It was the last thing he was to do for the service. His career as Postmaster-General, so brief, yet so full of vicissitude and labour, was approaching its close. The enormous amount of work which the generally discontented state of the service entailed daily upon him was more than could be sustained by any one man for long. Even after the repeated warnings of impending breakdown, he had stuck to his work. He was now to pay the penalty, and the country was to lose a capable and a dutiful servant. Henry Cecil Raikes, Postmaster-General, passed peacefully away on August 24, 1891.
As Postmaster-General, he passed through an exceedingly trying time; and though it was by some said that he himself was largely responsible for the troubles in the service, if he committed some few human mistakes in administration he hastened to repair them manfully; his bearing as a minister throughout was dignified and correct. No Postmaster-General was ever subjected to such sharp criticisms from every side at once; but no other had ultimately proved such a benefactor on so large a scale. His remedy for prevailing discontent was not all-sufficient nor without flaws; but in the circumstances—and it is the circumstances which have to be considered particularly in this connection, considering the vast area it had to cover—it was judicious, and it was not his fault that it was not more generous. He lived just long enough to know that, despite previous estimates of his conduct and character, he was at last to some extent appreciated for the efforts he had made to do justice even at a time of trying and painful ordeal. The sorters especially were sad at his premature departure; and the secretary of the Fawcett Association, W. E. Clery, it was, who wrote the lengthy, touching tribute to his memory which appeared in the Telegraph the day following the Postmaster-General’s death.
Henry Cecil Raikes was democratic enough in principle, though inclined to be autocratic in rule. He was a capable man, and a leader born; but the restrictions of his office kept many of his higher qualities in abeyance. If his administration could not always be considered strictly just, it was in part probably owing to influences over which he had little control. Being in the position he was, he was often compelled to identify himself with and take responsibility for the actions of others. Nor was this due to any weakness in the man so much as to the adamantine and tapebound rules of officialdom’s etiquette and to other causes and relations which may not here be mentioned. His son, in his “Life and Letters of Henry Cecil Raikes,” points out that, so weary of it all, the cares of his office and the curbs on his independence of action, did he become that he was strongly inclined to resign his position, till a higher sense of public duty restrained him.
The telegraphists and others, who felt they had so little cause to esteem him, could not at the time fully appreciate his difficulties; but they were to learn later that the Post-Office could be ruled by worse masters. In his lifetime it seemed his peculiar fate to fail to win full appreciation either from those above or below him. But if Henry Cecil Raikes had been a less honest man, a less conscientious and a less painstaking man, he might have lived long enough to secure his due share of that public recognition and reward which is too often bestowed less worthily.
CHAPTER XX
BENEFITS OF THE RAIKES SCHEME—A MARTINET POSTMASTER-GENERAL—A NEW PARLIAMENTARY POLICY—A PARTING OF THE WAYS—POLITICAL RIGHTS OF POSTAL SERVANTS—A BLOW AT COMBINATION.
Looking at all the circumstances impartially, it must be acknowledged that the late Mr. Raikes had bestowed very substantial benefits on the postal service. In the face of opposition to his proposals, and despite hostility from several sides at once, he had manfully tackled the complex and bewildering problem, and had set himself the task of adjudicating on the thousand divergent and multifarious class interests. It was a labour worthy of an intellectual Hercules to seek to cleanse such an Augean stable as the Post-Office, but he had done as much as it were possible for one man to dare attempt, meeting with the growls probably of the watch-dogs of the Treasury, and with little gratitude from those who benefited by the result. The late Postmaster-General had, though chary of it at first, at last set himself to the stupendous task of satisfying the wants and serving the conflicting interests of the discontented army under his control. He had set himself to the task, but he had materially shortened his days for his pains. Both the London sorters and the provincial sorting clerks were fairly well satisfied with the result of the Raikes scheme, but the telegraphists and the postmen were but little satisfied with their measure of relief, and remained hardly less discontented than before. The flowers had scarcely faded on the grave of their departed chief before the mutterings of discontent were again heard, from the ranks of the postmen and the telegraphists particularly. It was not so much that they were guilty of ingratitude as that their grievances as Government servants so far outmeasured the well-intentioned remedy.