The History of the Post Office, from Its Establishment Down to 1836

by Herbert Joyce

CHAPTER XII

JOHN PALMER
1782-1792

The apathy of the Post Office about this time is incomprehensible. More than twenty years before, the General Convention of the Royal Boroughs of Scotland had called the attention of the postmasters-general to the intolerable slowness of the post on the Great North Road. "Every common traveller," they wrote, "passes the King's mail on the first road in the kingdom." At the present time the clerks of the roads were giving as one of the reasons why they were undersold in the matter of newspapers that, whereas they sent their wares by post, the booksellers and printers availed themselves of the more expeditious conveyance by stage-coach. Yet it seems never to have occurred to the postmasters-general that what was being done by others they might do themselves. The lesson that was lost upon the postmasters-general was to be learnt and applied by John Palmer, proprietor of the theatre at Bath.

Palmer had, while yet at school, been distinguished for a love of enterprise, an indomitable perseverance, and an activity of body which knew no fatigue and set distance at defiance. He had, through sheer persistency, obtained a patent for his theatre at Bath, which thus became the first Theatre-Royal out of the metropolis. At a time when the mail leaving London on Monday night did not arrive at Bath until Wednesday afternoon, he had been in the habit of accomplishing the distance between the two cities in a single day. He had made journeys equally long and equally rapid in other directions; and, as the result of observation, he had come to the conclusion that of the horses kept at the post-houses it was always the worst that were set aside to carry the mail, and that the post was the slowest mode of conveyance in the kingdom. He had also observed that, where security or despatch was required, his neighbours at Bath who might desire to correspond with London would make a letter up into a parcel and send it by stage-coach,[59] although the cost by stage-coach was, porterage included, 2s. and by post 4d. Not seldom, indeed, the difference would be more than 1s. 8d., for to prevent delay on the part of the porters in London one of these clandestine letters would as often as not have written on the back, "An extra sum will be given the porter if he delivers this letter immediately."

Starting from these premises Palmer, with characteristic energy, set himself to devise a plan for the reform of the Post Office. This plan was simply that the mails—which, to use his own words, had heretofore been trusted to some idle boy without character, mounted on a worn-out hack, who, so far from being able to defend himself against a robber, was more likely to be in league with one—should for the future be carried by coach. The coach should be guarded, and should carry no outside passenger. For guard no one could be better than a soldier, who would be skilled in the use of firearms. He should carry two short guns or blunderbusses, and sit on the top of the coach with the mail behind him. From this position he could command the road and observe suspicious persons. The coachman also should carry arms; but in his case they should be pistols. A speed should be maintained of eight or nine miles an hour. Thus, the distance between London and Bath would, stoppages included, be accomplished in sixteen hours instead of thirty-eight; and these stoppages should, in point of time, be largely reduced. As the coach arrived at the end of each stage there would be little more for the postmaster to do than to put into the mail bag the outgoing letters and to take out of the bag the letters that were coming in. Surely a quarter of an hour would be ample for the purpose. He must indeed be an inexpert postmaster who could not change his letters as soon as the ostler changes his horses. Strict punctuality should be observed. Each postmaster should be on the spot and to the moment to receive the mail when it arrived; and if it did not arrive to time, a man on horseback should be despatched to ascertain the cause of delay. This, in the event of the coach having been stopped by highwaymen, would secure immediate pursuit.

And how little would be the cost of the proposed reform. It was doubtful indeed whether there would be any additional cost at all. The mails were now being conveyed at a charge for boy and horse of 3d. a mile. It was certain that men might be found who for this rate of payment would be glad to convey them by coach. Especially would this be the case if the coaches which carried the mails were exempt, as they ought to be, from toll. Between London and Bath, for instance, the toll was, for a carriage and pair, 9s., and for a carriage and four, 18s. Exemption from this impost would of itself be no inconsiderable boon to the contractors. Besides, the speed and security of a mail coach would attract passengers. At all events something, it was clear, must be done. As matters stood it was an intolerable hardship that persons sending letters by coach should be subject to penalties. A coach might go at a time when there was no post; and a letter might require immediate despatch. Yet, rather than make use of the coach and pay half a crown, one was obliged to hire an express, which was less expeditious, at a cost of two or three guineas. Surely, if no other change were made, this at least should be conceded—that any one taking a letter to the Post Office and paying the proper amount of postage upon it according to its address should, after the letter had been impressed with the postmark and signed by the postmaster, be at liberty to send it by what channel he pleased.

Such were the main features of Palmer's plan. As a subsidiary, though by no means a necessary, part of it he made two suggestions which it may be well to mention, if only because they were afterwards adopted. These were—1st, that the mails, which from the first establishment of the Post Office had not left London until between midnight and three o'clock in the morning, should start at eight in the evening; and 2nd, that they should not be kept waiting for the Government letters when these happened to be late. This keeping the mails waiting for the Government letters had, at the beginning of the century, been a constant source of complaint. "We take this occasion of representing to your Lordship," wrote the postmasters-general to Lord Dartmouth on the 16th of March 1710, "the great inconvenience which happened to the business of this office on Tuesday's night's post by the inland mails having all been detained here till the receipt of the Court letters, which were not brought by the messenger from Whitehall before half-past six on Wednesday morning." A similar letter of remonstrance was at the same time addressed to Mr. Secretary St. John. But, of late years, so profound had been the supineness which reigned at the Post Office that it may, probably enough, have been considered of little consequence whether the mails were delayed or not. Palmer was unable to take this view. To him it appeared in the highest degree improper that, for the sake of a few letters which after all might be of no great importance, the Post Office business of the whole country should be thrown out of gear. Far better, he urged, that the mail should leave at the proper hour, and that these letters, if behind time, should be sent after it by express. A third suggestion he made, a suggestion admirable in itself, and yet one that at that time was little likely to be adopted. This was that the Post Office should take the public into its confidence, and invite them to make known their wants and suggest how best these wants might be supplied.

In October 1782, through the intervention of his friend John Pratt, afterwards Lord Camden, Palmer's plan was brought under the notice of Pitt; and Pitt, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer in the administration of Lord Shelburne, at once discerned its merits. Nothing, however, could be done until the Post Office had had an opportunity of offering its opinion on the matter, and when this opinion was given—which was not until July 1783—Pitt was out of office; and, although he returned to power as minister in the following December, the struggle in which he then became engaged with an unruly Parliament, and afterwards a general election, effectually precluded him from giving attention to the posts until the summer of 1784.

Meanwhile Palmer devoted himself to the perfection of his plan. He traversed the whole of the kingdom by stage-coaches, noting down the time they occupied in accomplishing their journeys, the time they unnecessarily lost, and how they might be better regulated and made serviceable for the transport of the mails. He took the same opportunity of acquainting himself with the course of the post and carefully observed its defects and delays. Nor did he trust to his own exertions alone. In order to test the extent of clandestine traffic, he employed persons to watch the Bath and Bristol coaches as they started for London, and to count the number of parcels which appeared to contain letters. These persons assured him that the number was never less than several hundreds in the week, and in some weeks was as high as 1000.

The office of postmaster-general was at this time held by Lords Carteret and Tankerville. Carteret had only recently been raised to the peerage. Appointed thirteen years before as Henry Frederick Thynne in conjunction with Lord le Despencer, he had, amid the conflict of parties and the fall of successive ministries, contrived to retain his post. Tankerville, on the contrary, had come in and gone out with a change of Government. Called upon to preside over the Post Office in 1782, he had left it in 1783 and had returned in January of the following year. The part which these two peers took in connection with Palmer's plan appears to have been not injudicious. Without expressing any opinion of their own as to its feasibility or otherwise, they contented themselves with collecting and forwarding to Pitt the opinions of such of their subordinates as were presumably qualified to judge. These were the district surveyors, and their verdict was unanimously against the plan. Of the reasons for this judgment a specimen or two will suffice. By one it was objected that there could be no need for the post to be the swiftest conveyance in the kingdom; by another, that to employ firearms for the protection of the mail would encourage their use on the other side, and thus murder might be added to robbery; by a third, that not only did the posts as they stood afford all reasonable accommodation, but it was beyond the power of human ingenuity to devise a better system.

Of these and other objections Pitt made short work. He summoned a conference at the Treasury, at which were present the postmasters-general, Palmer, and the objectors; and having patiently listened to all that could be urged against the plan, he desired that it should be tried on what was commonly called the Bath road, the road between Bristol and London. This conference was held on the 21st of June 1784. On Saturday the 31st of July an agreement was signed under which, in consideration of a payment of 3d. a mile, five innholders—one belonging to London, one to Thatcham, one to Marlborough, and two to Bath—undertook to provide the horses; and on Monday the 2nd of August the first mail-coach began to run.

It is unfortunate that of the early performances of this coach no record remains. We only know that on the first journey it started from Bristol and not from London, and that Palmer was present to see it off; that, ordinarily, the distance was accomplished in seventeen hours, being at the rate of about seven miles an hour; and that, as a result, the expresses to Bristol, which before 1784 had been as many as 200 in the year, ceased altogether. Ten or twelve years later, indeed, the expresses for the whole of the kingdom were not one-fifth of what, before 1784, was the number for the city of Bristol alone.

Palmer's plan, once introduced, made rapid progress. Mail-coaches began to run through Norfolk and Suffolk in March 1785; and on the cross-road between Bristol and Portsmouth in the following May. On the 25th of July the plan was extended to Leeds, Manchester, and Liverpool, and during the next two months to Gloucester and Swansea; to Hereford, Carmarthen, and Milford Haven; to Worcester and Ludlow; to Birmingham and Shrewsbury; to Chester and Holyhead; to Exeter; to Portsmouth; to Dover and other places. The Great North Road was reserved to the last, and here the plan was carried into effect in the summer of 1786.

It may be convenient here to say a few words on the subject of nomenclature. Post-coach, a term in vogue about this time,[60] might not unnaturally be supposed to denote a coach in use by the Post Office. Such, however, was not the case. The term post-coach, like the kindred term post-chaise, was introduced probably early in the last century, and, so far as we are aware, was never employed in the sense of mail-coach. It should further be noticed that the term mail-coach, although we have employed it to make our meaning clear, did not come into use until after 1784. In that year, and for some little time afterwards, coaches which carried the mails were called diligences or machines, and the coachmen were called machine-drivers.

The plan of carrying letters by mail-coach was, on its introduction, sadly marred by a simultaneous or almost simultaneous increase in the rates of postage. Pitt had brought forward his budget on the 30th of June; and among the measures he proposed with a view to replenish an exhausted Exchequer was a tax upon coals. The proposal was not well received by the House, and it was afterwards withdrawn in favour of an increase of postage. Palmer took credit to himself that he had proposed the substitution. If, as would appear to be the case, the claim is well founded, one can only regret that he should thus wantonly have handicapped his own proceedings. It is true, no doubt, that he was about to make the post both quicker and more secure; that he would have a better article to dispose of, an article that would fetch a higher price. It is also true that his plan, weighted as it was, proved an unqualified success. And yet it is impossible to deny that his reputation as a Post Office reformer, high as it stands, would have stood still higher if his counsel had been on the side of reduction.

The rates prescribed by the Act of 1784, as compared with those of 1765, were as follows:—

			1765				1784.
	S	D	T	O	S	D	T	O
	i	o	r	u	i	o	r	u
	n	u	e	n	n	u	e	n
	g	b	b	c	g	b	b	c
	l	l	l	e	l	l	l	e
	e	e	e	.	e	e	e	.
Distance.	.	.	.		.	.	.
	d.	d.	d.	d.	d.	d.	d.	d.
Not exceeding one post stage	1	2	3	4	2	4	6	8
Exceeding one and not
exceeding two post stages	2	4	6	8	3	6	9	12
Exceeding two post stages
and not exceeding 80 miles	3	6	9	12	4	8	12	16
Exceeding 80 and not
exceeding 150 miles	4	8	12	16	5	10	15	20
Exceeding 150 miles	4	8	12	16	6	12	18	24
To and from Edinburgh	6	12	18	24	7	14	21	28

	{ The Irish Post Office had only
	{ recently been placed under the
	{ authority of the Irish Parliament;
To and from Dublin	{ and the rates of postage, not only
	{within Ireland, but between Ireland
	{ and Great Britain, were awaiting
	{ revision.

Within Scotland.
(Measured from Edinburgh.)
Not exceeding one post stage	1	2	3	4	2	4	6	8
Exceeding one post stage and
not exceeding 50 miles	2	4	6	8	3	6	9	12
Exceeding 50 miles and not
exceeding 80 miles	3	6	9	12	4	8	12	16
Exceeding 80 and not
exceeding 150 miles	4	8	12	16	5	10	15	20
Exceeding 150 miles	4	8	12	16	6	12	18	24

The same Act which increased the rates of postage imposed, or sought to impose, additional restrictions upon franking. Some concessions indeed were made. Letters from members of Parliament, in order to secure exemption, need no longer be limited, in point of weight, to two ounces and, in point of time, to the session of Parliament and forty days before and after. As part of the superscription, however, were now to be given the full date of the letter, the day, the month, and the year, all in the member's handwriting; and the letter was to be posted on the date which the superscription bore. These restrictions, it was confidently expected, would correct the worst abuses and render the concessions harmless. But, curiously enough, like the restrictions of 1764, they had an exactly contrary effect to that which was intended. The members sent to their constituents and friends, for use as occasion should serve, franks that were post-dated. These the Post Office charged, as coming from places where the members were known not to be. The members remonstrated, demanding to be informed in what respects the conditions of the Act had not been satisfied. The dispute waxing warm, the matter was referred to Pitt; and Pitt, after testing the opinion of the House, decided that pending fresh legislation the charges should be abandoned. Practically, therefore, the abuses which the Act was designed to prevent were not only not prevented but were given wider scope.

