The “candling” of letters was practised to ascertain whether single, double, treble, or still heavier postage should be charged. The missive was carried into a darkened room, and held up against a strong artificial light. This process not only gave the examining official some idea of the number of enclosures, if any, but often revealed their character. It was to defeat temptation to dishonesty caused by this scrutiny that the practice, not yet obsolete, was adopted of cutting a banknote in two before posting it, and keeping back the second half till receipt of the first had been acknowledged.
Single letter postage between London and Edinburgh or Glasgow cost 1s. 3-½d., between London and Aberdeen 1s. 4-½d., and between London and Thurso 1s. 5-½d., the odd halfpenny being the duty exacted in protectionist days to enable the epistle to cross the Scottish border. A letter to Ireland via Holyhead paid, in addition to ordinary postage, steamer rates and toll for using the Menai and Conway bridges. Or, if a letter took the southerly route to Ireland, the extra charge was levied at Milford. Single letter postage to Londonderry was 1s. 5d. To the many other more distant Irish towns it was still heavier.
These single charges—enforced, too, at a time when the nation, wearied out with many years of almost incessant war, was poorer far than it is now—seem to us exorbitant. When, therefore, we think of them as doubled, trebled, quadrupled, and so forth, it is easy to understand why to all but the rich letter-writing became an almost lost art; and we realise more clearly the truth of Miss Martineau's word-picture which a superficial reader might be inclined to pronounce overdrawn.
The rates had been oppressive enough in 1801 when, in order to swell the war-tax, a further contribution to the Exchequer of £150,000 was enforced. But in 1812 a yet further contribution of £200,000 was required; and these higher rates—the highest ever reached—were maintained for a quarter of a century after the peace of 1815: that is, till Rowland Hill's reform swept the old system away.
In order to increase the postal revenue, the screw had been tightened in a variety of ways, even to the arresting of further progress in Ralph Allen's much-needed “cross-posts” reform.[32] As Mr Joyce puts it: “In 1695 a circuitous post would be converted into a direct one, even though the shorter distance carried less postage; in 1813 a direct post in place of a circuitous one was constantly being refused on the plea that a loss of postage would result.”[33] In the latter year all sorts of oppressive and even bewildering new regulations were enforced whose tendency was to make of the Post Office a yet harsher tax-raising machine. One new charge was of “an additional penny on each letter for the privilege of the mail-coach passing through”[34] certain towns; and other rules were equally vexatious.
The lowest single postage to Paris was 1s. 8d.; and in the case of foreign letters partial prepayment was the rule. For instance, when a letter travelled from London to Paris, the writer paid 10d., which freed it as far as Calais only, its recipient paying the other 10d. on its delivery in the French capital. Collection of postage at the end of the entire journey would have been contrary to regulation.
The lowest single postage to Gibraltar was 2s. 10d.; and to Egypt, 3s. 2d. When a letter crossed the Atlantic to Canada or the United States an inland rate at each end of the transit was charged in addition to the heavy ocean postage. A packet of manuscript to either of those countries cost £5 under the old system. But at this “reduced” (!) rate only a 3-lb. packet could be sent. Did one weigh the merest fraction of a pound over the permitted three, it could not go except as a letter, the postage upon which would have been £22, 0s. 8d.[35] One can hardly expect the public of to-day to believe that rates such as these were ever in force. They sufficiently explain why it was that the ill-to-do relatives of equally ill-to-do people who emigrated to the Colonies or foreign countries often lost all trace of them.
In the Morning Chronicle of 22nd August 1837, appeared an announcement that, “Henceforth postage on letters to the Mediterranean will be at the rate of only 10s. an ounce”—showing that even as regards countries nearer home than America postal charges rendered letter-writing an expensive occupation even to the well-to-do if they had a large foreign correspondence. To-day “a letter can be sent from London westward to San Francisco or eastward to Constantinople or Siberia for a less amount of postage than was charged in 1836 on one going from Charing Cross to Brompton.”[36] And in the future the cost is likely to become less.
The old postal rates being so burdensome, it was inevitable that tricks and evasions of many sorts should be practised, notwithstanding the merciless penalties that were inflicted on delinquents detected in the act.
It is probably no exaggeration to say that hundreds, if not thousands, of newspapers were annually posted which no one particularly cared to read. Yet it is certain that many a recipient eagerly welcomed the paper sent him even though he might rarely unfold its pages. As newspapers went free—or nominally did so, for after all the postage was indirectly taken out of the pocket of the man who invested 5d. in every copy of his “daily”—and letters, except those which passed between members of the privileged classes, did not, the newspaper came to be a frequent bearer of well-disguised messages from one member of the unprivileged classes to another. The employment of inks of different colours, of variations in modes of writing names, callings, and addresses, and even peculiar flourishes executed by the pen, conveyed valuable information to him who received the paper, and enabled many tradesmen to keep up a brisk correspondence without contributing a farthing to the revenue.