It is impossible to conceive that on Freeling's part there can have been anything in the shape of contumacy, still less of defiance; but we are by no means sure that the House of Commons did not incline to that view. Be that as it may, however, the Post Office was in bad odour, and an unfortunate series of incidents which occurred about this time little tended to remove the unfavourable impression which the unwillingness to carry out the Commissioners' recommendations had created. The House, at the instance of the Select Committee on Steam Navigation, had called for a return of the casualties which within a given period had happened to the Irish packets. The return furnished by the Post Office omitted two accidents in which one of the members of the Committee had himself assisted; and the Committee forthwith ordered the attendance of a witness from the Post Office to explain the omission. Another return contained obvious errors, and was sent back to the Post Office to be corrected.
But the two returns which excited most comment referred to the mileage allowance received by the mail-coach contractors, and to the Money Order Office. As regards the mileage allowance the only reply vouchsafed by the Post Office was that it "has not the means of furnishing any account of the amount paid." The return as regards the Money Order Office was still more unfortunate. The ground on which this office had been condemned by the Revenue Inquiry Commissioners was that it was carried on for the benefit of individuals, and yet in so far as its correspondence was exempt from postage, at the expense of the revenue. Several years had since passed, and the House, not doubting that the abuse had been corrected, called for a return shewing the amount of postage derived from letters containing money orders, and to what purpose it was applied. "The Money Order Office"—thus ran the return which the Post Office furnished—" is a private establishment, and the business is carried on by private capital under the sanction of the postmaster-general; but as no accounts connected in any degree with it are kept at the Post Office, no return can be made by the postmaster-general to the order of the House of Commons." The House was highly incensed, and ordered that, both as regards the Money Order Office and the mileage allowance, proper returns should be rendered at once.
The energy of the new Commission had now nearly brought the Post Office into trouble. The contract for the supply of mail-coaches was in the hands of Mr. Vidler of Millbank, who had held it for more than forty years, and little had been done during this period to improve the construction of the vehicles he supplied. Designed after the pattern in vogue at the end of the last century, they were, as compared with the stage-coaches, not only heavy and unsightly but inferior both in point of speed and accommodation. Moreover, the charge made for them, namely, 2-1/2d. a mile in England and 2d. a mile in Scotland, was considered to be high; and the Commissioners, altogether dissatisfied with the manner in which the contract had been performed, arranged with the Government not only that the service should be put up to public tender, but that Vidler should be excluded from the competition. This decision was arrived at in July 1835, and the contract expired on the 5th of January following. To invite tenders would occupy time, and, after that mail-coaches would have to be built sufficient in number to supply the whole of England and Scotland. A period of five or six months was obviously not enough for the purpose, and overtures were made to Vidler to continue his contract for half a year longer. Vidler, incensed at the treatment he had received, flatly refused. Not a day, not an hour, beyond the stipulated time would he extend his contract, and on the 5th of January 1836 all the mail-coaches in Great Britain would be withdrawn from the roads.
A man less loyal than Freeling or endued with less generous instincts might have felt a twinge of satisfaction at this result of interference with what he considered his own domain. But such emotion, if indeed he felt it, was not suffered to appear. With a difficulty to overcome, some of his old energy returned, and when the 5th of January arrived there was not a road in the kingdom from Wick to Penzance on which a new mail-coach was not running.
It was now that the mail-coaches reached their prime. Eight or nine miles an hour had hitherto been their highest speed, and now, with vehicles of lighter build, the speed was advanced to ten miles an hour and even more. Truth compels us to add that while the fastest mail-coach on the road, the coach between Liverpool and Preston, travelled at the rate of ten miles and five furlongs an hour, a private coach accomplished within the hour rather more than eleven miles. This was the coach between Edinburgh and Aberdeen, of which Captain Barclay of Ury was the proprietor. Besides coachman and guard it carried fifteen passengers, namely, four inside and eleven outside, while a mail-coach carried four in and four out or eight altogether. Nor would Captain Barclay admit that, in order to attain this high rate of speed, recourse need be had to anything like furious driving. Nothing more, he maintained, was necessary than to keep the horses at a "swinging trot."
Freeling's success in averting a breakdown with the mail-coaches did little or nothing to arrest the tide which had set in against him. After exercising an influence such as probably no civil servant had exercised before, he found himself discredited and the object of vehement and not over-scrupulous attack. Of the ministers under whose orders he had acted not a few had passed away, and none were in a position to share his responsibility, while their successors only knew him as identified with a system which had become unpopular. Owing to an unusually rapid succession of postmasters-general,[99] he was without even the solace and support which a chief of some years' standing might have given him. Single-handed, the old man had maintained a gallant defence; but his spirit was now broken. In the midst of his exertions to prevent any interruption of travelling facilities the House of Commons had called for a return which was calculated to wound him deeply. This return implied not only that he had been guilty of gross mismanagement, but that his salary was higher than he was entitled to receive, that he was drawing unauthorised emoluments, and that the Post Office was made subordinate to his personal interests.
To the outside world Freeling maintained much the same demeanour as before, and few would have suspected the weight that pressed at his heart; but in the solitude of his study he was an altered man. There he brooded over the past and contrasted it with the present. Notes jotted down haphazard on official papers that chanced to be on his table reveal the inner workings of his mind. We know few sadder records. He recalls the time when Governments consulted him and he stood high in favour with the public. He cannot forget how, in the course of debate in the House of Commons, his own proficiency and devotion to duty were urged as reasons for not retaining the second appointment of postmaster. In the recollection of those happy days he endeavours to find consolation for the calumny and detraction of the present. He repudiates as unfounded the charge that he has long ceased to consult the interests of the public, and affirms that in this cause he has of late years laboured even more abundantly than he did of old.
Then there is a break, after which he takes up his pen again. "Cheap postage,"—to this effect he writes. "What is this men are talking about? Can it be that all my life I have been in error? If I, then others—others whose behests I have been bound to obey. To make the Post Office revenue as productive as possible was long ago impressed upon me by successive ministers as a duty which I was under a solemn obligation to discharge. And not only long ago. Is it not within the last six months that the present Chancellor of the Exchequer[100] has charged me not to let the revenue go down? What! You, Freeling, brought up and educated as you have been, are you going to lend yourself to these extravagant schemes? You, with your four-horse mail-coaches too. Where else in the world does the merchant or manufacturer have the materials of his trade carried for him gratuitously or at so low a rate as to leave no margin of profit?"
Here the manuscript abruptly ends. It is dated the 24th of June 1836. Within sixteen days from that date Francis Freeling was no more.