This circumstance, accounting, as it does, for some of the deficit in the first and second years, also served to test the real principles of the reform.[111] Mr. Hill's plan, though given over to the apathy and _vis inertiæ_ of the authorities--to "the unwilling horses of the Post-Office," as Mr. Baring subsequently designated them--really worked well, though at a loss, when everything else was working ill. Moreover, the tendency of cheap communication to improve the general revenue of the country was clearly apparent so early as 1842; and this is a fact which ought not to be lost sight of for a moment. The reduction of postage-rates was to the community a reduction of taxation; the capital released was driven into other and perhaps more legitimate channels. The Exchequer lost revenue from one source, but it gained it in other ways, as a consequence on the outlay at the Post-Office. In 1842, there was an acknowledged loss to the Post-Office revenue of 900,000_l._ In the same year, no serious defalcation appeared in the general accounts of the country, notwithstanding the extent of the depression in trade.
There were special as well as general considerations entering into the question of the acknowledged deficiency in the revenue. It is clear that Mr. Hill--who did not foresee that so much money would be sacrificed, and who was sanguine of recovering it at no distant date--likewise could have had but an indefinite idea of the vast amount of extra machinery which would be called into operation by the full development of his plans; the extent of the measures that must follow if the country was to be equally privileged with cheap correspondence; and the concessions that would have to be granted when the wedge was driven in by this, his principal measure. As one only of the causes leading to the extra heavy expenses of the Post-Office department, we may mention the changes in the system of mail-conveyance consequent on the introduction of railways. Dating from 1838, railways had been gradually absorbing all the stage-coach traffic. Mr. Hill, when making his original proposals, calculated that the number of chargeable letters might be increased twenty-four fold without overloading the mails, and without any material addition to the sums paid to contractors. So great and important--we would almost say vital--was the question of _speed_ to the Post-Office, that railways were almost immediately brought into requisition, although the cost of the carriage of the mails was, at the outset, doubled, tripled, and even quadrupled! Many striking examples of the great difference in the cost of the two services are furnished in different Post-Office Reports. For instance:[112] In 1844, a coach proprietor in the North of England actually _paid_ to the Post-Office Department the sum of 200_l._ annually for what he regarded as the privilege of conveying the mails, twice a-day, between Lancaster and Carlisle. Now the Post-Office _pays_ the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway the sum of 18,000_l._ annually for the same service. The items of charges for mail-conveyance by railway at the present time--if they could have been known by any means, or even guessed at, by the enterprising post-reformer of 1837--might have had the effect of deterring him from offering his suggestions when he did. Certain it is, that the proposals would have had small chance of success, if those who had charge of the fiscal concerns of the country could have known that the sum which would have to be paid by the Post-Office to railway companies alone, in the year 1863, would not fall far short of the whole amount standing for the entire postal expenses of 1839.