Chapter 25

[18]For the sketch of this house, as it was at the time of Sir Rowland Hill’s birth, I am indebted to the kindness of William Bucknall, Esq., of Franche Court, Kidderminster.[19]“Henry Crabb Robinson’s Diary.” Vol.I., p. 80.[20]The Peace of Amiens was not signed till March 27, 1802. But the general rejoicings were on the conclusion of the Preliminary Articles on October 1, 1801.[21]The battle was fought on the twenty-first.[22]Prefatory Memoir.[23]Prefatory Memoir,[24]I remember how, at the age of eight, I was myself set for a short time to teach some still smaller children to read. The book we used was Mrs. Barbauld’s “Early Lessons.” We came to the word mezereon. I was ashamed to own that I did not know how it was pronounced. With great gravity I informed my class that this was a word that no one knew how to read. So far as I can remember there was no doubting Thomas present.[25]For many years he was engaged to give private lessons in mathematics to some of the boys in the Grammar School. Among his pupils were Dr. Kennedy, the Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Cambridge, and Dr. Guest, the Master of Caius College, Cambridge.[26]“I shall never forget the joy I felt on taking the first spark from the prime conductor.”—Rowland Hill’s Journal.[27]Prefatory Memoir.[28]See Appendix A.[29]See Appendix A.[30]Prefatory Memoir.[31]“At the first meeting in April, and also in October, a Committee shall be elected, which shall consist of at least one-fifth of the members of the Society. The mode of election shall be as follows:—A ticket shall be delivered to each member present, with his own name at the head of it, immediately under which he shall write the name of the member whom he may wish to represent him in the Committee. The votes thus given, shall be delivered to the president, who, after having assorted them, shall report to the meeting the number of votes given for each nominee. Every one who has five votes shall be declared a member of the Committee; if there are more than five votes given to any one person, the surplus votes (to be selected by lot) shall be returned to the electors whose name they bear, for the purpose of their making other nominations, and this process shall be repeated till no surplus votes remain, when all the inefficient votes shall be returned to the respective electors, and the same routine shall be gone through a second time, and also a third time if necessary; when if a number is elected, equal in all to one-half of the number of which the Committee should consist, they shall be a Committee; and if at the close of the meeting the number is not filled up, by unanimous votes of five for each member of the Committee, given by those persons whose votes were returned to them at the end of the third election, then this Committee shall have the power, and shall be required, to choose persons to fill up their number; and the constituents of each member so elected shall, if necessary, be determined by lot. The President, Secretary, and Treasurer, all for the time being, shall be members of the Committee,ex-officio, whether elected or not. In the intervals between the general elections, it shall be competent to any four members of the society, by a joint nomination, in a book to be opened for the purpose, to appoint a representative in the ensuing Committee; such appointment being made shall not be withdrawn, nor shall the appointers give any vote in the choice of a Committee-man, as such, until after the next election. A register shall be kept by the Secretary of the constituents of every member of the Committee; and the constituents of any member, except those appointed by the Committee, (upon whose dismissal that body may exercise a negative,) shall have the power of withdrawing their representative, by a vote of their majority, of which vote notice in writing shall be given (subscribed by the persons composing such majority) both to the member so dismissed, and to the Chairman of the Committee; and in the case of a vacancy occasioned by a dismissal as above, or by any other cause, the constituents of the member whose place becomes vacant, may elect another in his stead, by a unanimous vote, but not otherwise; if such election be not made within a fortnight after the vacancy has occurred, the appointment shall devolve upon the Committee.”[32]I give this Preface in Appendix B.[33]A young man to whom he was strongly attached. He also had been bent on doing something for the world—something which should make his name live. He was studying engineering, and it was his great hope that he should live to make a canal through the Isthmus of Panama. Unhappily he died at an early age.[34]Published in London by Sir Richard Phillips.[35]Prefatory Memoir.[36]Prefatory Memoir.[37]“Of course I do not mean by these quotations to set up for my father or myself any claim to invention, seeing that we merely formed crude ideas which were never elaborated or even published.”—Prefatory Memoir.[38]Prefatory Memoir.[39]Sir Rowland Hill, to a considerable extent at all events, recovered the process. It is described in Appendix C. He adds: “As it is fully fifty years since I gave any thought to the subject, and as, in the eightieth year of my age, I find my brain unequal to further investigation, I must be contented with the result at which I have arrived.”[40]“Essays by a Birmingham Manufacturer,” Vol.II., p. 188.[41]This expression is not strictly correct, as it was impossible to maintain absolutely the same level throughout without using stools of an unmanageable height. What was done was to keep the rods in a right line until a new gradient was designedly taken; the angle of rise or fall being in each instance carefully measured, and the whole afterwards reduced by computation to the exact horizontal distance. It may be added, that in order to make due allowance for the elongation or contraction of the rods by change of temperature, thermometers were attached to the apparatus, and the rise and fall of the mercury duly recorded.[42]“These manuscripts were unfortunately destroyed two years afterwards in a fire which will be mentioned hereafter, and with them perished not only my water alarum, but also my planispheres, and various other results of past labour.”[43]Colonel Mudge’s “Report of the Trigonometrical Society of England and Wales.” Vol.III., p. 156.[44]Alphabetical Index to the third volume of the “Report.”[45]Prefatory Memoir.[46]“Southey’s Life and Correspondence,” Vol.I., p. 39.[47]“Plans for the Government and Liberal Instruction of Boys in Large Numbers. Drawn from Experience.” London: Printed for G. & W. B. Whittaker, Ave-Maria Lane, 1822. A second edition was published in 1825.[48]He was speaking of the system as it was in his time. His only son, and all his grandsons, have been pupils of the school.[49]“When Dr. Johnson read his own satire, in which the life of a scholar is painted with the various obstructions thrown in his way to fortune and to fame, he burst into a passion of tears.”—“Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson.” By Madame Piozzi, p. 50.[50]This Society, which was thus founded more than sixty years ago, has existed ever since. Many hundreds of pounds have been raised by successive generations of the pupils of Hill Top, Hazelwood, and Bruce Castle. Why should not every school in the country have its Benevolent Society?[51]This officer, I believe, kept the punches with which the number that each boy bore in the school was stamped on certain articles of his clothing.[52]See page 112.[53]“By this institution, successive committees of boys (generally, indeed, presided over by a master, but still free in action) must have disposed of little less, perhaps more, than four thousand pounds.”—Prefatory Memoir.[54]“Essays by a Birmingham Manufacturer,” Vol.II., p. 187.[55]Emilius. BookII.[56]Prefatory Memoir.[57]Prefatory Memoir.