Part 45

"The whole of the receipts from the various sources administered by the Post Office has always been treated in our Public Accounts as 'Non-Tax Revenue.' It is all carried to the Exchequer; and the whole cost is annually provided by Parliament. Therefore, to omit altogether this public receipt from a classification of taxes would seem to be the natural course to take. But the charge which is made for the carriage of letters, telegrams, and parcels, so far as the Post Office services are a State monopoly, is unquestionably 'an obligatory contribution by persons in respect of or incidental to something which they do.' Accordingly, to take no account of this charge, which nobody can avoid, would be to omit something which falls within our definition of a tax. At the same time it is obvious that to treat the whole of the Post Office revenue as a tax would for present purposes be misleading, inasmuch as the amount actually expended by the State represents direct and immediate service rendered to those who write letters or send telegrams. Regard being had to these considerations, when balanced one with another, it appears to me that the least incorrect course to adopt is to treat as a tax the amount by which the revenue derived from Post Office services exceeds the cost of administering those services."--Sir E. W. Hamilton, K.C.B. (_Memoranda on Classification and Incidence_, p. 36).

See also p. 361, n. 2, _supra._

[752] "There cannot be devised a more eligible method than this of raising money upon the subject; for therein both the Government and the people find a mutual benefit. The Government acquires a large revenue, and the people do their business with greater ease, expedition, and cheapness than they would be able to do if no such tax (and of course no such office) existed."--Sir William Blackstone, _Commentaries on the Laws of England_, London, 1783, vol. i. p. 324.

"Nor, while the rates of postage are confined within due limits, or not carried so high as to form any serious obstacle to correspondence, is there, perhaps, a more unobjectionable tax."--J. R. McCulloch, _Taxation and Funding_, p. 320.

[753] "The Post Office in reality is neither a commercial nor a philanthropic establishment, but simply one of the revenue departments of the Government. It very rightly insists that no country post office shall be established unless the correspondence passing through it shall warrant the increased expense, and it maintains a tariff which has no accordance whatever with the cost of conveyance. Books, newspapers, and even unsealed manuscripts, can be sent up to the weight of 4 ounces for a penny; whereas if a sealed letter in the least exceeds 1/2 ounce it is charged 2d. It is obvious that the charges of the Post Office are for the most part a purely arbitrary system of taxes, designed to maintain the large net revenue of the Post Office, now (1867) amounting to a million and a half sterling.

"It will thus be apparent that Sir Rowland Hill's scheme of postal tariff consisted in substituting one arbitrary system of charges for a system more arbitrary and onerous."--W. S. Jevons, _Methods of Social Reform_, London, 1883, p. 280.

[754] "Will it pay?

"I will here lay down what may seem to financiers in this House a somewhat startling position. I hold that the State has no right to make a profit out of the Post Office. (Cheers.) ... Probably half the letters sent are business letters; and another very large share is sent by persons of small means who have many stern inducements to take care of their pence. In other words, one half of your postal revenue is derived from a tax on the machinery of trade, and another large share from the poorest class of citizens.

"This is practically a tax on commerce."--Sir J. Henniker Heaton, _Parl. Debates_ (_Commons_), 30th March 1886.

[755] "Regarded as a tax diffused over the whole community, it is on the whole defensible, though the tendency to insist that the postal profits shall be devoted to improving the service is already becoming more pronounced."--C. F. Bastable, op. cit., p. 575.

"The Post Office, therefore, is at present one of the best sources from which this country derives its revenue. But a postage much exceeding what would be paid for the same service in a system of freedom is not a desirable tax. Its chief weight falls on letters of business, and increases the expense of mercantile relations between distant places. It is like an attempt to raise a large revenue by heavy tolls: it obstructs all operations by which goods are conveyed from place to place, and discourages the production of commodities in one place for consumption in another; which is not only in itself one of the greatest sources of economy of labour, but is a necessary condition of almost all improvements in production and one of the strongest stimulants to industry and promoters of civilization."--J. S. Mill, _Principles of Political Economy_, London, 1871, vol. ii. p. 462.

"It may happen (quite acceptably) that a surplus comes in from an undertaking which is primarily carried on for administrative purposes alone. A striking instance of this is afforded by the letter post. If the administrative purpose in question admitted of no aim beyond the covering of its own expenses, such a surplus would have no meaning, or at any rate no other meaning than that of a surplus in the hands of a consumers' club, which is returned to the members, on the closing of the accounts for the year, in the proportion in which they have contributed to it. The fact that the postal service not only retains any such surplus but even (with due regard to its primarily administrative function) consciously seeks it, is to be explained on the ground that, without hindrance to the administrative function, the different abilities of the citizens to contribute to public purposes may be drawn on by this means, with desirable results which are not attainable in any other way."--G. Cohn, op. cit., p. 94. Cf. _The Development of the Post Office_, Fabian Research Department, London, 1916, pp. 43-7.

