Lord Melbourne's ministry was hardly strengthened by the circumstances under which it resumed office. Yet the close of the same year witnessed a reform of which it is hardly too much to say that no single measure of this century has contributed more to the comfort of the whole mass of the people, with which it has also combined solid commercial benefits. Hitherto the Post-office had been managed in a singular manner, and the profit derived from it had been treated as something distinct from the ordinary revenue of the kingdom. In the reign of Charles II. it had been given to the Duke of York, and the grant was regarded as conferring on him such extensive rights, that when, some years afterward, an enterprising citizen set up a penny post for the delivery of letters in the City and its precincts, the Duke complained of the scheme as an infraction of his monopoly, and the courts of law decided in his favor. That grant ceased, as a matter of course, on the Duke's accession to the throne; and in the reign of Queen Anne a portion of the Post-office proceeds was appropriated, with the general consent of a grateful country, to reward the great achievements of the Duke of Malborough, a perpetual charge on it of L5000 a year being annexed to the dukedom. In those days the postage of a letter was twopence for short distances, and threepence for any distance beyond eighty miles.[251] But those charges had been gradually increased; about the middle of the century the lowest charge was fixed at fourpence, rising in proportion to the distance, till the conveyance of a single letter from one extremity of the kingdom to the other cost eighteen-pence. Such a rate could not fail to be very profitable; and by the beginning of the present reign the yearly profit exceeded a million and a half of money. The heaviness of the charge, however, had latterly attracted attention, and had been the cause of many complaints, as being a great discouragement, and, in the case of the poorer classes, a complete obstacle to communication. However, neither the ministers nor the Parliament had succeeded in devising any remedy, since a system affording so large a return was not a thing lightly to tamper with, when those who complained suddenly found a practical leader in Mr. Rowland Hill, who published a pamphlet on the subject, in which he affirmed the cost of the conveyance of each letter even for such a distance as from London to Edinburgh to be infinitely less than a farthing; and that, consequently, all the rest of the postage was a tax for the purposes of revenue. When this fact was once established, it needed no argument to prove that to increase the tax paid by each recipient of a letter in proportion to the distance at which he lived from the writer was an indefensible unfairness; and, after much investigation and discussion, Mr. Hill succeeded in converting the ministers to his view. Accordingly, the Budget for 1839, introduced by Mr. Spring Rice, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, contained a clause which reduced the postage for every letter weighing less than an ounce to a uniform charge of a penny, to be prepaid by means of a stamp to be affixed to each letter by the sender. It was not without plainly-expressed reluctance that the scheme was consented to by the Opposition; nor can their hesitation be considered as unreasonable, in the very unsatisfactory condition of the finances of the kingdom at the time. The balance-sheet of the preceding year showed a considerable deficiency. There was a large unfunded debt; and even Mr. Hill's most sanguine calculations admitted a probable loss to the Post-office of L1,200,000 for the first year or two; though he expressed his confidence that eventually the correspondence of the kingdom would be found to increase so largely as to make up for the greater part, if not the whole, of the deficiency. His anticipations were far outran by the reality.
In 1839 the Postmaster-general estimated the number of letters sent yearly by the post at less than twenty-five millions. They are now upward of a thousand millions, a number the conveyance of which (with the addition of newspapers, whose circulation had also been greatly augmented by a recent reduction of the tax to a penny) would have severely taxed the whole carrying power of the kingdom before the introduction of railroads. Nor have the benefits of the new system been confined to ourselves. Foreign nations have followed our example, though not quite in the same degree, till an international postage is at length established throughout the whole of the civilized world. And it has not been only the happiness of private individuals that has been augmented by this facility of communication. In its gradual development it has largely promoted the extension of trade of every kind, and, by facilitating a commercial intercourse between nations, it cannot but contribute to the maintenance of friendship and peace.
