The reformer kept a constant watch on the returns of the number of inland letters passing through the post. The result was sometimes satisfactory, sometimes the reverse, especially when a return issued about two months after the establishment of the penny rate showed that the increase was rather less than two-and-three-quarters-fold. The average postage on the inland letters proved to be three halfpence; and the reformer calculated that at that rate a four-and-three-quarters-fold increase would be required to bring up the gross revenue to its former dimensions. Eleven years later his calculation was justified by the result; and in the thirteenth year of the reform the number of letters was exactly five times as many as during the last year of the old system. Meanwhile, it was satisfactory to find that the reductions which had recently been made in the postage of foreign letters had led to a great increase of receipts, and that in no case had loss to the revenue followed. One reason for the comparatively slow increase in the number of inland letters must be attributed to the persistent delay in carrying out my father's plan for extending rural distribution. In the minute he drew up, he says: “The amount of population thus seriously inconvenienced the Post Office has declared itself unable to estimate, but it is probable that in England and Wales alone it is not less than 4,000,000. The great extent of the deficiency [of postal facilities] is shown by the fact that, while these two divisions of the empire contain about 11,000 parishes, their total number of post offices of all descriptions is only about 2,000. In some places _quasi_ post offices have been established by carriers and others, whose charges add to the cost of a letter, in some instances as much as sixpence. A penny for every mile from the post office is a customary demand.”[133] Of the beneficent effects of cheap postage, gratifying accounts were meanwhile being reported; some told in conversation, or in letters from friends or strangers, some in the Press or elsewhere. One immediate effect was an impetus to education, especially among the less affluent classes. When one poor person could send another of like condition a letter for a penny instead of many times that amount, it was worth the while of both to learn to read and write. Many people even past middle age tried to master the twin arts; and at evening classes, some of which were improvised for the purpose, two generations of a family would, not infrequently, be seen at work seated side by side on the same school bench. Other poor people, with whom letter-writing, for lack of opportunity to practise it, had become a half-forgotten handicraft, made laborious efforts to recover it. And thus old ties were knit afresh, as severed relatives and friends came into touch again. Surely, to hinder such reunion by “blocking” rural distribution and other important improvements was little, if at all, short of a crime.