That your Petitioners earnestly desire an Uniform Penny Post, payable in advance, as proposed by Rowland Hill, and recommended by the Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons. That your Petitioners intreat your Honourable House to give speedy effect to this Report. And your Petitioners will ever pray. * * * MOTHERS AND FATHERS that wish to hear from their absent children! FRIENDS who are parted, that wish to write to each other! EMIGRANTS that do not forget their native homes! FARMERS that wish to know the best Markets! MERCHANTS AND TRADESMEN that wish to receive Orders and Money quickly and cheaply! MECHANICS AND LABOURERS that wish to learn where good work and high wages are to be had! _support_ the Report of the House of Commons with your Petitions for an UNIFORM PENNY POST. Let every City and Town and Village, every Corporation, every Religious Society and Congregation, petition, and let every one in the kingdom sign a Petition with his name or his mark. THIS IS NO QUESTION OF PARTY POLITICS. Lord Ashburton, a Conservative, and one of the richest Noblemen in the country, spoke these impressive words before the House of Commons Committee--"Postage is one of the worst of our Taxes; it is, in fact, taxing the conversation of people who live at a distance from each other. The communication of letters by persons living at a distance is the same as a communication by word of mouth between persons living in the same town." "Sixpence," says Mr. Brewin, "is the third of a poor man's income; if a gentleman, who had 1,000_l._ a year, or 3_l._ a day, had to pay one-third of his daily income, a sovereign, for a letter, how often would he write letters of friendship! Let a gentleman put that to himself, and then he will be able to see how the poor man cannot be able to pay Sixpence for his Letter." * * * READER! If you can get any Signatures to a Petition, make two Copies of the above on two half sheets of paper; get them signed as numerously as possible; fold each up separately; put a slip of paper around, leaving the ends open; direct one to a Member of the House of Lords, the other to a Member of the House of Commons, LONDON, and put them into the Post Office. * * * _Reproduced from a handbill in the collection of the late Sir Henry Cole, K.C.B. By permission of Lady Cole._ * * * * * Should any reader desire to inform himself with some degree of fulness of the stages through which the Penny Postage agitation passed, he cannot do better than peruse Sir Henry Cole's _Fifty Years of Public Work_.