[58]“The ammunition with which these poor fellows were to overturn the government was kept in an old stocking.”[59]The passage quoted begins, “Deep-toned the organ breathes,” and ends, ‘He smiles on death.’[60]It was part of Uriconium.[61]It was at a time of grievous distress and loud discontent that the suspension of this Act was carried. In few places was there greater suffering than in Birmingham. Rowland Hill, before he set out for London, had passed near the Birmingham Workhouse while a crowd was gathered round the doors waiting for their weekly dole. One of them called out to him, “Look there, Sir; there’s a sight, while they’re a-passing their Horpus Corpus Acts. Damn their Horpus Corpus Acts, say I.”[62]There existed at this time in Birmingham, as Sir R. Hill subsequently recorded, “a very exclusive society for procuring private concerts. It was supposed that the society’s strict rule would be waived in favour of so distinguished a visitor as Mr. Campbell; but upon application being made for his admission to one of these performances, answer was returned that no exception had been made even in the case of an officer who had bled for his country, and whose claims were of course very superior to any that could be advanced by Mr. Campbell.”[63]See page 87.[64]Joseph Hodgson, Esq., F.R.S., late President of the College of Surgeons.[65]M.P. for Midhurst.[66]“The Recorder of Birmingham.” A Memoir of Matthew Davenport Hill. By his daughters. Page 76.[67]“History of my Religious Opinions.” Page 290.[68]See page 47.[69]See Mr. Trevelyan’s “Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay.” Second edition. Vol.II., p. 463.[70]“By a mistake of the Secretary, my name was omitted in the first list of the Committee.”[71]Writing to his wife from Hazelwood on January 12th, 1830, he says: “I am engaged in my experiments with pendulums, which at present promise very well. Father is much interested in the matter. I tell you this, my dear, because I know you take a lively interest in everything I undertake.”[72]Published by Simpkin and Marshall.[73]TheArthur Hill Lifeboat, stationed at Fowey, is a memorial of the affection of many generations of scholars for their old master.—Ed.[74]This was written in the year 1869. Eight years later—seventy-four years after the opening of Hill Top, and fifty years after the opening of Bruce Castle—the school passed out of the hands of any member of Sir Rowland Hill’s family. In justice to the present head-master, it should be stated that in the fifty-eight years that have elapsed since the publication of “Public Education,” great changes have been made in the system of government of the school.[75]The reader will find the scheme described in Appendix E.[76]The late Sir John Shaw-Lefevre, K.C.B.[77]Assistant Secretary to the Poor Law Commissioners.[78]The Society was later on joined by Dr. Arnott, Dr. Lyon Playfair, Mr. Edwin Chadwick, Mr. Henry Cole, Mr. Arthur Symonds, Mr. Dilke, and Mr. Frederic Hill.[79]See Southey’s “Life and Correspondence.” Vol.I., p. 216.[80]We may compare with this what Gibbon says of his own training. “Whatsoever have been the fruits of my education, they must be ascribed to the fortunate banishment which placed me at Lausanne.”—Ed.[81]Sir R. Hill, in after years, saw a good deal of Lord Brougham. He thus writes of him:—“Judging by what I observed, I should say that, wide as was the range of his knowledge—far wider, indeed, than I could measure,—it was deficient in accuracy, and therefore in profundity. This, indeed, must be evident to all who regard the undulatory theory of light as now fully established.... Other instances of inaccuracy, doubtless of a minor, but yet of a serious character, I found in his essay on Hydrostatics, written for the Useful Knowledge Society, and, as it happened, referred to me by the Committee for report thereon. On the other hand, I found much more of kindliness in him than the world generally gave him credit for, and in particular I remember with gratitude the important help which he freely and promptly rendered to myself.”—Ed.[82]Writing to Mr. M. D. Hill on September 5, 1834, he says:—“However absurd it may appear, I do really believe that Mr. Spring Rice [at that time Secretary to the Colonies] has jumbled up together in his mind the statements as to the sterility of some parts of the Continent with the ample evidence of the fertility of other parts, and has got a notion that the evidence is contradictory.”—Ed.[83]See “First Annual Report of the Colonisation Commissioners for South Australia,” pp. 7 and 13, and “Fourth Report,” p. 3.[84]“Third and Fourth Reports of the South Australian Commissioners.”[85]“Third Report,” p. 18.[86]See page 69.[87]The office was No. 6, next door to the house in which Garrick had died; and this, on an alarm of fire, I once entered at the request of the occupant. I need not say with what interest.[88]It was in the same year that he received this refusal that he and Mr. Lefevre formed the small society which has been described on page 209. He has recorded that the society discussed “the possibility of feeding the machine mechanically with a continuous supply ofsheets.... I scarcely need add that we found the problem insoluble.”—Ed.[89]The offer was made by Mr. Wm. Clowes, Sen. I should have had to contribute, I think, about £5,000 of capital, and my share of the profits was estimated at £2,500 a-year.[90]See Appendix E for letters by Mr. John Forster, late Member for Berwick, and Sir Rowland Hill, on the subject of the printing machine.[91]The employment of existing stage-coaches instead of slow and irregular horse and foot posts, a change made in the year 1784.[92]In Sir R. Hill’s Pamphlet on “Post Office Reform,” (Third Edition, p. 86), is the following passage:—“Coleridge tells a story which shows how much the Post Office is open to fraud in consequence of the option which now exists. The story is as follows. ‘One day, when I had not a shilling which I could spare, I was passing by a cottage not far from Keswick, where a letter-carrier was demanding a shilling for a letter, which the woman of the house appeared unwilling to pay, and at last declined to take. I paid the postage, and when the man was out of sight, she told me that the letter was from her son, who took that means of letting her know that he was well; the letter wasnot to be paid for. It was then opened and found to be blank!” (“Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge,” Vol. II., p. 114).In Miss Martineau’s “History of England During the Thirty Years’ Peace,” which was published thirteen years after “Post Office Reform,” this story appears in the following shape:—“Mr. Rowland Hill, when a young man, was walking through the Lake District, when he one day saw the postman deliver a letter to a woman at a cottage door. The woman turned it over and examined it, and then returned it, saying that she could not pay the postage, which was a shilling. Hearing that the letter was from her brother, Mr. Hill paid the postage, in spite of the manifest unwillingness of the woman. As soon as the postman was out of sight, she showed Mr. Hill how his money had been wasted, as far as she was concerned. The sheet was blank. There was an agreement between her brother and herself, that as long as all went well with him, he should send a blank sheet in this way once a quarter, and she thus had tidings of him without expense of postage. Most people would have remembered this incident as a curious story to tell; but Mr. Hill’s was a mind which wakened up at once to a sense of the significance of the fact. There must be something wrong in a system which drove a brother and sister to cheating, in order to gratify their desire to hear of one another’s welfare, &c.” Vol. II., p. 425.A few years ago Sir R. Hill drew my attention to the blunder into which Miss Martineau had fallen. The following is my note of what he said:—“He remarked on her carelessness, and the trouble it had cost him. He had sent her, on her application, his pamphlet. She read it carelessly. The story Miss Martineau tells is, in the pamphlet, told of Coleridge. He (Sir R. Hill) had been attacked in some of the papers for taking credit to himself for charity. Cornewall Lewis asked him one day whether he had seen an attack on him in ‘Notes and Queries.’ On his answering ‘No,’ he showed it him, and undertook to answer it himself. The story was so believed and amplified, that a friend of his, when travelling in the Lake District, was shown the very room in an inn where Rowland Hill had first thought of penny postage.”I am informed that two old ladies who lived in No. 1, Orme Square, Bayswater, used to show to their friends the room in which Rowland Hill devised Penny Postage, though he only took that house in 1839, a few months before the Penny Postage Act was passed.—Ed.[93]In “Post Office Reform” this anecdote is given as of a friend, but in truth I was my own hero. It must not be supposed that in franking these newspapers I was usurping a privilege. In those days newspapers, unless franked, at least in appearance, were charged as letters. But any one was at liberty to use the name of any Peer or Member of the House of Commons without his consent. The publishers of newspapers had a name printed on the wrapper.[94]A short time since Sir William Armstrong told me that a pound of coal contained a greater latent power than a pound of gunpowder.[95]See page 23.[96]“Early in the ‘thirties’ there had been some reduction in certain departments of taxation. It occurred to me that probably some ease might be given to the people by lowering the postal rate, and I discussed the subject with members of my family. My brother Matthew, who was expecting Mr. Parker, (M.P. for Sheffield, one of the Lords of the Treasury), to dine at his house, invited me to meet him. Leading the conversation to the reduction of taxation, he said my attention had been turned to the subject, and I explained to Mr. Parker the method of relief that had occurred to me. Afterwards, at my brother’s suggestion, I wrote down my views, the whole not exceeding three or four pages of foolscap. Although occupied with other affairs, the reduction in the postal rate was not then dismissed from my thoughts. The interest it had excited induced me to read Reports, &c., on postal administration, and it was in the perusal of their contents that the question arose in my mind, whether the cost of a letter was affected by the distance it had to be conveyed.”—Note of a conversation with Sir R. Hill two or three years before his death, by Miss F. Davenport-Hill.—Ed.[97]“Post Office Reform; its Importance and Practicability.” By Rowland Hill. Published by Charles Knight and Co., London. 1837.[98]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 2.[99]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 3.[100]p. 4.[101]Ibid.[102]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 5.[103]pp. 5, 6.[104]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 9.[105]“Eighteenth Report of the Commissioners of Revenue Enquiry,” p. 4.[106]I applied for permission to see the working of the London office, but was met by a polite refusal.[107]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 10.[108]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 16.[109]Ibid.[110]When at length I obtained precise information, I found that in taking care not to make my estimate too low I had made it considerably too high; and I think the history of this rectification too curious and characteristic to be omitted. Two years later, the Parliamentary Committee appointed to consider my plan ordered, at my suggestion, a return on the subject; when, to my surprise and amusement, the report of the Post Office gave as the cost of this mail the exact sum estimated by me, viz., £5. Struck with the coincidence, the more so as I had intentionally allowed for possible omission, I suggested the call for a return in detail; and, this being given, brought down the cost to £4 8s. 7¾d. In the return, however, I discovered an error, viz., that the charge for guards’ wages was that for the double journey instead of the single; and when this point was adjusted, in a third return, the cost sank to £3 19s. 7¾d. When explanation of the anomaly was asked for, it was acknowledged by the Post Office authorities that my estimate had been adopted wholesale.—Appendix to Second Report of Select Committee on Postage, 1838, pp. 257-259.[111]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 18.[112]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 12.[113]Returns, 1830, Nos. 293 and 478.[114]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 55.[115]By statistics published in the Journal of the Society of Arts (Oct. 28th, 1870), it appears that the plan of secondary distribution, (though perhaps not under that name) actually exists in North Germany, concurrently with complete distribution from house to house; and, doubtless, the one arrangement has facilitated and justified the other.[116]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, pp. 34 and 83.[117]Parl. Return, 1834, No. 19.[118]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 83.[119]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 83.[120]p. 85.[121]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, pp. 86, 87.[122]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, pp. 94-96.[123]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, pp. 66, 67.[124]“Post Office Reform,” p. 67.[125]From this pamphlet many extracts are given in the course of this chapter. I have not thought it necessary to follow Sir R. Hill in giving, in each case, the reference.—Ed.[126]The following extract from a letter by the Right Hon. C. P. Villiers, M.P., to Mr. Frederic Hill, most fittingly comes in here. It was written, indeed, a few days after Sir Rowland Hill’s death, but the writer was carried back in his thoughts to the earliest days of the great struggle for postal reform, in which he himself had played no mean part:—... “His time, probably from fulness of years, had arrived for leaving us. Still those who appreciated his rare qualities, and the great service he had rendered the country, liked to think that he was yet amongst them, and could observe, with justifiable pride, the continued and increasing success of his great and beneficial scheme.... I remember well, indeed, the frequent communications I had with your brother when he was first bringing his plan before the public, and also (to his honour) the great disinterestedness that he showed when he requested me to submit the scheme then in MS. to the Government, offering to allow them to have the entire credit of its introduction, if they chose to undertake it, stipulating only that, if they should refuse, he should then refer it to the Press, and make it known to, and understood by, the country. The apprehensions that were then expressed at head-quarters (when I executed his commission) are still fresh in my recollection, and most certainly was he left free to do what he liked about a measure that, in their view, would require such a sacrifice of revenue, and the success of which was so extremely problematical. I always considered it fortunate (with regard to its success) that the measure was thus left to the unbiassed judgment of the public, and to the energetic support which such men as Grote, Warburton, and Hume, and the really intelligent reformers, then in the House, gave to your brother.”—Ed.[127]Within the last few months (November, 1869) I have privately recommended to Government the contingent adoption of this measure, as well as of others for giving increased facilities and greater speed of conveyance.[128]See p. 218.[129]Neither Mr. Knight nor I was then aware of an earlier though long abandoned use of stamped covers in France. See p. 377.