Palmer maintained to the end of his life that during the two years which followed the starting of the first mail-coach he was thwarted and opposed by the Post Office. This charge, so far as it refers to those by whom the Post Office was managed and controlled, we believe to be groundless. That he had difficulties with contractors and postmasters is beyond question. Contractors were at all times troublesome persons to deal with, but they were not Post Office servants; and postmasters might well be excused if they looked askance at the new plan. Their salaries, low as they were, had long been shamefully reduced by exactions at headquarters under the name of fees; and what little they had been able to make out of their allowances for riding-work was now threatened by a system under which that work was to be done by contract. But the charge was not confined to contractors and postmasters. It extended to those who controlled and directed the Post Office, to Carteret and Tankerville and to their confidential adviser, the secretary; and, as we believe, with very insufficient reason. Carteret was indifferent. Tankerville was sincerely desirous of a reform of the posts, from whatever quarter it might come. Anthony Todd, the secretary, was eminently a man of peace. Appointed to the Post Office in 1738, he had arrived at a time of life when to most men ease and quiet are essential; and not only was he well advanced in years but it was not in his nature to thwart or oppose any one. All he wanted was to be left alone; and he was shrewd enough to know that the best way to secure this object was not to molest others.

Between Todd and Palmer, indeed, there was little in common. Palmer, in everything he undertook, was intensely in earnest. Todd, on the contrary, could with difficulty get up even an appearance of earnestness about anything which did not concern himself. Even of his duty Todd took a view which must have been absolutely repugnant to Palmer. Lloyds's coffee-house was supplied by the Post Office with the arrivals and sailings of British ships, and it paid for the information no less than £200 a year. One-half of this amount went into Todd's own pocket; and yet, according to him, the giving of the information was a concession, an indulgence. "The merchants," he would write, "are indulged with ship news." To the Mayor of Shrewsbury, who had asked on behalf of the inhabitants for an earlier post, he deliberately wrote, "The arrival of the mail a few hours sooner or later can be of no great consequence." Not many years before, a despatch sent by express from Lord North to the Duke of Newcastle had been lost. Even to the minister Todd was not ashamed to write, "I dare to say there is no roguery in the case, but [that the letter has been] lost and trampled under foot in the dirty roads." Between a man who could take this view of his duty and Palmer, who was burning to perfect his plan, there could be little sympathy; but there was certainly no active antagonism. That, as Palmer extended his plan, doubts as to its merits arose at headquarters is perfectly true; but they were honest doubts, doubts which might excusably be entertained and which, if entertained, the Post Office was bound to express. Palmer, who regarded every one who was not for him as being against him, construed the expression of a doubt into an act of hostility.

Let us see what some of these doubts were, and whence they originated. In London, before the introduction of Palmer's plan, it had been the practice to wait for the arrival of all the mails before any one of them was delivered, so that in the event of a single mail being behind time, no delivery at all might take place until three or four o'clock in the afternoon or even later. Palmer, of course, altered this. But now his interest in the Bristol coach led him to an opposite extreme. The Bristol mail was delivered the moment it arrived; and all other mails, by how little soever they might be later, were kept waiting. Again, before 1784 the post was frequently diverted from the high road in order that adjacent villages might be served. On the Bath road, for instance, although on this road there were fewer diversions than on any other in the kingdom, the post left the turnpike road between Hungerford and Marlborough in order to go through Ramsbury. Under the new arrangement it would have defeated Palmer's object to leave the direct track, if indeed the state of the roads would have admitted of it; and as the coaches could not go to the villages, the villages had to send to the coaches. Not in these cases alone was there, at first, a very general failure to effect a junction. Along every road on which a mail-coach was started the bye and cross posts were deranged and thrown into confusion; and, as a consequence, the Post Office was swamped with complaints from those whose letters had been delayed.

Had this been all, it would have been little more than might be expected in the course of transition from one system to another; but other causes of dissatisfaction arose. The Act of Parliament regulated the rates of postage according to stages—2d. in the case of a single letter, for one stage, 3d. for two stages, and beyond two stages and not exceeding eighty miles 4d.; but what was meant by the term stage the Act nowhere defined. Virtually it was in the power of one man, by the simple expedient of reducing the length of the stages and so increasing their number, to raise the rate of postage between any two towns in the kingdom that were not more than a certain number of miles apart. And this is exactly what Palmer did. From Rochester to Dartford, for instance, had been one stage. The single stage was replaced by two stages; and the postage, which had been 2d., became 3d. From Newbury to Devizes had been two stages. The two stages were increased to three; and the postage was raised from 3d. to 4d. And so it was throughout the kingdom. Well might the postmasters-general write, as they wrote under date the 7th of December 1785, "We are now at a loss in many instances how to rate letters and what to call by the name of a stage."

But not even the increase of postage which resulted from shortening the stages gave so much offence as the earlier closing of the Post Office in Lombard Street. The Post Office had from the earliest times been kept open to at least twelve o'clock at night, and probably a little later. It now closed at seven o'clock in the evening, so as to admit of the mails starting at eight o'clock. Palmer had foreseen that objections might be raised to the change; but he was little prepared for the storm of indignation that followed. The first merchants in London, some of them bearing names still honoured in the city,—Thellusson, Lubbock and Bosanquet, Herries, Quentin Dick and Hoare,—protested in writing and afterwards waited on the postmasters-general in a body to support their protest. The leather-dealers followed suit, a body representing more than sixty firms. Some held that the Post Office should be kept open till nine o'clock, and others till ten or even eleven o'clock; but all were of opinion that seven was too early an hour to close. At a meeting held at the London Tavern, and presided over by one of the sheriffs, resolutions were passed, copies of which were afterwards presented to Pitt in person, not only condemning the early hour of closing but calling for the adoption of measures with a view "to remove the inconveniences which had hitherto been experienced from the establishment of mail-coaches." No wonder if the postmasters-general doubted the merits of a plan which exposed them to these complaints.

Nor was it only from without that troubles came. The letter-carriers were grumbling and more than grumbling; and not without reason. For more than seventy years they had been ringing bells in the streets after the receiving houses were shut—until 1769 on the three nights of the week called grand post nights, and since that date on the bye-nights as well—receiving as their own perquisite 1d. on each letter they collected. Hence the men had made a comfortable addition to their wages of 12s. a week; and now, owing to the closing of the Post Office at seven, the emoluments derived from this source were rapidly dwindling and promised soon to disappear altogether.

Between Carteret and Tankerville differences now arose which, in view of subsequent events, it is impossible to pass unnoticed. On the break-up of the Shelburne administration in 1783, when Tankerville left the Post Office and Carteret remained, the two postmasters-general had parted with mutual expressions of regard and goodwill. A questionable transaction in which Carteret had been concerned, a transaction partaking of the nature of a corrupt bargain, had indeed come under Tankerville's notice; but he willingly attributed it to the malign influence exercised by his predecessor, Lord le Despencer. This favourable construction his later experience had induced him to modify. One case in particular which occurred soon after his return to the Post Office had aroused the most painful suspicions. On Monday the 2nd of August 1784, the same day as that on which the first mail-coach started, the Post Office of Ireland was separated from the Post Office of England. Into the reasons of this separation, being as they were political, we do not propose to enter. Suffice it to say that the Government of Ireland took advantage of the occasion to displace Armit, the secretary to the Irish Post Office, and to reappoint John Lees, who had been secretary from 1774 to 1781, when he was promoted to the War Office. On his reappointment Lees wrote to the postmasters-general in London recapitulating the conditions on which he had been appointed ten years before, and stating that to those conditions, onerous as they were, he proposed in the main to adhere. He was indeed under no obligation in the matter, for he owed his reappointment to the Irish Government; but of this circumstance he had no desire to avail himself. Armit had taken over the conditions from Lees; and Lees would now resume them from Armit. Let us see what the conditions were. In 1774 Barham, the packet agent at Dover, being compelled by ill-health to retire, was succeeded by Walcot, the secretary to the Post Office in Ireland, and Walcot was succeeded by Lees, who was new to the service. Barham, though superannuated, was during his life to receive from Walcot the full salary and emoluments of the packet agency, and Walcot was during the same period to receive from Lees the full salary and emoluments of the secretaryship. Lees was meanwhile to receive from Walcot a small allowance for acting as secretary. Thus far there was nothing unusual in the arrangement. On the contrary, it was an arrangement which in those days was very commonly made. That which was unusual, and which nowhere appeared in the official records, was an undertaking into which Lees had entered to the effect that, after Barham's death, he would make to a fourth person during that person's life an annual payment of £350. This engagement Lees, when reappointed in 1784, expressed himself unwilling to renew. He was quite prepared to resume the payment to Walcot, reduced only to the same extent as by recent legislation the secretary's emoluments had been reduced; but the reversionary payment to the gentleman whom he would designate by the initials A. B. rested on different grounds. From this he must beg to be released.

Now, who was A. B.? This was the question which Tankerville asked; and asked in vain. He could obtain no information on the subject. Meanwhile Carteret, who was extremely displeased and disquieted at the disclosure, caused an expression of his severe displeasure to be conveyed to Lees that he should have presumed to make public a transaction which was obviously designed to be private. Lees replied that, as he would be unable to keep the engagement, he was bound in honour to state so; that he had made known nothing more than was absolutely necessary in order to obtain an acquittance, namely, that after Barham's death an annuity of £350 had been agreed to be paid to some one; but who this some one was had been, and would continue to be, a profound secret. In London it had been whispered, and more than whispered, that A. B. was Carteret himself. On this point Lees was emphatic. The transaction, he said, concerns no postmaster-general, either living or dead. "With Lord Carteret it has personally no more to do than with the King of France."

Tankerville, though profoundly dissatisfied, resolved to let the matter drop; and during the next eighteen months the feeling of distrust with which he regarded Carteret did not prevent the two postmasters-general from working together harmoniously. It was not until June 1786 that an open rupture occurred. Some furniture had been ordered for the housekeeper's apartments, and Tankerville, regarding it as of too luxurious a nature, refused to countersign the bill unless the secretary could produce a precedent for the expense. This Todd might have had some difficulty in doing, as no housekeeper had resided on the Post Office premises since the year 1740; but instead of offering an explanation to that effect he waited for the next Board meeting, and, having already procured Carteret's signature to the bill, put it before Tankerville without remark. Tankerville, who never signed a document without examining its contents, inquired whether this was not the housekeeper's bill to which he had taken exception, and, on being answered in the affirmative, told Todd that he had been guilty of a gross impropriety. Carteret, who had made no secret of his opinion that it was no part of a postmaster-general's duty to check tradesmen's accounts, took Todd's part; whereupon Tankerville, whose temper was always running away with him, observed that he would do no jobs, and that if a good understanding between himself and Carteret were only to be procured by such means he would rather that they should continue on their present terms.

The next business set down for discussion had a termination still more unfortunate. The office of comptroller of the bye and cross roads had become vacant, and Carteret, whose turn it was to appoint, had appointed Staunton, the postmaster of Isleworth. In addition to a salary of £500 a year, the appointment carried a residence in the Post Office building; and as the residence occupied by the late comptroller had by Pitt's desire been given to Palmer, Carteret proposed that Staunton should be recommended to the Treasury for an allowance of £100 a year as compensation. Tankerville, who had been in personal communication with Pitt and ascertained that he would object to an allowance for such a purpose, declined to join in the recommendation, explaining the reason. Carteret's remarks implied, or seemed to imply, a doubt whether Pitt had really been seen on the subject, as alleged. Tankerville again lost his temper. High words ensued, and the Board broke up, Carteret declaring that it was impossible they should continue to act as joint postmasters-general, and that he should at once wait upon Pitt and inform him to that effect.

Carteret was as good as his word. In three days from the date of the Board meeting at which the altercation had taken place he waited upon Pitt; and Pitt, after labouring in vain to effect a reconciliation, at length dismissed Tankerville. Tankerville, who had been in constant communication with the minister on the subject of the abuses at the Post Office, and had sedulously applied himself to their correction, was hardly less surprised than he was indignant; and restating the origin of the disagreement between himself and his colleague, he demanded to be informed in what respects he had been to blame. Pitt replied that he could not enter into the merits of the question; that all it concerned him to know was that Carteret was necessary to him in the House of Lords; and that, as Carteret had expressed himself unable to act any longer with Tankerville, it had become essential to make another arrangement.

This decision as between two colleagues, of whom one was as clearly actuated by honesty of purpose as the other was not, a decision given too by a minister who had already established a character for purity of administration, seems so extraordinary that we must look for some further explanation. The truth we believe to be that owing to an ungovernable temper Tankerville was simply intractable, and had shewn himself to Pitt to be so. Even Todd, who with all his faults was essentially a man of peace, was unable to get on with him. "I am sorry to say," he wrote on one occasion, "your Lordship is the only postmaster-general I have not had the happiness to serve under with his perfect approbation." On another occasion he wrote to Carteret: "I have had a very unpleasant day of it. His Lordship is so completely jealous and wrong-headed, so that without entering into unpleasing particulars I had better leave him to his own thoughts." Tankerville's own letters afford evidence to the same effect. "I shall not be disposed to talk coolly on the subject of Mr. Dashwood, or hear anything you may have to say, unless you can prove him guilty of fraud, which I do not admit, but now tell you distinctly that I believe Lord Carteret has been indebted to you for that forced construction." Again, "I do not find that I cool very fast," Tankerville wrote from Brighton a week or so after the incident which had excited his ire. Ever his own worst enemy, he now spoiled a good ease, so far as it was possible to spoil it, by intemperate writing. Instead of keeping to the main question, he rambled off into side-issues which were all but irrelevant. Carteret had spoken of one interview with Pitt. Pitt had expressed himself as though there had been more than one. The point was absolutely unimportant. Yet Tankerville fastened upon it, and, declaring that one or the other must have been guilty of untruth, called upon them as men of honour to reconcile the discrepancy.

Intemperate as Tankerville's language had been, it was impossible that things should remain as they were. Nothing but a public inquiry would satisfy the justice of the case; and on this he was resolved. It was a matter of regret to him to impeach Carteret's conduct; but there was no other method of vindicating his own. "The causes of my removal," he wrote, "shall be made as public as the injury; and, however gratified your Lordship and those in concert with you may at present feel by the success of your measures, I will take upon me to foretell that the triumph will soon be at an end. I have been removed; others will be disgraced." "When your Lordship," replied Carteret, "shall think proper to bring this matter before the public, I flatter myself my conduct will be unimpeached."

A Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry was granted, and met for the first time on the 16th of May 1787. The session terminated on the 30th of the same month. Short as the interval was, evidence enough was taken to substantiate all and more than all that Tankerville had alleged. The Committee reported that a payment of £350 a year had been exacted from Lees as a condition of his appointment as secretary to the Post Office in Ireland; that a payment of £200 a year had been similarly exacted from Dashwood, the postmaster-general of Jamaica; that, while Lees had engaged to pay only in a future event, the payment in Dashwood's case had begun from the date of his appointment; that both payments were in favour of the person who had been designated by the initials A. B.; that the transactions, though protested against at the time, had been insisted upon by Lords Carteret and Le Despencer; and that not only had no record of them been made in the official books, but they had been kept carefully concealed. The Committee further reported that scandalous abuses had been found to exist at the Post Office, abuses which should be examined into and corrected forthwith; and that of many of these the First Lord of the Treasury had been specifically informed by Lord Tankerville before the latter was dismissed.

The chief interest of the inquiry, however, centred in the question—who was A. B.? A. B. proved to be one Peregrine Treves, a so-called friend of Carteret's, who had never performed any public service either in the Post Office or elsewhere. "Are you not a Jew and a foreigner?" asked the inexorable Committee. "Yes," was the reply. "In consideration of what services," the Committee continued, "did you receive these grants?" "From friendship entirely," answered Treves.

Tankerville's prediction had been amply fulfilled. It was not he that was disgraced. Yet, curiously enough, Carteret made no sign. And even Pitt did nothing more than expedite the proceedings of a Royal Commission which was already sitting. This Commission had been appointed at his instigation some years before to inquire into the duties and the pay of certain public departments, of which the Post Office was one. It was now arranged that the Post Office was to be the next to come under review.

During these dissensions at headquarters Palmer's plan had made steady progress. Many of the irregularities inseparable from the introduction of a new system had been corrected. The cross-posts had been fitted to the mail-coaches, so that failures of connection were daily becoming fewer; and when the merchants found that answers to their letters were being received in less than half the usual time, and with a degree of punctuality never experienced before, their complaints respecting the early closing of the Post Office appear to have died away. The Post Office revenue bore evidence to the improved state of things, the net receipt during the quarter ending the 5th of January 1787 being £73,000, as against £51,000 during the corresponding quarter of 1784. According to all experience, the increase in the rates of postage should have had the effect of reducing the number of letters; but so far was this from being the case that the number of letters had increased in spite of the increase of rates. The truth is that clandestine correspondence had to a large extent ceased. There was no longer any temptation to send by irregular means, at a cost of two or three shillings, and at the risk of detection, a letter which would be conveyed at least as expeditiously and for one-third of that amount by mail-coach.

Palmer, who had to this time been assisted by persons selected by himself and not belonging to the Post Office, now bestirred himself to procure for them an established position. Public and private interests were for once identical. Hitherto there had been only three surveyors for the whole of England; and of these one had resided in London. At Palmer's instigation, England was now divided into six postal districts, and a surveyor allotted to each. A seventh or spare surveyor was held in readiness to be detached to any part of the kingdom where his services might be required. Each surveyor was to reside in the centre of his district, and his functions, shortly stated, were to keep an accurate record of the posts and of the persons under his charge, to see that these persons did their duty, to facilitate correspondence and to remedy complaints. The resident surveyorship, an appointment which had been created in 1742, was abolished as no longer necessary, Palmer himself being at hand to give what advice the postmasters-general might require. The mode of remuneration was also altered. Hitherto the surveyors had received a salary of £300 a year without any allowance for travelling, the consequence being of course that they had travelled as little as possible. For the future the salary was to be only £100; but as an inducement to them to move about within their own districts, they were to have one guinea a day when absent from their headquarters. The whole of the additional appointments were conferred upon Palmer's nominees, and for the seventh or spare surveyorship he selected Francis Freeling, a young man of promise, who during the last two years had been actively engaged in regulating the mail-coaches throughout the country.

It was about this time or a little earlier that the conditions of Palmer's own employment were, at length, definitely settled, but not by any means to his own satisfaction. His first stipulation was that, besides being absolutely free from the control of the postmasters-general, he should have a commission of 2-1/2 per cent upon all increase in the net Post Office revenue, which should follow as the result of his own plan. Thus, the net Post Office revenue before August 1784 being estimated at £150,000, he stipulated for one-fortieth part of the excess over that amount. To this Pitt agreed; but freedom from the control of the postmasters-general was a point which it was out of his power to concede. The Act of Parliament constituting the Post Office would not admit of it. Even nominal subjection to the postmasters-general was so irksome to Palmer that he was constantly pressing that a special Act might be passed to give him perfect freedom. Nor was this all. The increase in the rates of postage which came into operation one month after the starting of the first mail-coach was estimated to produce £90,000 a year, and Pitt deemed it only reasonable that this amount should be added to the previous revenue of £150,000, making £240,000 altogether, before Palmer could be allowed to draw his percentage. Of this variation of the original understanding Palmer bitterly complained, not seeing apparently that, as the increase of rates had been recommended by himself, the complaint reflected on his own singleness of purpose in making the recommendation.

Eventually it was decided that, in addition to a commission of 2-1/2 per cent upon the net revenue in excess of £240,000, Palmer should receive a salary of £1500; but even this settlement was not arrived at without grumbling on Palmer's part, and without serious misgiving on the part of the Post Office. Pitt highly approved the percentage, holding that it would serve as a constant incentive to exertion. Tankerville, while not denying the expediency of such a mode of remuneration, questioned its legality. Under the Act of Anne, which a subsequent Act had made perpetual, the Post Office revenue was appropriated to certain specific purposes; and he doubted the propriety of diverting any part of it as a reward for services, however meritorious. Clarendon, Tankerville's successor, entertained the same scruples; and except by the postmasters-general no appointment within the Post Office could be made. Palmer's objection, on the contrary, was to the amount of salary, on the ground that £1500 did not represent the fortieth part of £90,000. Pitt declined, however, to give way; and on the 11th of October 1786 Palmer was appointed comptroller-general of the Post Office on the terms prescribed by the minister.

There can be no question that Palmer bargaining for terms is Palmer seen in his least pleasing aspect. The best that can be said is that he was candid enough not to disguise his object, which was to amass a fortune. At Bath he had in his boyhood seen Ralph Allen living in a large house and dispensing hospitality on an extensive scale, and he could not bring himself to understand why the difference between his own and Allen's remuneration should be in the inverse ratio to the value of their improvements. And not only did Palmer exhibit an unworthy jealousy of Allen, but he did that good man, as we think, an injustice. When urging his own claims on the minister, he constantly insisted that Allen, on the introduction of his plan, had no difficulties to contend with, and that he kept that plan a secret. Never was there a more untenable position. That Allen had difficulties to contend with and how he overcame them we have seen in a preceding chapter; and the charge of keeping his plan a secret is refuted by the conditions of his contract, which prevented him from giving an instruction even to his own servants until it had been submitted to headquarters. No doubt it was not known until after his death that Allen had derived from the Post Office an income of £12,000 a year. His wealth had been supposed to come from the stone-quarries he possessed on Combe Down. But this was not the contention. What Palmer insisted upon was that, while he had disclosed his plan, Allen had kept his plan secret, and that, if only on that ground, the balance of merit was on his own side.

In December 1787 the Commission of Inquiry commenced its labours. Exactly a century had elapsed since the Post Office had undergone a similar ordeal, a period too long for any public department to be left to itself; and meanwhile abuses had taken root and flourished. One hundred years before there had been no sinecures. Now the principal officers attended, some of them only occasionally and others not at all; and attendance, when attendance was given, often extended no later than to one or two o'clock in the afternoon. The receiver-general, for instance, attended on three days a week; and the accountant-general attended once or twice in three months, when the quarterly balance had to be made up. Court-post employed a deputy, to whom, out of a salary of £730, he made an annual allowance of £58. The solicitor, like court-post, was an absentee, but, unlike him, was careful not to part with even a fraction of his salary. In this case the deputy received as remuneration one-third part of the law charges incurred—a form of payment calculated more perhaps than any other to promote litigation. In the Penny Post Office were three principal officers—a comptroller, an accountant, and a collector. Of these the first two gave no attendance, and the third attended only occasionally, their duties being imposed upon the chief sorter, who, in all but salary, was practically the head of the department.

Meagre salaries were bolstered up by fees and perquisites, many of them of an outrageous character. While the senior letter-carrier was rigidly restricted to 312 candles in the year, a number not perhaps in excess of his actual requirements, there was hardly an officer reputed to be of any position in the Post Office, whether an absentee or otherwise, who was not provided with coals and candles for his private use. Although to some the supply of these articles was greater than to others, the usual annual allowance was, in the case of a subordinate, four, and, in the case of the head of a department, ten chaldron of coals, and in both cases thirty-two dozen pounds of candles. As the holder of two appointments, although he discharged the duties of only one of them, the comptroller of the bye and cross roads received a double allowance. Many commuted with the tradesmen whose duty it was to supply the articles for a money payment. Altogether the allowance to Post Office servants for their private use in town and country, and irrespective of what was consumed in the official apartments, exceeded in a single year 300 chaldron of coals and 20,000 pounds of candles.

The postmasters-general had long ceased to reside in the Post Office building; and yet to them was supplied, besides coals and candles, what was euphoniously termed tinware, by which is to be understood kitchen utensils. The expenditure on their account under the three heads during two years and a half was, for coals £2230, for candles £700, and for pots and pans £150.

Of stationery there was also a gratuitous supply for private as well as official use. One fee was a peculiarly cruel one, exacted as it was from a class of public servants who were unable to protect themselves. All postmasters whose salaries amounted to as much as £20 were forced to renew their deputations every three years, with no other object than to enrich the harpies at headquarters. On each renewal the same fee had to be paid as on appointment, namely £4:11s.; and of this amount 30s. went to each of the postmasters-general, 10s. to the secretary, 10s. to the solicitor, and 1s. to the door-keeper. The remainder was for stamp duty. Postmasters were also required to pay a fee of half a guinea before receiving a warrant to exempt them from serving in public offices. Christmas-boxes given by the merchants, and designed for the letter-carriers and other subordinates, were to a large extent appropriated by their superiors. From this source the comptroller of the foreign office, with an official income of £1300, was not ashamed to derive £34 a year. Others from the same source derived smaller amounts. Newspapers for reading were supplied in profligate profusion. One head of department was allowed for his own use two morning and five evening papers; another was paid £42:16s. a year to supply himself with what papers he pleased. All, whether absentees or not, received an annual payment under the title of drink and feast money, the lowest amount being £1:17s. and the highest £3:17s., and this was in addition to three or four so-called feasts given annually at the cost of the department. These with percentages on tradesmen's bills were some of the fees and perquisites which were now dragged to the light.

Out of the whole number there was only one which, besides being moderate and unobjectionable, possessed a certain interest as denoting the connection which had at one time subsisted between the Post Office and the Crown. This was a fee of 1s. received by the chief sorter at the General Post Office on the occasion of a birthday in the Royal Family; and as the Royal Family now consisted of twenty-one members, his emoluments from this source amounted to one guinea in the year.

There were two points on which the Royal Commissioners appear to have received less than full information. These were expresses and registered letters. Expresses, according to the old custom of the post, were still going at the rate of only six miles an hour, while the mail-coaches were going at the rate of eight. To this difference the Commissioners called attention; but they were silent as to the fees which some expresses paid, being apparently under the impression that all were treated alike. As a matter of fact, however, expresses had by this time been divided into two kinds—the public express and the private express. The public express, that is the express on public affairs, was allowed to pass without a fee, no doubt because the Post Office dared not impose one; but on every private express, in addition to the authorised mileage, was charged, if from London, a fee of 12s. 6d., and if from the country, a fee of 2s. 6d.; and of course in this, as in every other case, the fees were for the benefit of individuals.

On the subject of registered letters addressed to places abroad the Commissioners merely expressed the opinion that the registration fee, instead of being any longer treated as a perquisite, should be applied to the use of the public; but they nowhere stated, and perhaps had not been informed, what this fee was. It may be interesting if we supply the omission. The fee for registering a packet of value was, outwards[61] 21s., and inwards 5s. It seems incredible, and yet such is the unquestionable fact. For every letter registered for abroad the comptroller of the foreign office received 10s. 6d., the deputy-comptroller 4s. 6d., and six clerks 1s. apiece. One guinea for registration! And it was all the more monstrous because there can be little doubt that at one time letters had been practically registered without any fee at all. An Order in Council dated as far back as July 1556 had ordained "that the poste between this and the Northe should eche of them keepe a booke and make entrye of every letter that he shall receive, the tyme of the deliverie thereof unto his hands with the parties names that shall bring it unto him, whose handes he shall also take to his booke, witnessing the same note to be trewe." In 1603 another Order in Council passed, requiring that "every post shall keepe a large and faire leger paper booke, to enter our packets in as they shalbe brought unto him, with the day of the moneth, houre of the day or night, that they came first to his handes, together with the name of him or them, by whom or unto whom they were subscribed and directed." In 1680 Dockwra, when establishing his penny post, was careful to provide that letters on reaching any one of his seven sorting offices should be "entered"; and in a mere detail of treatment, it may well be believed, he followed the practice of the general post. In 1707 letters from abroad arriving at Harwich were not to be forwarded to the Court at Newmarket until the addresses had been copied. And more than this. In 1709 two letters between London and Ostend had been delayed, and it became important to discover where the delay had occurred. "We find them," wrote the postmasters-general, "both duly entered in Mr. Frowde's books, and are satisfy'd they were regularly dispatched from this office." Now Mr. Frowde was comptroller of the foreign office. It may be added that, small as was the force employed at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, it is difficult to account for the length of time which was then occupied in dealing with a mere handful of letters except on the hypothesis that there was a good deal more to be done than to sort and to tax them. And now the Post Office, upon no better authority than its own will, was exacting a fee of 21s. and 5s., according as the letter was outwards or inwards, for doing what some eighty years before had been done for nothing. The sums extorted from the public under this head were in 1783 £121, and in the following year £240.

