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

by Herbert Joyce

That Freeling would have received a special pension is beyond doubt; but even a special pension, with the utmost goodwill on the part of the Government, could not have approached the amount of his official income. And of this Freeling must have been well aware, for grumblings were already to be heard. The Commissioners of Revenue Inquiry, indeed, had gone so far as to question his right to receive any fees at all, and, even assuming such right to exist, had impugned the conduct of the Government in fixing the amount of his compensation at close upon £3000 a year.

The removal into the new building was celebrated by two important steps in advance. Two branch offices were opened, one at Charing Cross and the other in Oxford Street, where letters were received without a fee until half-past six o'clock in the evening. Up to this time, except in Lombard Street, no office for the receipt of letters had been kept open later than five o'clock. A still more important step was the earlier delivery of letters in the morning. This was accomplished within the city by the employment of additional letter-carriers, and in the more distant parts by conveying the men to their walks in vehicles. A whole hour was thus gained. In the west end of London the delivery had not been completed until between twelve and one o'clock. It was now to be completed, except on Mondays, when the greater number of letters caused delay, between eleven and twelve.

It will be convenient here to notice, though not strictly in chronological order, a third step in advance which took place about a year later, a step regarded as of little moment at the time, and yet one which, in view of subsequent events, was of the highest importance. On the 11th of November 1830 the first mail was sent by railway, this being the mail between Liverpool and Manchester. Except as the opening of a new era, the fact would hardly deserve to be recorded, for many years had yet to pass before railways became sufficiently general to afford to the Post Office any sensible relief. Meanwhile the roofs of the mail-coaches groaned under the weight of the mails. Time had been when no mail was allowed to be put on the roof or elsewhere than in the mail-box; but, as the correspondence increased, the Post Office was forced to countenance a practice of which it highly disapproved. What, except for the railways, would have happened on the introduction of penny postage is a question into which, happily, we need not inquire.

The new Post Office had not been long occupied before the Government changed hands, and Earl Grey came into power with the Duke of Richmond as postmaster-general. It is not often that a change of Government affects the proceedings of the Post Office. One postmaster-general may be more active than another, or he may take a more lively and personal interest in the questions with which he has to deal; but there must, from the nature of the case, be a continuity of policy which can seldom be broken. Nor was there in this respect any exception to rule in the present instance. And yet the peer who now assumed the direction of the Post Office adopted a mode of procedure so different from that of his immediate predecessors that it is impossible to pass over the occasion in silence.

Richmond on his appointment as postmaster-general declined to receive any salary; and having formed this determination on the ground that the office was notoriously a sinecure, he straightway proceeded to shew that a sinecure was the very thing which in his hands the office was not to be. He devoted himself heart and soul to his new duties. Early and late, at his private residence as well as the Post Office, he was in constant and personal communication with officers of all classes from the highest to the lowest. Nothing like it had been seen since the days of Walsingham. He frequented the sorting office, saw for himself how the work was done, and with many a kindly word encouraged the men to do their best. With his own hands he on one occasion opened a bag for the colonial office, and, in confirmation of the suspicion which had prompted the act, found it full of letters for bankers, army agents, and others, representing postage to the amount of £60.

Yet hard as he laboured, the Duke's repugnance to receive remuneration for his services could not be overcome. Learning that his salary remained undrawn, the Treasury addressed to him a letter of gentle remonstrance. To this letter he returned no reply. Fourteen months later the Treasury wrote again. To gratuitous service there were, in their Lordships' opinion, serious objections. The Lord Privy Seal had declined to receive the salary annexed to his office, and a Select Committee of the House of Commons had expressed disapproval of the step as being inconsistent with the wishes and the dignity of the country. Could that be right on the part of the postmaster-general which had been held to be wrong in the case of the Lord Privy Seal? Richmond now yielded, feeling that it would be indelicate, if not disrespectful to the House, to force gratuitous service where he was authoritatively informed gratuitous service would not be welcome; but while yielding he managed to draw as little of the arrears of salary as possible. His appointment as postmaster-general bore date the 14th of December 1830, and the views of the Committee were for the first time made known to him at the end of April. The end of April, he was pleased to say, was an inconvenient time to begin. It was a broken quarter. He would, in deference to the opinion of the Committee, draw salary from the 5th of July but not before.

Richmond had been only a short time at the Post Office when he had a most invidious task to perform. This was the carrying out of the arrangements consequent upon the consolidation of the Irish Post Office with the Post Office of Great Britain. The state of things arising from the maintenance within the United Kingdom of two independent Post Offices had long been felt to be intolerable. Until four or five years before, not only had the rates of postage in Ireland been different from those in England, but on a letter passing from one part of the kingdom to another both the English and the Irish rates had been charged. This had now been altered,[96] but the inconvenience of the dual control remained. A letter from Ireland might have miscarried or been delayed. The postmaster-general of England could not answer for its course except on this side of the Channel, and for further particulars the complainant had to be referred to Dublin. The English packets were timed to arrive in Ireland at a particular hour; but on the goodwill of the authorities in Dublin it depended whether the Irish posts corresponded or whether, as had not been unknown to be the case, their times were perversely fixed so as to keep the English mails waiting.

Nor was this all. The Revenue Inquiry Commissioners had recently reported upon the Irish Post Office, and the evidence, on which their report was based, revealed the existence of scandalous abuses such as no Government could suffer to continue. For nearly fifty years the Irish Post Office had been independent of the Post Office of Great Britain, and it was now determined that this independence should cease. In 1831 an Act was passed incorporating the two Post Offices into one, and Richmond's patent as postmaster-general of Great Britain had hardly been completed before another passed constituting him postmaster-general of the United Kingdom.

Upon Richmond as postmaster-general of Ireland as well as England and Scotland it now devolved to sweep out the Augean stable; and his stern sense of duty peculiarly qualified him for the task. Rosse and O'Neill had ceased to be postmasters-general of Ireland upon the Act of incorporation passing. Lees, their secretary, was removed from Dublin to Edinburgh. Only those who had performed their duties in person were retained. All others were summarily dismissed and pensions were refused to them. In the result the Irish establishment was reduced in point of numbers by one-half, and in point of cost by nearly £10,000 a year; and this after the salaries of those who were retained had been increased all round.

One important function had yet to be performed. This was to audit the Irish accounts, which had not been audited for fourteen years, and were known to be in a state of the utmost confusion. The receiver-general, who carried on the private business of banker and money-lender, had recently died, and speculation was high as to what further scandals the audit would reveal. All preparations had been made, and the persons selected for the task were on the point of starting for Dublin when intelligence reached London that the receiver-general's bond was not forthcoming. It had, shortly after his death, been surrendered under an instruction from Lees which, like the instruction which conferred upon his brother a valuable appointment, purported to have been given at a Board at which were present "the earls." The earls, as a matter of fact, had not been present and had never been consulted on the point. As it was felt that in the absence of the bond an audit would be of little use, the Government abandoned their intention, and the Irish Post Office accounts from 1817 to 1831 remain unaudited to the present day.