Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/56

Exported from Wikisource on July 21, 2024

42

Walks in the Black Country

all foreign nations. He was always ahead of the Government and a majority of the people in his views on this free trade of human minds, and I fully believe that he was personally in favour of establishing that Universal Ocean Penny Postage which was agitated so earnestly some twenty years ago in England. Although the reduction of ocean postage did not reach the uniform and universal penny rate, it was greatly modified under his regime, so that a single letter from London to Paris is now charged only 4d., against 1s. 2d.; while the postage to Australia, India, Canada, and all the British colonies has been reduced to 6d, for the three services, the home inland, the sea transport, and the colonial inland. This is just half way to an Ocean Penny Postage, which would make the whole charge between England and all other countries 3d, on a single letter. It was hoped that Rowland Hill would retain his post in the General Post Office until he should see the system so intimately associated to his name carried out to this extent and universality; but he may well rest and be thankful for having seen his plans worked to such magnificent results.

M. D. Hill, Esq., late Recorder of Birmingham, and elder brother of Sir Rowland Hill, applied his great legal abilities and philanthropic mind to a reform of vast importance—the improvement of prison discipline and of the whole criminal juris-

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Title page

Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/56

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