It was not till many years later that all kinds of letters came to be delivered by one set of postmen, and that thus needless repetition of work was got rid of.
At the same period—namely, in 1782—the other officers of all kinds employed in the London Post-office numbered 157. At the present time the officers of all kinds (exclusive of postmen, who have been referred to separately) employed in the Metropolitan district are nearly 16,000 in number.
CHAPTER IX.
CLAIMS FOR POST-OFFICE SERVICE.
In his Autobiography, Mr Anthony Trollope, many years a Post-office surveyor, records how he was employed in England, for a considerable period about the year 1851, revising and extending the rural-post service; and he there mentions the frequency with which he found post-runners to be employed upon routes where there were but few letters to deliver—while in other directions, where postal communication would have been of the utmost benefit, there were no post-runners at all. This state of things had no doubt had its origin in the efforts of influential persons, at some previous time, to have the services established for their own personal benefit; while persons in other districts, having less interest at headquarters, or being less imperious in their demands, were left out in the cold, and so remained beyond the range of the civilising influence. The posts in such cases, once established, went on from year to year; and though the arrangements were out of harmony with the surroundings, very often nothing was done—for in all likelihood no one complained loud enough, or, at any rate, in a way to prove effective.
But though the Department did wake up to the need for a better distribution of its favours in the country districts in 1851, there were earlier instances of surveyors attempting to lay down the posts for the general good, instead of for a select few, and in these cases the surveyors had sometimes a hard battle to fight. The following report from a surveyor in Scotland, written in the year 1800, will illustrate what is here mentioned. It is given at length, and will possibly be found worthy of perusal; for it not only shows both spirit and independence on the part of the surveyor, who was evidently a man determined to do his duty irrespective of persons, but it sheds some light on the practices of the post-runners of that period, and their relations with their superiors on the one hand, and the public on the other. It affords us, too, a specimen of official writing remarkable for some rather quaint turns and expressions. The report proceeds:—
"I am much obliged by the perusal of my Lord ——'s card to you of the 29th ultimo, with the copy of a fresh memorial from his lordship and other gentlemen upon the long-argued subject of the alteration of the course of the post betwixt Perth and Coupar-Angus.
"It is certainly one of those cases which hath become of tenfold more importance by the multiplicity of writing, than from any solid reasoning or essential matter of information to be drawn from it.
"It having fallen to my official duty to execute the alteration of this post proposed by my late colleague Mr ——, to whose memory I must bear testimony, not only of his abilities, but his impartiality in the duties of his office, and under the authority of the late respectable and worthy Postmaster-General Mr ——, whose memory is far above any eulogium of mine, I considered the measure as proper and expedient, equally for the good of the country in general, and the revenue under the department of the Post-office; and I can with confidence deny that it was 'hastily, inconsiderately, or partially' gone into, as this memorial would wish to establish. In this capacity, and under these circumstances, it is no wonder I could have wished the epithets used against this official alteration, of ignorance, arbitrary and oppressive proceedings, to have dropped from a person less honourable, respectable, and conspicuous than I hold the Honble. —— at the head of this memorial. Before this last memorial was presented, I understood from Mr ——, Secretary, in the presence of Lord ——, that any further opposition upon the part of the Blairgowrie gentlemen to a re-alteration was now given up; indeed this cannot be surprising if they had learned, as stated in the memorial, page 9, that they had protested, did now protest, and would never cease to complain loudly of it, until they obtain redress. Whether this argument is cool or arbitrary I have not time nor inclination to analyse, but having been removed from this ancient district of road, and given my uniform opinion upon the merits of the alteration itself, I have no desire to fight the memorialists to all eternity. Before, however, taking final leave of this contest, and of a memorial said to be unanswerable, I consider myself in duty and honour called upon to vindicate the late Mr ——, as well as myself, from the vindictive terms of 'ignorance, arbitrary, and oppressive' implied in the memorial, and which, if admitted sub silentio, might not be confined to the mismanagement of the Post-office, but to every other department of civil government. In order to this, I shall as briefly as I can follow the general track of the memorial, as of a long beaten road in which, if there is not safety, there is no new difficulty to encounter. It is needless to go over the different distances,—I am ready to admit them—they have not formed any material part of the question,—and the supposed ignorance of the surveyor here is not to the point. The alteration neither did nor should proceed upon such mathematical nicety. The idea of posts is to embrace the most extensive and most needful accommodation. In establishing a post to Blairgowrie it was neither ignorant nor arbitrary to take the line by Isla Bridge, which was the centre of the country meant to be served by it—that is, the Coupar and the Stormont and Highland district. It is of some consequence to observe here, that with all the great and rapid improvements mentioned in the memorial, of the lower or Coupar district, the upper or Stormont district was, upon the first year's trial, above one-half of its revenue to the Post-office, the second nearly or about three-fourths, and continuing to increase in proportion. Coupar-Angus revenue for the year ending 10th October last was £159, 3s. 7d., and Blairgowrie £123, 4s. 10d. Now, if the Coupar district of country, which contains in it a populous market-town, can produce no more than this proportion for the whole district, it is evident that the district of Stormont, with only as yet a little village for its head town, has more correspondence in regard to its state of agriculture and improvement as an infant district, than the parent district with its antiquity can lay claim to, and equally well entitled at least to be protected and nourished. Much is said of the memorialists' line of road, and of its being one from time immemorial. I have said in a former paper that this may be the case; many of the roads in Scotland, God knows, are old enough. But unless the feudal system should still exist upon any of them, I know of no law, no regulation, no compulsion, that can oblige the post, more than any other traveller, to take these old beaten tracks where they can find any other patent or better road. Nay, more,—as a traveller, I am entitled to take any patent road I choose, good or bad; and the moment this privilege is doubted in regard to the post, you resign at once the power of all future improvements so far as it belongs to your official situation to judge it, and let or dispose of in lease the use of your posts to particular and local proprietors of lands, who will be right to take every advantage of it in their power, and include it specifically in the rental of their estates, as I have known to be the case with inns in which Post-offices had formerly been kept.