The continental mails by way of Dover and Harwich went at this time only twice a week; and by a curious arrangement these mails started from the General Post Office at midnight, although the inland mails for the same towns and going by the same route started at eight o'clock in the evening. At Harwich the packet station had abandoned itself to smuggling. In 1774 two packets, the Bessborough and the Prince of Wales, were seized for having contraband goods on board. Not a single voyage had these packets made during the last two years without committing a similar infringement of the law. The Commissioners of Customs, whose patience was exhausted, now commenced proceedings in the Court of Exchequer, and were prevailed upon to abandon them only upon the captains, who were also owners of the vessels, paying by way of fine two-third parts of their appraised value—amounting to £306 in one case and to £272 in the other—of which sums one-half was to go to the Crown and one-half to the officer by whom the goods had been discovered. This high reward was not long in reproducing the occasion on account of which it had been given. In November 1777 another seizure took place, this time of three packets simultaneously, two of them being the same as had been seized in 1774. The third was the Dolphin. On this occasion the Commissioners of Customs determined that the vessels should be prosecuted to condemnation. In vain the postmasters-general urged that the law was a hard one which made the captains responsible for offences which, it was alleged, they had done their best to check. The customs authorities were inexorable. It was not long, however, before the Post Office became possessed of certain facts which, when investigated, proved beyond a doubt that there had for years past been collusion of the grossest character. On every voyage contraband goods—chiefly tea, coffee, and gin—had, with the connivance of the local officers of customs, been imported in large quantities; and of these only a part, a comparatively small part, had been seized. Thus, the Post Office servants received from the goods that were left to them ample, and more than ample, compensation for those that were taken away; and the servants of the customs received from their Board in London both credit and reward for their vigilance. Nor was it by any means certain that the seizure of the packets in 1774 and again in 1777 was not another phase of the same collusive arrangement.
At Falmouth the case was somewhat different. Smuggling, indeed, was going on there just as it was at Harwich. As far back as 1744 the customs had issued process against the captains of two of the Falmouth packets for having contraband goods on board. The case is only worthy of mention as shewing the loose notions which at that time prevailed even in high quarters on the subject of clandestine traffic. The postmasters-general of the day, Lord Lovell and Sir John Eyles, told the Board of Customs in so many words that their conduct was unhandsome. It was vain, they urged, to endeavour to prevent "these little clandestine importations and exportations" on board the packets; and if violent measures were to be resorted to, as in the present instance, no captain "of real worth and character" would be found to command, and "no fit and able" seamen to serve. Again, in 1776 the Greyhound packet was seized at the port of Kingston in Jamaica for attempting to smuggle spirits. Early in 1788 the Queen Charlotte packet was condemned and sold at the same port and for the same cause. In 1786 a special agent sent down to Falmouth by Tankerville reported that, according to common repute, no packet either proceeded on a voyage or returned from one without hovering about the coast for the purpose of shipping or unshipping goods.
But, rife as smuggling was, it was something more than an infringement of the customs laws that now brought the packet station at Falmouth into notoriety. During the seventeen years ending the 5th of April 1787, the cost of the packets had exceeded £1,038,000; and of this amount about £800,000 had been expended at Falmouth. At the present day, when a single mail steamer costs perhaps as much as £300,000, the sum of £1,000,000 sterling would not go far to create and maintain a fleet; but a century ago it was considered, even when spread over a period of seventeen years, an enormous expenditure, an expenditure such as, in the language of the Royal Commissioners, almost to surpass credibility. And certainly there seems to have been good ground for this opinion. The packets altogether were only thirty-six in number, of which twenty-one were stationed at Falmouth. These were of no more than 200 tons burthen, and were navigated with thirty men, five of them being the property of the Post Office and fifteen being hired. For each of the hired boats was paid the annual sum of £2129, and for each of the others the annual sum of £1529, these sums including the charge of manning and victualling. The sixteen packets stationed elsewhere than at Falmouth were hired at ridiculously low prices, at Dover for £412 a year each, at Harwich for £469, and at Holyhead for £350. To expend upon the packets under such conditions as these more than £1,000,000 sterling in the course of seventeen years required no small amount of ingenuity. How was it managed? This was the question which the Royal Commissioners now set themselves to solve.
