Thus, after inquiry and debate lasting for three years, this great reform was accomplished, and the English Post-Office assumed an unprecedented character. The new system was founded on a uniform rate for uniform weight without regard to distance, and this rate the lowest unit of coin,--with prepaid stamps, and the abolition of the franking privilege. The experiment was a prodigious success, although the first results showed a falling off financially. The Post-Office authorities had predicted that it would not pay expenses; but the diminished receipts were more than enough for the expenses, while the number of letters was more than doubled.[67] There was a smaller net revenue for the National Treasury, but an infinite benefit to the people. The surplus of the first year was £500,789, against £1,633,764 of the previous year.[68] But the improvement financially was constant, so that here Rowland Hill became a prophet. He had predicted that the increase of correspondence and the economy of management would in a reasonable time afford a probable net revenue of £1,278,000.[69] In 1856 the net revenue had reached £1,207,725,--while at the same time the letters were 478,393,803 in number, with 6,178,982 money orders, against 75,907,572 letters, with 188,921 money orders, in the last year of the old system.[70] The smallest part of the result was in the revenue,--except so far as this was advanced by the increased activity of the country, represented by the added millions of correspondence. Commerce and business were quickened infinitely, while the ties of social life were brightened and the heart was rejoiced. Here the testimony is complete. Tradesmen wrote to Rowland Hill, their benefactor, saying how their business had increased. Charles Knight, the eminent publisher, who did so much for the literature of the people, wrote that every branch of bookselling was stimulated, while the country seller was brought into almost daily communication with the London houses. The publisher of the Polyglot Bible in twenty-four languages, requiring a peculiar revision, declared that it could not have been printed but for penny postage. The Secretary of the Parker Society, composed of Church dignitaries and influential laymen, which has done so much for ecclesiastical literature by reprinting the works of the early English Reformers, stated that without penny postage the Society could not have come into existence. Secretaries of other societies, literary and benevolent, wrote how their machinery had been improved; conductors of educational establishments testified that people were everywhere learning to write for the first time, in order to enjoy the benefits of untaxed correspondence, and that night classes of adults for this purpose were springing up in all large towns. A leading advocate for the repeal of the Corn Laws gave it as his opinion that this reform must have waited but for penny postage,--that through this ally it reached its