Among the many things testified before the Committee I select the words of Lord Ashburton, as especially valuable. Experienced in business and in public life, he pictures truthfully the burden of excessive postage, when he says:-- “I think it is one of the worst of our taxes. We have, unfortunately, many taxes which have an injurious tendency; but I think few, if any, have so injurious a tendency as the tax upon the communication by letters.” And then again:-- “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. You might as well tax words spoken upon the Royal Exchange as the communications of various persons living in Manchester, Liverpool, and London. You cannot do it without checking the disposition to communicate very essentially.” At the same time Lord Ashburton hesitated to adopt a rate as low as one penny. He was for twopence or threepence.[55] The doubts of Lord Ashburton as to the rate were encountered by Mr. Cobden, who testified:-- “I consider the only way to produce the greatest possible amount of revenue is to charge the lowest possible trading profit; and it is in the Post-Office as in steamboats, or Paddington coaches, or calicoes, or sugars, or teas, or anything else which can be or ought to be an article of universal demand and consumption. With that view I have regarded Mr. Rowland Hill’s plan of Post-Office Reform; and taking the cost of a letter, upon the presumed increase he has stated, even at three-fourths of a penny each letter, I should say one penny would then be a proper charge ultimately to produce the greatest possible amount of revenue. I would reason from analogy and experience in every other business, and in none more than my own.”[56] On such a point nobody could speak with more authority than Mr. Cobden. But nobody showed more comprehension of the moral ground for this reform than Mr. Jones Loyd, the eminent banker and economist, afterwards Lord Overstone. Nothing can be better than this:--