The History of the British Post Office

by Joseph Clarence Hemmeon

At the same time that the Post Office received this adverse decision it had begun to suffer severely from the illegal carriage of letters by the post coaches. These post coaches were so called merely because they were most numerous on the post roads. John Palmer, the proprietor of a theatre in Bath, pointed out to the Postmasters-General that the coaches were speedier and cheaper than the post boys who carried the mails on horseback and proposed that he should be allowed to establish mail coaches and thus save the postage on letters illegally carried by the post coaches. His coaches were to be protected by a guard, presumably a retired soldier, who was to be armed with two guns and to sit facing the road in front of him. The driver was to carry pistols. No outside passengers were to be carried, since they impeded the guard in performing his duties. The speed was to be not less than eight or nine miles an hour, twice as fast as the post boys travelled. In addition the mails were to leave London at 8 P.M. instead of after midnight. The coaches were all to leave London together and return together as far as possible. To insure this they were not to wait for government letters when the latter were delayed.[170]

The first mail coach ran between London and Bristol in 1784. It was furnished by contractors at a cost of 3d. a mile. This was the initial cost, however, and by 1797, the rate had been reduced to a penny a mile each way. In the early part of August, 1784, there was only one mail coach. At the end of the same month, coaches went to Norwich, Nottingham, Liverpool, and Manchester. During the next year they were sent to Leeds, Gloucester, Swansea, Hereford, Milford, Worcester, Birmingham, Shrewsbury, Holyhead, Exeter, Portsmouth, and other places. In 1786 they ran between London and Edinburgh. In 1797 there were forty-two mail coach routes established, connecting sixty of the most important towns in the kingdom, as well as intermediate places. These coaches travelled a total distance of 4110 miles and cost the Government £12,416 a year, only half the sum paid for post horses and riders under the old system. The coaches made daily journeys over nearly two thirds of the total distance traversed and tri-weekly journeys over something less than one third the total distance. The remainder travelled one, two, four, and six times a week. The result of the establishment of these mail coaches was summed up by a Parliamentary committee in the following words: "They have lessened the chance of robbery, diminished the need for special messengers and expresses, and now carry the letters formerly sent by post coaches."[171]

Palmer had been appointed Controller-General of the Post Office and had chosen as his assistant a man by the name of Bonner. Palmer himself was of a violent and headstrong disposition, and as ill-luck would have it, Walsingham, one of the Postmasters-General, was as masterful as himself. Palmer considered that his office was outside the scope of Walsingham's authority, and although he failed in making his position absolutely free from the control of the Postmasters-General, yet he heeded them as little as possible. He organized a newspaper department without consulting his superiors and paid no attention to them when an explanation was asked. He stirred up the London merchants to complain about the late delivery of their letters, a delay which he had probably brought about intentionally. A mail coach had been ordered by Walsingham to carry the King's private despatches while His Majesty was taking the waters at Cheltenham. This was done without consulting Palmer, who was so indignant that he persuaded the contractor to send in an enormous bill for supplying the coach. All this came out through the treachery of Bonner, who owed his advancement entirely to the friend whom he betrayed. He went so far as to hand over to the Postmasters-General the private letters which Palmer had written him. Palmer was dismissed in 1792 with a pension.[172]

At the time of Palmer's appointment, a Treasury warrant had been issued for the payment to him of £1500 a year and 2 per cent of the increase from the Post Office revenue, but this warrant had been pronounced illegal by the Attorney-General. Through Pitt's influence, Palmer finally obtained £1500 a year and 2 per cent on any increase in net revenue over £240,000 a year. Palmer objected to this on the ground that the old net revenue was only £150,000 a year, but Pitt replied that the increased rates of 1784 would produce at least £90,000. It is improbable, however, that the new rates produced the increase estimated. In 1797 Palmer presented a petition to the House of Commons, asking for the arrears due him according to his method of estimating the increase in net revenue, upon which his percentage was due. He said that before his system was introduced the gross product of the Post Office was decreasing at the rate of £13,000 a year. This was not true. He claimed that the increase after 1784 was wholly due to his own reforms, taking no account of the increased rates and the industrial expansion of England. No action was taken by Parliament.[173]

One of the arguments advanced by Palmer for the use of mail coaches was their security against robbers. Previous to and during the rebellion of 1745 numerous attempts were made to rob the mails, and many of them were successful. These robberies occurred principally at night. It was said that the mails were carried by boys not always of the best character, and that very often they were in league with the robbers. The Postmasters-General asked for soldiers to patrol the roads where these robberies were the most frequent. This was the method which Cromwell had used to protect the mails. The request does not seem to have been granted, but in 1765 the death penalty was imposed for robbing the mail and for stealing a letter containing a bank note or bill. Any post boy deserting the mail or allowing any one but the guard to ride on the horse or carriage with the mails was liable to commitment to hard labour.[174] Palmer's prediction was fulfilled by the comparative safety with which the mails were carried after his coaches had come into use.

