The History of the Post Office, from Its Establishment Down to 1836

by Herbert Joyce

But neither the loss of their horses nor the inadequacy of their remuneration was so galling to the postmasters as the liability to which they now became subject, of having soldiers quartered upon them. A standing army had been recently authorised, and there was little or no barrack accommodation. Hence a liability, which in our own time might be little more than nominal, was, in 1690, tantamount to a heavy tax. Under Charles and James[12] the postmasters had been exempt from this annoyance; but the exemption had been granted by virtue of the royal prerogative, and William could not be induced to continue it. In vain it was urged that, if a burden were cast upon them as novel as it was oppressive, justice demanded that their salaries should be increased. The King resolutely refused to make a distinction which the law did not recognise, and, except in a few isolated cases, the salaries remained unchanged.

Despite these drawbacks, there is no reason to think that the appointment of postmaster was not eagerly sought for, or that when obtained there was any general disposition to throw it up. The explanation is obvious. In the first place the appointment carried with it the exclusive right of letting post-horses. This monopoly, at all events on the more frequented roads, must have been remunerative; and it must have been especially remunerative where, as appears to have been generally the case, the postmaster was also innkeeper. Travellers were drawn to his house, for it was only there that they could procure horses to pursue their journey. He was, in a word, assured of custom. Other sources of emolument were—1st, gratuities, varying according to distance, from 1d. to 3d., on every letter he collected or delivered; and 2nd, what were technically called "Bye-letters." This term, whatever may have been the case a century before, had now a distinctive meaning. It meant letters which stopped short of London,[13] letters upon which at that time there was no check. In 1690 the postage on these letters was probably not large; but, large or small, the whole or all but the whole of it found its way into the pockets of the postmasters, and it was one of the first cares of the new postmasters-general to consider how the diversion might be stopped.

Such, in England, was the condition of the Post Office when Cotton and Frankland assumed the direction of it in the month of March 1690. In Scotland the posts were under separate direction, the direction of the Secretary of State for that part of the kingdom, and subject to the control of the Scotch Parliament. For purposes of convenience, however, an arrangement had been made between the two Post Offices. On letters between London and Edinburgh in both directions the English Post Office took not only its own share of the postage but the whole; and, in return, it paid the salaries of all the postmasters and defrayed the cost of all expresses between the Border town of Berwick-on-Tweed and Edinburgh. The correspondence at this time passing between the two capitals was of the slightest. It is true that for the three years ending March 1693 the amount due to the London office for postage on letters to Edinburgh was £1500, or at the rate of £500 a year; but the correspondence of the Secretary of State for Scotland, or "Black-box" as it was called, from the colour of the box in which it was carried, would probably account for nearly the whole. In 1707, which no doubt was a busy year in consequence of the Act of Union, the cost of carrying this box to and fro averaged £66 a month.

In Ireland the Post Office was managed by a deputy-postmaster, who was directly responsible to the postmasters-general in London. The method of business was the same as in England. Instead, however, of six "roads," there were only three—the Munster Road, the Ulster Road, and the Connaught Road. The Dublin establishment, clerks and letter-carriers included, consisted of twelve persons, of whom five received £20 a year, and no one, the deputy-postmaster excepted, more than £80. The deputy-postmaster himself received £400. Such at least was the normal establishment; but all was now confusion. The battle of the Boyne had not yet been fought, and Tyrconnel was still Lord Deputy. By his direction the Post Office servants in Dublin, down to the youngest letter-carrier, had been turned out of their appointments; and the mails from England, instead of being opened at the Post Office, were being carried to the castle and opened there.

The new postmasters-general had not long taken up their quarters in Lombard Street before they began to feel serious alarm for the revenue committed to their charge. It was in the matter of bye-letters that their apprehensions were first aroused. London, as the metropolis, sent and received more letters than any other town, more probably than all the other towns of the kingdom put together. Through London, too, as the centre of the Post Office system, many letters passed in those days which would not so pass now, because there were no cross-posts. Still there was a residue, a residue considerable in the aggregate, consisting of letters which did not touch London in any part of their course; and of these comparatively few were accounted for. Some thirty years later, after a check had been established, the revenue derived from bye-letters was only a little over £3000 a year. At the end of the seventeenth century it probably did not amount to as many hundreds.

