But, to quit details, the broad results were these. Palmer, when introducing his plan, had promised security and despatch; but not economy. On the contrary, he had made no secret of his opinion that the use of mail-coaches would involve a considerable increase of expense. The result was a surprise even to himself. Before 1784 the annual allowance for carrying the mails ranged from £4 to £8 a mile, £8 being paid where the mails were heavy—as, for instance, on the Great North Road from London as far as Tuxford. In 1792 the terms on which the mails were carried were exemption from tolls and 1d. a mile each way, or an annual allowance of a little more than £3 a mile. Palmer had estimated the total cost of his plan at £30,000 a year. The actual cost only slightly exceeded £12,000.
Hardly less reason had he to congratulate himself on the score of security and despatch. Before 1784 scarcely a week passed without the mails on one road or another being robbed. So great had the scandal become that the Post Office built a model cart—a cart wholly constructed of iron and reputed to be robber-proof. This cart had not long begun to run before it was stopped by highwaymen and rifled of its contents. In 1792 eight years had passed since the introduction of Palmer's plan; and during this period not a single mail-coach had been either stopped or robbed. This immunity from robbery was in more ways than one equivalent to a further saving. Before 1784 heavy expenses were incurred annually for prosecutions. One trial alone, a trial which made no little noise at the time, namely that of the brothers Weston, cost no less than £4000. This source of expense had now, of course, disappeared. As regards despatch, before 1784 the post travelled between five and six miles an hour. In 1792 the mail-coaches were travelling about seven miles an hour. Telford had not yet levelled the hills nor Macadam paved the roads; and rollers were unknown. A speed of seven miles an hour at the end of the last century was probably far more trying to horses than a speed of ten miles an hour later on.
It would be beyond our province to inquire—interesting as the inquiry would be—to what extent the exchange of commodities between town and town dates from the introduction of mail-coaches; and whether it was not at this period that, with some noted exceptions, the local repute which certain towns enjoyed for the manufacture of particular articles began to spread. Ours is a humbler purpose; or we might be tempted even to contend that Palmer's plan, by the facilities it afforded for intercourse, exercised an influence—slow it may be, but none the less sure—upon the habits and condition of the people.
We will illustrate our meaning. Before the introduction of mail-coaches in 1784 the town of Penzance in Cornwall was not indeed without a post; but the post it possessed was hardly worthy of the name. In 1790 letters were conveyed there by cart from Falmouth regularly six days a week. Now, of the condition of Penzance not many years before the earlier of these two dates we are informed on unimpeachable authority. "I have heard my mother relate," writes Sir Humphry Davy's brother and biographer, "that when she was a girl[72] there was only one cart in the town of Penzance, and that if a carriage occasionally appeared in the streets it attracted universal attention. Pack-horses were then in general use for conveying merchandise, and the prevailing manner of travelling was on horseback. At that period the luxuries of furniture and living enjoyed by people of the middle class at the present time were confined almost entirely to the great and wealthy; in the same town, where the population was about 2000 persons, there was only one carpet, the floors of rooms were sprinkled with sea-sand, and there was not a single silver fork. The only newspaper which then circulated in the west of England was the Sherborne Mercury, and it was carried through the country not by the post but by a man on horseback specially employed in distributing it." Penzance can never be otherwise than a most interesting town; but one finds it difficult to believe that, after being brought into communication with the outside world on six days of the week, it can long have retained its pristine charm and simplicity.
Let us now see what, at the time of Palmer's retirement, was the condition of the country Post Offices. Bristol, after long ranking next to London in wealth and population, had yielded place to other towns. Foremost among these stood Manchester. Manchester, following suit to the capital, had recently numbered its streets; it was publishing local directories; and it enjoyed the reputation of being, the capital itself not excepted, the dearest town in the kingdom. At the present time the Post Office at Manchester gives employment to about 1400 persons. In 1792, with the exception of a single letter-carrier, the whole of the Post Office business there was conducted by an aged widow assisted by her daughter. Dame Willatt had recently achieved some little local notoriety. She had, as an inducement to persons to post early, imposed a late-letter fee. For this proceeding, not at that time uncommon and not disapproved at headquarters, she had been summoned to the Court of the Lord of the Manor, and had been cast in damages.
