In January 1837 Rowland Hill published his pamphlet Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability. He had no doubt that the source of trouble lay in the complexity of the charges and the mixture of paid and unpaid letters.

His solution was prepayment. The charge should be low and uniform and he recommended that it be 1d up to one ounce in weight. No mention was made initially of the method of prepayment. Later that month he suggested the use of stamped covers, an idea put forward before by Charles Knight.

An official inquiry into aspects of the Post Office was still continuing and Hill was summoned to give evidence. He outlined his plan and expanded his idea of stamped covers. Then, referring to possible difficulties with people unable to write, he suggested the use of "a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp, and covered at the back with a glutinous wash." This suggestion was made in a letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a draft of which is now in the Phillips Collection.

This was eventually to become the Penny Black, the world’s first adhesive postage stamp. When the inquiry reported later in 1837 the commissioners recommended Hill’s plan to reduce postal charges. They appended examples of stamped covers printed on John Dickinson’s silk-thread security paper.

CAMPAIGN TO REDUCE POSTAL CHARGES.

After a campaign by Robert Wallace a parliamentary Select Committee was appointed with him as chairman to look into postal charges with a view to reducing them without loss of revenue.

At the same time, in early 1838, a private Mercantile Committee on Postage was set up, consisting of merchants agitating for lower postal rates. Hill was a member of the Committee and Henry Cole was made its Secretary. Cole threw himself into organising petitions and arranged for a newspaper, The Post Circular, to be published as a propaganda sheet for postal reform.

In the fourth issue of the newspaper a letter from James Chalmers of Dundee was reprinted. Chalmers had written to Wallace in December 1837, and later to the Post Office, suggesting for ‘slips’ to prepay postage. He also supplied examples which he had designed and printed, and which he cancelled with a datestamp to prevent re-use.

UNIFORM PENNY POSTAGE

Wallace published the final report of the parliamentary Select Committee in March 1839 recommending most of Hill’s ideas but with a uniform 2d rate. This resulted in a lot of activity and some action was demanded of the Government.

Public pressure meant that Lord Melbourne, the Liberal prime minister, promised a bill in favour of uniform penny postage. This was passed and given the Royal Assent on 15 August.

It enabled the reduction of postage rates to a uniform penny regardless of distance but measured by weight. Free franking would be abolished and prepayment would be in the form of stamped paper, stamped envelopes and labels, though this would not be compulsory.

Rowland Hill was appointed to the Treasury to oversee the implementation of his ideas, with Henry Cole as his assistant.