Rambles on Railways

by Sir Cusack P. Roney

I now come to the second branch of the subject. I ventured to say, and I do not hesitate to repeat, that “without railway facilities the excellent plans of Mr. Rowland Hill for the reduction of the rates of postage could not have been carried out to their full extent.” But it is contended, that “not only would the penny postage without railways have been both practicable and remunerative, but that it would have been even more profitable than it now is.” Upon that I join issue. Would it have been practicable,—would it have been more profitable than it now is?

1st.—As to Practicability. I argued that question, solely and exclusively, and, I will add, fairly and properly, upon the question of bulk. “The old mail coaches,” I said, “were never planned for bulk. Bulk, indeed, would have been fatal to that regularity and speed, upon which the Post Office could alone rely, as the means of securing the monopoly of the letter carriage of the nation.” How is this reasoning met in the Post Office Report? The Report argues the question as a question of weight. “The increase,” it is said, “which has taken place in the weight of the mails has presented no difficulty to their conveyance by mail coaches.” Seventeen times in one page the word weight is reiterated, whilst the word bulk is carefully avoided. The reply to my argument that the bulk would have been fatal is that the weight would have presented no difficulty. Until my argument is met on the question of bulk, I must maintain that my argument is untouched. We all know that letters weigh very little. But unpressed, sent in bags, as they are, by the Post Office, what is the bulk of the mails? I told you in my address, that “On a Friday night, when so many thousands of weekly papers are sent into the country, the Post Office requires, on the London and North-Western Railway, not only the use of the travelling post office, which is provided for its convenience, but of six or eight additional vans.” This is not denied in the Report. But it is argued, nevertheless, as if all these letters could have been packed into the old mail coaches. What are the facts? On Saturday week the 1.30 p.m. Dover train carried down the Indian mail. That mail consisted of no less than 170 boxes,[150] each about 1 foot 9 inches long by 1 foot broad and 1 foot deep. How could these have been carried by a mail coach? I have caused an old Dover mail to be measured, for the purpose of ascertaining the space allotted to bags. The box under the guard’s feet was 2 feet 10 inches long by 2 feet 1 inch deep, and 3 feet 5 inches broad; the boot (usually assigned to passengers’ carpet-bags and private parcels) was 2 feet 11 inches wide, 2 feet 6 inches deep, and 2 feet 7 inches long. The space on the roof, including the roof seat, was 5 feet long by 4 feet broad. Giving all this space to the Post Office, without reservation, had that mail coach carried last Saturday’s mail from London, it would have carried on its top a pyramid of mail boxes 12 feet high from the roof of the mail, or 20 feet from the ground! Yet the Report tells you, that there would have been no difficulty in providing for the conveyance of the present mails by the old mail coaches.

On Friday night (May 16), the mail from the Euston Square Station consisted of one Post Office van and six very large tenders, containing large sacks of letters, newspapers and parcels (many of them as large as sacks of corn). The vans each measured 660 cubic feet; if we say 600, we shall have a total cubic contents of 4,000 feet. This is equal to the displacement of a vessel of more than 1,000 tons burden. I said, in my Address, that it would take fourteen or fifteen mail coaches to carry the Friday night’s mail from London to Birmingham: that every coach that ran in 1830 between London and Birmingham would now have been needed for Post Office purposes, if the London and North-Western Railway had not been brought into existence. It turns out that I was much under the mark. 4,000 cubic feet, the extent of accommodation required to be provided by the railway company, could not have been afforded by less than fifty of the old mails, even allowing that the two passenger-seats on the roof were devoted to the Post Office service, and the bags were packed to the height of 3 feet above the roof. And yet the Report tells us, that this extent of accommodation could have been afforded by the mail coaches that formerly ran on the North road; thus assuming for each old mail the same capacity as half an ordinary fly canal boat, or as two of our largest London omnibuses.

2nd. I proceed to the next question—the question of Expenditure. The Report states, that Mr. Hill’s plan would have been even more profitable under the old coach system than it now is.