Bath enjoyed a double distinction, a distinction due less probably to its population as compared with that of other towns than to the fact that, being Palmer's native place, it was constantly under his eye as it had been under the eye of Ralph Allen before. This highly-favoured town was, outside London, the only one in the kingdom which could boast of what, with any regard to the meaning of words, could be dignified by the name of a Post Office Establishment; and the postmaster's salary was in excess of that which any other postmaster received. This salary was £150 a year, and the establishment, over which Ralph Allen's successor presided, consisted of one clerk and three letter-carriers.
No other town had more than one letter-carrier; and many towns had not even this. Whether the accommodation was provided or not appears to have depended less upon the necessities of the place than upon the disposition of the inhabitants. Thus, the little towns of Sandwich in Kent and Hungerford in Berkshire, in recognition of the gallant conflict they had waged with the authorities, had each a letter-carrier of its own, while Norwich, York, Derby, Newcastle, and Plymouth had none. Besides Bath only four towns received an allowance for a clerk or assistant, namely Manchester, Norwich, York, and Leeds. Elsewhere the postmaster and a letter-carrier, if letter-carrier there was, were the sole Post Office representatives.
At Bristol the postmaster's salary was £140,—the next highest after that given at Bath. At Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and Chester the salary was £100; at Exeter, York, Newcastle, Leeds, and Plymouth £80; at Sheffield £60, to which amount it had been recently raised from £50; at Derby, Carlisle, and Gloucester £40; at Brighton and Nottingham £30; at Leicester £25; and at Southampton £20. At Tunbridge the postmaster, in addition to a salary of £20, received an allowance of equal amount for keeping an office at Tunbridge Wells. Ripon, despite the rebuke it had received in 1713 for its audacity in asking for a Post Office, had now been accommodated with one. At Chepstow pence were still being paid on the delivery of letters, not because the inhabitants had not discovered their rights but out of consideration to the aged postmistress, whose emoluments they were unwilling to diminish. Birkenhead, Torquay, and Bournemouth,[73] of course, did not exist. Eastbourne existed indeed, but not as we know it now. Hither the letters were carried three times a week from Lewes. At Ramsgate, then a village served from the neighbouring post-town of Sandwich, an office for the receipt of letters was kept at a cost of £6 a year. The whole of the Isle of Wight had but one postmaster and one letter-carrier. To the Channel Islands there was no post.
On Palmer's retirement the office of chief adviser to the postmasters-general devolved almost naturally upon Francis Freeling, the surveyor located at headquarters. Todd still held the appointment of secretary, but after a service of more than fifty years he was unequal to the exertion which the exigencies of the time required. Between Todd and Walsingham, moreover, there was little in common. Their relations, indeed, had always been most friendly; but the views they entertained on Post Office questions were more often than not at variance. "It is a matter of great entertainment to me," wrote Walsingham, as early as October 1788, "to see how totally we differ in all our official opinions." From this time Todd took less and less part in the duties of his office, and confined himself almost exclusively to its social amenities. This was a sphere in which he excelled. At his table in Lombard Street the postmasters-general themselves and such as they might choose to meet them were frequent guests, and "his old hock in his old parlour" passed into a by-word.
Freeling, on the contrary, possessed advantages which not only pointed him out as Todd's successor when Todd should be pleased to retire, but peculiarly fitted him to deal with the circumstances of the moment. In the prime of life, of good address and prepossessing appearance, and with a knowledge of every detail of Post Office organisation such as only constant visits to different parts of the kingdom could give, he soon contrived to make himself not only useful but indispensable; and before any long period had expired the postmasters-general appointed him joint secretary with Todd, an arrangement by virtue of which one was to be the acting and the other the sleeping partner; one was to do the work and the other to draw the pay. It was new to the postmasters-general to have about them some one who was not only able but willing and anxious to impart information on every official question as it arose, and they could ill conceal their glee at the altered state of affairs. "One of the complaints made by us of Mr. Palmer," they wrote about this time, "was that he did what he thought fit without making the least communication to the Board, or without there being a single record of anything which he did or objected to either before or after it was done"; ... but "Mr. Freeling reports distinctly to us upon every application that we refer to him, or that is made to the Board, amounting to above two hundred reports every quarter for the current business." Freeling was now exposed to a serious danger, a danger to which many a reputation has succumbed, namely, that of being transformed from a man of action into a mere scribe; but this was a temptation which he stoutly resisted. Without relaxing his efforts to maintain and improve upon Palmer's plan, he was careful not only to keep the postmasters-general informed of what he was doing, but to do nothing which had not first been duly authorised.