Rowland Hill well observed, that, while population, business, and all other sources of national revenue had greatly increased during the preceding twenty years, the revenue of the Post-Office had actually decreased; that, for instance, the revenue from stage-coaches had risen from £217,671 in 1815 to £498,497 in 1835, or one hundred and twenty-nine per cent., while the postal revenue, which at a corresponding rate of increase should have exhibited a gain of £2,000,000, in point of fact showed an absolute loss of near £20,000, having declined from £1,557,291 in 1815 to £1,540,300 in 1835.[47] Evidently there was something abnormal, when the conveyance of persons and parcels yielded a revenue so much beyond that of letters. After showing the loss to the revenue, the generous reformer demonstrated clearly that the actual cost of carrying a letter by coach in the mail from London to Edinburgh, being four hundred miles, was only one thirty-sixth part of a penny,[48]--from which it was properly inferred that the actual difference of expense between transporting a letter one mile and delivering it and transporting it four hundred miles and delivering it did not justify a different rate of postage. His conclusion was, that the large cost of distributing letters grew out of a complex and multifarious system, springing especially from many rates,--that all this would be superseded, if postage were charged, _without regard to distance, at a uniform rate_, and that this uniform rate should be one penny; and he did not hesitate to declare that with this change there would be an increase in correspondence “at least five and a quarter fold.”[49] In his original proposition, Rowland Hill relied especially upon a uniform rate at a penny, regardless of distance,--and from this promised simplicity, economy, and an immense increase of correspondence. But, offensive as the franking privilege had become, and burdensome to the postal service, he did not at first propose its excision.