The Post Office, as we have seen, had hitherto existed chiefly for the benefit of the aristocratic and moneyed classes—those of the latter, at least, who were Members of Parliament, then rich men only—the general public having to pay dearly for the privilege of using the Department for conveyance of their correspondence. But with the advent of the new system, the Post Office straightway became the paid servant—and a far more faithful and efficient one than it is sometimes given credit for being—of the entire nation, since upon every man, woman, and child in the United Kingdom were henceforth conferred equal rights to postal intercourse.
Strange to say, the passing of the Penny Postage Bill had, to some extent, depended upon the successful making of a bargain. In April 1839 Lord Melbourne's Government brought in what was known as the Jamaica Bill, which proposed to suspend for five years that Colony's Constitution. The measure was strenuously opposed by the Conservatives led by Peel and by some of the Liberals. On the second reading of the Bill, the Government escaped defeat by the narrow majority of five, and at once resigned. Peel was sent for by the Queen, but, owing to the famous “Bedchamber Difficulty,” failed to form a Ministry. Lord Melbourne returned to office, and the Radical members agreed to give his Administration their support on condition that penny postage should be granted. “Thus,” says my brother, “one of the greatest social reforms ever introduced was actually given as a bribe by a tottering Government to secure political support.”[124] A party move not altogether without precedent.
When the new postal system became a legalised institution both Mr Wallace and Mr Warburton, independently of one another, wrote to Lord Melbourne, and urged him to give Rowland Hill a position in which he would be enabled to work out his plan. Of Mr Wallace's letter my father said that it was but a specimen of that tried friend's general course. “He makes no reference to his own valuable labours, but only urges claim for me.” Mr Warburton's letter was equally generous and self-oblivious.
Lord Melbourne turned no deaf ear to these appeals. In the autumn of 1839 the reformer was appointed for a term of two years—afterwards extended to three—to the Treasury to superintend the working of his plan. Obviously, his proper place, and that to which the public expected him to be raised, was the Post Office; but the hostile element there was probably too formidable to be withstood. The new Chancellor of the Exchequer—Mr Spring Rice had gone to the Upper House as Lord Monteagle—was Mr (afterwards Sir) Francis Baring, whom Rowland Hill found an able, zealous, high-minded chief, and whose friendship he valued to the last.
Of what can only be correctly described as the fanatical opposition of the Post Office authorities to the reform, it is easy, and customary, to point the finger of scorn or of derision. This is unjust. Honourable men occupying responsible positions as heads of an important branch of the Civil Service, and bound, therefore, to safeguard what they believe to be its truest interests, have a difficult task to carry out when they are confronted with the forcible acceptance of an untried scheme in whose soundness they have little or no faith. That the policy the postal officials pursued was a mistaken one time has abundantly proved; but if their opposition argued lack of understanding, they merely acted as the generality of men similarly situated would have done. Even Rowland Hill, who, as an outsider, battered so long at the official gates, was wont to confess, when, later, he found shelter within the citadel they defended, that he was not a little apt to feel towards other outsiders a hostility similar to that which his old enemies had felt towards him. The sentiment is not inspired by the oft-alleged tendency to somnolence that comes of the well-upholstered official armchair and assured salary, but from the heart-weariness born of the daily importunity of persons who deluge a long-suffering Department with crude and impracticable suggestions, or with complaints that have little or no foundation.[125]
By the time the postal reform had come to be an established institution, not a few former adversaries loyally aided the reformer to carry out its details, by their action tacitly confessing, even when they made no verbal acknowledgment, that their earlier attitude had been a mistake. Now that all are dead their opposition may rightly be regarded with the tenderness that is, or should be, always extended to the partisans of a lost cause.
A great deal of the opposition was, however, far from honest, and unfortunately had very mischievous effects. On this subject something will be said in the course of the ensuing chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[89] The members in addition to Mr Wallace were Viscount Lowther, Lord Seymour, Sir Thomas Fremantle, and Messrs Warburton, Poulett Thomson, Raikes Currie, Morgan John O'Connell, Thornley, Chalmers, Pease, Mahony, Parker (Sheffield), George William Wood, and Villiers. Three of these—Lord Seymour, Mr Parker, and Mr Thomson (afterwards Lord Sydenham)—were opponents of the plan, but that their opposition was mainly official was evidenced when, the Government having adopted the plan of reform, all three became its advocates.—“Life,” i. 287.