[rLeminc] POST OFFICE REFORMS IN THE VICTORIAN ERA 72 
The progress of public opinion in favour of the reform was so 
rapid that Parliament took up the matter before the end of 1837, 
and appointed a committee of inquiry, which sat throughout the ses- 
sion of 1838 and examined many witnesses. The result of the inves- 
tigation is well known, but it is not perhaps so well known that the 
resolution establishing the vital principle of the reform was carried, 
only, by the casting vote of the chairman, Mr. Robert Wallace, mem- 
ber for Greenock. The publication of the report of the committee, 
embodying the arguments in favour of penny postage, gave an extra- 
ordinary impetus to the demand for the proposed measure, and but 
a short time elapsed before Parliament granted one of the greatest 
boons ever conferred on a people. 
Penny postage came into force throughout the United Kingdom 
in January, 1840, and before many years had passed, all the evil fore- 
bodings respecting the loss of revenue were falsified. The benefits 
resulting from the change were conspicuous, and were not confined to 
the United Kingdom. Six years later, a public subscription was 
raised throughout the country in recognition of Sir Rowland Hill’s 
services, and the Knighthood bestowed on him by his Sovereign was 
another attestation of his merit. At a later day, Lord Palmerston, af- 
ter pointing out in the House of Commons, the advantages which 
penny postage had bestowed on the nation, concluded by moving “that 
the sum of £20,000 sterling be granted to Her Majesty as a provision 
for Sir Rowland Hill,” a man whose name should be remembered in 
every country, for every country has benefited, and will continue to 
benefit from his thoughtful labours. 
Harriet Martineau describes the great postal reformer as “a man 
of slow and hesitating speech, but so accurate, so earnest, so irrefra- 
gable in his facts, so wise and benevolent in his intentions, and so 
well timed in his scheme, that success was certain from the begin- 
ning.” 
By the year 1854, the postal improvements resulting from Sir 
Rowland Hill’s initiative had been adopted more or less completely in 
nearly every civilized country. Speaking in the United States Senate 
in 1870, Charles Sumner referred to Sir Rowland Hill as:—“The son 
of a schoolmaster, of simple life, and without any connection with the 
Post Office, he conceived the idea of radical reform—he became the 
inventor or author of cheap postage—there are few more worthy of 
honour; and since what is done for one country, becomes the common 
property of the world, he belongs to the world’s benefactors.” 
In 1897, the year of Her late Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee, the Bri- 
{ish Post Office gave a new significance to the expression “penny post- 
