Postal abuse in Great Britain continued to get worse. As might be expected, the post office became an unprofitable and inefficient enterprise. Complaints mounted on all sides— from merchants, clergy and government. Finally, in 1837, a forty-two-year-old ex-schoolteacher and government bureaucrat named Rowland Hill published a pamphlet entitled Post Office Reform, Its Importance and Practibility. Hill’s pamphlet was scathing in its criticism, but broad in its ideas for change. He pointed out the postal abuses already discussed. He evaluated actual postal costs, and concluded that the real transportation cost for carrying a letter anywhere in the British Isles was less than a farthing (one quarter of 1 penny.) Even though the post office at this time was charging over 1 shilling (or 12 pence) for many internal letters, it was losing money. This, Hill said, resulted from the army of postmen employed to administer a system in which each letter needed to be separately rated, carried, and paid for, with a myriad of variables at each of these steps. It took great intelligence and much experience for even the lowest of postal employees to perform their jobs properly, so complicated was the work. Hill had a radical solution: slash postage rates to 1 penny per half ounce (still four times the actual carrying cost) for any letter posted in the British Isles to another address in the British Isles.
Transportation by this time had become comparatively inexpensive as compared to labor costs. Hill’s scheme was to allow the efficiencies of transportation to determine the cost of postage. Everyone, Hill said, must pay in advance for the privilege of using the mail; no more franking. Hill further advanced the radical thesis that the decline of fees would not mean less revenue for the postal service, because the lower rates would be compensated for by the increased use of the mails. Furthermore, the simplification of the postal service would make fewer postal employees necessary, thereby decreasing costs. Shorn of its gleamy high-speed sorts, zip codes, and registry labels, this was essentially the postal service we have today.
Naturally, this proposal earned Hill the enmity of the members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The Duke of Wellington was an outspoken opponent of Hill’s scheme, and was supported by most of the members of his various supper club. Postmen, as well may be imagined, did not rally behind Hill either. Postmaster General Lord Lichfield stated: “With respect to the plan set forth by Mr. Hill, of all the wild and visionary schemes which I have ever heard or read, it is the most extravagant.” The opinions of the individual postmen, some of whom stood to lose their jobs, are not recorded; no doubt they would have phrased their discontent with Hill’s “wild and visionary scheme” somewhat more strongly. However those individuals who stood to benefit from Hill’s proposal (businessmen, lawyers, tradespeople and, in fact, anyone not working for the post office or privileged with the Free Frank) cheered for inexpensive postage. Most newspapers warmly supported it, and after serious discussion the change was enacted and subsequently instituted in 1840.