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

by Herbert Joyce

But if such were indeed Althorp and Richmond's intention, we cannot regret that it was not carried into effect. The illustrious man who gave us penny postage had not yet directed his attention to the subject; and, as he tells us himself, it was with him a matter of long and careful consideration whether he should devote his energies to the reform of the Post Office or to the improvement of the printing machine. If in 1834 only a moderate reduction had been made in the extortionate rates of postage which were then in force, Rowland Hill might not have embarked upon his plan, and, even if he had done so, that plan might have failed to evoke from the public sufficient support to overcome opposition in high quarters. In proportion to the extent of the evil did men welcome the remedy.

Meanwhile, although the demand for cheap postage had not yet taken shape, profound dissatisfaction existed with the conduct of the Post Office. This, under the reformed Parliament, was perhaps to be expected in any case; but there were special circumstances which contributed to the result. Nearly five years had elapsed since the Royal Commission of Inquiry had reported upon the Post Office, and nothing had since been done to carry its recommendations into effect.

It is not difficult to understand this inaction. In Freeling's view the Post Office had been brought to a pitch of perfection such as it had never reached before, and he regarded it as little short of sacrilege that a body of outside novices should presume to lay its hands upon the sacred ark which he had now for more than a generation been moulding into form. Of the change of opinion which the labours of the Commission had wrought he appears to have been utterly unconscious. Hitherto the Post Office had been regarded as a marvellous mystery, which none but experts could understand. This mystery had now been invaded, and men were beginning to wonder, not, as in the past, at the things which the Post Office was able to do, but how it was that these things were not done better.

The Commission had also brought to light the existence of abuses, and these on one pretext or another had remained uncorrected. We will give a single instance. The Money Order Office had been established in 1792 with the object of facilitating the transmission of small sums from one part of the country to the other by means of orders drawn on the different postmasters. The plan was excellent and deserved success. The only objection to it was that the enterprise was a private one, undertaken by a few Post Office servants for their own benefit, and that to make it remunerative to the projectors required from the authorities an amount of favour which they had no right to bestow. Originally there had been no limit to the amount for which a money order might be drawn;[97] but long before 1829, in order to prevent interference with the banking interest, the limit had been fixed at £5:5s.; and the commission chargeable was at the rate of 8d. in the £1 on the sum remitted. Of this amount 3d. went to the postmaster who issued the order, 3d. to the postmaster who paid it, and the residue to the proprietors.[98]

Seeing that the postage on a single letter between two towns no farther apart than London and Bristol was at this time 10d., it will be obvious that in respect to orders for small sums the enterprise would have been conducted at a loss unless the correspondence on money order business had been exempt from postage. And such indeed was the case. All letters passing from London to the country were impressed with the official stamp, and those passing from the country to London were enclosed in printed covers addressed to the secretary, and bearing, immediately below the secretary's name, that of the proprietors, "Stow and Company." For correspondence between themselves on money order business the postmasters were supplied with franks sent down from London in blank. Strongly as the Commission of Inquiry had animadverted on this abuse, nothing had been done to correct it, and the franking privilege was, for money order purposes, being as freely used as ever.

The returns which the House of Commons called for about this time, and the returns which the Post Office furnished, shew, more forcibly perhaps than anything else, in what direction men's minds were tending, and how hollow was the foundation on which a part of the Post Office system rested. More than sixty years had elapsed since the Law Courts decided that inhabitants of post towns were entitled to a gratuitous delivery of their letters. The House now inquired at how many post towns a charge on delivery was still being made, and by what authority. The return furnished by the Post Office shewed the number of towns to be eighty-nine, and after giving as the authority for the charge "immemorial usage," went on to state that "the payment is not compulsory if the parties choose to object."

It was still the practice to hold up to a strong lamplight every letter that passed through the post in order to see whether it was a single or a double one; and the House called upon the Post Office to state by what authority this was done. The Post Office, having no authority to adduce, returned an evasive reply. The House next called for the number of persons who had been prosecuted in the course of the year for the illegal conveyance of letters. The Post Office return shewed that on this ground, during the last twelve months, as many as 341 prosecutions had taken place, many of them involving a large, and some of them a very large, number of persons, and that the cases were still more numerous in which, in order to avoid prosecution, the transgressors had submitted to fines. And how had the revenue been prospering meanwhile? A return called for by the House in April 1834 answers the question. During the last ten years, despite the increase of population, the net Post Office revenue had actually declined. In 1824 the receipts were £2,055,000 gross and £1,438,000 net, as against £1,391,000 net and £2,062,000 gross in 1833.

In 1834 Earl Grey was succeeded by Viscount Melbourne; and one of the first acts of the new Government was to appoint another Commission of Inquiry into the Post Office, with directions to ascertain and report how it was that the recommendations of the former Commission had not been carried out. These recommendations were now set down one by one, and the Post Office was called upon to explain, opposite to each, whether any and, if so, what steps had been taken to give effect to it. One or two of them had indeed been adopted—such, for instance, as the recommendation that Post Office servants should cease to deal in newspapers—but only under compulsion. Others affecting the internal administration of the Post Office were certainly not feasible. But there remained not a few which, while excellent in themselves, had been discarded on the merest pretext.

The Commissioners had recommended that the "early," that is the preferential, delivery of letters should be discontinued. The Post Office replied that it was impossible. The Commissioners had recommended that, instead of the receiving houses for general post letters being separate and distinct from those for the letters of the twopenny post, every receiving house should take in letters of both kinds. The Post Office replied that the existing arrangement was the best adapted not only to the convenience of the public but to the business of the department. The Commissioners had recommended that the letter-carriers, instead of being separated into general post, twopenny post, and foreign letter-carriers, should all form one corps and deliver letters of every description. The Post Office replied—a reply all the more extraordinary inasmuch as the very arrangement which the Commissioners recommended was already in force both in Edinburgh and Dublin—that "it would be productive of the greatest confusion and delay."

The last of the recommendations to which we shall refer was that "the total charge upon all letters should be expressed in one taxation." The Post Office replied that it was "not possible for country postmasters to know the precise line of demarcation between the general post and twopenny post deliveries." In other words, no postmaster could know what, in the case of letters for London—and, it might have been added, for any other town than his own—the proper charge should be. This was no pretext. It was, on the contrary, perfectly true; and perhaps no more striking testimony could be afforded to the unsoundness of the system then in vogue.