As regards the working arrangements, Palmer, in virtue of the power he possessed as comptroller-general, had already corrected those that were most faulty. Until lately, the letter-carriers' walks had been so extensive that many of the deliveries could not be accomplished within five or six hours. Palmer had arranged that no delivery should occupy more than two hours or two hours and a half at the utmost, counting from the time of despatch from the General Post Office. It had been the practice for the junior clerks, the clerks with the least experience, to sort the letters for delivery, the consequence being that they reached the letter-carriers' hands in so confused a state that they had to be sorted again. Hence it had been by no means unusual for an interval of four or five hours to elapse between the arrival of the last mail and the going out of the letter-carriers. By appointing some of the most intelligent letter-carriers to sort the letters in the first instance, Palmer had reduced the interval to one hour on ordinary, and to one hour and a half on extraordinary occasions. As many as 400 postmasters had returned their letter-bills in one week, and on the plea of having been overcharged had claimed and been allowed deductions. Palmer had checked this abuse by arranging that in the case of those postmasters who were in the habit of returning their letter-bills the charges should be twice told. He had also reduced the amount expended on extra duty by £2000 a year. Heretofore, if a man had chosen to absent himself, the Post Office had provided a substitute. For the future the substitute was to be provided at the absentee's own expense.

But although Palmer had already corrected the most faulty of the arrangements, some still existed which could not be pronounced good. The accountant-general was intended to be a check upon the receiver-general; yet, instead of keeping an independent record of the sums received, he merely transcribed or caused to be transcribed the entries from the receiver-general's books. The accountant-general, again, was required to certify every bill before the postmasters-general passed it for payment; but as he was not empowered to call for vouchers or for the authority under which the expenditure had been incurred, his certificate conveyed nothing more than that the bill had been rightly cast. The accounts themselves appear to have been rendered in the strangest manner. The article "Dead Letters," for instance, was made to serve a variety of purposes. Under this article postmasters were accustomed to claim chaise-hire, law charges, and even pensions to private persons.

The packet service was a part of the Post Office which the Commissioners would fain have avoided if they could; but the public voice was too strong for them. The enormous expenditure which this service involved had long excited murmurs, and the opportunity which now offered of investigating the causes of it was one which could not with any regard to propriety be missed. Accordingly the inquiry was entered upon; but with a desire to restrict it as far as possible the Commissioners did not extend their investigations beyond the packet station at Falmouth, where more than three-fourths of the expenditure was incurred. To ourselves, who are under no obligation to observe a similar limit, perhaps a little more latitude may be allowed.

The continental mails by way of Dover and Harwich went at this time only twice a week; and by a curious arrangement these mails started from the General Post Office at midnight, although the inland mails for the same towns and going by the same route started at eight o'clock in the evening. At Harwich the packet station had abandoned itself to smuggling. In 1774 two packets, the Bessborough and the Prince of Wales, were seized for having contraband goods on board. Not a single voyage had these packets made during the last two years without committing a similar infringement of the law. The Commissioners of Customs, whose patience was exhausted, now commenced proceedings in the Court of Exchequer, and were prevailed upon to abandon them only upon the captains, who were also owners of the vessels, paying by way of fine two-third parts of their appraised value—amounting to £306 in one case and to £272 in the other—of which sums one-half was to go to the Crown and one-half to the officer by whom the goods had been discovered. This high reward was not long in reproducing the occasion on account of which it had been given. In November 1777 another seizure took place, this time of three packets simultaneously, two of them being the same as had been seized in 1774. The third was the Dolphin. On this occasion the Commissioners of Customs determined that the vessels should be prosecuted to condemnation. In vain the postmasters-general urged that the law was a hard one which made the captains responsible for offences which, it was alleged, they had done their best to check. The customs authorities were inexorable. It was not long, however, before the Post Office became possessed of certain facts which, when investigated, proved beyond a doubt that there had for years past been collusion of the grossest character. On every voyage contraband goods—chiefly tea, coffee, and gin—had, with the connivance of the local officers of customs, been imported in large quantities; and of these only a part, a comparatively small part, had been seized. Thus, the Post Office servants received from the goods that were left to them ample, and more than ample, compensation for those that were taken away; and the servants of the customs received from their Board in London both credit and reward for their vigilance. Nor was it by any means certain that the seizure of the packets in 1774 and again in 1777 was not another phase of the same collusive arrangement.

At Falmouth the case was somewhat different. Smuggling, indeed, was going on there just as it was at Harwich. As far back as 1744 the customs had issued process against the captains of two of the Falmouth packets for having contraband goods on board. The case is only worthy of mention as shewing the loose notions which at that time prevailed even in high quarters on the subject of clandestine traffic. The postmasters-general of the day, Lord Lovell and Sir John Eyles, told the Board of Customs in so many words that their conduct was unhandsome. It was vain, they urged, to endeavour to prevent "these little clandestine importations and exportations" on board the packets; and if violent measures were to be resorted to, as in the present instance, no captain "of real worth and character" would be found to command, and "no fit and able" seamen to serve. Again, in 1776 the Greyhound packet was seized at the port of Kingston in Jamaica for attempting to smuggle spirits. Early in 1788 the Queen Charlotte packet was condemned and sold at the same port and for the same cause. In 1786 a special agent sent down to Falmouth by Tankerville reported that, according to common repute, no packet either proceeded on a voyage or returned from one without hovering about the coast for the purpose of shipping or unshipping goods.

But, rife as smuggling was, it was something more than an infringement of the customs laws that now brought the packet station at Falmouth into notoriety. During the seventeen years ending the 5th of April 1787, the cost of the packets had exceeded £1,038,000; and of this amount about £800,000 had been expended at Falmouth. At the present day, when a single mail steamer costs perhaps as much as £300,000, the sum of £1,000,000 sterling would not go far to create and maintain a fleet; but a century ago it was considered, even when spread over a period of seventeen years, an enormous expenditure, an expenditure such as, in the language of the Royal Commissioners, almost to surpass credibility. And certainly there seems to have been good ground for this opinion. The packets altogether were only thirty-six in number, of which twenty-one were stationed at Falmouth. These were of no more than 200 tons burthen, and were navigated with thirty men, five of them being the property of the Post Office and fifteen being hired. For each of the hired boats was paid the annual sum of £2129, and for each of the others the annual sum of £1529, these sums including the charge of manning and victualling. The sixteen packets stationed elsewhere than at Falmouth were hired at ridiculously low prices, at Dover for £412 a year each, at Harwich for £469, and at Holyhead for £350. To expend upon the packets under such conditions as these more than £1,000,000 sterling in the course of seventeen years required no small amount of ingenuity. How was it managed? This was the question which the Royal Commissioners now set themselves to solve.

The grossest abuses were found to exist. The hire of the packets had been paid when they were under seizure for smuggling, and under repair, and even when they were building. In the case of packets that were building and under repair the victualling allowance paid when there were no men to victual had amounted in twelve years and a half to £56,000. When packets had been taken by the enemy the hire of them had been paid for months beyond the date of their capture; and this was in addition to compensation to the owners, which, however old and rotten the packet might be, was fixed at her original value when taken into the service. Compensation to the captains had also been given for the loss of their private property and of provisions. For provisions the compensation had always been as for six months' supply, although the supply that was actually on board might not be enough for one month; and for their private property the captains had been compensated at their own valuation. Whatever they had asked they had received without examination and without question. This astounding prodigality indulged in at the expense of the State is easily explained. The Post Office servants in London, down even to the chamber-keeper, had shares in the packets; and of these servants the one who possessed by far the largest number of shares was Anthony Todd, the secretary. Todd also received a commission of 2-1/2 per cent upon the entire sum expended on the packet establishment of the kingdom. Thus, the very man whose duty it was to check the expenditure had a direct personal interest in making the expenditure as high as possible.

The salary of the Secretary to the Post Office remained, as it was fixed in 1703, at £200 a year; and whatever Todd received over and above that amount, he received without authority. Let us see what his actual receipts were. In addition to his proper salary of £200, he had what was called a bye salary of £75. Bye had at one time meant out of course or clandestine; and this meaning would perhaps not be inappropriate here. He had for coach hire £100 a year. He had another £100 a year from Lloyds's coffee-house. He had from fees on commissions and deputations £154 a year. He had every year twenty chaldron of coal and twelve dozen of wax and sixty-four dozen of tallow candles, valued by himself at £103. He had an unfurnished residence with stables in the Post Office building; and he received annually from the East India Company eight pounds of tea and two dozen of arrack. But this was by no means all. As former clerk in the foreign branch, an appointment which he still retained, he had a salary of £50 and an allowance of £100 a year for so-called disbursements, which he never made. He had also, in his capacity of clerk, £15 a year for coach-hire and ten chaldron of coal and thirty-two dozen of candles, valued at £40. Besides all this, he had his commission of 2-1/2 per cent upon the entire packet expenditure of the country, from which source he derived in the year 1782 no less than £2136. Altogether, Todd's modest salary of £200 a year had, by his own unaided exertions, been converted into an annual income of more than £3000.

The extent of Todd's emoluments, his commission on the packet expenditure, the outrageous character of some of the fees and perquisites which he and others were receiving, the absenteeism, the abuses generally—all this had long been known to Pitt. Much he had heard from Tankerville, and still more, probably, from Palmer. But before either Palmer or Tankerville became connected with the Post Office, Pitt had been aware of many, if not most, of the abuses which prevailed there. As early as 1782 one of his first acts after becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Shelburne administration was to give peremptory orders that no more packets were to be either built or purchased without Treasury authority. For such authority it had hitherto been the practice to ask before setting up new packets, but not before replacing old ones—packets that were worn out or alleged to be worn out, or that had been lost or captured. This was a distinction which had existed since packets were first established, and to which, nearly a hundred years before, Cotton and Frankland had attached great importance. It was now to exist no longer. In 1783 Pitt called for a return of the fees and perquisites received at the Post Office, and it was not until after this return had been furnished and possibly in consequence of it that the Commission of Inquiry was appointed. "Did you ever communicate this transaction to Mr. Pitt," inquired the Parliamentary Committee in 1787. "I did," replied Tankerville, "but found him not ill-informed on the subject in general."

It may seem strange that with the knowledge which he unquestionably possessed respecting the prevalent abuses Pitt should have allowed them to go on so long uncorrected. The explanation we believe to be twofold. In the first place he was unwilling to do or suffer to be done anything which might interfere with the introduction of Palmer's improvements. This was a point on which Pitt never ceased to betray the utmost anxiety. To embark on any general system of reform might conflict with the new plan. Let the plan be established first and the abuses could be corrected afterwards. Hence it was, no doubt, that of all the public offices to be inquired into, the Post Office, in spite of the notoriety which its abuses had acquired, was taken last. But this, although the primary explanation, was not, we suspect, the only one. Incorrupt himself, Pitt was extraordinarily tolerant of corruption in others. Witness his defence of Melville. Even of Carteret's transaction with Peregrine Treves he could never be brought to admit more than that it was not a proper one. This tolerance in others of what he would have scorned to do himself we attribute to a conviction on his part that abuses were less to be charged against individuals than as the result of a bad system which made the abuses possible; and what, if we mistake not, Pitt had proposed to himself was to bring to bear upon this system the force of public opinion. A ruthless exposure, we have little doubt, had been in contemplation; and yet when the time for exposure came, Pitt held back. Whether it was that the abuses proved too flagrant to be published with safety or that their correction would involve more time or more money than could then be spared, the fact remains that, after receiving the report of the Commission, Pitt locked it up in his despatch box and kept it there for the space of four years; and not even the postmasters-general could procure a copy.

But secret as the report of the Commission was kept, the procedure at the Post Office was about to undergo a radical change. A change indeed had already begun. Tankerville, on his dismissal in August 1786, had been succeeded by Lord Clarendon; and Clarendon died in the following December. Then followed an interval of eight months, during which Carteret alone administered the Post Office and, as was usual on such occasions, drew the double salary. At length, as Carteret's colleague, Pitt appointed Lord Walsingham; and from that moment irregularity and disorder were at an end. Nothing escaped Walsingham's vigilant eye. To neglect or evasion of work he shewed no mercy. The man honestly striving to do his duty had no better friend. His industry and power of work were simply amazing. All instructions were prepared by him. Not a single letter of any importance was received at the Post Office without the answer to it being drafted in his own hand. Generous to a fault with his own money, he regarded the money of the public as a sacred trust, a trust which could not be discharged too scrupulously. Carteret's opinion was well known, that it was no part of a postmaster-general's duty to check accounts. Walsingham, on the contrary, would allow no account to be passed until he had checked it; and his checking went a good deal beyond the casting. Unless the articles were necessary and the charges reasonable, and unless they were proved to be so to his satisfaction, the account had a sorry chance of being passed. The official hours of attendance had hitherto been pretty much what each man chose to make them. To Walsingham all hours were alike; and at all hours he exacted attendance from others. "It is utterly impossible," wrote the head of one department, "for the accounts to be ready for your inspection to-morrow evening." "I will not fail," wrote the head of another, "to do myself the honour of waiting upon your Lordship to-morrow morning at eight precisely."

Walsingham, on entering upon his duties at the Post Office, was concerned to find that to documents requiring to be signed by the two postmasters-general Carteret attached his signature first. Carteret's peerage dated from 1784, and Walsingham's from 1780. Surely the peer of older creation should sign first; and such, Walsingham found on inquiry, had been the practice hitherto. Pitt, though overwhelmed with business, was called upon to decide the momentous question. He was sorry, he said, that in the preparation of the patent the practice of the Post Office had been overlooked. It was a strange practice, a practice different from that of all other public offices. There the senior, the one who was first to enter the office, took precedence of the junior whatever his rank; and Carteret having been mentioned first in the patent must unquestionably sign first. But this, he added, need not be drawn into a precedent, and, on a new patent passing, the old practice of the office might be reverted to. We may here mention that a few years later the Earl of Chesterfield became Walsingham's colleague; but on that occasion Walsingham does not appear to have raised the question again or to have been unwilling to conform to the new practice. And, indeed, whether Walsingham signed before or after Carteret must to every one except himself have appeared of the least possible importance. Sign in what order he might, Walsingham's influence soon became paramount. Carteret might give what instruction he pleased, but unless endorsed by Walsingham a Post Office servant obeyed it at his peril. Walsingham, on the contrary, gave instructions without reference to his colleague, and exacted prompt and implicit obedience.

