It must not be supposed, because Palmer's name is associated with the establishment of mail-coaches, that to these his attention was exclusively confined. In virtue of his appointment as comptroller-general he exercised control, subject of course to the postmasters-general, over the whole of the Post Office, the offices of account excepted; and he now took advantage of this position to create a newspaper office. Newspapers had long been a source of trouble. By the clerks of the roads they were not only posted in good time but were tied up in bundles, covered with strong brown paper, and addressed to the postmasters of the respective towns, who took out the contents and had them delivered. So long as the newspapers were thus dealt with, no inconvenience resulted from their being mixed up with letters; but from the moment that the distribution passed into the hands of the printers and dealers the case was different. The newspapers were now posted at the last moment, and, being clumsily folded and still wet from the printing press, they damaged and defaced the addresses of the letters with which they came in contact in the mail bags. The inconvenience had been tolerated for years. As early as 1782 the postmasters-general had contemplated the creation of a newspaper office, an office in which newspapers might be dealt with separately from letters, but nothing had been done. Palmer now took the matter in hand and carried it through with his usual vigour. Having satisfied himself that a separate office was necessary, he forthwith established one, appointed to it eighteen sub-sorters and fixed their wages; and not even the postmasters-general were aware of what he was doing until it was done.[66]
Such an instance of energy, worthy as we may think it of imitation, would be impossible on the part of any one who had been brought up in the public service, because he would have learnt that no wages can be fixed or new offices created without the consent of the Treasury. In the Post Office, too, the postmasters-general alone were legally competent to make appointments. But to Palmer these were the merest trifles, if indeed he gave them a thought. To create a newspaper office was a right thing to do, and he had done it; and to haggle about the circumstances of the doing appeared to him sheer pedantry. Not so thought Walsingham. It ill accorded with his sense of propriety that a number of new places should have been created without the requisite authority which the Treasury alone could give; but that to these places, whether authorised or not, a subordinate should have presumed to make appointments—a power which by the postmaster-generals' patent was vested in themselves alone—struck him as little short of an outrage.
Unfortunately for Palmer, another irregularity on his part came to light at the same time. The mail guards' wages had been fixed at 13s. a week; but of this sum Palmer paid only 10s., retaining the balance for the purpose of providing uniforms, pensions, and an allowance during sickness. Again, the plan was excellent; but it was unauthorised, and had the effect of leaving in Palmer's hands, without any means of checking it, a sum of liberated money amounting to about £900 a year.
Walsingham now called upon Palmer to give the details of his plan, with a view to its being properly authorised, and to submit the names of those whom he had appointed to the newspaper office, so that their appointments might be confirmed. Palmer would do neither the one nor the other. Walsingham persisted in his demand, and Palmer persisted in his refusal. No course remained but to submit the matter for Pitt's decision; and Pitt decided in Walsingham's favour. Palmer, said the minister, had the power of suspending Post Office servants but not of appointing them, although the postmasters-general, it might well be believed, would consent as a matter of favour to accept his nominations. Pitt also agreed that the mode of dealing with the mail guards' wages was highly irregular. The decision of the minister was communicated to Palmer, but it had not the slightest effect upon his conduct. The mail guards' wages continued to be dealt with as before; and the appointments to the newspaper office remained unconfirmed.
Pitt's decision was not given until the autumn of 1789; and meanwhile other matters had occurred to strain the relations between Walsingham and Palmer. Chief among these was Walsingham's inveterate habit of scribbling. Both men were endowed with an amount of energy which nothing could repress; but while Palmer expended himself by rushing from one part of the country to another as fast as horses could carry him, Walsingham's sphere of activity was restricted to writing. And well he exemplified the law that force asserts itself in proportion to the limits within which it is confined. His notes and questions were literally endless. At one time all the ingenuity of Lombard Street, with the assistance of erasers and acids, is being exercised to remove remarks he has written upon a document which, not being the property of the Post Office, had to be returned. At another, he has sent for a blank form of contract, of which only a single copy remains in the Office. "I implore your Lordship," writes the sender, "to let me have it back, and that the margin may not be written on." Palmer, to whom pens, ink, and paper were an abomination, would think nothing of posting a hundred miles and more to avoid the necessity of writing a letter; and by Bonnor, Palmer's lieutenant, who always aped his master as far as he dared, answers to the questions put to him would be withheld altogether or reserved for the next Board meeting. "I can perceive," wrote Todd to Walsingham about this time, "you are hurt that neither Mr. Palmer nor Mr. Bonnor pay a proper regard to your many observations."
Another matter occurred at this time which, while only indirectly affecting Palmer, was not calculated to promote harmonious relations. Bonnor, who had sent some accounts to Windsor for Walsingham's signature, wrote two or three days later, urging that they might be signed and returned at once, and giving as a reason the importunity of the letter-carriers. "What these poor oppressed creatures will do," he said, "I know not. They all came in a body this morning and gave a most affecting description of the distresses with which their wives and families laboured, their credit exhausted, not a shilling to buy bread, and each having between £30 and £40 of hard-earned wages due to them from a public office whose revenues are every day increasing." This struck Walsingham as very strange. The letter-carriers were paid by weekly wages; and what, over and above their wages, they had earned for extra duty should also have been paid weekly. Besides, the accounts had been in his hands for only two or three days, whereas for the last twelve months and more he had been pressing for their production, and had only now succeeded in getting them.