The grossest abuses were found to exist. The hire of the packets had been paid when they were under seizure for smuggling, and under repair, and even when they were building. In the case of packets that were building and under repair the victualling allowance paid when there were no men to victual had amounted in twelve years and a half to £56,000. When packets had been taken by the enemy the hire of them had been paid for months beyond the date of their capture; and this was in addition to compensation to the owners, which, however old and rotten the packet might be, was fixed at her original value when taken into the service. Compensation to the captains had also been given for the loss of their private property and of provisions. For provisions the compensation had always been as for six months' supply, although the supply that was actually on board might not be enough for one month; and for their private property the captains had been compensated at their own valuation. Whatever they had asked they had received without examination and without question. This astounding prodigality indulged in at the expense of the State is easily explained. The Post Office servants in London, down even to the chamber-keeper, had shares in the packets; and of these servants the one who possessed by far the largest number of shares was Anthony Todd, the secretary. Todd also received a commission of 2-1/2 per cent upon the entire sum expended on the packet establishment of the kingdom. Thus, the very man whose duty it was to check the expenditure had a direct personal interest in making the expenditure as high as possible.
The salary of the Secretary to the Post Office remained, as it was fixed in 1703, at £200 a year; and whatever Todd received over and above that amount, he received without authority. Let us see what his actual receipts were. In addition to his proper salary of £200, he had what was called a bye salary of £75. Bye had at one time meant out of course or clandestine; and this meaning would perhaps not be inappropriate here. He had for coach hire £100 a year. He had another £100 a year from Lloyds's coffee-house. He had from fees on commissions and deputations £154 a year. He had every year twenty chaldron of coal and twelve dozen of wax and sixty-four dozen of tallow candles, valued by himself at £103. He had an unfurnished residence with stables in the Post Office building; and he received annually from the East India Company eight pounds of tea and two dozen of arrack. But this was by no means all. As former clerk in the foreign branch, an appointment which he still retained, he had a salary of £50 and an allowance of £100 a year for so-called disbursements, which he never made. He had also, in his capacity of clerk, £15 a year for coach-hire and ten chaldron of coal and thirty-two dozen of candles, valued at £40. Besides all this, he had his commission of 2-1/2 per cent upon the entire packet expenditure of the country, from which source he derived in the year 1782 no less than £2136. Altogether, Todd's modest salary of £200 a year had, by his own unaided exertions, been converted into an annual income of more than £3000.
The extent of Todd's emoluments, his commission on the packet expenditure, the outrageous character of some of the fees and perquisites which he and others were receiving, the absenteeism, the abuses generally—all this had long been known to Pitt. Much he had heard from Tankerville, and still more, probably, from Palmer. But before either Palmer or Tankerville became connected with the Post Office, Pitt had been aware of many, if not most, of the abuses which prevailed there. As early as 1782 one of his first acts after becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Shelburne administration was to give peremptory orders that no more packets were to be either built or purchased without Treasury authority. For such authority it had hitherto been the practice to ask before setting up new packets, but not before replacing old ones—packets that were worn out or alleged to be worn out, or that had been lost or captured. This was a distinction which had existed since packets were first established, and to which, nearly a hundred years before, Cotton and Frankland had attached great importance. It was now to exist no longer. In 1783 Pitt called for a return of the fees and perquisites received at the Post Office, and it was not until after this return had been furnished and possibly in consequence of it that the Commission of Inquiry was appointed. "Did you ever communicate this transaction to Mr. Pitt," inquired the Parliamentary Committee in 1787. "I did," replied Tankerville, "but found him not ill-informed on the subject in general."
It may seem strange that with the knowledge which he unquestionably possessed respecting the prevalent abuses Pitt should have allowed them to go on so long uncorrected. The explanation we believe to be twofold. In the first place he was unwilling to do or suffer to be done anything which might interfere with the introduction of Palmer's improvements. This was a point on which Pitt never ceased to betray the utmost anxiety. To embark on any general system of reform might conflict with the new plan. Let the plan be established first and the abuses could be corrected afterwards. Hence it was, no doubt, that of all the public offices to be inquired into, the Post Office, in spite of the notoriety which its abuses had acquired, was taken last. But this, although the primary explanation, was not, we suspect, the only one. Incorrupt himself, Pitt was extraordinarily tolerant of corruption in others. Witness his defence of Melville. Even of Carteret's transaction with Peregrine Treves he could never be brought to admit more than that it was not a proper one. This tolerance in others of what he would have scorned to do himself we attribute to a conviction on his part that abuses were less to be charged against individuals than as the result of a bad system which made the abuses possible; and what, if we mistake not, Pitt had proposed to himself was to bring to bear upon this system the force of public opinion. A ruthless exposure, we have little doubt, had been in contemplation; and yet when the time for exposure came, Pitt held back. Whether it was that the abuses proved too flagrant to be published with safety or that their correction would involve more time or more money than could then be spared, the fact remains that, after receiving the report of the Commission, Pitt locked it up in his despatch box and kept it there for the space of four years; and not even the postmasters-general could procure a copy.