With many of the qualities of a great man, Walsingham was strangely wanting in one particular. He had no sense of proportion. A trivial point hardly deserving of a moment's consideration he would elaborate as carefully as a measure involving large and important issues; and a clerical error or a slight indiscretion he would visit as severely as misconduct of the gravest character. Nor must we omit to mention a habit in which he indulged to an extent that has probably never been surpassed. This was a habit of annotating. Nothing came officially before him, whether a letter or a report or a book, without being covered in the margin and every available space with notes and queries; and, to add to the distraction which this mode of criticism seldom fails to cause, they were in so small and crabbed a hand as to be always difficult, and sometimes even with the aid of a magnifying-glass impossible, to decipher.

There was only one person that had the slightest influence with Walsingham. This was Daniel Braithwaite, who, holding nominally the situation of clerk to the postmasters-general, was really their private secretary. Braithwaite was a Fellow of the Royal Society. Of consummate tact and judgment, and endowed with a peculiar sweetness of disposition, he contrived during difficult times to tone down asperities and to accommodate many a dissension which promised to become acute. Passing through his hands a harsh admonition was turned into a gentle reproof, and an imperious command into a courteous message. But under this softness of manner and a deference of language so profound that even Walsingham quizzed him on the number of "Lordships" he would introduce into a single letter, there lay concealed a solidity of character which few would have suspected. Honest Braithwaite he was called, and well he deserved the epithet. By a simple inquiry, a request for information or the expression of a doubt, he would nip some wild project in the bud, and, where occasion required, he would not hesitate to speak his mind freely. A young man, Stokes by name, who had been appointed to assist Braithwaite, had miscopied a date in one of Walsingham's numerous drafts, or rather, feeling sure that the date as it stood was wrong, had altered it to what he believed to be the right one. Walsingham, who was absent from London at the time, wrote back that Stokes was to be suspended. Braithwaite's sense of justice was shocked, and he refused to carry the order into effect. "If a mistake in copying," he wrote, "deserves so severe a punishment as suspension, what am I not to fear for disobedience, and yet I really cannot execute the task your Lordship has imposed upon me. For God's sake, my dear lord," he proceeded, "let me most earnestly entreat you to mitigate the severity of this sentence, and, if a reprimand at the Board is not sufficient, give poor Stokes a holiday and impose the fine for a substitute upon me. At any rate," he added, "pray leave the case to be decided at a Board or refer it to Mr. Todd." Walsingham did refer the case to Todd, but not before he had sternly demanded of his refractory henchman whether he had never read Beccaria on Crimes and Punishments. "No," replied Braithwaite, "I have not read Beccaria on Crimes and Punishments; but Beccaria, say what he may, will never convince me that it can be right to punish a mistake as though it were a crime." Honest Braithwaite! He prevailed in the end, and stood in Walsingham's confidence even higher than before.

At a Board meeting on the 20th of July 1787, less than a fortnight after taking up his appointment, Walsingham in the presence of the captains who were ashore, and who had been summoned to London for the occasion, gave notice of his intention to reduce the packet establishment at Falmouth. That establishment consisted of twenty-one boats of 200 tons each, and manned by thirty men. It was proposed that for the future there should be twenty boats of 150 tons each, and with a complement of eighteen men. These boats would cost about £3000 apiece to build, and would not be the property of the Government. The Government would simply hire them, giving as the price of hire £1350 a year, which was to cover everything, wages and victualling included. The owners would also have the passage money, estimated at £150, for each boat. Large as this reduction was, the Treasury desired that it should be carried further, that only the boats to America should be of as much as 150 tons, and that those for the West Indies and for Lisbon should be of 100. The captains, who had not relished the proposed reduction even to 150 tons, were half-amused and half-indignant. Why, they asked, should the boats for America be the largest? Were hurricanes unknown in the West Indies? And could not the Bay of Biscay boast of tremendous seas? Boats of 100 tons would be positively dangerous. No passenger would go by them; nor would any merchant trust them with bullion, from the freight of which the Post Office derived a considerable income.

The postmasters-general had also on their side the result of experience. In 1745, when the packet service to the West Indies, which had ceased in 1711, was re-established, boats of 100 tons had been tried and had proved to be altogether insufficient. Moreover, it was in the highest degree important, as a means of checking smuggling, that the boats should not be restricted to one route. The intention was that they should be interchangeable, so that their port of destination should be uncertain; and to this end the tonnage of one should be the tonnage of all. The Treasury appear to have remained unmoved by these representations. At all events no decision was received; and Walsingham, after waiting for what he no doubt considered an unreasonable time, took silence for assent and proceeded to carry his recommendations into effect.

The economical results which had been looked for were not immediately realised. The boats hitherto in use may not perhaps have been built with the view of facilitating smuggling; and yet, crowded as they were between decks with cupboards, they could hardly have been better adapted to the purpose. In the new boats no receptacles were to be allowed in which clandestine goods could be concealed; the holds were to be only large enough to contain the stores and provisions for the voyage; the seamen were no longer to remain unrestricted as to the size and number of their boxes; and in other respects stringent regulations were laid down to prevent illicit traffic. Finding what they called their ventures stopped, the crews of the packets refused to go to sea without an increase of pay all round. These ventures, they contended, had been recognised from time immemorial and went in place of so much wages. How else would it have been possible for them, many of them men with wives and families, to subsist on a pittance of 23s. a month? The Post Office was forced to yield to the demand; and as the immediate result of his first essay in the cause of economy, Walsingham had the mortification of seeing the cost of the packet establishment increased by more than £2300 a year.

From Falmouth Walsingham turned his attention to other ports where packets were stationed. At Dover and at Harwich the establishments were too small to admit of any reduction. At the latter port, indeed, what little change took place was on the side of increase, the victualling allowance being raised from 7-1/2d. a day for each man to 9d., so as to be uniform with that given at Falmouth; and for the same reason the seamen's wages were raised from 23s. a month to 28s.

With Holyhead the case was different. Here Walsingham had resolved upon making a reduction, and it was only on an earnest remonstrance from the Marquis of Buckingham, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, that he abandoned his intention. The Holyhead packets were at this time five in number, and they were of seventy tons each and carried twelve hands. Walsingham held that this tonnage and complement of men were more than enough; and Buckingham maintained a directly contrary opinion. Between England and Ireland, he urged, the number of passengers was increasing every year, and surely this was not a time to lessen the confidence of the public in the security of the packets. The danger of navigation in those seas could not, he felt sure, be appreciated. He had himself crossed the Channel in all weathers. Once he had been nearly lost, and not on that occasion alone he had seen the crews, though at their full complement, absolutely prostrate with their exertions. Could it be known that, for purposes of passenger traffic, the captains of the Holyhead packets had recently built and fitted out at their own expense a sloop named the Duchess of Rutland; and that for this sloop, which, although vastly superior in point of accommodation to any one of the packets, was of no higher tonnage, the complement had been fixed at twelve hands? This would shew what was the opinion on the point of those who were most competent to judge. The fact, moreover, that Ireland had undertaken to pay to Great Britain the sum of 2d. on every letter passing to and fro placed the English Post Office under a sort of moral obligation not to reduce the amount of accommodation and security existing at the time the undertaking was given. Such were the arguments by which Buckingham prevailed upon Walsingham to abandon his intention. He at the same time hinted that there were other objects to which Walsingham's energies might more properly be directed. "Does your Lordship know," he asked, "that an immense communication of letters is kept up by the Liverpool packets[62] which sail weekly to Dublin?"

One line of packets remains, the line between Milford Haven and Waterford. Here five boats were employed, of which three were of eighty tons and the others somewhat less; and the service was six days a week. This, though the youngest of the packet stations, was by no means the least interesting. It had been opened in April 1787; and in the first year the proceeds from passengers alone amounted to more than £1200. No doubt had been entertained that in the matter of letters there would be an equally satisfactory account to render; but it soon became evident that all hopes on this score must be given up. The Irish Post Office was no longer subject to the Post Office of England; and in the supposed interests of Dublin, which regarded with jealousy the postal facilities enjoyed by the southern towns, advantage was taken of this freedom from control to checkmate the new service. From Waterford the post for Cork had been used to start at two o'clock in the afternoon, an hour most convenient for the packets. Under orders from Dublin it was now to start at twelve; and, as shewing the vexatiousness of the proceeding, an express leaving Waterford as late as four o'clock would overtake the mail at Carrick, a distance of no more than fifteen miles. Under the same orders Limerick was forbidden to send letters by way of Waterford; and the post between this town and Clonmel was reduced from six days a week to three. This was a state of things which, under the system of Home Rule then existing, Walsingham was powerless to remedy. He could only lift his hands in amazement that such perversity should be possible.

But it was not exclusively or even mainly to the packet establishment that Walsingham's attention was directed. There was no part of the Post Office with which he did not make himself thoroughly acquainted; and in the course of his investigations nothing struck him more than the pitiable condition of the clerks of the roads. The case of these men had been gradually getting worse and worse. It is true that ten years before a part of the salaries and pensions for which they were responsible had been transferred to the State; but the relief thus afforded had been neutralised and more than neutralised by the decrease which had since taken place in their emoluments from the franking of newspapers. Of these emoluments, indeed, little now remained. In the seventeen years from 1772 to 1789 the notices served upon the Post Office by members of Parliament to send newspapers into the country free had risen from a little more than 2000 to 7000, and the number of newspapers which these 7000 notices covered amounted to no less than 65,760 a week. In the face of such competition the special privilege enjoyed by the clerks of the roads was practically valueless, and Walsingham and Carteret clearly discerned that to compensate them for the loss of their emoluments by an increase of salary was an act dictated no less by justice than policy.

The case indeed was urgent if a catastrophe were to be averted; and Carteret, whose experience led him to believe that the salaries would not be increased with the consent of the Treasury, proposed to increase them without. Walsingham was shocked at the audacity of the proposal, and read his colleague a homily on the constitutional proprieties. "I know," replied Carteret, "we shall have the power of increasing salaries with the consent of the Treasury, but many may starve before that consent comes." Even Walsingham admitted the gravity of the occasion; and with the full knowledge that at this time no representation from the Post Office reached the Treasury which did not come under Pitt's own observation, the two peers, after recommending a substantial measure of relief, concluded their letter thus: "We shall find ourselves compelled, if the present weight of Parliamentary and official duties shall make it impossible for your Lordships to give us the authority we request in the course of a week, to take it upon ourselves to issue the money at our own risk, or the persons who are the object of this relief will be unable to attend their duty, and the business of the office will be literally at a stand." Whatever Pitt may have thought of the somewhat unusual terms of this address, he allowed no sign of dissatisfaction to escape him, and the authority sought was given.

As long as Walsingham confined his attention to the packets and the clerks of the roads, there was no danger of a collision with Palmer. Palmer, on the contrary, offered his congratulations to Walsingham on the improvement which he had been instrumental in making in these officers' condition. It was when Walsingham gave an instruction which even indirectly affected the inland posts that Palmer's jealousy was aroused. This he regarded as his own peculiar domain, a domain upon which even the postmasters-general themselves were trespassers; and a trespass or what he considered as such he never lost an opportunity of resenting. The earliest and not the least curious illustration of these pretensions appears in the case of the King's coach. In the summer of 1788 the King repaired to Cheltenham for the purpose of drinking the waters, and Walsingham, who was above all things a courtier, had arranged that during the royal visit a mail-coach should be stationed at that town for the exclusive use of His Majesty. The coach was to be a new one, sent down from London for the occasion, and the leading contractor on the Cheltenham road, one Wilson by name, was to provide the horses. The royal visit at an end, the contractor's bill was sent in, and Palmer, in forwarding it to Walsingham, professed to be extremely dissatisfied with the magnitude of the charge. On the sale of the horses and harness alone, after only a month's use, there had been a loss of £550. "Nothing," he said, "could have been more absurdly or extravagantly conducted." But the thing was done. It would be useless to dispute the payment. Besides, it would "soil the compliment" designed to His Majesty. "We must," he added, "take more care next time, for, had it been properly settled, the loss at most could not have exceeded £300."

The actual arrangement for the coach had been made not through Palmer but through Bonnor, Palmer's lieutenant; and to him Walsingham now applied for further information. Bonnor's reply was a strange compound of candour and insolence. It was indeed not to be wondered at, he said, that his Lordship's indignation should be roused by the magnitude of the bill. Had the matter been left as originally settled under Mr. Palmer's orders, Wilson could never have made so monstrous a claim. By those orders he had been given to understand that, the coach being designed as a mere compliment to the King, not more than 1d. a mile would be allowed at the outside. And "so the undertaking stood 'till your Lordship ordered the circular letter to the horse-keepers respecting Sir George Baker's[63] being accommodated with the mail horses if he had occasion. Your Lordship will recollect that I remonstrated against it, and urged the impossibility of Wilson ever allowing his mail horses to be taken out of his stables for posting, and the regularity of the work destroyed, and the cattle drove along by people he knew nothing of; to which your Lordship was pleased to say that Wilson had no business to trouble his head about that; that, whatever his expenses were, he should be paid; and that no feelings of his about his horses or anything else should prevent the thing being done in the best possible style."... "Thinking as little in the delivery of the message as your Lordship did in sending it that such an advantage would be taken, I of course obeyed the directions, and it seems that this is the ground upon which the charge is made out as it is."

