This brought me to the conclusion that, “when a reduction of taxation is about to take place, it is exceedingly important that great care and judgment should be exercised in the selection of the tax to be reduced, in order that the maximum of relief may be afforded to the public with the minimum of injury to the revenue”. My next attempt was to arrive at some rule which might serve for general guidance in such cases; and I came to the conclusion that, with some allowance for exceptions, the best test would be found by examining each tax “as to whether its productiveness has kept pace with the increasing number and prosperity of the nation. And the tax which proves most defective under this test is in all probability the one we are now in quest of”.
This test brought the tax I had in mind, viz., that on the transmission of letters, into bad pre-eminence.*
From ‘The Life of Sir Rowland Hill, and the History of the Penny Postage’ (1880), by Rowland Hill (1795-1879).
* Hill’s reforms resulted in a new rate of one penny for all inland letters under half an ounce (14g) in weight, and twopence for larger items. The penny stamp was black, hence the name Penny Black; the twopenny stamp was blue. They were the world’s first adhesive postage stamps. In today’s money, one penny in 1830 was equivalent to about 40p.