Sir Rowland Hill: The Story of a Great Reform

by Eleanor C. Hill Smyth

The agitation showed how prone is the public to fly to wrong conclusions. Here was Rowland Hill striving to diminish Sunday work, and being denounced as if he was seeking to increase it! It goes without saying that, during the agitation, numerous letters, generally anonymous, and sometimes violently abusive, deluged the Department, and especially the author of the relief; and that not even Rowland Hill's family were spared the pain of receiving from candid and, of course, entirely unknown friends letters of the most detestable description. Truly, the ways of the unco gude are past finding out.

While the conflict raged, many of the clergy proved no wiser than the generality of their flocks, and were quite as vituperative. Others, to their honour be it recorded, tried hard to stem the tide of ignorance and bigotry. Among these enlightened men were the Hon. and Rev. Grantham Yorke, rector of St Philip's, Birmingham; the Professor Henslow already mentioned; and Dr Vaughan, then head-master of Harrow and, later, Dean of Llandaff. All three, although at the time personal strangers, wrote letters which did their authors infinite credit, and which the recipient valued highly. The veteran free-trader, General Peronnet Thompson, also contributed a series of able articles on the subject to the then existing Sun.

Some of the newspapers at first misunderstood the question quite as thoroughly as did the public; but, so far as we ever knew, only the Leeds Mercury—unto whose editor, in common with other editors, had been sent a copy of the published report on the reduction of Sunday labour—had the frankness to express regret for having misrepresented the situation.[186] Other newspapers were throughout more discriminating; and the Times, in its issue of 25th April 1850, contained an admirable and lengthy exposition of the case stated with very great clearness and ability.[187]

“Carrying out a plan of relief which I had suggested as a more general measure when at the Treasury,” says Rowland Hill in his diary, “ I proposed to substitute a late Saturday night delivery in the nearer suburbs for that on Sunday morning. By this plan more than a hundred men would be forthwith released from Sunday duty in the metropolitan district alone.”[188] He further comments, perhaps a little slyly, on the “notable fact that while so much has been said by the London merchants and bankers against a delivery where their places of business are, of course, closed, not a word has been said against a delivery in the suburbs where they live.”[189]

To give further relief to Sunday labour, Rowland Hill proposed “so to arrange the work as to have the greatest practicable amount of sorting done in the travelling offices on the railways; the earlier portion ending by five on Sunday morning, and the later not beginning till nine on Sunday evening. The pursuit of this object led to a singular device.”[190] He was puzzling over the problem how to deal with letters belonging to good-sized towns too near to London to allow of sorting on the way. The railway in case was the London and North-Western; the towns St Albans and Watford. The thought suddenly flashed upon him that the easiest way out of the difficulty would be to let the down night mail train to Liverpool receive the St Albans and Watford up mails to London; and that on arrival at some more remote town on the road to Liverpool they should be transferred, sorted, to an up train to be carried to London. No time would be really lost to the public, because, while the letters were performing the double journey their destined recipients would be in bed; nor would any additional expense or trouble be incurred. The plan was a success, was extended to other railways, and the apparently eccentric proceeding long since became a matter of everyday occurrence.

In 1851 prepayment in money of postage on inland letters was abolished at all those provincial offices where it had thus far been allowed. Early in the following year the abolition was extended to Dublin, next to Edinburgh, and, last of all, to London—thus completing, throughout the United Kingdom, the establishment of prepayment by stamps alone, and thereby greatly simplifying the proceedings at all offices. To save trouble to the senders of many circulars, the chief office, St Martin's-le-Grand, continued to receive prepayment in money from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M., in sums of not less than £2 at a time: an arrangement, later, extended to other offices.

An extract from Rowland Hill's diary, under date 29th October 1851, says: “A clerkship at Hong-Kong having become vacant by death, the Postmaster-General has, on my recommendation, determined not to fill it, and to employ part of the saving thus effected in giving to the postmaster and each of the remaining clerks in turn leave of absence for a year and a half,[191] with full salary, and an allowance of £100 towards the expense of the voyage. By these means, while ample force will still be left, the poor fellows will have the opportunity of recruiting their health.”

Early in 1852 Rowland Hill also writes in his diary that “The Postmaster-General has sanctioned a measure of mine which, I expect, will have the effect of converting the railway stations in all the larger towns into gratuitous receiving offices.” The plan, convenient as it has proved, was, however, long in being carried out.

The agitation to extend penny postage beyond the limits of the British Isles is much older than many people suppose. Far back in the 'forties Elihu Burritt[192] strove long and manfully in the cause of “ocean penny postage”; and in my father's diary, under date 5th March 1853, it is recorded that the Postmaster-General received a deputation “which came to urge the extension of penny postage to the Colonies.”[193] It was a reform long delayed; and as usual the Post Office was reproached for not moving with the times, etc. That a large portion of the blame lay rather with the great steamship companies, which have never failed to charge heavily for conveyance of the mails, is far too little considered.

But the great steamship companies are not alone in causing the Post Office to be made a scapegoat for their own sins in the way of exacting heavy payments. In 1853 Rowland Hill gave evidence before a Parliamentary committee to consider railway and canal charges; and showed that, owing to the strained relations between the Post Office and the railway companies, the use of trains for mail conveyance was so restricted as to injure the public and even the companies themselves; also that, while the cost of carrying passengers and goods had been greatly reduced on the railways, the charge for carrying the mails had grown by nearly 300 per cent., although their weight had increased by only 140 per cent. He also laid before the Committee a Bill—approved by two successive Postmasters-General—framed to prescribe reasonable rates, and laying down a better principle of arbitration in respect of trains run at hours fixed by the Postmaster-General. The Committee, as shown by their Report, mainly adopted Rowland Hill's views, which were indeed perfectly just, and, if adopted, would, in his estimation, have reduced the annual expenditure in railway conveyance—then about £360,000—by at least £100,000. The proposals were made to secure fair rates of charge in all new railway bills, but it was intended to extend the arrangement eventually to already existing railways. But the railway influence in Parliament was too strong to allow adoption of these improvements; and attempts subsequently made were unavailing to alter the injurious law enacted early in the railway era, and intended to last only till experience of the working of the lines should have afforded the requisite data for laying down a scale of charges.[194] Being of opinion that, in order to serve the public more effectually, far greater use should be made of the railways, the reformer tried to procure for the Post Office the unrestricted use of all trains for a moderate fixed charge. Owing, however, to the existing law, the uncertainty of rates of payment, the excessive awards frequently made, and other causes, this useful measure was not adopted, with the result that the subsidies to the companies went on increasing in magnitude.