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

by Herbert Joyce

Another clause must also be regarded as peculiarly Lowndes's own. This clause—which, unlike the foregoing, was not rejected—prohibited the postmasters-general and all persons serving under them from intermeddling in elections. They were forbidden under heavy penalties "to persuade any one to give or to dissuade any one from giving his vote for the choice" of a member of Parliament. Lowndes can hardly have believed it possible thus to padlock men's mouths. It is still more difficult to suppose that the clause can have been aimed at Frankland; and yet assuredly Frankland was the only person whom it affected. Postmasters and others, it may well be believed, continued to talk and to argue exactly as they had argued and talked before; but Frankland had to give up his seat. At the general election in October he had, there can be little doubt, received a hint of what was coming, for after sitting for his pocket borough of Thirsk for more than twelve years he retired from the representation.

So much of the new Act as originated with the Post Office was mainly directed to clearing up doubts, to supplying omissions, and to making that legal for which the law had not yet provided. Thus, legal sanction was given to the penny post, and competition with it was forbidden under severe penalties. Pence upon ship-letters were not only authorised but directed to be paid. The rates of postage to America and to the West Indies were confirmed; and power was given to impose rates upon letters to other places with which communication might be opened. The Act of 1660 had conferred upon the postmasters-general the exclusive right of "receiving, taking up, ordering, despatching, sending post or with speed, and delivering of all letters and packets whatsoever"; but it was silent on the subject of carrying. This omission the Act of 1711 supplied. The later Act also imposed restrictions on the common carrier. Hitherto it had been left in doubt what letters he might carry. These were now defined to be letters which concerned the goods in his waggon or cart; and they were to be delivered at the same time as the goods and without hire or reward.

It was not enough that the penny post should receive legal sanction. By this post, from its first establishment, a single penny had carried only within London proper. For delivery in the outskirts—as, for instance, at Islington, Lambeth, Newington, and Hackney, all of which were at this time separate towns—the Post Office received one penny more. So long, therefore, as the charge by the general post for a distance not exceeding eighty miles stood at 2d., it was a mere question of convenience whether towns in the neighbourhood of London should be served by that post or by the penny post. In either case the postage on a single letter was the same, namely 2d. But now that the initial charge by the general post was raised from 2d. to 3d., it became necessary to assign a limit beyond which the penny post should not extend; and this limit was fixed at ten miles, measured from the General Post Office in Lombard Street.

How little the Post Office had at this time entered into the inner life of the people may be judged by the fact that such restriction was possible. In 1711 there were towns distant nearly twenty miles from London—for instance, Walton-on-Thames, Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, and Tilbury in Essex—which had long been served by the penny post; and the penny post carried up to one pound of weight for the same charge for which the general post carried a single letter. Yet these towns were now deprived of the facilities which the penny post afforded without, so far as appears, exciting a murmur.[36]

Under the new Act the Post Office retained the monopoly of furnishing post-horses. It is to be observed, however, that the charge for each horse, although remaining the same as before—namely, 3d. a mile, with 4d. a stage for the guide—was now re-enacted apologetically, as though some compunction had begun to be felt at the interference with the freedom of contract. The explanation is perhaps to be found in the recent introduction of stage-coaches and the low prices at which these vehicles carried passengers. "There is of late," writes an author of the period, "an admirable commodiousness, both for men and women of better quality, to travel from London to almost any town of England and to almost all the villages near this great city, and that is by stage-coaches, wherein one may be transported to any place, sheltered from foul weather and foul ways; and this is not only at a low price, as about 1s. for every five miles, but with such speed, as that the posts in some foreign countries make not more miles in a day."[37] If a mode of travelling so luxurious as this appears to have been thought could be secured for less than 2-1/2d. a mile, a charge of 3d. a mile for a horse besides a guerdon to the guide may well have appeared to require justification.

