He considered that to run toll free and duty free was sufficient to secure them against competition, but, curiously enough, this never seems to have been tried, for though the roads were compelled to let the mails run without paying toll, the Chancellor of the Exchequer always claimed the mileage duty, which was twopence a mile. There was also a duty of five pounds for the stage-coach licence, or what was termed the plates, which they were obliged to carry. The mails, however, were excused from carrying the plates, as it was said His Majesty's mails ought not to be disfigured; but whether they enjoyed the more substantial benefit of having the five pounds remitted I have not been able to ascertain.
As time went on, and fast coaches increased, Mr. Johnson must have been at his wit's end to know how to get the mail bags carried. Mail carts appear to have been an expensive luxury, as they cost a shilling a mile, and he could generally do better with the coach proprietors.
In some cases there was so much difficulty in filling up stages that it was repeatedly necessary to send orders that if no horses were to be found to take the coach over a certain stage, to forward it by post horses.
The Norwich mail, through Newmarket, received eightpence a mile, of which two hundred pounds seems to have been advanced to help the proprietors out of difficulties, and to induce them to go on at all; but that mail was very strongly opposed by an excellent day coach, the "Norwich Telegraph," from the "Golden Cross," Charing Cross.
So little at this time was the post-office work valued where it interfered with the hours or increased the pace, that a night coach on the same Norwich road as the mail declined to compete, and it was suggested, but not carried out, to put a guard upon a coach, making a contract with him to carry the letters, giving them some advantage for so doing, which would make it worth their while; and a coach at one time was employed to carry the bags between Alton and Gosport, which were brought to the former place by the Poole mail.
It did not, however, meet with Mr. Johnson's approval. He says, "I think that the use of coaches in that way goes directly to destroy the regular mail coach system. I think that if any coach from London to Manchester were to be allowed to carry ten outsides, it never would arrive within an hour of the present mail coach, from the interruption which is occasioned by the number of outside passengers, not to speak of the insecurity of the bags."
No doubt he was quite right, as a rule; but if he lived to witness the "Telegraph" coach perform with regularity that journey of one hundred and eighty-six miles in eighteen hours, he would have confessed that there might be exceptions to the rule.
He says, speaking generally of the system, with a justifiable spice of esprit de corps, "I think we should look to the general result of the mail coach system, and that we should provide the best expedient we can for cases of difficulty. If we employed such coaches we could not prevent the parties from writing Royal Mail Coach upon them, and writing Royal Mail Coach Office upon all their establishments in the towns where they reside; all of which would go very much to destroy the distinction by which the present mail coaches greatly depend, and we should consider that after the mail coach system has supplied all the uses of the post-office, it is still valuable as a national system. It originally set the example of that travelling which is so much admired, not only at home, but even throughout Europe, and I hope continues to set an example now. I am persuaded that the manner in which the stage coaches have been accelerated arose entirely from their desire to rival the mails upon their old plan, and they now try to keep as close to them as they can, though, in all long distances, they are certainly very far behind. Persons of the first distinction travel by the mail coaches. I don't mean amateur whips, but persons who depend upon the regularity, security, and comfort of the mail coach, and being less likely to meet with disagreeable passengers."
He adds, "I am not aware of any coach that goes as fast as the mail for a hundred and fifty miles, not even the 'Wonder,' and if some days as fast, they are able, whenever they think proper, to relax their speed, which the mail, being under contract, cannot do."
The keen competition between the mails and other coaches is well emphasized by a letter written by Mr. Spencer, the coach proprietor at Holyhead, to Mr. Chaplin in London, complaining that as the "Nimrod" had commenced running through to Holyhead, they were obliged to carry passengers at lower fares, and saying that he had by that night's mail booked a lady through to London, inside, for four pounds; and from my own experience, I can quite believe this, as some of the ladies of the Principality are like Mrs. Gilpin, who, though on pleasure bent, had a frugal mind.