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Cheap Postage

Chapter 4: Footnotes
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About This Book

The pamphlet argues for a system of uniformly low postage, documenting British postal reform outcomes and comparing them with prevailing American practices. It presents parliamentary returns and tables showing rapid increases in letter volume after rate reduction, financial data on revenues and administrative costs, and accounts of private carrier competition. The author analyzes policy choices—distance-based rates versus single-rate reform—and reports committee proceedings and testimony to support adopting low, inexpensive postage to expand correspondence, commerce, education, and social ties. An appendix supplies detailed official statistics and extracts underscoring fiscal and civic effects, while urging legislative action to implement similar postal reforms.


Footnotes

1.
“The estimate for 1839 is founded on the ascertained number of letters for one week in the month of November, and strictly speaking, it is for the year ending Dec. 5th, at which time 4d. was made the maximum rate. The estimate for each subsequent year is founded on the ascertained number of letters for one week in each calendar month.”
2.
“This is exclusive of about six and a half millions of franks.”
3.
The number of franks was ascertained for each of the weeks ending January 11, January 21, and February 4, 1838; and the mean of these three gives 126,212 as the estimated number for one week, which is 8 per cent. of the whole, and leaves 1,459,761 as the number of chargeable letters.
4.
Week ending April 21, 1847. The whole number in the week ending February was 6,569,696. The number 6,148,876, for one week, multiplied by 52, gives 319,741,552, the total number for the year 1847.
5.
Namely, the gross receipts, after deducting the returns for refused letters, &c.
6.
Including all payments out of the revenue in its progress to the Exchequer, except advances to the Money Order Office; of these sums £10,307 10s. per annum is for pensions, and forms no part of the disbursements on account of the service of the Post Office.
7.
This year includes one month of the Fourpenny Rate.
8.
By multiplying any of these numbers by 13, you get the number for 62 weeks, which is, for all practical purposes, the number for a year; as 20,087,971 in 1839, to 109,362,997 in 1847
9.
Estimated from an enumeration for four several weeks in that year.
10.
The Penny Rate commenced Jan. 10, 1840; Stamps, May 6, 1840.
11.
The increase of the total, since 1839, is 418 per cent.; of paid in coin, since 1840, 39 per cent.; of unpaid, since 1841, 21 per cent.; of stamps, since 1841, 183 per cent.
12.
Cost diminished by £364, equal to d. 0.004 per letter.
13.
Cost increased equal to d. 0.445 per letter.
14.
Cost increased equal to d. 0.205 per letter.