Page:The Post Office of Fifty Years Ago.djvu/79

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
ACTUAL COST OF CONVEYING LETTERS, &c.
11

commercial principles, and postage relieved entirely from taxation; and then to add to the natural cost such amount of duty as may be necessary for producing the required revenue.

As a step towards determining the natural cost, let the present actual cost be first ascertained.

Without desiring to interfere with the franking privilege, or to relieve the Post Office of the cost of transmitting newspapers, we must, in order to obtain an accurate result, consider (for the present) a due share of the expenses of the Post Office, as charged to the account of franked letters and newspapers.

The number of letters chargeable with postage which pass through all the post-offices of the United Kingdom per annum is about[1] 88,600,000
The number of franked letters[1] 7,400,000
The number of newspapers[1] 30,000,000
Total number of letters and newspapers per ann. 126,000,000
The annual expenses of all kinds at present are[2] £696,569
  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 The total number of letters, &c., transmitted through the Post is a statistical fact altogether unknown: the statement here given is the result of an estimate, which, however, may be relied upon as sufficiently accurate for the present purpose. (Vide Appendix, pp. 77—80.)
  2. Finance Accounts for the year 1835, pp. 55 — 57. The great increase in the number of newspapers since the reduction of the duty (already about one-fourth) must be expected in some degree to increase the expenses of the Post Office; the increase cannot, however, be such as materially to affect this calculation.