But secret as the report of the Commission was kept, the procedure at the Post Office was about to undergo a radical change. A change indeed had already begun. Tankerville, on his dismissal in August 1786, had been succeeded by Lord Clarendon; and Clarendon died in the following December. Then followed an interval of eight months, during which Carteret alone administered the Post Office and, as was usual on such occasions, drew the double salary. At length, as Carteret's colleague, Pitt appointed Lord Walsingham; and from that moment irregularity and disorder were at an end. Nothing escaped Walsingham's vigilant eye. To neglect or evasion of work he shewed no mercy. The man honestly striving to do his duty had no better friend. His industry and power of work were simply amazing. All instructions were prepared by him. Not a single letter of any importance was received at the Post Office without the answer to it being drafted in his own hand. Generous to a fault with his own money, he regarded the money of the public as a sacred trust, a trust which could not be discharged too scrupulously. Carteret's opinion was well known, that it was no part of a postmaster-general's duty to check accounts. Walsingham, on the contrary, would allow no account to be passed until he had checked it; and his checking went a good deal beyond the casting. Unless the articles were necessary and the charges reasonable, and unless they were proved to be so to his satisfaction, the account had a sorry chance of being passed. The official hours of attendance had hitherto been pretty much what each man chose to make them. To Walsingham all hours were alike; and at all hours he exacted attendance from others. "It is utterly impossible," wrote the head of one department, "for the accounts to be ready for your inspection to-morrow evening." "I will not fail," wrote the head of another, "to do myself the honour of waiting upon your Lordship to-morrow morning at eight precisely."
Walsingham, on entering upon his duties at the Post Office, was concerned to find that to documents requiring to be signed by the two postmasters-general Carteret attached his signature first. Carteret's peerage dated from 1784, and Walsingham's from 1780. Surely the peer of older creation should sign first; and such, Walsingham found on inquiry, had been the practice hitherto. Pitt, though overwhelmed with business, was called upon to decide the momentous question. He was sorry, he said, that in the preparation of the patent the practice of the Post Office had been overlooked. It was a strange practice, a practice different from that of all other public offices. There the senior, the one who was first to enter the office, took precedence of the junior whatever his rank; and Carteret having been mentioned first in the patent must unquestionably sign first. But this, he added, need not be drawn into a precedent, and, on a new patent passing, the old practice of the office might be reverted to. We may here mention that a few years later the Earl of Chesterfield became Walsingham's colleague; but on that occasion Walsingham does not appear to have raised the question again or to have been unwilling to conform to the new practice. And, indeed, whether Walsingham signed before or after Carteret must to every one except himself have appeared of the least possible importance. Sign in what order he might, Walsingham's influence soon became paramount. Carteret might give what instruction he pleased, but unless endorsed by Walsingham a Post Office servant obeyed it at his peril. Walsingham, on the contrary, gave instructions without reference to his colleague, and exacted prompt and implicit obedience.
With many of the qualities of a great man, Walsingham was strangely wanting in one particular. He had no sense of proportion. A trivial point hardly deserving of a moment's consideration he would elaborate as carefully as a measure involving large and important issues; and a clerical error or a slight indiscretion he would visit as severely as misconduct of the gravest character. Nor must we omit to mention a habit in which he indulged to an extent that has probably never been surpassed. This was a habit of annotating. Nothing came officially before him, whether a letter or a report or a book, without being covered in the margin and every available space with notes and queries; and, to add to the distraction which this mode of criticism seldom fails to cause, they were in so small and crabbed a hand as to be always difficult, and sometimes even with the aid of a magnifying-glass impossible, to decipher.