General Post Office, February 10th, 1821.
Mr. Freeling requests the postmaster to make inquiries of the master of any ship arriving from Jamaica into the state of the Duke of Manchester's health, and inform him of the result by the first post.
Of the reason of this solicitude we are not aware.
Police notices, notices giving particulars of crimes which had been committed and offering rewards for the apprehension of the criminals, were similarly dealt with. These, like the hand-bills of which specimens have been given, were sent from Lombard Street under cover to the postmasters with instructions to circulate them in their respective towns. The propriety of this proceeding is not free from doubt. Of course, every department of the State is interested in the detection and punishment of crime; and yet it may be a question whether by taking an active part in the distribution of these documents the Post Office was not to some extent identifying itself with a class of business from which, for obvious reasons, it had better hold itself aloof.
While changes were taking place in other directions, the regulations for the transmission of newspapers through the post remained as they had been at the beginning of the century. Within the United Kingdom newspapers could not pass free except under the frank of either members of Parliament or of the clerks of the roads. To the Continent of Europe and to the colonies they could pass only at the letter rate of postage unless they were franked, in the case of the Continent, by the comptroller or clerks of the foreign department, and, in the case of the colonies, by Freeling. This privilege of franking was to the Post Office servants who possessed it a source of considerable profit. Freeling's share alone amounted to nearly £3000 a year; but he, unlike his subordinates, claimed to frank not newspapers alone but the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews and other publications of a like nature.
The West India merchants had long writhed under this exaction, and now at their instance Joseph Hume, the member for Montrose, brought the matter under the notice of the House of Commons. The practice had only to be made known in order to secure condemnation. A bill was brought in and passed extinguishing the privilege so far as the colonies were concerned, empowering the Treasury to grant compensation for the loss of it, and providing for the transmission of newspapers at easy rates. These rates were, from the United Kingdom to the colonies, 1-1/2d. and, from the colonies to the United Kingdom, 3d. for each newspaper, the reason for the difference of charge being that the paper would bear a stamp-duty in one direction and not in the other.
In the case of newspapers for the Continent the franking privilege remained untouched. It may seem strange that this should have been so; indeed, not more than two or three years had elapsed before members of Parliament were expressing surprise that the Act which had taken away the privilege in respect to one class of newspapers had not taken it away also in respect to the other. But the explanation, we think, is simple. Some nine or ten years before it had been rumoured that in the case of all Post Office servants the franking privilege was to be abolished, and those who would have been injured by its abolition proceeded to shew cause why in their own case an exception should be made. Only by those who franked to the Continent were even plausible reasons given; and there can be little doubt that, at all events to some extent, the same reasons operated now. These were that over a great part of the Continent, except for the arrangements made by the Post Office servants in Lombard Street, English newspapers could not circulate at all or could circulate only under most onerous conditions. In France their circulation was prohibited. To Holland they could not be sent unless ordered by some postmaster there. In Germany and Sweden, unless so ordered, they could not pass through the post except at the letter rate of postage. In Portugal the letter rate of postage was always charged. In Russia, besides being charged 7s. 6d. apiece, they were generally delayed and not seldom suppressed altogether. These obstacles had been overcome by the private arrangements made from Lombard Street, and, if these should be disallowed, the transmission of newspapers to the Continent, instead of being facilitated, would be rendered more difficult and costly. Thus in 1816 argued those who were interested in the maintenance of the privilege, and we can well understand that in 1825 much the same considerations prevailed.
The same Act of Parliament which imposed upon newspapers to the colonies a postage of 1-1/2d. allowed newspapers within the United Kingdom to pass through the post free from any postage at all. This was the effect of the Act, but it was accomplished in a roundabout manner. By a statute passed early in the century[93] a member of Parliament was required, in order to send his newspapers free, to sign his name on the outside in his own handwriting, and, in order to receive them free, to have them addressed to some place of which he had given previous notice in writing at the Post Office. By the present statute these provisions were repealed. A newspaper, to be exempt from postage, need no longer bear the signature of a member of Parliament and need no longer be addressed to a place of which previous notice had been given. In other words, newspapers might pass through the post free; and as a consequence the franking privilege possessed by the clerks of the roads was at an end.
This, it might naturally be supposed, was a signal epoch in the history of the Post Office. As a matter of fact, it was nothing of the kind. For many years past the law had been disregarded. It had indeed been insisted upon that a newspaper, in order to pass free, must bear a member's name, without which the full letter rate of postage would be charged; but by whom the name was written, whether it was written at all or only printed, and whether the use of it had been authorised, had long ceased to be considered material. So well was this understood that some of the largest news-vendors in the kingdom adopted a member's name without the slightest reference to the member himself, and had it printed on their newspaper-covers.
This laxity in the case of newspapers may appear all the more extraordinary in view of the stringency which was observed in other matters. The Chelsea pensioners had by statute enjoyed the privilege of sending and receiving letters at low rates of postage. Freeling never rested until the statute was repealed. At the close of hostilities with France letters which had been detained in Paris since the war broke out in 1803 were forwarded to London, and the merchants urged that they might be delivered free. The Treasury were in favour of granting the request; but Freeling energetically opposed it. The delivery of such letters free, he insisted, would be a plain breach of the law. On a dissolution of Parliament those who had been members lost their privilege in the matter of franking; and yet it might be supposed that a short period of grace would have been allowed, a period sufficient to admit of letters which were already in the post being delivered free. Nothing of the kind. These letters were surprised in course of transit and charged with postage.[94]
Lord Salisbury when at the Post Office contrasted the stringency of later years with the laxity which prevailed in his early manhood. "In the year 1778," he wrote, "and in many succeeding ones while I took the field with the militia it was the constant practice to write on all regimental papers the words, 'On His Majesty's service,' which insured a free delivery; but in process of time the Post Office became rather stricter and more attentive, and then such a superscription was charged except when addressed to peers and members of Parliament, and I have frequently paid for such letters overweight without getting any redress."