Charles, Earl of Tankerville, and Lord Carteret had been the Postmasters-General in 1782 and 1783. On the fall of Shelburne's ministry in the latter year, Tankerville left the Post Office, but Carteret still remained. So far these two men had worked together fairly well, although Tankerville had a suspicion that his colleague had been engaged in some doubtful transactions. In 1784, when Pitt became Prime Minister, Tankerville was restored to his old office. In the same year a transaction came under his notice which aroused his suspicion. A Mr. Lees had been appointed Secretary of the Irish Post Office. The man who had held this position was made agent of the Dover packet boats, the old agent having been superannuated. The new agent agreed to pay to his predecessor the full amount of the salary coming to the place, while he himself was to be paid by Mr. Lees the total salary coming to the Secretary in Ireland. So far there was nothing uncommon about the arrangement. The unusual part of the agreement and the part which attracted Tankerville's attention was Lees' promise to pay the money to "A. B.," an unknown person, after the old agent's death. Suspicion pointed to Carteret as the man to whom the money was to be paid. Lees himself denied this, but did not say who "A. B." was.[175]

In 1787 a Mr. Staunton, the postmaster of Islesworth, a position worth £400 a year, was in addition appointed Controller and Resident Surveyor of the Bye and Cross Posts, to which was attached a salary of £500, coals and candles and a house. The First Lord of the Treasury proposed that the house should not go with the office, and Carteret decided that Staunton should receive an extra £100 a year in lieu of the house. Tankerville refused to agree to this, and the contention became so warm that the whole matter was referred to Pitt, who, rather than lose Carteret's political support, dismissed Tankerville.[176] Tankerville at once demanded an investigation, which was granted. The results showed the Post Office to be in a deplorable state. Tankerville was completely exonerated, but failed to obtain much sympathy on account of the violence of his attack upon Pitt and Carteret. It came out in the investigation that "A. B." was a foreigner named Treves, who had no claim on the Post Office or any other department of the government except that he was a friend of Carteret. Carteret himself knew the condition of his appointment, but had done nothing except to express himself displeased with the whole arrangement. A payment of £200 a year had also been exacted from Mr. Dashwood, Postmaster-General of Jamaica, as the condition of his appointment, and that too had gone to Treves. The agent at Helvoetsluys had been allowed by Carteret to sell his position to a man as incapable as himself. Staunton's office had been abolished soon after his appointment, and he had been allowed to retire at the age of forty years with a pension of £600 a year in the face of the rule that officers of an advanced age and after long service were allowed upon retirement to receive only two thirds of their salaries.[177]

The Postmasters-General had received in 1783, in addition to their salaries, over £900 for coals. They had also received £694 for candles during two years and a half and £150 for tinware for the same period. Tankerville had taken his share of these perquisites, but it is only fair to add that Carteret's emoluments exceeded his by £213 for the periods under consideration. It had become customary to receive a money payment in place of a large part of their supplies. In 1782 the total sum going to the officials of the General Office amounted to £28,431, of which sum about £10,000 were placed under the heading of emoluments other than salaries.[178] Of all the departments of the Post Office, the Sailing Packet Service was the one most in need of reform.

The light, which was then let in among the dark places of the Post Office, had a most excellent effect. Acting on the report furnished by the committee of the House, a new establishment was effected in 1793. The reforms were approved by the Postmasters-General and carried out under the direction of the Lords of the Treasury. The good work had been begun in 1784 by Palmer. He had appointed additional clerks, letter carriers, surveyors and messengers, had established new offices, and had increased the inadequate pay of minor officials. This had entailed an increase of £19,022 in expenses in the General and Penny Posts, but the increase was justified by increased efficiency and by larger returns from the conveyance of letters. Of the total increase, £11,451 had been spent on the General Office and £7571 on the Penny Post, to which had been added eighty-six more letter carriers for London and seventy-eight more for the suburbs, as well as some supernumerary carriers.[179] The reforms introduced in 1793 may be grouped under three heads: regulations respecting fees and emoluments, abolition of some offices and an increase in officers and clerks in others; regulation of official business. The regulations respecting fees and emoluments were necessarily negative in their character. The most important were as follows: The postmasters were no longer to pay fees to the Postmasters-General on the renewal of the bonds given by their securities. The two per cent allowed to the Scotch Deputy Postmaster-General on all remittances from Scotland was discontinued and a compensation for life was granted instead. The fees for tinware were abolished, and the pension to the New York agent was to cease. No postal official was allowed to own shares in the sailing packets, and with a few minor exceptions all salaries were henceforth to be in lieu of every emolument or fee.[180]

A number of sinecure and useless offices were abolished. The chief among them were: Jamineau's perquisite office which had the monopoly of selling newspapers to the "Clerks of the Roads," the Secretary's position as agent for the packets, the Controller of the Bye and Cross Posts, the Inspector of Dead Letters in the Bye Letter Office, the Collector in the Bye Letter Office, the Secretary of the Foreign Office, and the Controller of the Inland Office.[181]