[756] The extent to which any such disadvantage may be experienced is, of course, largely minimized by the existence of a low rate containing no element of tax, (see _supra_ Chapter IV) for most of the formal documents of commerce.

[757] "It is wholly misleading to point to the fact that the business of the Post Office now yields a very considerable profit, and to suggest that increased remuneration can easily be provided from that source. That profit is not in a bag to be drawn upon at will. It goes into the National Exchequer, and forms part of the revenue of the country, and if two or three millions is taken from it, the deficit in the Exchequer must be made good in other ways. And it has never been admitted, nor can it now be admitted, that the profits of the Post Office belong in equity to the staff rather than to the taxpayer. The Post Office is not like a private business. Parliament has established a monopoly, and has fixed certain rates of postage. If Parliament chose to relax that monopoly, or to reduce those rates of postage, the profit would straightway disappear. It does not do so, because it desires to retain for the Exchequer the sums so brought.

"Parliament has also established the sixpenny telegram, extended the telegraph service into remote rural districts, and has given very cheap rates to the Press. This has resulted in the telegraphs being worked at a loss of over a million a year. No one would suggest that it would be just, because of this loss, to reduce the wages of the men and women employed in the telegraph service, and it is equally beside the mark to quote the profits on the postal side as though the pay of the staff should be determined by their amount."--The Right Hon. Herbert Samuel, British Postmaster General, to a deputation from the staff, 19th November 1913.

[758] Pekin.

[759] From the _British Official Records_.

[760] Exeter.

[761] From the _British Official Records_.

[762] From the _British Official Records_ (undated).

* * * * *

Transcriber's Notes

With the exception of a few minor punctuation corrections, changes have been made to the text only as follows:

Footnote 240: "Werte" changed to "Werke" (zu Werke gegangen)

Footnote 240: "bedeutender" changed to "bedeutende" (...hatte die Erleichterungen ohne bedeutende Opfer aus der Postkasse erkauft)

Footnote 250: "Reichs-Post" changed (added hyphen) to "Reichs-Post-" (Die Finanzen der Reichs-Post- und Telegraphenverwaltung)

Footnote 251: "Post" changed (hyphen added) to "Post-" (Entwickelung des deutschen Post- und Telegraphenwesen)

Page 174: added closing parenthesis in "(Hauptblattes)"

Footnote 384: "Jahrengeklagt" changed to "Jahren geklagt" (Das sind Erscheinungen, [:u]ber die seit Jahren geklagt wird)

Footnote 384: "Bl[:a]tte" changed to "Bl[:a]tter" (Wenn Sie beide Bl[:a]tter nun auf ihren Inhalt pr[:u]fen,...)

Footnote 387: "worden" changed to "werden" (...es soll ein anderer Tarif aufgestellt werden.)

Footnote 390: "vorgeben" changed to "vorgehen" (gleichfalls mit einer Erm[:a]ssigung des Abonnementspreises hat vorgehen m[:u]ssen)

Footnote 398: "erachten" changed to "erachtet" (derjenigen Zeitung oder Zeitschrift erachtet werden k[:o]nnen)

Footnote 435: "charakter ihre Ein K[:u]nfte" changed to "Charakter ihrer Eink[:u]nfte" (Die Post und der Charakter ihrer Eink[:u]nfte)

Footnote 459: "seine" changed to "seiner" (seiner Billigkeit)

Footnote 459: "Weberi" changed to "Weberei" (Bezug von Rohstoffen f[:u]r Spinnerei, Weberei, u.s.w.)

Footnote 460: "kostspeiliger" changed to "kostspieliger" (und ist zu dem Zwecke oft zur Einstellung kostspieliger Transportmittel (Eisenbahnbeiwagen) gen[:o]tigt.)

Page 223: the anchor position for Footnote 472 did not appear in the original text, but is inferred from context.

Page 225 "Schriften" changed to "Schriften-" (under the name of _Schriften- und Aktentaxe_)

Footnote 521: "zu gelassen" changed to "zugelassen" (Als Gesch[:a]ftspapiere sind zugelassen...)

Footnote 521: "personlichen" changed to "pers[:o]nlichen" (die Eigenschaft einer eigentlichen und pers[:o]nlichen Korrespondenz)

Footnote 521: "Dienst" changed to "Dienst-" (Lohn-, Dienst- oder Arbeitsb[:u]cher)

Page 406: changed "releived" to "relieved" (they were relieved by your Lordships)

Footnote 564: "ein" changed to "im" (Als Nachbarorte im Sinne des Gesetzes...)

Footnote 707: "Post" changed (hyphen added) to "Post-" (dem Taxis w[:a]re nur das Post-, nicht das Botenwesen zu Lehen gegeben)

Footnote 718: "Taxis'sche" changed to "Taxis'schen" (Trotz der Ausdehnung der Taxis'schen Posten)

End of Project Gutenberg's The Development of Rates of Postage, by A. D. Smith