There was a mystery somewhere, and, as the best means of solving it, Walsingham called for the vouchers. Bonnor now lost himself in excuses. The vouchers were essential to his reputation. He could not part with them. If once they left his hands, they might be lost. It could not but be known to his Lordship how often this had happened with official papers passing to and fro. Besides, to inspect the vouchers would be to pry into his private concerns. This was enough for Walsingham, and he directed the accountant-general to look into the matter forthwith. The examination revealed a curious state of things. The amounts which the letter-carriers had earned for extra duty had not been paid for a whole year, and a part of the money which had been issued for that purpose had been applied to the payment of the persons irregularly appointed to the newspaper office. More than this. The accounts shewed, or professed to shew, that during the last eighteen months the mail-coach contractors had received in payment of their services the sum of £20,000; but the receipts for more than £16,000 of this amount bore no dates, and others were signed by Bonnor himself. "Signed," to use his own words, "by myself for money paid by myself to myself." In short, the so-called vouchers were no vouchers at all. Bonnor now made an apology, which, in point of abjectness, has probably seldom been equalled; and Walsingham, unwilling to force matters to extremities, let him off with a sound dressing. This disclosure did not tend to restore either harmony or confidence. Palmer, it is true, gave no heed to accounts; but Bonnor was under his protection, and Palmer resented a censure upon his lieutenant and friend even more than a censure upon himself.
We doubt whether in England a public department has often been in so singular a position as that which the Post Office occupied during the six months beginning with September 1789. Carteret had been dismissed;[67] and Westmorland, Carteret's successor, whose patent had been delayed owing to the absence of the law officers from London, had not even entered upon his duties as postmaster-general before he wrote to announce his appointment as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Meanwhile Palmer resolutely withheld obedience from the orders of his chiefs, backed though those orders were by the minister; and Walsingham was powerless to act. Minutes indeed he prepared by the score, proposing the most drastic measures; but Carteret refused to sign because he was on the point of going out, and Westmorland refused to sign because he had only just come in, and had no intention of remaining. Walsingham's signature alone carried no legal force. It was not until the following March, the March of 1790, that the office of postmaster-general was again properly filled by the appointment of Lord Chesterfield as Walsingham's colleague.
At the risk of interrupting the course of our narrative we cannot refrain from mentioning here in its chronological order memorial which was at this time received from certain merchants of the city of London trading with foreign parts. This memorial, or rather the counter-memorial to which it gave rise, is interesting if only as serving to shew that the conservative instinct—an indisposition to change, is not confined to public offices. The delivery of inland letters had been recently expedited; but foreign letters continued to be delivered as of old. Lest the practice in the case of these letters should seem to be overstated, we give it in the memorialists' own words. "It is the practice of the Post Office," they write under date the 20th of January 1790, "if a mail does not arrive before one o'clock to withhold the delivery of the letters till the next day, and even to protract the delivery till after the same hour the succeeding day, provided any other mail be expected or due. This happening on a Saturday (a case by no means uncommon), the letters are kept back till the Monday, when three other mails being due, and they not arriving perhaps till the stipulated hour of one, the delivery of the mail which arrived on Saturday is not made till between three and four o'clock on the Monday and sometimes later. Thus the advice of property shipt to a great amount on which insurances should immediately have been made, the receipt of remittances on which the credit of many persons may depend, and the general information so essential in commercial affairs are cruelly withheld for upwards of fifty hours without the least apparent necessity." The remedy which the memorialists proposed was moderate enough. They asked nothing more than that, in the case of mails arriving before four o'clock in the afternoon, letters might be given out to persons who should call at the Post Office for them in two or three hours after the mail had come in, such as were not called for being, at the expiration of that interval, sent out by letter-carrier; and that, in the case of mails arriving after four o'clock, the letters might be delivered at ten o'clock on the following morning.
The unfortunate merchants who signed this memorial little bethought themselves of the storm they were raising. Other merchants, also trading with foreign parts and more numerous than those who advocated an earlier delivery, put forward a counter-memorial strongly protesting against any change. The custom of postponing until the following day the delivery of all foreign letters arriving at the Post Office after one o'clock was, they said, a wise custom, a "custom recommended by our ancestors," and one that could not be altered save to their own great prejudice. The original memorial had been studiously kept from themselves, and "this most extraordinary proceeding" they could only ascribe to a well-founded apprehension on the part of the promoters that otherwise the impropriety of the "novelty" which they sought to introduce would be exposed. The remonstrants added that many and cogent reasons might be given in support of the existing usage; but, unhappily, they omitted to state what these reasons were. Doubtless, however, jealousy lest others should obtain priority of information was at the bottom of the protest; although it is not very clear how, under a regulation that was to be common to all, any one in particular would enjoy an undue advantage.