It was, however, not the letters that fell into the post, but those that were kept out of it, the illicit traffic in fact, that caused the greatest concern. This traffic was assuming larger proportions every day. Under Charles and James searchers had been appointed, men who searched for letters as baggage is searched at the Custom House. No suspected person, no suspected vehicle, was safe from inspection. But there was no legal sanction for the practice, and it had ceased on William's accession. Early in the present reign it had been mooted whether a prosecution should not be undertaken, at all events against the principal offenders; but the King refused to consent to a step which he regarded as impolitic and calculated to excite discontent. License waxed bolder with impunity. Along the road from Bristol to Worcester and from Worcester to Shrewsbury men might be seen openly collecting and delivering letters in defiance of the law. Openly or clandestinely the same thing was being done in other parts. "Wherever," wrote the postmasters-general, "there are any townes which have commerce one with another so as to occasion a constant intercourse by carryer or tradesman, there we do find it a general practice to convey at the same time a considerable number of letters."

But the illicit traffic between one part of the country and another, large as were the dimensions it had assumed, was insignificant as compared with that which was taking place between the country and London. This was the natural result of the establishment of the penny post. At the first introduction of postage care had been taken so to fix the rates that for single letters the post should be cheaper than the common carrier. But the common carrier, in competition with the State, had one enormous advantage. He could reduce his terms at will. So long, therefore, as there was a profit to be made, the relative cheapness of the post had proved only an imperfect check.

A far more efficient check, in the case of the metropolis at least, had been the difficulty of dispersion. It was one thing to bring letters to London and another to deliver them. In a maze of streets consisting of houses which bore no numbers, a comparative stranger to the town attempting anything in the shape of a general delivery would have been simply bewildered. But all this was now altered. The penny post supplied the very machinery, the want of which had hitherto kept the illicit traffic within bounds. Once within the orbit of that post, a letter consigned to any one of Dockwra's four or five hundred receiving offices would be delivered in any part of what was then known as London for 1d., and in the suburbs for 2d. And these charges would carry up to one pound in weight; whereas a quarter of one pound by the general post, even from places no further distant from London than Croydon or Kingston, would be charged 2s. 8d.

Of course, under such conditions, to carry letters across the border-line, the line which separated the general post from the penny post, had soon become a regular traffic; and this traffic, in consequence of the impunity it enjoyed, was now being carried on with little concealment. No stage-coach entered London without the driver's pockets being stuffed with letters and packets, and he was moderate indeed if he had not a bagful besides. The waggoner outstripped his waggon and the carrier his pack-horse; and each brought his contribution. The higgler's wares were the merest pretext. It was to the letters and packets he carried that he looked for profit. So notorious had the abuse become that two private persons, unconnected with the Post Office, offered their services with a view to its correction. These persons were gentlemen by birth, and yet it is difficult to conceive an office more odious than the one which they were prepared to assume. They proposed to erect stands or barriers in Westminster, Southwark, and other places in the outskirts of London, and there to demand of suspected persons as they passed any letters they might have about them which did not concern their private business. They further proposed to deliver these letters by messengers of their own, and to collect the postage, and to proceed against the bearers of them for the recovery of the penalties. It is significant of the extent to which the traffic had grown, that in return for their services they asked no more than two-thirds of the postage they should collect, and even pleaded the heavy expenses to which they would be put as an apology for asking so much. The remaining third they would undertake to make over to the postmasters-general. They did not explain, however, how it was proposed to distinguish letters which concerned the private business of the bearers from those which did not, or how, while checking others, they were to be checked themselves. Nor indeed was any such explanation needed, for the postmasters-general very clearly discerned that the proposed remedy would be worse, far worse, than the disease.