[18]For the sketch of this house, as it was at the time of Sir Rowland Hill’s birth, I am indebted to the kindness of William Bucknall, Esq., of Franche Court, Kidderminster.

[19]“Henry Crabb Robinson’s Diary.” Vol.I., p. 80.

[20]The Peace of Amiens was not signed till March 27, 1802. But the general rejoicings were on the conclusion of the Preliminary Articles on October 1, 1801.

[21]The battle was fought on the twenty-first.

[22]Prefatory Memoir.

[23]Prefatory Memoir,

[24]I remember how, at the age of eight, I was myself set for a short time to teach some still smaller children to read. The book we used was Mrs. Barbauld’s “Early Lessons.” We came to the word mezereon. I was ashamed to own that I did not know how it was pronounced. With great gravity I informed my class that this was a word that no one knew how to read. So far as I can remember there was no doubting Thomas present.

[25]For many years he was engaged to give private lessons in mathematics to some of the boys in the Grammar School. Among his pupils were Dr. Kennedy, the Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Cambridge, and Dr. Guest, the Master of Caius College, Cambridge.

[26]“I shall never forget the joy I felt on taking the first spark from the prime conductor.”—Rowland Hill’s Journal.

[27]Prefatory Memoir.

[28]See Appendix A.

[29]See Appendix A.

[30]Prefatory Memoir.