Walsingham was not satisfied, and resolved to contest the bill. Palmer now took alarm, and urged every consideration he could think of to dissuade Walsingham from his purpose. To have recourse to a Court of Law might seriously damage his infant undertaking. A legal dispute had been avoided hitherto, and, with a cunning and refractory set of persons such as the contractors were, might have the effect of raising the present terms of conveyance. These terms were low, lower than the Post Office was likely to obtain again; and the mail-coaches were running smoothly. It would be a thousand pities to introduce an element of disturbance. Besides, how unpleasant it would be to his Lordship to be subpœnaed as a witness; and, in the hands of an expert counsel, how supremely ridiculous the whole business might be made to appear! The King's jaunt with a mail-coach in attendance! For his own part, when he had been unfortunate enough to be imposed upon, he generally found it best to put up with the imposition and to take more care another time. Nor should it be forgotten that the matter might have been much worse. When first he had heard of the arrangement, he had rebuked Bonnor for his extravagance; and Bonnor had produced two letters from his Lordship in justification. These letters shewed not only that no expense was to be spared, but that it had originally been in contemplation to have two coaches, and that it was only owing to Bonnor's earnest expostulation that the idea of a second coach had been given up. Surely it was cause for congratulation that the bill was no higher. Had two coaches been established instead of one, Wilson might have clapped on another £1000. As the bill stood, it was a gross imposition, an imposition which must condemn him in the eyes of all honest men; and yet it would be pure madness to go to law. These arguments prevailed, and Walsingham abandoned his intention of contesting the bill. He did not at this time see, what he saw clearly enough some years later, that in retaliation upon himself for presuming to interfere Wilson had been cajoled or coerced into making an exorbitant demand, and that of the several persons who were concerned in the transaction Wilson himself was the least to blame.

This may be a convenient place to notice a point in which the practice of 1788 differed from that of the present time. It was only a few months after his return from Cheltenham that the King was taken with the serious illness which so nearly proved fatal. On the 9th of November the accounts from Windsor were such as to leave little room for hope. On the 10th intelligence reached the Post Office at three o'clock in the afternoon that, contrary to all expectation, the King was still living; and on the 14th a form of prayer was issued, to be used in all churches, for His Majesty's recovery. At the present time a circular of this kind would reach the Post Office already addressed to the persons for whom it was intended, and the Post Office would do nothing more than carry and deliver it like an ordinary letter. But such was not the case in 1788. The form of prayer, as it was issued by the printer, was sent to the Post Office in bulk, and the Post Office despatched fifty copies to the postmaster of each town with instructions to distribute them "with all possible expedition to the rectors, vicars, or resident ministers of your town and all places in your delivery." The point is hardly deserving of mention, for, of course, it would make little difference to the postmaster whether the copies were sent in bulk or as single letters. He would be bound to deliver them in either case. It is more worthy of note that, as the number of Post Offices in England was at this time only 608, and the area subordinate to each of correspondingly wide extent, to go over the whole of his delivery at one time as these instructions obliged the postmaster to do was no slight undertaking, and one which, owing to the paucity of letters, he had probably not been required to perform on any previous occasion. In this instance, however, we may feel sure that a sense of loyalty alone precluded all disposition to murmur. With far other feelings, it may well be believed, was an order regarded which had been issued rather more than thirty years before. The year 1756 was a year of scarcity; and, under direction from Whitehall, postmasters were to frequent the local markets and to ascertain and report the price of corn. This is the first instance on record of postmasters having been employed outside their own proper duties as such. It may be added that two years later the Duke of Newcastle sent down in hot haste to Lombard Street to inquire the latest prices, when it was explained to His Grace that, despite the course which had been adopted in 1756, the Post Office was not an office for the collection of agricultural returns.

It is a common practice to laugh at public offices for their rigid adherence to routine. This, we think, is not quite reasonable. No doubt it is calculated to excite ridicule, and indeed to irritate beyond all endurance when a course obviously proper in itself is condemned because, forsooth, there is no precedent for it; and we are by no means sure that some public servants would not be all the better for taking to heart the maxim—Wise men make precedents, only fools require them. But, without the order and regularity which a strict adherence to routine can alone produce, the business of a Government department must inevitably drift into a state of hopeless confusion. This is a truth which persons outside the public service have always found it hard to accept; as well indeed as persons inside who have entered late in life or after their habits are formed. Palmer was of the latter class; and a striking instance now occurred of his inability to adapt himself to the requirements of his new situation. Walsingham had asked whether the surveyors were keeping their journals regularly. These officers, besides a small salary, were now receiving an allowance of one guinea a day when travelling; and not only was a journal indispensable in order to shew whether they had been travelling or not, but the keeping of one had been made an express condition of the allowance being given. No subordinate cared to pass on the inquiry to Palmer, implying, as this might seem to do, a doubt. Walsingham had no such scruple and wrote to Palmer asking that the journals might be sent to him for examination. Palmer's reply will explain how it is that the records which now exist respecting himself and his achievements are so surprisingly few. There were no journals, he said. The surveyors' own letters, with their bills of expenses attached, were sufficient evidence of the journeys they had made. And these bills and letters, he added, as soon as the charges which they represent have been paid, "are and must be useless paper, for if I did not constantly clear my office both of their as well as my own and the other officers' rubbish, I should be buried under it." The auditors of the imprests had recently made good progress, but, fortunately for the Post Office, they were still many years in arrear.[64]

Among Walsingham's correspondents was George Chalmers, a merchant of Edinburgh. Chalmers was no mere maker of crude and impracticable suggestions. He had thirty years before been instrumental in shortening the course of post between Edinburgh and London. Before 1758 the Great North Mail, as it was called, went three days a week and occupied eighty-seven hours in going from London to Edinburgh, and 131 hours in going from Edinburgh to London. Thus, a mail leaving Edinburgh at twelve at night on Saturday did not reach London until eleven o'clock on Friday morning. Chalmers, in a paper of singular ability, dwelt upon the absurdity of the various detentions, ranging from three hours at Berwick to twenty-four hours at Newcastle, which made the course of post longer by nearly two days in one direction than in the other, and shewed how, by avoiding these unnecessary delays and getting rid of a diversion of twelve miles to York, the distance might be accomplished between London and Edinburgh in eighty-two hours, and between Edinburgh and London in eighty-five. The plan was adopted, and some years later, in recognition of its merits, Chalmers received from the Government a gratuity of £600. More recently he had prevailed upon the Post Office to increase from three to six days a week the service between London and Edinburgh, and from Edinburgh to the principal towns in Scotland; and in London, at his suggestion, the letter-carriers who collected letters by the sound of bell, or bellmen as they had begun to be called, were being employed after nine o'clock at night.

It was not, therefore, as a novice in Post Office matters that Chalmers now entered into correspondence with Walsingham. His present representation was in the nature partly of a suggestion and partly of a complaint. He had been staying some time in London, and was surprised to find that at the capital of the first commercial nation in the world the Post Office closed as early as seven o'clock in the evening. He contended that it ought not to close before ten. But it was in respect to his own native city of Edinburgh that he felt and expressed himself most warmly. Edinburgh was without a penny post. He was himself an old man or he would undertake to farm one, although, in his judgment, the farming of such an institution, until at least it was well established, was not for the public interests. But surely, whether farmed or not, a penny post should be opened without delay, and on his return to Edinburgh he would let Walsingham know how this could best be done. Nor was the want of such a convenience by any means the chief thing of which the inhabitants of Edinburgh had to complain. Since 1758 their post had not gone out until eight o'clock at night. Now, to suit Palmer's arrangements, it went out at half-past three in the afternoon; and, more than this, the diversion to York, which it had cost such pains to get rid of some thirty years before, had been revived. Thus, between Edinburgh and London the course of post was actually longer now than before the introduction of mail-coaches by as much as five hours. Were a little more consideration to be given to the correspondence of the country and a little less to the convenience of passengers, more than these five hours might be saved. At all events the mails might start from Edinburgh at eight o'clock as before, and from London at ten, and yet arrive at their destination no later than now. For himself, he thought it hardly decent that passengers should be allowed to travel by the same coaches as the mails, and predicted that a time would come when the mails would have coaches to themselves. Much of this, Chalmers added, he had pointed out to Palmer some time before, and the only result was an angry letter which had terminated a friendship of years. Even as he now wrote, another letter had come to hand in which Palmer told him, almost in so many words, to mind his own business.

Walsingham was at this time at Old Windsor. Hither it was his habit to repair whenever he had anything of more than ordinary interest to engage his attention; and such was the case at the present moment. He had recently had lent to him, under a pledge of the strictest secrecy, a copy of the Report of the Royal Commission which had sat upon the Post Office in the preceding year; and this Report he was now having copied under his own eye with a view to the preparation of an elaborate criticism upon it. But though absent from London he relaxed not his hold upon the Post Office for a single moment. Each morning's post brought to Lombard Street its own budget of drafts, to be written out fair, of questions to be answered, of scoldings to be given, and of instructions to heads of departments in the minutest details of their duty. Walsingham absent was a far more important personage than Carteret present; and a mandate from Old Windsor superseded any that might be given on the spot. It was while Walsingham was thus engaged that he received one morning from Palmer a few hurried lines, of which the last were as follows: "You ought not, meaning as well as you do, to be unpopular anywhere. Nor must you. You fret me now and then, tho' you don't intend it, and I am angry with myself for it." A visit from Palmer on the following morning, especially as that morning was Sunday, was little calculated to lessen the surprise with which Walsingham must have read this letter. The truth is that Palmer had repaired to Windsor with the intention of resigning his appointment; but the courteous reception he met with from Walsingham disconcerted his plan, and he returned to London as he had come, with the letter of resignation in his pocket.

The reasons which Palmer afterwards gave for his conduct on this occasion throw a flood of light upon his character. These reasons were: 1st, That Walsingham was ready to listen to proposals for improving the Post Office, come from what quarter they might, thus leaving it to be inferred, as Palmer put it, either that he was himself incompetent to effect improvements or else that there was a sinister design to detract from his reputation. 2nd, That from himself, though vitally interested in its contents, a report was being kept which clerks from his own office had been sent down to Windsor to copy. 3rd, That the same feeling of distrust was evidenced in the constant pressure which was being put upon him to require the surveyors to keep journals. How hollow these reasons were, a very little consideration will shew. In the course of the correspondence with Chalmers, on which the first of Palmer's reasons was obviously founded, Walsingham had been careful to state that, while ready to consider proposals for establishing a penny post in Edinburgh, he must decline to interfere with any of Palmer's arrangements. The second reason, though more plausible, was the merest pretext. Not a month before, with the full knowledge of what was going on at Windsor, Palmer had offered to send down, if required, the whole of his office to assist. And more than this. Although Walsingham could not in honour disclose a document which had been lent to him under a pledge of secrecy, Palmer must have been perfectly well acquainted with so much of the Report of the Royal Commission as dealt with his own undertaking, for it is beyond all question that this part of the Report had been written by himself. There was no other man living who was capable of writing it; and even if there had been, the opinions, the recommendations, the mode of expression, the disparagement of Ralph Allen, all of which are common to the Report and Palmer's private writings, unmistakably betray the author. The third reason requires little remark. Walsingham would have neglected his obvious duty if he had not taken steps to establish some check upon the travelling expenses claimed by the surveyors; and the experience of the hundred years which have since elapsed has failed to devise any better check than the journal. The keeping of the journal, moreover, had been an express condition imposed by the Treasury when the allowance of a guinea a day was authorised.

Walsingham treated Palmer on this occasion with great kindness. Rightly judging that jealousy was at the root of the whole matter, he followed up the conversation which had taken place at Windsor by a letter, in which he exhorted Palmer to speak out, to declare his sentiments freely, and to dismiss idle apprehensions. Then came a full statement from Palmer, written, as he expressly declared, "not as a justification but as an apology for my suspicions," and explaining the object and the motives of his visit on the preceding Sunday. "Your habits are not my habits," he concluded; "I would give a great deal for but a part of your correctness and inveterate attention to business and accounts." Walsingham's reply, which came by return of post, was an invitation to dinner. Palmer accepted it, and the courteous and hearty welcome he received called forth his warmest acknowledgments.

The duty of the mail guards, as their title implies, was to guard and protect the mails. This body of men, as it existed during the first forty or fifty years of the present century, was one of which the Post Office might well be proud. The very nature of their employment engendered in them a habit of self-reliance and an independence of character which invested them with a peculiar interest. But it was not always so. When mail-coaches were first established, Palmer had it in contemplation to employ retired soldiers as mail guards, on the ground that soldiers would be accustomed to firearms; but constitutional objections prevailed and the contractors who furnished the mail-coaches with horses were required also to furnish firearms arms and the men to use them. The result was not satisfactory. For economy's sake men were employed of little or no character, and the weapons with which they were supplied were of the most worthless description. More than worthless, they were dangerous. "Cheap things;" they were declared to be, "that burst and often did mischief." Accordingly, at Palmer's suggestion, the Post Office undertook to appoint its own mail guards. Honest and faithful as these men always were, it was only by degrees that they grew into the fine body they afterwards became. At first the novelty of their position led them into little excesses such as were never heard of in later years. Thus, a statute passed in 1790 imposed a penalty of 20s. on any mail guard who should fire off the arms with which he was entrusted for any other cause than the protection of the mail; and even this enactment appears to have been insufficient to correct the abuse against which it was directed. "These guards," writes Pennant two years later, "shoot at dogs, hogs, sheep, and poultry as they pass the road; and even in towns, to the great terror and danger of the inhabitants."[65]

It must not be supposed, because Palmer's name is associated with the establishment of mail-coaches, that to these his attention was exclusively confined. In virtue of his appointment as comptroller-general he exercised control, subject of course to the postmasters-general, over the whole of the Post Office, the offices of account excepted; and he now took advantage of this position to create a newspaper office. Newspapers had long been a source of trouble. By the clerks of the roads they were not only posted in good time but were tied up in bundles, covered with strong brown paper, and addressed to the postmasters of the respective towns, who took out the contents and had them delivered. So long as the newspapers were thus dealt with, no inconvenience resulted from their being mixed up with letters; but from the moment that the distribution passed into the hands of the printers and dealers the case was different. The newspapers were now posted at the last moment, and, being clumsily folded and still wet from the printing press, they damaged and defaced the addresses of the letters with which they came in contact in the mail bags. The inconvenience had been tolerated for years. As early as 1782 the postmasters-general had contemplated the creation of a newspaper office, an office in which newspapers might be dealt with separately from letters, but nothing had been done. Palmer now took the matter in hand and carried it through with his usual vigour. Having satisfied himself that a separate office was necessary, he forthwith established one, appointed to it eighteen sub-sorters and fixed their wages; and not even the postmasters-general were aware of what he was doing until it was done.[66]

Such an instance of energy, worthy as we may think it of imitation, would be impossible on the part of any one who had been brought up in the public service, because he would have learnt that no wages can be fixed or new offices created without the consent of the Treasury. In the Post Office, too, the postmasters-general alone were legally competent to make appointments. But to Palmer these were the merest trifles, if indeed he gave them a thought. To create a newspaper office was a right thing to do, and he had done it; and to haggle about the circumstances of the doing appeared to him sheer pedantry. Not so thought Walsingham. It ill accorded with his sense of propriety that a number of new places should have been created without the requisite authority which the Treasury alone could give; but that to these places, whether authorised or not, a subordinate should have presumed to make appointments—a power which by the postmaster-generals' patent was vested in themselves alone—struck him as little short of an outrage.

