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I had almost forgotten one other point of communication for mind, and, though at the risk of trying your patience, I must mention it, as its increase has been so large, and its advantages so manifold and untold. I mean the penny-postage.
Even the invention of the penny-postage system by Sir Rowland Hill is disputed; Dr. Gray of the British Museum claiming to be its inventor, and a French writer alleging it to be an old French invention. The invention of the steamboat has been claimed on behalf of Blasco de Garay, a Spaniard, Papin, a Frenchman, Jonathan Hulls, an Englishman, and Patrick Miller of Dalswinton, a Scotchman.
The people of England, Ireland, and Scotland have, for the last twelve years, enjoyed the incalculable benefits of Penny-Postage, but they have never thought of extending its blessings to their fellow-countrymen, scattered abroad among our various colonies over the whole surface of the globe.
The number of letters in 1839, before the penny-postage, was 82,470,596, and in 1866 it was 597,277,616. Judge the difference! Coming to the results of communication, I have one subject to bring before you, and as it has shown to such a large extent the benefits of international communication, I trust a few words on it may not be out of place.
What Mr Gibbon Wakefield says of the free-postage plan of that time, would apply with nearly equal force to the proposed Colonial Penny-Postage: 'In this way, not only would the necessary evil of going to a colony be diminished that is, the emigrants would depart with the pleasant assurance of being able to communicate with their friends at home but the poorer classes in the mother-country would always hear the truth as to the prospects of emigrants; and not only the truth, but truth in which they would not suspect any falsehood. He goes on to say, that the statements published about that time, by an emigration-board sitting in Downing Street, shewing what high wages were obtainable in the colonies, 'though perfectly true, have not been received with implicit faith by the harassed, and therefore suspicious class to whom they were addressed; nor would any statements made by the government ever obtain so much credit as letters from the emigrants themselves. All who have ever paid any attention to the subject of emigration, and who have mixed familiarly among the poorer classes, will agree with Mr Wakefield.
A very striking instance of the value of a penny is set before us in that most wonderful system the penny-postage, the institution of which was a boon to the kingdom that cannot be too highly appreciated.
But his calm spouse, nothing daunted, quietly whispered on "You know, Thomas, you have boasted to me that your capital is doubling every year; penny-postage has made the stationery business most prosperous; and if you were wealthy when the old king knighted you as lord mayor, surely you can spare something handsome now for an only daughter, who "
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