[31]“At the first meeting in April, and also in October, a Committee shall be elected, which shall consist of at least one-fifth of the members of the Society. The mode of election shall be as follows:—A ticket shall be delivered to each member present, with his own name at the head of it, immediately under which he shall write the name of the member whom he may wish to represent him in the Committee. The votes thus given, shall be delivered to the president, who, after having assorted them, shall report to the meeting the number of votes given for each nominee. Every one who has five votes shall be declared a member of the Committee; if there are more than five votes given to any one person, the surplus votes (to be selected by lot) shall be returned to the electors whose name they bear, for the purpose of their making other nominations, and this process shall be repeated till no surplus votes remain, when all the inefficient votes shall be returned to the respective electors, and the same routine shall be gone through a second time, and also a third time if necessary; when if a number is elected, equal in all to one-half of the number of which the Committee should consist, they shall be a Committee; and if at the close of the meeting the number is not filled up, by unanimous votes of five for each member of the Committee, given by those persons whose votes were returned to them at the end of the third election, then this Committee shall have the power, and shall be required, to choose persons to fill up their number; and the constituents of each member so elected shall, if necessary, be determined by lot. The President, Secretary, and Treasurer, all for the time being, shall be members of the Committee,ex-officio, whether elected or not. In the intervals between the general elections, it shall be competent to any four members of the society, by a joint nomination, in a book to be opened for the purpose, to appoint a representative in the ensuing Committee; such appointment being made shall not be withdrawn, nor shall the appointers give any vote in the choice of a Committee-man, as such, until after the next election. A register shall be kept by the Secretary of the constituents of every member of the Committee; and the constituents of any member, except those appointed by the Committee, (upon whose dismissal that body may exercise a negative,) shall have the power of withdrawing their representative, by a vote of their majority, of which vote notice in writing shall be given (subscribed by the persons composing such majority) both to the member so dismissed, and to the Chairman of the Committee; and in the case of a vacancy occasioned by a dismissal as above, or by any other cause, the constituents of the member whose place becomes vacant, may elect another in his stead, by a unanimous vote, but not otherwise; if such election be not made within a fortnight after the vacancy has occurred, the appointment shall devolve upon the Committee.”

[32]I give this Preface in Appendix B.

[33]A young man to whom he was strongly attached. He also had been bent on doing something for the world—something which should make his name live. He was studying engineering, and it was his great hope that he should live to make a canal through the Isthmus of Panama. Unhappily he died at an early age.

[34]Published in London by Sir Richard Phillips.

[35]Prefatory Memoir.

[36]Prefatory Memoir.

[37]“Of course I do not mean by these quotations to set up for my father or myself any claim to invention, seeing that we merely formed crude ideas which were never elaborated or even published.”—Prefatory Memoir.

[38]Prefatory Memoir.

[39]Sir Rowland Hill, to a considerable extent at all events, recovered the process. It is described in Appendix C. He adds: “As it is fully fifty years since I gave any thought to the subject, and as, in the eightieth year of my age, I find my brain unequal to further investigation, I must be contented with the result at which I have arrived.”

[40]“Essays by a Birmingham Manufacturer,” Vol.II., p. 188.

[41]This expression is not strictly correct, as it was impossible to maintain absolutely the same level throughout without using stools of an unmanageable height. What was done was to keep the rods in a right line until a new gradient was designedly taken; the angle of rise or fall being in each instance carefully measured, and the whole afterwards reduced by computation to the exact horizontal distance. It may be added, that in order to make due allowance for the elongation or contraction of the rods by change of temperature, thermometers were attached to the apparatus, and the rise and fall of the mercury duly recorded.

[42]“These manuscripts were unfortunately destroyed two years afterwards in a fire which will be mentioned hereafter, and with them perished not only my water alarum, but also my planispheres, and various other results of past labour.”

[43]Colonel Mudge’s “Report of the Trigonometrical Society of England and Wales.” Vol.III., p. 156.

[44]Alphabetical Index to the third volume of the “Report.”

[45]Prefatory Memoir.

[46]“Southey’s Life and Correspondence,” Vol.I., p. 39.

[47]“Plans for the Government and Liberal Instruction of Boys in Large Numbers. Drawn from Experience.” London: Printed for G. & W. B. Whittaker, Ave-Maria Lane, 1822. A second edition was published in 1825.

[48]He was speaking of the system as it was in his time. His only son, and all his grandsons, have been pupils of the school.

[49]“When Dr. Johnson read his own satire, in which the life of a scholar is painted with the various obstructions thrown in his way to fortune and to fame, he burst into a passion of tears.”—“Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson.” By Madame Piozzi, p. 50.

[50]This Society, which was thus founded more than sixty years ago, has existed ever since. Many hundreds of pounds have been raised by successive generations of the pupils of Hill Top, Hazelwood, and Bruce Castle. Why should not every school in the country have its Benevolent Society?

[51]This officer, I believe, kept the punches with which the number that each boy bore in the school was stamped on certain articles of his clothing.

[52]See page 112.

[53]“By this institution, successive committees of boys (generally, indeed, presided over by a master, but still free in action) must have disposed of little less, perhaps more, than four thousand pounds.”—Prefatory Memoir.

[54]“Essays by a Birmingham Manufacturer,” Vol.II., p. 187.

[55]Emilius. BookII.

[56]Prefatory Memoir.

[57]Prefatory Memoir.

[58]“The ammunition with which these poor fellows were to overturn the government was kept in an old stocking.”

[59]The passage quoted begins, “Deep-toned the organ breathes,” and ends, ‘He smiles on death.’

[60]It was part of Uriconium.

[61]It was at a time of grievous distress and loud discontent that the suspension of this Act was carried. In few places was there greater suffering than in Birmingham. Rowland Hill, before he set out for London, had passed near the Birmingham Workhouse while a crowd was gathered round the doors waiting for their weekly dole. One of them called out to him, “Look there, Sir; there’s a sight, while they’re a-passing their Horpus Corpus Acts. Damn their Horpus Corpus Acts, say I.”

