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A STATE PARCEL POST. 32 5
An inland letter is limited to 18 inches iu length, 0 inches in
width, and 6 inches in depth, and this &pace may be paoked
with cast-iron or platiuum if you like, and yct transmitted by
post, so far as the regulations in the British Postal Guide show.
But except for very mall light thiugs, fom people use the
privilege, because t.he let,ter rttto fur ltwgo letters is Id. per
oz., which makes 1s. .id. per lb., a prohibitory clmrgo upon
art’iclcs of any considerable weight,. If I recollect aright,, it
mas allownblc some years since to forwwd parcels at tho book
rate of postage, v-hich is ouly -$ti. pcr lb., but troublo nrow
between the Post Offico and the rnilway compuuies, so that
this comparatively modemto ch:~rgc is nom rigidly restricted
to literary matter.
A number of writers have from time to t,i~no pointed out
the very great advtl11t;iges mllicl would mise from a general,
well arranged, and cheap parcel post. It is stlrtcd on tho bost
authority,* that such a post formcd part of thc sclleulc which
Sir Romland Hill submitted to tho public, and Mr. Ikwins, in
his iuteresting account of Her Binjosty’s Nails” (p. 247)’
points out what :in unspeakallc boon this suggestion of tho
father of the pcuny post would be when properly carried out.
I regret that I hare not been ablc to discover any explicit
statement of such a scllcmc in tllc original palnpldets of Sir
Rowland Rill, which are among thc most cherisl~ed contents
of my library. The proposal must, then, be given in other
documents which I have not seen.
In subsequent years the Society of Arts took up tho idea,
and appointed a committee, which in 1858 published an
elaborate and careful report upon t11e subject. They recommended
that parcels should be conveyed by tho Post Office at
a moderato uniform tariff of charges, irrespective of distance.
That scheme, we are told, was carefully considered by the
postal authorities; and in still later years, as mo may infer
from Mr. E. J. Page’s Evidence before the Railway Commission
of 1865, the Post Wce has entertained the idea.
* Royal Commission on Railwayys, 1865. Minutcs of Evidence,
Question 15,010.