“Supposing,” says the Report, “that the number of mail coaches, all over the kingdom, had been doubled, the expenditure of the department for mail coach service would, in that case, have been advanced from £155,000 to only £310,000 per annum, whilst the present expenditure for the railway and mail coach service of the department is £443,000, of which sum £400,000 is paid to railway companies alone.”

Now, I beg you to mark these figures. £155,000, says the Report, was the sum paid for the entire old mail coach service, whilst £443,000 is the sum now paid for railway and mail coach service, of which £400,000 is paid to railways alone, leaving £43,000 as the charge incurred by the side mails. Now, at page 14 of the Report, you will find it stated, that the branch mail coaches at the present time convey the mails over 31,667 miles per day at an average charge of 2¼d. per mile. 31,667 miles at 2¼d. per mile gives a total of £108,000 a year. Here is a total then of £108,000 a year paid at the present time merely for the conveyance of the side mails by coaches, in place of £43,000 as the Report leaves us to infer.[151] Now, if £108,000 a year is paid, at the present time, only for the conveyance, by two horse coaches and mail carts, of the side mails where railways do not run, how is it possible that the total cost of all the mail coach transit of England could have been only £155,000 a year?

It is clear there must be some serious error in the Post Office figures, and that error is of such a character as really to invalidate all the calculations of the Report. Either £155,000 could not have represented the cost of carrying the mails formerly, or £108,000 a year, instead of £43,000 a year, must be deducted, for the side mails, from the total sum of £443,000, assumed to be the cost of postal conveyance at the present time.

But, it is also to be remarked, that the payments to mail coach proprietors for working, did not represent anything like the amount borne by the public for the mails. The Post Office treats this question as if the working at 2¼d. a mile is all the expense the public have to bear. They forget the tolls. They forget that a mail coach could not pass over a road without wear and tear, and that the Post Office paid nothing for that wear and tear. The public in another shape bore that expenditure. Under the old system, indeed, as the Postmaster-General’s table shows, many of the old coaches were only too glad to “carry a bag” (as it was termed), merely for the sake of obtaining exemption from toll, which cost on the average 5d. per mile to the coach proprietor. You must remember that this toll was levied on the public using the turnpike road, for those purposes of repair, which are now defrayed by railway companies, in the shape of reparation of permanent way. The wear and tear of a railway line is solely paid for by the railway company, who can receive nothing in the shape of an equivalent for remission of tolls, except by direct payment.

The Post Office forgets, again, that under the old system, the roads, to some extent, were made at the cost of the public. Nearly a million of money was expended by Government in making and improving the old Holyhead line of road. Why was this expenditure incurred? It was incurred to save six hours in the delivery of the mails between Dublin and London. This, be it recollected, was the measure of the value of time by the State. They spent a million of treasure to save six hours of time. Contrast the time occupied in the transmission of mails now and in the year after that expenditure was incurred? The Holyhead mail, after a million of public money had been spent in expediting it, still took 26 hours on the road. The same mail by railway only occupies 8½ hours[152] on its whole journey. Nearly 18 hours have been thus saved on this one line of road; and yet though the Government could spend a million to save 6 hours, they complain of paying £30,000 a-year, or only the interest at 5 per cent. upon £600,000, for a railway service passing over a line of road which they did not expend a farthing to construct, and which is kept in repair by private individuals, who have incurred the enormous expense of spanning the Menai Straits by a railway bridge.

In estimating the comparative cost of conveyance by road and by railway, not only are the Government officers, as I have shown you, wrong in their figures and calculations, but they suppress the great items which entailed expense on the public under the old mail coach system, and which are now saved to the State. Let me mention another saving. Under the old system, the Post Office packets were a source of well ascertained loss to the State. The old Holyhead mail coach could not bring down a sufficient number of passengers to pay the cost of the passage from Holyhead to Dublin. The packet service with Ireland entailed a loss of more than £100,000 a-year. At the present time, the railway saves the Government nearly all this loss. In consequence of the travelling facilities now afforded by the railway, the boats between Holyhead and Dublin contract to perform the service of the Government for a payment of £25,000 a-year.[153] And yet the department complains that it pays £30,000 a-year, for carrying its mails, to the railway company which has enabled it to effect this enormous annual saving.