Sir Rowland Hill: The Story of a Great Reform

by Eleanor C. Hill Smyth

In the same year the Great Northern Railway had spontaneously begun to run a train at night, at such speed as to outstrip the night mail on the London and North-Western line. Believing that the object was to tempt the public into agitating for the use of the rival train and line, my father applied to the North-Western Railway company for such acceleration as would obviate the possibility of such a demand being made. He also suggested the introduction of what are now called limited mails; but this idea was not adopted for some years.[195] Till the acceleration was accomplished the answer to a letter leaving London by the night mail for Edinburgh or Glasgow could not be received till the afternoon of the next day but one.

Increased speed, however, was found to produce unpunctuality, misunderstandings, and other evils; and the public grew dissatisfied. Of course the railway companies blamed the Post Office, and, equally, of course, though with better reason, the Post Office blamed the railway companies. My father proposed that each side should be subjected to fines whenever irregularity occurred, and that punctuality should receive reward. But the proposal was not accepted. In 1855, however, the attempt was again made to induce the railway companies to agree to the payment of mutual penalties in case of unpunctuality, coupled with reward to the companies, but not to the Office, for punctual performance. Only one company—the North British—accepted the proposal, the result being that the instances of irregularity were in half a year brought down from 112 to 9, the company at the same time receiving a reward of £400.

Later, the railway companies agreed to accelerate their night mails between London and Edinburgh and Glasgow. An additional payment of some £15,000 a year had to be made, but the benefit to the two countries was so great that the outlay was not grudged. The effort to extend a like boon to Ireland was not so successful. The companies which had begun with moderate demands, suddenly asked for lessened acceleration and increased remuneration; and the Government adopted their views in preference to those of the Postmaster-General and the postal reformer. As a natural consequence, an annual subsidy of over £100,000 had to be paid in addition to the necessary cost of provision for letter-sorting in the trains and steamships. Punctuality also was often disregarded, and penalties were suspended on the score of insufficient pier accommodation at Holyhead.

Some of the companies were short-sighted enough to refuse what would have been remunerative work offered by the Post Office. On one short line of 23 miles, £3,000 per annum was demanded for the carriage of a night mail; and, although the Office offered to furnish a train of its own, as by law any one was entitled to do, and to pay the appointed tolls, though legally exempt from so doing—such payment to be settled by arbitration—the proposal was rejected. Ultimately, a more circuitous route was adopted at a third of the cost first demanded.

There was great need of reorganisation and common-sense rearrangement in these matters. Why, for instance, when carrying a letter between Land's End and John O'Groat's should twenty-one separate contracts, irrespective of engagements with rural messengers and of plans for the conveyance of mail-bags to and from railway stations and post offices, have been required?

With a view to the reduction of these extravagant subsidies, Rowland Hill proposed that “Government should, on ample security, and to a limited extent, advance loans on the terms on which it could itself borrow to such companies as were willing to adopt a reasonable tariff of charge for postal services.” He hoped by these means to reduce the annual payments to the companies by about £250,000. The Duke of Argyll, then Postmaster-General, and Mr Hutchinson, Chairman of the Stock Exchange, highly approved of the plan; but, though it evoked much interest, and came up again as a public question more than once in later years, no progress was made. Were State purchase of the railways to become the law of the land, solution of the difficulty might yet be discovered.

One of the measures Rowland Hill hoped to see accomplished was the conveyance of mails on one of the principal lines by special trains absolutely limited to Post Office service. The cost would be moderate if the companies could be induced to join in an arrangement under which, the bare additional expense in each instance being ascertained by a neutral authority, a certain fixed multiple of that amount should be paid. Captain (afterwards Sir Douglas) Galton, of the Board of Trade, and Sir William Cubitt heartily approved of the plan, the latter estimating the cost in question at 1s. to 1s. 3d. a mile, and advising that two and a half times that amount should be offered. Under this rule the Post Office would pay less for the whole train than it already paid for a small part of one. The plan of charge by fixed scale found little favour with the companies; but the proposed special mail service was ultimately adopted.

The Postmaster-General (Lord Canning's) Commission in 1853 on the Packet Service—which included among its members Lord Canning himself and the then Sir Stafford Northcote—did much useful work, and published an able Report giving a brief history of “contract mail-packets”; explaining why, under older conditions, heavy subsidies were necessary, and expressing their opinion that, as now the steamers so employed carry passengers and freight, these large subsidies could no longer be required. When a new route has been opened for the extension of commerce, further continuance of the Service, unless desirable on account of important political reasons, should depend on its tendency to become self-supporting. Among other recommendations made were the omission in future contracts of many conditions whose effect is increase of cost; a reduction of the contract to an undertaking (subject to penalties for failure) to convey the mails at fixed periods and with a certain degree of speed, and an agreement that, except in the case of a new route, contracts should not be allowed to exist for a long period.

When at last the management of the Packet Service was transferred from the Admiralty to the Post Office, a useful—indeed necessary—reform was accomplished. While in the hands of the former Department, the Service had become a source of very heavy expense, owing, in great part, to its extension for political reasons very far beyond postal requirements.