Unfortunately for Palmer, another irregularity on his part came to light at the same time. The mail guards' wages had been fixed at 13s. a week; but of this sum Palmer paid only 10s., retaining the balance for the purpose of providing uniforms, pensions, and an allowance during sickness. Again, the plan was excellent; but it was unauthorised, and had the effect of leaving in Palmer's hands, without any means of checking it, a sum of liberated money amounting to about £900 a year.

Walsingham now called upon Palmer to give the details of his plan, with a view to its being properly authorised, and to submit the names of those whom he had appointed to the newspaper office, so that their appointments might be confirmed. Palmer would do neither the one nor the other. Walsingham persisted in his demand, and Palmer persisted in his refusal. No course remained but to submit the matter for Pitt's decision; and Pitt decided in Walsingham's favour. Palmer, said the minister, had the power of suspending Post Office servants but not of appointing them, although the postmasters-general, it might well be believed, would consent as a matter of favour to accept his nominations. Pitt also agreed that the mode of dealing with the mail guards' wages was highly irregular. The decision of the minister was communicated to Palmer, but it had not the slightest effect upon his conduct. The mail guards' wages continued to be dealt with as before; and the appointments to the newspaper office remained unconfirmed.

Pitt's decision was not given until the autumn of 1789; and meanwhile other matters had occurred to strain the relations between Walsingham and Palmer. Chief among these was Walsingham's inveterate habit of scribbling. Both men were endowed with an amount of energy which nothing could repress; but while Palmer expended himself by rushing from one part of the country to another as fast as horses could carry him, Walsingham's sphere of activity was restricted to writing. And well he exemplified the law that force asserts itself in proportion to the limits within which it is confined. His notes and questions were literally endless. At one time all the ingenuity of Lombard Street, with the assistance of erasers and acids, is being exercised to remove remarks he has written upon a document which, not being the property of the Post Office, had to be returned. At another, he has sent for a blank form of contract, of which only a single copy remains in the Office. "I implore your Lordship," writes the sender, "to let me have it back, and that the margin may not be written on." Palmer, to whom pens, ink, and paper were an abomination, would think nothing of posting a hundred miles and more to avoid the necessity of writing a letter; and by Bonnor, Palmer's lieutenant, who always aped his master as far as he dared, answers to the questions put to him would be withheld altogether or reserved for the next Board meeting. "I can perceive," wrote Todd to Walsingham about this time, "you are hurt that neither Mr. Palmer nor Mr. Bonnor pay a proper regard to your many observations."

Another matter occurred at this time which, while only indirectly affecting Palmer, was not calculated to promote harmonious relations. Bonnor, who had sent some accounts to Windsor for Walsingham's signature, wrote two or three days later, urging that they might be signed and returned at once, and giving as a reason the importunity of the letter-carriers. "What these poor oppressed creatures will do," he said, "I know not. They all came in a body this morning and gave a most affecting description of the distresses with which their wives and families laboured, their credit exhausted, not a shilling to buy bread, and each having between £30 and £40 of hard-earned wages due to them from a public office whose revenues are every day increasing." This struck Walsingham as very strange. The letter-carriers were paid by weekly wages; and what, over and above their wages, they had earned for extra duty should also have been paid weekly. Besides, the accounts had been in his hands for only two or three days, whereas for the last twelve months and more he had been pressing for their production, and had only now succeeded in getting them.

There was a mystery somewhere, and, as the best means of solving it, Walsingham called for the vouchers. Bonnor now lost himself in excuses. The vouchers were essential to his reputation. He could not part with them. If once they left his hands, they might be lost. It could not but be known to his Lordship how often this had happened with official papers passing to and fro. Besides, to inspect the vouchers would be to pry into his private concerns. This was enough for Walsingham, and he directed the accountant-general to look into the matter forthwith. The examination revealed a curious state of things. The amounts which the letter-carriers had earned for extra duty had not been paid for a whole year, and a part of the money which had been issued for that purpose had been applied to the payment of the persons irregularly appointed to the newspaper office. More than this. The accounts shewed, or professed to shew, that during the last eighteen months the mail-coach contractors had received in payment of their services the sum of £20,000; but the receipts for more than £16,000 of this amount bore no dates, and others were signed by Bonnor himself. "Signed," to use his own words, "by myself for money paid by myself to myself." In short, the so-called vouchers were no vouchers at all. Bonnor now made an apology, which, in point of abjectness, has probably seldom been equalled; and Walsingham, unwilling to force matters to extremities, let him off with a sound dressing. This disclosure did not tend to restore either harmony or confidence. Palmer, it is true, gave no heed to accounts; but Bonnor was under his protection, and Palmer resented a censure upon his lieutenant and friend even more than a censure upon himself.

We doubt whether in England a public department has often been in so singular a position as that which the Post Office occupied during the six months beginning with September 1789. Carteret had been dismissed;[67] and Westmorland, Carteret's successor, whose patent had been delayed owing to the absence of the law officers from London, had not even entered upon his duties as postmaster-general before he wrote to announce his appointment as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Meanwhile Palmer resolutely withheld obedience from the orders of his chiefs, backed though those orders were by the minister; and Walsingham was powerless to act. Minutes indeed he prepared by the score, proposing the most drastic measures; but Carteret refused to sign because he was on the point of going out, and Westmorland refused to sign because he had only just come in, and had no intention of remaining. Walsingham's signature alone carried no legal force. It was not until the following March, the March of 1790, that the office of postmaster-general was again properly filled by the appointment of Lord Chesterfield as Walsingham's colleague.

At the risk of interrupting the course of our narrative we cannot refrain from mentioning here in its chronological order memorial which was at this time received from certain merchants of the city of London trading with foreign parts. This memorial, or rather the counter-memorial to which it gave rise, is interesting if only as serving to shew that the conservative instinct—an indisposition to change, is not confined to public offices. The delivery of inland letters had been recently expedited; but foreign letters continued to be delivered as of old. Lest the practice in the case of these letters should seem to be overstated, we give it in the memorialists' own words. "It is the practice of the Post Office," they write under date the 20th of January 1790, "if a mail does not arrive before one o'clock to withhold the delivery of the letters till the next day, and even to protract the delivery till after the same hour the succeeding day, provided any other mail be expected or due. This happening on a Saturday (a case by no means uncommon), the letters are kept back till the Monday, when three other mails being due, and they not arriving perhaps till the stipulated hour of one, the delivery of the mail which arrived on Saturday is not made till between three and four o'clock on the Monday and sometimes later. Thus the advice of property shipt to a great amount on which insurances should immediately have been made, the receipt of remittances on which the credit of many persons may depend, and the general information so essential in commercial affairs are cruelly withheld for upwards of fifty hours without the least apparent necessity." The remedy which the memorialists proposed was moderate enough. They asked nothing more than that, in the case of mails arriving before four o'clock in the afternoon, letters might be given out to persons who should call at the Post Office for them in two or three hours after the mail had come in, such as were not called for being, at the expiration of that interval, sent out by letter-carrier; and that, in the case of mails arriving after four o'clock, the letters might be delivered at ten o'clock on the following morning.

The unfortunate merchants who signed this memorial little bethought themselves of the storm they were raising. Other merchants, also trading with foreign parts and more numerous than those who advocated an earlier delivery, put forward a counter-memorial strongly protesting against any change. The custom of postponing until the following day the delivery of all foreign letters arriving at the Post Office after one o'clock was, they said, a wise custom, a "custom recommended by our ancestors," and one that could not be altered save to their own great prejudice. The original memorial had been studiously kept from themselves, and "this most extraordinary proceeding" they could only ascribe to a well-founded apprehension on the part of the promoters that otherwise the impropriety of the "novelty" which they sought to introduce would be exposed. The remonstrants added that many and cogent reasons might be given in support of the existing usage; but, unhappily, they omitted to state what these reasons were. Doubtless, however, jealousy lest others should obtain priority of information was at the bottom of the protest; although it is not very clear how, under a regulation that was to be common to all, any one in particular would enjoy an undue advantage.

The Post Office, unassisted in this instance by Palmer, declared the change to be, if only on account of want of space, impossible. The average number of letters arriving by each foreign mail were at this time—from France 2500, from Holland 2000, and from Flanders 1500, or 6000 altogether. At the present day, when as many as 500 sacks full of letters come by a single mail, and several mails may arrive simultaneously, 6000 letters more or less make little appreciable difference. One hour at most is enough for three men to sort them. But in 1790 the office in which the foreign letters were sorted possessed but a single table and a single alphabet or sorting rack.

Although want of space was the ostensible reason for refusing an earlier delivery, there was another, not avowed indeed, and yet which, there can be no doubt, materially influenced the decision. This will be best explained in the words of the comptroller of the foreign letter department. "The delivery of foreign letters," writes this officer to Walsingham, "is so complicated with the secret office[68] that any alteration will deserve the most serious consideration when you come to the Board."

It would hardly excite surprise if Chesterfield, on entering upon his duties in Lombard Street, had fallen under the influence of a colleague who, besides being possessed of a strong will, had had some years' experience in Post Office administration; but, as a matter of fact, he does not appear to have surrendered his private judgment. On one point, indeed, he took a view somewhat different from Walsingham. Walsingham regarded Palmer, in so far as he withheld obedience from the postmaster-generals' orders, as simply an insubordinate servant. To Chesterfield, on the contrary, Palmer was an object of no common interest. That two peers of large social influence, deriving their authority direct from the Crown, and to some extent supported by the minister, should be held in check by one man, and that man a subordinate, was an incongruity which struck Chesterfield's imagination. It amused him. It interested him. He could not withhold his meed of admiration from the masterful spirit which fought single-handed against long odds, and not always without success. The very terms Chesterfield employed, while implying a consciousness of defeat, implied also a certain amount of homage to the victor. It was always as "our Master," "our Dictator," "our Tyrant" that he referred to Palmer; and it is difficult to believe that a man who could thus playfully express himself would have proved implacable.

For ourselves, we have little doubt that, if at this time Palmer had demeaned himself with only moderate reserve, all might yet have been well; but it must be admitted that, from now till the end of his official career, his conduct was strangely aggressive. We have already seen how he made appointments to the newspaper office without reference to the postmasters-general, and how, in their despite, he retained in his own hands a considerable balance arising out of deductions from the mail guards' wages. He now went further. He declined to attend the Board meetings: he not only omitted but refused to answer inquiries which the postmasters-general addressed to him; he persistently withheld the surveyors' journals, if, indeed, he had required journals to be kept; he claimed to make contracts and to introduce what measures he pleased without the postmasters-general being so much as consulted; and because Walsingham and Chesterfield would not admit the claim, he suffered the contracts to expire, and the mail-coaches were run on mere verbal agreements. "Except the warrants we have signed," wrote the postmasters-general in October 1790, "there is no record whatever in our possession of any of Mr. Palmer's proceedings since his appointment."

From disobedience Palmer proceeded to defiance. We will give instances. The proprietors of the mail-coach between Carlisle and Portpatrick had demanded payment at the rate of 2d. a mile, and Palmer had agreed to the demand. This was just double the usual rate, and the postmasters-general, fearing that if given on one road it could not be refused on another, determined, before signing the warrant presented for payment, to obtain Treasury authority. Palmer, knowing that delay would thus be caused, protested that no such authority was necessary, and, in order to enforce his protest, stopped four mail-coaches, for which was being paid more than the usual allowance of 1d. a mile, namely, the coach to Falmouth, the coach to Bristol, the coach to Plymouth, and the coach to Portsmouth—coolly informing the postmasters-general that he had done so "under the idea that appears to influence their Lordships, that paying a higher rate to the proprietors on one road might induce others to make a similar demand." He next inquired whether the postmasters-general were to be understood as preferring a cart to the mail-coach, even though a cart should be the more expensive of the two. As nothing had been said about a cart, the postmasters-general remarked that this could only be meant for insult. Insult! rejoined Palmer, he was as little capable of offering an insult as he was of putting up with one; and then he proceeded to charge the postmasters-general with the grossest partiality. The postmasters-general had increased the salary of the postmaster of Tewkesbury beyond what Palmer conceived to be necessary. He denounced the transaction as extraordinary and ill advised, and, while himself professing to believe that it proceeded only from motives of benevolence, expressed his conviction that others would regard it as "a job." Smuggled goods had been found in the mail-box of the Dover coach; and coach, horses, and harness had, in consequence, been seized by the Commissioners of Customs. The same man who, in order to force a decision, had stopped four mail-coaches in a single morning, now rated the postmasters-general soundly because they did not at once and without inquiry take steps to get the Commissioners' proceedings reversed. "The comptroller-general," wrote Palmer on another occasion, "has informed their Lordships of his motives for not answering several of the postmaster-generals' minutes, which he trusts cannot but be satisfactory to them. The same reasons will prevent him from answering any others their Lordships may send but such as appear to him absolutely necessary."