[62]There existed at this time in Birmingham, as Sir R. Hill subsequently recorded, “a very exclusive society for procuring private concerts. It was supposed that the society’s strict rule would be waived in favour of so distinguished a visitor as Mr. Campbell; but upon application being made for his admission to one of these performances, answer was returned that no exception had been made even in the case of an officer who had bled for his country, and whose claims were of course very superior to any that could be advanced by Mr. Campbell.”

[63]See page 87.

[64]Joseph Hodgson, Esq., F.R.S., late President of the College of Surgeons.

[65]M.P. for Midhurst.

[66]“The Recorder of Birmingham.” A Memoir of Matthew Davenport Hill. By his daughters. Page 76.

[67]“History of my Religious Opinions.” Page 290.

[68]See page 47.

[69]See Mr. Trevelyan’s “Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay.” Second edition. Vol.II., p. 463.

[70]“By a mistake of the Secretary, my name was omitted in the first list of the Committee.”

[71]Writing to his wife from Hazelwood on January 12th, 1830, he says: “I am engaged in my experiments with pendulums, which at present promise very well. Father is much interested in the matter. I tell you this, my dear, because I know you take a lively interest in everything I undertake.”

[72]Published by Simpkin and Marshall.

[73]TheArthur Hill Lifeboat, stationed at Fowey, is a memorial of the affection of many generations of scholars for their old master.—Ed.

[74]This was written in the year 1869. Eight years later—seventy-four years after the opening of Hill Top, and fifty years after the opening of Bruce Castle—the school passed out of the hands of any member of Sir Rowland Hill’s family. In justice to the present head-master, it should be stated that in the fifty-eight years that have elapsed since the publication of “Public Education,” great changes have been made in the system of government of the school.

[75]The reader will find the scheme described in Appendix E.

[76]The late Sir John Shaw-Lefevre, K.C.B.

[77]Assistant Secretary to the Poor Law Commissioners.

[78]The Society was later on joined by Dr. Arnott, Dr. Lyon Playfair, Mr. Edwin Chadwick, Mr. Henry Cole, Mr. Arthur Symonds, Mr. Dilke, and Mr. Frederic Hill.

[79]See Southey’s “Life and Correspondence.” Vol.I., p. 216.

[80]We may compare with this what Gibbon says of his own training. “Whatsoever have been the fruits of my education, they must be ascribed to the fortunate banishment which placed me at Lausanne.”—Ed.

[81]Sir R. Hill, in after years, saw a good deal of Lord Brougham. He thus writes of him:—“Judging by what I observed, I should say that, wide as was the range of his knowledge—far wider, indeed, than I could measure,—it was deficient in accuracy, and therefore in profundity. This, indeed, must be evident to all who regard the undulatory theory of light as now fully established.... Other instances of inaccuracy, doubtless of a minor, but yet of a serious character, I found in his essay on Hydrostatics, written for the Useful Knowledge Society, and, as it happened, referred to me by the Committee for report thereon. On the other hand, I found much more of kindliness in him than the world generally gave him credit for, and in particular I remember with gratitude the important help which he freely and promptly rendered to myself.”—Ed.

[82]Writing to Mr. M. D. Hill on September 5, 1834, he says:—“However absurd it may appear, I do really believe that Mr. Spring Rice [at that time Secretary to the Colonies] has jumbled up together in his mind the statements as to the sterility of some parts of the Continent with the ample evidence of the fertility of other parts, and has got a notion that the evidence is contradictory.”—Ed.

[83]See “First Annual Report of the Colonisation Commissioners for South Australia,” pp. 7 and 13, and “Fourth Report,” p. 3.

[84]“Third and Fourth Reports of the South Australian Commissioners.”

[85]“Third Report,” p. 18.

[86]See page 69.

[87]The office was No. 6, next door to the house in which Garrick had died; and this, on an alarm of fire, I once entered at the request of the occupant. I need not say with what interest.

[88]It was in the same year that he received this refusal that he and Mr. Lefevre formed the small society which has been described on page 209. He has recorded that the society discussed “the possibility of feeding the machine mechanically with a continuous supply ofsheets.... I scarcely need add that we found the problem insoluble.”—Ed.

[89]The offer was made by Mr. Wm. Clowes, Sen. I should have had to contribute, I think, about £5,000 of capital, and my share of the profits was estimated at £2,500 a-year.

[90]See Appendix E for letters by Mr. John Forster, late Member for Berwick, and Sir Rowland Hill, on the subject of the printing machine.

[91]The employment of existing stage-coaches instead of slow and irregular horse and foot posts, a change made in the year 1784.