The full advantages of this reform could not be seen at first; but, even had it been appreciated as fully as we appreciate it now, no approval of it could have counterbalanced the general dissatisfaction with which the ministry was regarded. At home the finances were falling into great disorder, the expenditure of the year greatly exceeding the income; while the feeling that their Irish policy was dictated by a wish to purchase at any price the support of O'Connell, was still more injurious to them, for he was already beginning to renew agitation in Ireland, inaugurating a new association, which, though its purposes were faintly veiled for a time under the title of the Precursor Association, was understood to point at a repeal of the Union; while the ministers, though they denounced such a measure as ruinous to every part of the kingdom, seemed willing to give it practical encouragement by a bill which they introduced, which bore the name of a Registration Act for Ireland, but which was not confined to that object. On the contrary, it contained a provision for lowering the qualification for the franchise by one-half; so that it was, in fact, a new Reform Bill for Ireland,[252] calculated greatly to increase his influence by the number of voters of the poorer classes whom it would create. The bill was defeated, but the odium of having proposed it remained.
But, besides these home difficulties, there were troubles abroad, both in the East and in the West. In the East, the complications inseparable from a dominion like that of ours in India, where constant expansion seemed to have become a law of its existence, had involved us in a war with a new enemy, the warlike Afghan nation; in the West, both Jamaica and Canada were in a state threatening insurrection. Indeed, the troubles in Jamaica had been the immediate cause of that resignation of the ministry in 1839 which has already been mentioned. Measures adopted in the English Parliament with reference to the termination of that apprenticeship system which, as we have seen, formed a part of the bill for the abolition of slavery, and another for the regulation of the prisons in the island, had given such offence to the colonial Assembly, never very manageable, that the members passed a resolution that their legislative rights had been violated, and that they would abstain from all exercise of their legislative functions, except such as might be necessary "to preserve inviolate the faith of the island with the public creditor, until" (by the rescinding of the resolutions, etc., of which they complained) "they should be left to the free exercise of their inherent rights as British subjects." And this resolution was seconded by an insulting protest, in which they drew an offensive comparison between the state of crime in the island and that which prevailed in Great Britain, taunting the British Parliament with the murders and acts of incendiarism which terrified Ireland night and day, with the murders of Burke and Hare in Scotland, with the law of divorce and crim. con. trials in England, and "a Poor-law which has taken millions from the necessities of the destitute to add to the luxuries of the wealthy." The Governor dissolved the Assembly, but that which succeeded re-adopted the resolutions of its predecessor, and the ministers, in consequence, brought in a bill "to suspend the existing constitution of the island for a limited number of years, and to provide that during that interval its legislative functions should not be exercised by a Governor, a Council, and a House of Assembly, but should reside in the Governor and Council alone." The emergency was too great and undeniable, the remedy proposed was also too unprecedented in its stringency, to be dealt with without the gravest deliberation; and the House of Commons accordingly gave the matter the patient consideration which became both it and themselves. They allowed the island to appear by counsel against the bill, and listened for many hours to an elaborate defence of the conduct of the Assembly, which if it failed to change the intention of the ministers, convinced Sir Robert Peel and his party that their measure was doubtful in its justification and impolitic in its severity. He pointed out that "the bill was neither more nor less than one for the establishment of a complete despotism-one which would establish the most unqualified, unchecked, unmitigated power that was ever yet applied to the government of any community, in place of that liberal system which had prevailed for upward of one hundred and fifty years." And, though he did not for a moment question the power of Parliament to pass such a measure, he greatly doubted the policy of such an exertion of it. A somewhat similar measure affecting Canada they had been compelled to enact in the preceding year, and he feared lest "it might seem to be coming to be a practice of Parliament to suspend a constitution every session." And he quoted a speech of Canning, delivered fifteen years before, in which that eloquent statesman, a man by no means inclined to a timorous policy, had declared that "no feeling of wounded pride, no motive of questionable expediency, nothing short of real and demonstrable necessity, should ever induce him to moot the awful question of the transcendental power of Parliament over every dependency of the British crown. That transcendental power was an ordinance of empire, which ought to be kept back within the penetralia of the constitution. It exists, but it should be veiled. It should not be produced on trifling occasions, or in cases of petty refractoriness or temporary misconduct."