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

by Herbert Joyce

Lord Althorp was at this time Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the position which he assumed towards the Post Office was probably unique. Ordinarily, between the Treasury and the Post Office there is a certain amount of antagonism which, deplorable as it may be, is not difficult to understand. The Post Office wants to spend money; the Treasury wants to save it. The Post Office knows by experience that it must sow before it can reap; the Treasury, while ready enough to reap, has a rooted aversion to sowing, and resolutely shuts its eyes to the fact that between the two processes there is a direct and necessary connection. All this was reversed in Althorp's time. Often, during his tenure of office, might be witnessed the strange spectacle of a Chancellor of the Exchequer urging the Post Office to adopt some improvement, and the Post Office attempting to frighten him with the bogey of cost.

The first matter on which Althorp brought his authority to bear was the boundary of the general post delivery. The limits of this delivery were irregular and capricious in the extreme. Of two streets, possibly adjoining streets, one might receive its general post letters for the general post rate alone, while the other, though at no greater distance from St. Martin's-le-Grand, had to pay the twopenny rate as well.

The question now forced itself into prominence. Belgrave Square had been laid out, and the houses were being occupied as fast as they could be built. Those of the occupiers who were members of Parliament found to their chagrin that every letter they received cost them 2d., for the franking privilege did not clear the twopenny post; and, of course, by those who were not members of Parliament, 2d. had to be paid in addition to any other postage to which their letters might be liable. Althorp insisted that the general post limits should be not only extended but fixed on some definite principle. But what was the principle to be? Contiguity of building? This was held to be impracticable. A line drawn on such a basis would extend beyond Brentford on the west to Hampstead and Highgate on the north, and beyond Clapham on the south. A line drawn according to parishes would be little better. The parish of St. Pancras, which nearly touched Holborn in its southern extremity, extended as far as Finchley in the north, and the parish of Lambeth reached nearly to Croydon.

Another course would be to draw a circle of which the Post Office should be the centre, and let all letters within this circle be delivered free; but even with a radius of no more than three miles, the additional cost would be £25,000 a year. This was an outlay which the Post Office could not recommend, and, if it were incurred, the Government must take the responsibility. Althorp was not to be daunted, and after April 1831 the general post limits extended for a distance of three miles from St. Martin's-le-Grand. A little later, the threepenny post was extended to a radius of twelve miles. This, boon as it was considered to be sixty years ago, was shorter by some miles than the radius of the penny post when Queen Anne ascended the throne.

Althorp was hardly less determined on the subject of the packets. It had been a matter of principle with Freeling, that to all places beyond the sea to which there was regular communication the Post Office should carry its own mails. That they should be carried in vessels belonging to private persons, however respectable these persons might be, appeared to him to be unworthy of the English Government, and on this ground many an advantageous offer had been refused.

Althorp held a different opinion, and an opportunity soon offered of carrying his own view into effect. From Harwich the mails to Holland and to Hamburg were still carried by sailing packet, and the merchants of London, regarding this as an anachronism, urged that the sailing packets might be replaced by steam packets. The request was not unreasonable, but, unwilling that the Government should be at the cost of substituting one description of packet for the other, Althorp directed that the service should be put up to public competition. Here we see the first application of a principle which in the result has furnished us with a fleet of packets such as no other country in the world can produce. The tender of the General Steam Navigation Company was accepted, though saddled with the condition that its vessels should start from the Thames. This was a death-blow to Harwich. The sailing packets for Sweden were, indeed, still retained there; but in little more than eighteen months the Swedish Government contracted for the mails to be forwarded from Hull, and Harwich as a packet station was closed.

But of all the changes which Althorp introduced perhaps the most important, and certainly the one which excited most opposition at the Post Office, was the abolition of the newspaper privilege. The number of newspapers sent by post from London into the country had, within the last fifty or sixty years, increased enormously. In 1764 they averaged 3160 a day, in 1790 the daily average was 12,600, and in 1830 it had risen to 41,412. The rate of increase, moreover, was advancing. In 1829 the total number of such newspapers was 11,862,000, and in 1830 12,962,000; and more than one-tenth part of the whole number was supplied by the clerks of the roads.

The news-vendors now took the matter up in earnest. A general meeting was held to protest against the Post Office servants being any longer allowed to compete with the private dealers, and a petition to the same effect was presented to Parliament. This called forth a vigorous rejoinder from Freeling, and it is interesting to note by what arguments he defended his position. So far, he said, from the news-vendors having any ground of complaint against the Post Office servants, it is the Post Office servants who have reason to complain of the news-vendors. For their own interest and advantage a few persons engaged in a trade of modern creation are endeavouring by clamour to deprive others of the remains of an old and long-established privilege, which they exercise not only under the sanction of immemorial usage, but by the direct authority of Acts of Parliament. It is not as though the public were interested in the question. The public have absolutely no interest in it, except indeed to this extent—that, if what remains of the privilege be withdrawn, they will be asked to compensate those whose incomes are reduced in consequence, and to provide higher salaries for their successors; and this "for the sole purpose of transferring their authorised official remuneration to the pockets of a few individuals who, having been admitted to a participation in what was originally an exclusive privilege, have now thought proper to set up a claim to the whole."

Such were Freeling's arguments, but Althorp was not convinced by them. By his direction the privilege was withdrawn as from the 5th of April 1834, and those whose incomes suffered were handsomely compensated. Thus ended a practice which had existed from the first establishment of the Post Office, and which, while the Post Office was still in its infancy, may perhaps have had this to justify it—that except for the franking privilege possessed by the clerks of the roads the provinces would probably have had to go without even the few copies of newspapers which at that time found their way there.

It may appear strange that, while Althorp was thus applying his sturdy common sense to the affairs of the Post Office, no steps were taken to correct what most needed correction—the exorbitant rates of postage. Our own belief is that in a very short time, had the Government of which he was a member remained in office, a reduction would have been made, and that it was to this result that he and Richmond, who worked hand in hand together, were preparing the way. As to Richmond's views on the matter there can be little doubt. Under previous Governments the Post Office had been accustomed in exceptional cases to appeal to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to mitigate the severity of its own rates by the exercise of a dispensing power; but Richmond set his face against the practice, insisting that the law should be obeyed until it was altered; and, after being released from the trammels of office, he was one of the first to propose an alteration.