Cheap Postage

by Joshua Leavitt

The correspondence, of the manufacturing towns, it appeared, was carried on almost entirely in private and illicit channels. In Walsall, it was testified that, of the letters to the neighboring towns, not one-fiftieth were sent by mail. Mr. Cobden said that not one-sixth of the letters between Manchester and London went through the post-office. Mr. Thomas Davidson, of Glasgow, stated the case of five commercial houses in that city, whose correspondence sent illegally was to that sent by post in the ratio of more than twenty to one; one house said sixty-seven to one.

In Birmingham, a system of illicit distribution of letters had been established through the common-carriers to all the neighboring towns, in a circuit of fifteen miles, and embracing a population of half a million. The price of delivering a letter in any of these places was 1d., and for this the letters were both collected and delivered. Women [pg 012] were employed to go round at certain hours and collect letters. They would collect them for 2d. per hundred, and make a living by it. The regular postage to those towns was 4d., besides the trouble of taking letters to the post-office. Hence there was both economy and convenience in the illicit arrangement. The practice had existed for thirty years, and when it was brought in all its details to the notice of parliament, no man seems to have dreamed that it was in the power of the government to suppress it by penal enactments.

An individual, whose name and residence are, for obvious reasons, suppressed, gave the committee a full description of these private posts. He said that, in the year 1836, he kept an account of his letters; that the number sent by the post-office was 2068, and those sent by other means were 5861. Of these, about 5000 were to places within twenty miles, all of which were sent for 1d. each. Some carriers made it their sole business to carry letters. Some of them travelled on foot; others went by the stage coach to the place, and then distributed their letters. He found the practice prevailing when he began his apprenticeship in 1807. The population of the district thus accommodated was from 300,000 to 500,000. The practice was notorious, and used by all persons engaged in business. The object of a great deal of the correspondence was to convey orders, notes of inquiry, and other information to and from the small manufacturers, to whom it would be a tax of twenty-five per cent. on their earnings, if the letters were sent through the post-office at 4d. The letters were commonly wrapped up in brown paper, or tied with a string, some directed and some not. Very few persons thought about the practice being illegal. He had never heard of an attempt by the post-office to institute legal proceedings. It would absorb the whole revenue of the post-office to carry on the prosecutions that would be required to stop it, and without any effect, as most of the carriers were worth nothing. To suppress it by law, would be very injurious to the trade of the place. The only way to supersede it is to reduce the postage to 1d. Were this done, the post-office would be preferred, for its greater certainty, even though the carriers would go for a halfpenny. The post-office would unquestionably receive more money by the change.

“E. F.”, a manufacturer, described what he called the free-packet system. Those manufacturers who did much business with London, in forwarding parcels through the stage coaches, were allowed by the coach proprietors to send a “free-packet,” without any charge, except 4d. for booking; and this package contained not only the letters and patterns of the house itself, but of others, who thus evade the postage.

“G. H.” had been a carrier, from a town in Scotland to other towns. There were six carriers, and they all carried letters, generally averaging fifty a day, and realizing from 6s. to 7s. per day, although there were four mails a-day running from the town. The business was kept in a manner secret. Reducing the postage to 2d. would not stop the practice, because the carriers would still take the letters for 1d.; but a penny postage would bring all the letters into the post-office, and then the post-office would beat the smuggler.

Mr. John Reid, of London, formerly an extensive bookseller in Glasgow said his house used to send out twenty to twenty-five letters a day, and scarcely ever through the post. Of 20,000 times of infringing the post-office laws, he was never caught but once, and then the government failed in proof, and he had the matter exposed as a grievance in the house of commons. He had seen a carrier in Glasgow have more than 300 letters at a time, which he delivered for 1d. Nearly all the correspondence between Glasgow and Paisley, was by carriers. There were 200 carriers came to Glasgow daily. There was as regular a system of exchanging bags, as in the post-office. There was not much attempt at concealment; sometimes we got frightened, and sometimes we laughed at the postmasters. Of his own letters, about one in twenty of those sent, and one in twelve of those received, passed through the post-office. The only way to put an end to the smuggling of letters was to remove the inducement. He said he could send letters to every town in Scotland. He could do it in more ways than one. He declined to state in what ways he would do it, because the disclosure would knock up some convenient modes he had of ending his own letters, and those of others. He said he would never use the post-office in an illegal manner, as by writing on newspapers and the like, because that would be dishonestly availing himself of the post-office, without [pg 013] paying for it. But he considered he had a right to send his letters as he pleased. He did not feel it his duty to acquiesce in a bad law, but thought every good man should set himself against a bad law, in order to get it repealed. Some of the methods of evading postage, practised in Scotland, are amusing. One was through what he called “family boxes.” When a student from the country comes to Glasgow to attend the college, he usually receives a box, once or twice a week, from his family, who send him cheese, meal, butter, cakes, &c., which come cheaper from the farm-house than he can purchase them in town. Probably, also, his clean linen comes in this way. The moment it was known that any family had a son at the university, the neighbors made a post-office of that farm-house.

The committee, in their report, concur in the opinion expressed by almost all the officers of the department, that it was not by stronger powers to be conferred by the legislature, nor by rigor in the exercise of those powers, that illicit conveyance could be suppressed. The post-office must be enabled to recommend itself to the public mind. It must secure to itself a virtual monopoly, by the greater security, expedition, punctuality, and cheapness, with which it does its work, than can be reached by any private enterprise.

With this nearly all the witnesses also agree, although some of them thought it possible that a less extreme reduction of the rate of postage might have kept out the private mails, if it had taken place earlier, before these illicit enterprises had obtained so firm a footing.

Lord Ashburton, who was examined before the committee, said that had a uniform rate of 2d., or even 3d. been adopted heretofore, most persons would sooner pay it than look out for the means of evading it.

Mr. Cobden, of Manchester, said a 6d. rate between Manchester and London would increase but slightly the number of letters, since the sending of letters clandestinely has become a trade, which would not be easily broken down. The railroads which are now opening to all parts of the country will so increase the facilities for smuggling, as to counteract any reduction of from twenty to fifty per cent. on the postage. No small reduction will induce the people to write more. A reduction to one half of the present rates would certainly be a relief to his trade, as far as it went, that is, to all such as now pay the full rate; but he thinks it would not induce the poorer classes to use the post-office. It would occasion a loss to the revenue of fifty per cent.