[92]In Sir R. Hill’s Pamphlet on “Post Office Reform,” (Third Edition, p. 86), is the following passage:—“Coleridge tells a story which shows how much the Post Office is open to fraud in consequence of the option which now exists. The story is as follows. ‘One day, when I had not a shilling which I could spare, I was passing by a cottage not far from Keswick, where a letter-carrier was demanding a shilling for a letter, which the woman of the house appeared unwilling to pay, and at last declined to take. I paid the postage, and when the man was out of sight, she told me that the letter was from her son, who took that means of letting her know that he was well; the letter wasnot to be paid for. It was then opened and found to be blank!” (“Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge,” Vol. II., p. 114).In Miss Martineau’s “History of England During the Thirty Years’ Peace,” which was published thirteen years after “Post Office Reform,” this story appears in the following shape:—“Mr. Rowland Hill, when a young man, was walking through the Lake District, when he one day saw the postman deliver a letter to a woman at a cottage door. The woman turned it over and examined it, and then returned it, saying that she could not pay the postage, which was a shilling. Hearing that the letter was from her brother, Mr. Hill paid the postage, in spite of the manifest unwillingness of the woman. As soon as the postman was out of sight, she showed Mr. Hill how his money had been wasted, as far as she was concerned. The sheet was blank. There was an agreement between her brother and herself, that as long as all went well with him, he should send a blank sheet in this way once a quarter, and she thus had tidings of him without expense of postage. Most people would have remembered this incident as a curious story to tell; but Mr. Hill’s was a mind which wakened up at once to a sense of the significance of the fact. There must be something wrong in a system which drove a brother and sister to cheating, in order to gratify their desire to hear of one another’s welfare, &c.” Vol. II., p. 425.A few years ago Sir R. Hill drew my attention to the blunder into which Miss Martineau had fallen. The following is my note of what he said:—“He remarked on her carelessness, and the trouble it had cost him. He had sent her, on her application, his pamphlet. She read it carelessly. The story Miss Martineau tells is, in the pamphlet, told of Coleridge. He (Sir R. Hill) had been attacked in some of the papers for taking credit to himself for charity. Cornewall Lewis asked him one day whether he had seen an attack on him in ‘Notes and Queries.’ On his answering ‘No,’ he showed it him, and undertook to answer it himself. The story was so believed and amplified, that a friend of his, when travelling in the Lake District, was shown the very room in an inn where Rowland Hill had first thought of penny postage.”I am informed that two old ladies who lived in No. 1, Orme Square, Bayswater, used to show to their friends the room in which Rowland Hill devised Penny Postage, though he only took that house in 1839, a few months before the Penny Postage Act was passed.—Ed.

[92]In Sir R. Hill’s Pamphlet on “Post Office Reform,” (Third Edition, p. 86), is the following passage:—

“Coleridge tells a story which shows how much the Post Office is open to fraud in consequence of the option which now exists. The story is as follows. ‘One day, when I had not a shilling which I could spare, I was passing by a cottage not far from Keswick, where a letter-carrier was demanding a shilling for a letter, which the woman of the house appeared unwilling to pay, and at last declined to take. I paid the postage, and when the man was out of sight, she told me that the letter was from her son, who took that means of letting her know that he was well; the letter wasnot to be paid for. It was then opened and found to be blank!” (“Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge,” Vol. II., p. 114).

In Miss Martineau’s “History of England During the Thirty Years’ Peace,” which was published thirteen years after “Post Office Reform,” this story appears in the following shape:—

“Mr. Rowland Hill, when a young man, was walking through the Lake District, when he one day saw the postman deliver a letter to a woman at a cottage door. The woman turned it over and examined it, and then returned it, saying that she could not pay the postage, which was a shilling. Hearing that the letter was from her brother, Mr. Hill paid the postage, in spite of the manifest unwillingness of the woman. As soon as the postman was out of sight, she showed Mr. Hill how his money had been wasted, as far as she was concerned. The sheet was blank. There was an agreement between her brother and herself, that as long as all went well with him, he should send a blank sheet in this way once a quarter, and she thus had tidings of him without expense of postage. Most people would have remembered this incident as a curious story to tell; but Mr. Hill’s was a mind which wakened up at once to a sense of the significance of the fact. There must be something wrong in a system which drove a brother and sister to cheating, in order to gratify their desire to hear of one another’s welfare, &c.” Vol. II., p. 425.

A few years ago Sir R. Hill drew my attention to the blunder into which Miss Martineau had fallen. The following is my note of what he said:—“He remarked on her carelessness, and the trouble it had cost him. He had sent her, on her application, his pamphlet. She read it carelessly. The story Miss Martineau tells is, in the pamphlet, told of Coleridge. He (Sir R. Hill) had been attacked in some of the papers for taking credit to himself for charity. Cornewall Lewis asked him one day whether he had seen an attack on him in ‘Notes and Queries.’ On his answering ‘No,’ he showed it him, and undertook to answer it himself. The story was so believed and amplified, that a friend of his, when travelling in the Lake District, was shown the very room in an inn where Rowland Hill had first thought of penny postage.”

I am informed that two old ladies who lived in No. 1, Orme Square, Bayswater, used to show to their friends the room in which Rowland Hill devised Penny Postage, though he only took that house in 1839, a few months before the Penny Postage Act was passed.—Ed.

[93]In “Post Office Reform” this anecdote is given as of a friend, but in truth I was my own hero. It must not be supposed that in franking these newspapers I was usurping a privilege. In those days newspapers, unless franked, at least in appearance, were charged as letters. But any one was at liberty to use the name of any Peer or Member of the House of Commons without his consent. The publishers of newspapers had a name printed on the wrapper.

[94]A short time since Sir William Armstrong told me that a pound of coal contained a greater latent power than a pound of gunpowder.

[95]See page 23.

[96]“Early in the ‘thirties’ there had been some reduction in certain departments of taxation. It occurred to me that probably some ease might be given to the people by lowering the postal rate, and I discussed the subject with members of my family. My brother Matthew, who was expecting Mr. Parker, (M.P. for Sheffield, one of the Lords of the Treasury), to dine at his house, invited me to meet him. Leading the conversation to the reduction of taxation, he said my attention had been turned to the subject, and I explained to Mr. Parker the method of relief that had occurred to me. Afterwards, at my brother’s suggestion, I wrote down my views, the whole not exceeding three or four pages of foolscap. Although occupied with other affairs, the reduction in the postal rate was not then dismissed from my thoughts. The interest it had excited induced me to read Reports, &c., on postal administration, and it was in the perusal of their contents that the question arose in my mind, whether the cost of a letter was affected by the distance it had to be conveyed.”—Note of a conversation with Sir R. Hill two or three years before his death, by Miss F. Davenport-Hill.—Ed.

