Having, according to the best information then accessible, estimated the number of letters and newspapers annually passing through the Post Office at 126,000,000, I calculated the apparent cost of what I termed the primary distribution, viz., the receipt, conveyance and distribution of missives passing from post town to post town, and found that this cost, on all such letters, newspapers, &c., within the United Kingdom, was, on the average, only 84-hundredths of a penny each; and that of this sum only one-third, or 28-hundredths of a penny went to conveyance; the remaining two-thirds, or 56-hundredths of a penny, appertaining to the receipt and delivery of letters, the collection of postage, &c. I further remarked that, as the cost of conveyance for a given distance is, under ordinary circumstances, in tolerably direct proportion to the weight carried, and as a newspaper or franked letter (and franked letters were then very numerous) weighs generally as much as several ordinary letters, the average expense of conveying a letter chargeable with postage must be much lower yet; probably about one-third of the sum mentioned above, or, in other words, nine-hundredths of a penny; a conclusion pretty well supported by the acknowledged fact that the chargeable letters did not weigh more than about one-fourth of the whole mail.[108] Beyond this, I found, by another calculation, based on more exact data, that the cost of transit as regards the great mass of letters, small as it appeared to be, was in reality still smaller; being probably loaded with charges not strictly appertaining to it, and certainly enhanced by the carriage of the mail to places which were “not of sufficient importance to repay the expense.”[109] Having found, with tolerable accuracy, the total cost of conveying the mail from London to Edinburgh;[110] having in like manner estimated the weight of the mail so conveyed, and from these premises deduced the cost per letter, I found this to be no more than one thirty-sixth part of a penny, though the distance, four hundred miles, is far above the average.[111] Thus, then, I found, first, that the cost of conveying a letter between post town and post town was exceedingly small; secondly, that it had but little relation to distance; and thirdly, that it depended much upon the number of letters conveyed by the particular mail; and as the cost per letter would diminish with every increase in such number, and as such increase would certainly follow reduction of postage, it followed that, if a great reduction could be effected, the cost of conveyance, per letter, already so small, might be deemed absolutely insignificant.