THE POST OFFICE OF FIFTY YEARS AGO.
THE RECEPTION OF THE PLAN AND ITS RESULTS.
Although, if strict chronological order were observed, Sir Rowland Hill's pamphlet should here be given, it will probably be more convenient to many readers if we first complete this narrative by a short account of the manner in which his proposals were received, and of the results which his reforms have now produced.
By the Post Office authorities the scheme was met with the most determined hostility, one high official stating that, in his opinion, there was no portion of the plan that could be adopted with advantage either to the revenue or to the public, while the Postmaster-General (Lord Lichfield) declared that "of all the wild and visionary schemes he had ever heard or read of, it was the most extraordinary." The Secretary of the Post Office did not believe the people would write more letters even if they were carried for nothing; the Postmaster-General, on the contrary, declared that the amount of correspondence would be so enormous as to be quite unmanageable, and that the walls of the Post Office would burst—an observation that laid his lordship open to Sir Rowland Hill's sarcastic rejoinder that he was sure the Postmaster-General, on reconsideration, would have no difficulty in deciding whether, in this great and commercial country, the size of the Post Office was to be regulated by the amount of correspondence, or the amount of correspondence by the size of the Post Office.
That the Government was opposed to his scheme
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