[97]“Post Office Reform; its Importance and Practicability.” By Rowland Hill. Published by Charles Knight and Co., London. 1837.

[98]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 2.

[99]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 3.

[100]p. 4.

[101]Ibid.

[102]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 5.

[103]pp. 5, 6.

[104]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 9.

[105]“Eighteenth Report of the Commissioners of Revenue Enquiry,” p. 4.

[106]I applied for permission to see the working of the London office, but was met by a polite refusal.

[107]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 10.

[108]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 16.

[109]Ibid.

[110]When at length I obtained precise information, I found that in taking care not to make my estimate too low I had made it considerably too high; and I think the history of this rectification too curious and characteristic to be omitted. Two years later, the Parliamentary Committee appointed to consider my plan ordered, at my suggestion, a return on the subject; when, to my surprise and amusement, the report of the Post Office gave as the cost of this mail the exact sum estimated by me, viz., £5. Struck with the coincidence, the more so as I had intentionally allowed for possible omission, I suggested the call for a return in detail; and, this being given, brought down the cost to £4 8s. 7¾d. In the return, however, I discovered an error, viz., that the charge for guards’ wages was that for the double journey instead of the single; and when this point was adjusted, in a third return, the cost sank to £3 19s. 7¾d. When explanation of the anomaly was asked for, it was acknowledged by the Post Office authorities that my estimate had been adopted wholesale.—Appendix to Second Report of Select Committee on Postage, 1838, pp. 257-259.

[111]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 18.

[112]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 12.

[113]Returns, 1830, Nos. 293 and 478.

[114]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 55.

[115]By statistics published in the Journal of the Society of Arts (Oct. 28th, 1870), it appears that the plan of secondary distribution, (though perhaps not under that name) actually exists in North Germany, concurrently with complete distribution from house to house; and, doubtless, the one arrangement has facilitated and justified the other.

[116]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, pp. 34 and 83.

[117]Parl. Return, 1834, No. 19.

[118]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 83.

[119]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, p. 83.

[120]p. 85.

[121]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, pp. 86, 87.

[122]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, pp. 94-96.

[123]“Post Office Reform,” second edition, pp. 66, 67.

[124]“Post Office Reform,” p. 67.

[125]From this pamphlet many extracts are given in the course of this chapter. I have not thought it necessary to follow Sir R. Hill in giving, in each case, the reference.—Ed.

[126]The following extract from a letter by the Right Hon. C. P. Villiers, M.P., to Mr. Frederic Hill, most fittingly comes in here. It was written, indeed, a few days after Sir Rowland Hill’s death, but the writer was carried back in his thoughts to the earliest days of the great struggle for postal reform, in which he himself had played no mean part:—... “His time, probably from fulness of years, had arrived for leaving us. Still those who appreciated his rare qualities, and the great service he had rendered the country, liked to think that he was yet amongst them, and could observe, with justifiable pride, the continued and increasing success of his great and beneficial scheme.... I remember well, indeed, the frequent communications I had with your brother when he was first bringing his plan before the public, and also (to his honour) the great disinterestedness that he showed when he requested me to submit the scheme then in MS. to the Government, offering to allow them to have the entire credit of its introduction, if they chose to undertake it, stipulating only that, if they should refuse, he should then refer it to the Press, and make it known to, and understood by, the country. The apprehensions that were then expressed at head-quarters (when I executed his commission) are still fresh in my recollection, and most certainly was he left free to do what he liked about a measure that, in their view, would require such a sacrifice of revenue, and the success of which was so extremely problematical. I always considered it fortunate (with regard to its success) that the measure was thus left to the unbiassed judgment of the public, and to the energetic support which such men as Grote, Warburton, and Hume, and the really intelligent reformers, then in the House, gave to your brother.”—Ed.

... “His time, probably from fulness of years, had arrived for leaving us. Still those who appreciated his rare qualities, and the great service he had rendered the country, liked to think that he was yet amongst them, and could observe, with justifiable pride, the continued and increasing success of his great and beneficial scheme.... I remember well, indeed, the frequent communications I had with your brother when he was first bringing his plan before the public, and also (to his honour) the great disinterestedness that he showed when he requested me to submit the scheme then in MS. to the Government, offering to allow them to have the entire credit of its introduction, if they chose to undertake it, stipulating only that, if they should refuse, he should then refer it to the Press, and make it known to, and understood by, the country. The apprehensions that were then expressed at head-quarters (when I executed his commission) are still fresh in my recollection, and most certainly was he left free to do what he liked about a measure that, in their view, would require such a sacrifice of revenue, and the success of which was so extremely problematical. I always considered it fortunate (with regard to its success) that the measure was thus left to the unbiassed judgment of the public, and to the energetic support which such men as Grote, Warburton, and Hume, and the really intelligent reformers, then in the House, gave to your brother.”—Ed.

[127]Within the last few months (November, 1869) I have privately recommended to Government the contingent adoption of this measure, as well as of others for giving increased facilities and greater speed of conveyance.

[128]See p. 218.

[129]Neither Mr. Knight nor I was then aware of an earlier though long abandoned use of stamped covers in France. See p. 377.

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