the
new system which would be more palatable to the public, than this
practical evidence of the willingness of members of this house, to
sacrifice everything personal to themselves, for the advantage of
the public revenue.

Sir Robert Peel did not think it desirable that members of this
house should retain the franking privilege. He thought if this
were continued after this bill came into operation, there _would
be a degree of odium_ attached to it which would greatly diminish
its value. He agreed that it would be well to restrict in some way
the _right of sending by mail the heavy volumes of reports_. He
said there were many members who would shrink from the exercise of
such a privilege, to load the mail with books. He would also
require that each department should specially pay the postage
incurred for the public service in that department. If every
office be called upon to pay its own postage, we shall introduce a
useful principle into the public service. There is no habit
connected with a public service so inveterate, as the privilege of
official franking.

On a former day, July 5, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had said
concerning the abolition of the franking privilege:

Undoubtedly, we may lose the opportunity now and then, of obliging
a friend; but on other grounds, I believe there is no member of
the house who will not be ready to abandon the privilege. As to
any notion that honorable gentlemen should retain their privilege
under a penny postage, they must have a more intense appreciation
of the value of money, and a greater disregard for the value of
time, than I can conceive, if they insist on it.

All the peculiarities which distinguish British institutions from our own,
might naturally be expected to make public men in that country more
tenacious of privilege than our own statesmen. In a land of privilege, we
should expect mere privilege to be coveted, because it is privilege. This
practical and harmonious decision of British statesmen, of all parties, in
favor of abolishing the franking privilege, in order to give strength and
consistency to the system of cheap postage, shows in a striking light the
sense which they entertained of the greatness of the object of cheap
postage. The arguments which convinced them, we should naturally suppose
would have tenfold greater force here than there; while