It is strange that Mr Sydney Herbert, Mrs Chisholm, and the rest of
those honourable men and women who have taken so much pains to promote
emigration, should not have seen the importance of obtaining colonial
postage reform. Mr Gibbon Wakefield, in his _England and America_,
published nearly twenty years ago, lays much stress upon the impulse
which healthy emigration to our colonies would derive from any measure
which should enable the poorer class of emigrants to write home more
frequently. As a proof of this, he remarks, that the great emigration
from England which had recently taken place--an increase of about 200
per cent. over former years--had been mainly caused by the publication
of letters from poor emigrants to their friends at home. With a view
to encourage such correspondence, he suggests that, for some years
after their arrival in a colony, poor emigrants should be allowed the
privilege of sending their letters free of postage. Thanks to Rowland
Hill, we have learned that letters can be carried at so very small a
cost, that even the poor can afford to pay the sum charged by the
post-office authorities in this country; and it requires little more
than a stroke of the colonial secretary's pen to extend the same
invaluable privilege to the thousands of emigrants who leave this
country every month for some one or other of our numerous colonies.
What Mr Gibbon Wakefield says of the free-postage plan of that time,
would apply with nearly equal force to the proposed Colonial
Penny-Postage:--'In this way, not only would the necessary evil of
going to a colony be diminished--that is, the emigrants would depart
with the pleasant assurance of being able to communicate with their
friends at home--but the poorer classes in the mother-country would
always hear the truth as to the prospects of emigrants; and not only
the truth, but truth in which they would not suspect any falsehood.'
He goes on to say, that the statements published about that time, by
an emigration-board sitting in Downing Street, shewing what high wages