But the particular case which brought matters to a climax was connected with Scotland. Palmer had sent two officers to Edinburgh, not to promote the conveyance of mails by coach, but to reform the internal management of the Scotch Post Office; and these officers had given orders for various changes to be made. Robert Oliphant was at this time deputy postmaster-general for Scotland, and from him alone, according to the terms of his commission, were Post Office servants in Scotland to receive instructions. It was by mere accident that the postmasters-general heard of the proceedings of Palmer's agents in Edinburgh, and, as soon as they did so, they wrote to Oliphant desiring that the proposed changes might be suspended until he had reported his opinion upon them and received authority from London for carrying them into effect. They at the same time wrote to Palmer, sending him a copy of their letter to Oliphant, and giving him to understand that he had exceeded his powers.

Palmer now threw off all restraint. He charged the postmasters-general with superseding his commission; he cautioned them against further interference with his regulations, and he appealed to the minister, to whom alone he declared himself to be responsible. It was true, he said, that he was nominally responsible to the postmasters-general, but, except for a legal difficulty connected with the constitution of the Post Office, he would have received an independent appointment. His commission had been made out as it stood merely as a matter of present necessity; and that in such circumstances they should venture to supersede it appeared to him a hasty and ill-advised measure—a measure not consistent with the judgment and temper which usually guided their proceedings. He had a profound veneration for the nobility of the country, and he could give no stronger proof of it than by stating that he still retained his respect and esteem for them in spite of their unhandsome conduct. The more he reflected on this conduct, the more he was struck at the haste and violence of it. Was it reasonable to suppose that he would consent to carry out his plan in trammels and fetters, and, liable as the postmasters-general were to change, to submit his regulations to them to be checked and controlled? The considerations for which he had received his appointment were twofold—for the good he had done in the past, and for the good he might do in the future. "When, therefore," he continued, "your Lordships from mistake or ill-advice shall send me any commands that I think may go to mischief instead of good, I shall most certainly not observe them; and if I apprehend ill consequences from any you may think proper to send to any of the officers under me, I shall take the liberty, for your Lordships' sake as well as my own and the public's, to contradict them."

It was impossible that this state of things should continue. Palmer had appealed to Cæsar; and to Cæsar he should go. Such at least was the postmaster-generals' intention, and they so far carried it into effect as to state their case in writing; but an interview with the minister, though solicited over and over again, the minister always found some excuse for declining. "We shall wait with the utmost impatience to hear from you that you have found a leisure moment when we may wait upon you to explain the nature of the question between Mr. Palmer and us." "The postmasters-general," they wrote again after a long interval, "present their compliments to Mr. Pitt. He will see by the enclosed copy of a minute from Mr. Palmer how totally the business of this Office must stand still, as far as respects the comptroller-general's department, till they can have the honour of seeing Mr. Pitt." And again, a fortnight later, "the postmasters-general present their compliments to Mr. Pitt, and take the liberty to remind him of the comptroller-general's two last minutes, and desire to have the honour of waiting upon him on Wednesday next at any hour he may be pleased to appoint previous to their holding their usual Board."

But all to no purpose. The truth is that Pitt was heartily tired of these unhappy dissensions. Palmer was doing, and doing admirably, the task which he had set himself to do. He might not indeed be all that could be desired. His conduct might be masterful and his pretensions absurd. Yet much allowance was to be made for a man who had undertaken a difficult business, and whose efforts had been crowned with success. And lamentable as the dissensions might be, there was no certainty that interference would effect a reconciliation. On the contrary, it might serve only to widen the breach, and, to judge from the past, this was the more likely result. And should the breach prove irreparable and a decision have to be given against the reformer who had done so much for his country, and from whom yet more was expected, it would be little short of a disaster. Better that matters should remain as they were than incur such a risk. We can well believe that some such considerations as these influenced Pitt in avoiding an interview; and doubtless he was confirmed in his decision by what he learned from another quarter. Palmer was a friend of Camden's, and Camden was a friend of Pitt's. To this common friend Palmer gave his own version of the differences between himself and his chiefs; and this version, which was altogether different from the one which the postmasters-general gave, was studiously impressed upon Pitt to their prejudice.

Thus matters stood when, early in 1792, in consequence of some discrepancies in the accounts, the postmasters-general determined that letters for the city by the first or morning delivery should be checked. Care had been taken that the check should not be of a nature to retard the delivery; and yet, strangely enough, the delivery became later and later every day. At length a public advertisement appeared inviting the merchants and traders to meet at the London Tavern on Wednesday the 15th February in order to consider the subject. The meeting was held under the presidency of Alderman Curtis, one of the members of Parliament for the city; and strong resolutions were passed directing the postmaster-generals' attention to the delay, and calling upon them to explain and remove the cause.

Charles Bonnor, the deputy comptroller-general, owed all he possessed to Palmer. It was by Palmer that he had been brought into the Post Office in July 1784, and the same influence procured for him shortly afterwards a salary of £500 and an allowance of £150 a year for a house. Warm in his attachments as he was fierce in his animosities, the great reformer extended to Bonnor a confidence which probably no other man possessed, and during his frequent absences from London kept up with him a correspondence in which he poured out his inmost thoughts. This person, stung with jealousy at some fancied coolness on Palmer's part, now published a pamphlet in which he charged his friend and benefactor with wilfully delaying the delivery of the morning letters, and then promoting the meeting at the London Tavern in order to protest against a mischief of his own making. According to Bonnor, Palmer had spared no effort to induce persons to attend the meeting, and had furnished Alderman Curtis, the chairman, with materials for denouncing the Post Office. All this, it was alleged, had been done in order to bring the postmasters-general into discredit, and to create a demand that Palmer might have larger powers given him and be left to deal with Post Office matters according to his unfettered judgment.

The postmasters-general were overwhelmed with astonishment. At first they could not bring themselves to believe that the pamphlet was authentic, and it was not until they had been reassured on this point that they began to make inquiries. Palmer, of course, denied the charge, and Bonnor reaffirmed it. Meanwhile the resolutions passed at the London Tavern had been sent to the Post Office; and the postmasters-general, not knowing what to believe, simply referred them to Palmer, with a request that he would explain the cause of the late delivery. Palmer's reply shews the frame of mind he was in. "The cause of the late delivery," he answered, "as well as every other existing abuse in the Post Office, arises from the comptroller-general not having sufficient authority to correct it." The postmasters-general naturally inquired in what respects his authority was insufficient to prevent the late delivery, and to what other abuses he referred. Palmer, without specifying what these abuses were, replied that among the causes which had produced them were "an unfortunate difference in opinion, and an equally unfortunate interference in his office"; and then he proceeded to ask for larger powers, which the postmasters-general, consistently with the terms of their patent, were unable to give.

A few days later Palmer did that which should perhaps have been done before. He suspended Bonnor. The postmasters-general also took action, but at the very moment when it might have been better if they had remained passive. They inquired the reason of Bonnor's suspension, and Palmer returned no reply. After waiting a week, the postmasters-general decided that, as no reason had been given, the suspension must be taken off; and Bonnor was directed to resume duty. On presenting himself for this purpose, however, Palmer refused to give up the key of his room, and sent him word that, if he dared to come to the Office again, the constables would have orders to turn him off the premises. The postmasters-general had put themselves in a false position. If their intention was to try conclusions with Palmer, they had selected the worst possible ground. Their only choice now was between submitting to defiance of their authority and supporting a worthless subordinate against his illustrious chief. They elected the latter alternative; and the suspension which had been imposed upon Bonnor was transferred to Palmer.

An interview with the minister had now become indispensable; and at length, but not without a great deal of pressure, Pitt fixed the 2nd of May for the purpose. Chesterfield was at Bath, slowly recovering from an attack of the gout. He was reluctant to leave his colleague unsupported on the occasion; and yet for a man who was still far from well it was a long and tedious journey to London. Should he go or should he not? A decision could not be longer delayed, as the 1st of May had already arrived. He ordered horses to be put to his carriage, then he countermanded them, then he changed his mind again, and finally, in response to a sudden twinge of the gout, he finally abandoned his journey, and determined to write to Walsingham a letter such as he might shew.

Chesterfield, unlike Walsingham, wrote a beautiful hand, a hand that was clear and easy to read; but on this particular occasion, in order that Pitt might have no excuse for not reading the letter, he wrote more clearly and legibly than usual. He had—thus the letter ran—been in fifty minds whether he should not repair to London and take part in the interview with Pitt; but he was still so lame that he durst not venture on so long a journey. His desire to be present had not indeed been prompted by the slightest doubt as to what Walsingham would do or say. On the contrary, he had the fullest confidence that his colleague would strictly adhere to the resolution which they had adopted, that on no consideration could Palmer remain with them at the Post Office. This resolution the experience which they had gained since his suspension had served to strengthen, for how much better and with how much greater regularity had they gone on since they had in fact as well as in name been postmasters-general. All this would doubtless be pressed upon Pitt, and, should he waver in the least, he must be informed of their ultimatum, which nothing could make them change. If, contrary to expectation, they should be driven to that option, they must be satisfied to retire from an office where they had done their duty and could do it no longer. To the full extent of the resolution they went hand in hand to Pitt, and this point could not be pressed upon him too strongly. Should he begin to propose any middle measures, Walsingham should stop him at once. It would be disgraceful to listen to them. "Our resolution once taken, no power, no persuasion, no influence ought to shake it, and I am confident nothing will."

Walsingham waited upon the minister at the appointed time. Pitt received him courteously indeed, but coldly. Walsingham stated his case. Pitt said little, but that little clearly shewed that his leanings were in Palmer's favour. Palmer had done good service to the public. Was it impossible that he should be restored to duty? Or, much having been alleged and nothing proved, might not a court of inquiry be held by which the questions at issue between him and his chiefs should undergo a thorough and impartial investigation? After these and other questions had been put and answered, Walsingham produced Chesterfield's letter. Pitt read it from beginning to end, folded it up, and returned it. Formal civilities followed, and the interview was at an end. That night a letter from Walsingham informed Chesterfield that assuredly two persons would be dismissed from the Post Office, and that of these two persons Palmer would not be one.

The postmasters-general were in a state of sore perplexity. Of Pitt's intentions they entertained not the slightest doubt. "The Post Office chair," wrote Chesterfield, "totters under us"; and again, "I see that can the ingenuity of man detect a flaw in our proceedings, we are to be the victims." The doubt which the postmasters-general felt concerned their own conduct. Rightly or wrongly, they believed that they were powerful enough to depose the minister, and the question which now agitated their minds was whether they should have recourse to so violent a measure, or whether they should simply resign. Bonnor saved them from the necessity of coming to a conclusion on the point. This person had hoarded up the private correspondence which, during years of close intimacy and friendship, had passed between himself and Palmer; and among the correspondence were many compromising letters. Such of these as he could readily lay his hands upon Bonnor, with incredible baseness, now carried to Walsingham, and Walsingham in an evil moment accepted them.

The temptation was no doubt strong. Even in the eyes of the postmasters-general themselves it was a comparatively small matter that they were on the point of losing their places. But it was by no means immaterial to them that they should appear to Pitt, as they were conscious of appearing at the present time, in the light of false accusers, persons who had brought false charges, or at all events charges which they could not substantiate; and these letters would prove all, and more than all, that had been alleged or even suspected. They laid bare the story of the King's coach. They shewed how on that occasion the contractor had been cajoled into making an exorbitant charge in order that Walsingham might be deterred from again interfering in what Palmer regarded as his own peculiar province. They shewed also how, from that time to the present, a deliberate plot had existed at headquarters to hinder and thwart Walsingham in everything he undertook.

And yet they were private letters, letters which had passed under the seal of confidence. It is by no means the least strange part of a strange and painful business that it appears never to have crossed the mind of either Walsingham or Chesterfield that this was a class of evidence which could not with propriety be used. Bonnor, not content with the letters he had already produced, searched his correspondence through from the time that he and Palmer became connected with the Post Office, and hailed any additional testimony he was able to collect against his former friend and benefactor with fiendish delight. He literally revelled in the shameless task he had set himself to perform. Evidence-hunting he called it. "We shall not only prove all that has been asserted," he wrote, "but a great deal more; and on the grand point of his premeditating a thorough and complete confusion in the business of the inland office, for the declared purpose of thereby disgracing the postmasters-general, I have proof that for strength and conviction no holy writ can exceed. But," he added, "I have a great deal to work up yet."

As soon as the unholy brief was completed, a second interview took place with the minister. Pitt appears again to have said little, even less than on the previous occasion. He had been deceived. The postmasters-general must take their own course. The rest is soon told. Two official minutes were prepared, the one in Lombard Street and the other at Whitehall. By the postmaster-generals' minute Palmer, the insubordinate Post Office servant, was dismissed.[69] By the minister's minute Palmer, the distinguished Post Office reformer, was granted a pension equal to double the amount of his salary. His salary was £1500, and he derived another £1500 a year from his percentage. The pension which Pitt conferred upon him was £3000. To this was added later on, after an interval of many years, a Parliamentary grant of £50,000.

Bonnor—we blush to record it—received as the reward of his infamy the place of comptroller of the inland department. His promotion brought him little pleasure. The Post Office servants, with all their faults, were loyal to the backbone, and they could ill understand being presided over by one who was branded with the foulest of all private vices, with treachery to a friend and ingratitude to a benefactor. His subordinates would hold no communication with him beyond what their strict duty required. His equals shunned him. Outside the Post Office, go where he would, he received the cold shoulder. Never was man left more severely alone. At the end of two years fresh postmasters-general came who, under the plea of abolishing his appointment, dismissed him with a small pension. Then he became insolvent, and was thrown into prison. Released from confinement at the end of the century, he published pamphlet after pamphlet, having for their object to vindicate what he was pleased to call his good name; but these vindications, though replete with professions of honour, proved nothing more than that the writer was a poltroon as well as a traitor.

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