Note 738 — APPENDIXES
Reading edition
"No man can feel a more intimate conviction than I do that, whatever our financial difficulties may be, we must not take measures to meet them which should bear upon the comforts of the labouring classes.... Well, then, I must, with my sense of public duty, abandon the idea of raising a revenue from the Post Office."—Sir R. Peel, 11th March 1842, Parl. Debates (Commons), vol. lxi. col. 434.
"If, therefore, it should also happen that it (the penny) is the best rate adapted ultimately to produce the largest amount of money profit, such a coincidence would be the result of accident, not of design."—Report from Select Committee on Postage, 1843; evidence of Sir Rowland Hill, Answer 74.
"The Post Office, and, since the fall in silver, the Mint, both produce in England a net revenue, but the yield of revenue ought to be considered as purely incidental if not accidental."—J. Shield Nicholson, Principles of Political Economy, London, 1901, vol. iii. p. 372.
As a war measure the United Kingdom has now increased the rate on letters over one ounce in weight. Such letters are, however, only a small proportion of the total number of letters posted (vide supra, p. 33). Canada has imposed a war tax of one cent on all letters, and on postcards (supra, p. 57).