It may here be noticed that, although the postmasters-general were under obligation to supply horses on demand, and, failing to do so, became liable to a penalty, the control which they exercised over the travelling post appears to have been of the slightest. It is true that they would now and again complain of a postmaster for keeping bad horses; but the badness would always be with reference to the horses' capacity to carry the mails. Whether they were fit or unfit for the use of travellers appears never to have troubled headquarters. Except, indeed, for some little exertion of authority on rare occasions and in circumstances out of the common,[38] it would almost seem that the postmasters-general had ceased to regard the travelling post as a matter in which they had any concern. It is not very clear why this should have been so. But perhaps the explanation is that in the case of the travelling post, unlike that of the letter post, a postmaster's interest and duty were identical; if horses were wanted, he was under the strongest inducement to supply them; and the danger to be apprehended was not that travellers would be neglected, but that they might be accommodated at the expense of the mails.

On one point, no doubt because it involved a question of prerogative rather than law, the new Act was silent; and yet it was a point of high importance and, as it afterwards became the subject of legal enactment, this may be a convenient time to mention it. We refer to the privilege conceded to certain persons to send and receive their letters free of postage, or, to use the term by which it was commonly known, the franking system. The persons who enjoyed this privilege were the Chief Officers of State and the members of the two Houses of Parliament. The Chief Officers of State, or ministers as they had now begun to be called, were entitled to send and receive their letters free at all times and without limit in point of weight. The members of the two Houses were so entitled only during the session of Parliament and for forty days before and after, and in their case the weight was limited to two ounces.

The privilege had already been greatly abused. Secretaries of State would not scruple to send under their frank the letters of their friends and their friends' friends as well as their own. In 1695 Blaithwaite, who was then Secretary of War, carried the practice to such an extent as to evoke from the postmasters-general a vigorous remonstrance. "We cannot deny," they said, "but this has been too much a practice in all tymes, and we are sure you will not blame us for wishing itt were amended, being soe very prejudicial to His Majestye's revenue under our management." The practice extended, and in 1705 a warrant under the sign-manual, after enumerating afresh the Officers of State who were entitled to frank, expressly charged them not "to cover any man's letters whatsoever other than their own," and, as regards any letters which might come addressed to their care for private persons, to send them to the Post Office to be taxed and delivered.

The abuses identified with the letters of members of Parliament were of wider scope. Lavishly as members might use their names as a means of franking, the use was not confined to themselves and their friends. On the part of the London booksellers and other persons who might hesitate to incur the risk of imitating another man's signature it had become a common practice to assume the name of some member of Parliament, and under that name to have their letters addressed to them at particular coffee-houses; and as their correspondents in the country adopted a similar device, the letters passing to and fro escaped postage. Cotton and Frankland had not been long at the Post Office before this practice arrested their attention, and in 1698 the warrant which granted to the members of the new Parliament the usual exemption from postage was expressly designed to check the abuse. "To prevent abuses," thus the warrant ran, "that were formerly practised[39] to the prejudice of our revenue by divers persons who, though they were not members, yet presumed to indorse the names of members of Parliament on their letters and direct their letters to members of Parliament which really did not belong to them," our will and pleasure is that members "will constantly with their owne hands indorse their names upon their owne letters, and not suffer any other letters to pass under their ffrank, cover, or direction but such as shall concerne themselves." Successive warrants issued between 1698 and 1711 were expressed in the same or nearly the same terms, what little variations there were only serving to shew that the practice against which the warrants were directed had become more general.

But now the postmasters-general could no longer conceal from themselves that, unwarrantable as might be the liberties taken with members' names, the members themselves were by no means blameless. That they were scattering their franks with boundless profusion was beyond doubt; and the question which the postmasters-general set themselves to solve was, How was this profusion to be checked? As the best expedient they could devise, they prepared for the Queen's signature a fresh warrant which, as a hint to members for the regulation of their own conduct, referred to Her Majesty's condescension in allocating a portion of the Post Office revenue towards defraying the expenses of the war. Of previous warrants copies had been posted up in the lobby of the House and in the Speaker's chamber. Of the present warrant copies were to be distributed with the votes so as to secure that every member should have a copy.