Note 71 — I THE RATE FOR LETTERS

"While thus confirmed in my belief that, even from a financial point of view, the postal rates were injuriously high, I also became more and more convinced, the more I considered the question, that the fiscal loss was not the most serious injury thus inflicted on the public; that yet more serious evil resulted from the obstruction thus raised to the moral and intellectual progress of the people; and that the Post Office, if put on a sound footing, would assume the new and important character of a powerful engine of civilization; that though now rendered feeble and inefficient by erroneous financial arrangements, it was capable of performing a distinguished part in the great work of national education."—Sir Rowland Hill in Life of Sir Rowland Hill and History of Penny Postage, London, 1880, vol. i. p. 245.