postmaster-General," p. 31.
t The ^"45,000 and ,110,000 charged for Government postage (exclusive of
that of the Post Office itself) for the year 1838 and the present time, do not show
the whole amounts received, the charges on the official foreign correspondence
being omitted from the first amount, and that for the official bye and cross post
letters from both. In the " Second Report of the Select Committee on Postage "
(Appendix, p. 115) is a table showing with greater accuracy the amounts received
for postage on the official inland correspondence for each year from 1833 to 1837.
The amounts given above, however, will suffice for comparison.