Although occupied
with other affairs, the reduction in the postal rate was not dismissed
from my thoughts. The interest it had excited induced me to read
Reports, etc., on postal administration."--Ibid., vol. i. p. 242.

[69] "The best test to apply to the several existing taxes for the
discovery of the one which may be reduced most extensively, with the
least proportionate loss to the revenue, is probably this: excluding
from the examination those taxes, the produce of which is greatly
affected by changes in the habits of the people, as the taxes on
spirits, tobacco, hair-powder, let each be examined as to whether its
productiveness has kept pace with the increasing numbers and prosperity
of the nation. And that tax which proves most defective under this test
is, in all probability, the one we are in quest of."--Rowland Hill,
_Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability_, London, 1837,
p. 2.

[70] "The revenue of the Post Office has been stationary at about
[L]1,400,000 a year since 1818. This can be accounted for only by the
great duty charged on letters; for with a lower duty the correspondence
of the country through the Post Office would have increased in
proportion to the increase of population and national wealth."--Sir
Henry Parnell, _On Financial Reform_, London, 1832, p. 41.

[71] "While thus confirmed in my belief that, even from a financial
point of view, the postal rates were injuriously high, I also became
more and more convinced, the more I considered the question, that the
fiscal loss was not the most serious injury thus inflicted on the
public; that yet more serious evil resulted from the obstruction thus
raised to the moral and intellectual progress of the people; and that
the Post Office, if put on a sound footing, would assume the new and
important character of a powerful engine of civilization; that though
now rendered feeble and inefficient by erroneous financial arrangements,
it was capable of performing a distinguished part in the great work of
national education."--Sir Rowland Hill in _Life of Sir Rowland Hill and
History of Penny Postage_, London, 1880, vol. i. p. 245.

[72] _Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability_, by Rowland
Hill, London, 1837.

[73] "In order to ascertain, with as much accuracy as the circumstances
of the case admit, the extent to which the rates of postage may be
reduced, under the condition of a given reduction in the revenue, the
best course