Rambles on Railways

by Sir Cusack P. Roney

From the day that railways were opened in England, the Post Office has resorted to them for the conveyance of its mails. The Liverpool and Manchester railway was opened for traffic, as already stated, on the 14th of September, 1830; on the same day the Post Office commenced using it, and mails were conveyed on it four times a day in each direction. The same happened at the opening of the Grand Junction between Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham on the 6th July, 1837; upon the completion of the line between London and Birmingham, on the 20th September, 1838, and so in succession with every leading railway throughout the kingdom.

The Post Office soon became jealous of the power and position of railway companies, and the expression of its jealousy culminated in the introduction, at its instance, of a bill into Parliament, in 1838, “for the conveyance of mails by railway.” The bill proposed to give power to the Post Office to run its own trains upon any line of railway open for traffic, without payment of toll. It was further to be authorised to remove all obstacles in the shape of passenger or other carriages out of the way of its trains; pains and penalties were to be amerced on the servants of companies if the “lawful commands” of the postal officials were disobeyed. The aid of the railway plant and of railway officials was commanded, and the remuneration to the companies for these services was to be this much, and no more—the cost of the wear, tear and deterioration that Post Office trains inflicted upon the rails!

Mr. Labouchere, now Lord Taunton, introduced the bill, and in doing so said that the country was at the mercy of railway companies which had bound the land in bonds of iron—bonds from which it was necessary that the land should be freed by the action of Parliament. Mr. Rice, afterwards Lord Monteagle, prince of jobbers, and for many years enjoying the sinecure and emoluments of Comptroller of the Exchequer, an office abolished at his death, warned all railway directors to beware of opposing the bill, threatening them, on the part of the Government, of which he was then a member, with more stringent measures, if they were so ill-advised.

The bill, nevertheless, met with vigorous opposition; at its head was Mr. George Carr Glyn, chairman of the London and Birmingham Company, and then, as now, the honoured member for the Borough of Kendal, whom Mr. John Francis truthfully describes in the dedication of his History of the English Railway[26], as “one of the earliest, as well as one of the most efficient allies of the system;”

The effect of the opposition was that an act was passed which differed essentially in character and conditions from the bill that had been presented to Parliament. The chief power given to the Post Office was that the railway companies were bound to convey mails at such hours as the Postmaster-General should direct; if required, they were to apply separate carriages exclusively to their conveyance, and remuneration was to be according to agreement between the Postmaster-General and the Directors, but in case of difference recourse was to be had to arbitration.

The era of postal reform commenced on the 10th of January, 1840. In the year previous to it, the number of letters circulating through the post was 82,471,000. In these were included 6,563,000 franks. The estimated number of newspapers conveyed by the post in 1839 was 44,500,000. In 1840 there were about 1,300 miles of railway open. What had before been an advantage to the Post Office, and to the letter-writing public, by the gain of speed which railways afforded, at once became a necessity to the department, in consequence of the sudden increase in the weight and the bulk of the mails. The number of letters delivered in the United Kingdom, in 1840, was more than double that of 1839. They were 168,768,000, and there was every indication that they would increase, if not in the gigantic ratio of the first year, at all events very rapidly; such was the case, for the number carried in 1841 showed an increase of nearly 28,000,000. Newspapers increased about 500,000 in 1840. It would have been supposed that the Post Office would have entered into negotiations, in a friendly spirit, with the officials of the railway companies; this, however, was not the case: on the contrary, from the earliest period of postal reform until recent years, the railway has experienced nothing but hostility and reproach from the department. Personal and friendly communication with its heads became out of the question, for the demeanour of one high official (whose name, without being mentioned, can easily be surmised) to many of the leading railway officials was such, that several declined to meet him; recourse was then had to arbitration, in accordance with the powers conferred on the Post Office by the provisions of the Act of Parliament. The result of references, many of which were very protracted, and in the course of which very minute and elaborate evidence was adduced on both sides, was that decisions were given much more favourable to the railways than the Post Office had expected. The proof that the demands of railway companies did not justify the appellations which the Post Office attributed to them was, that they were not much above the amounts awarded. But as regards the Post Office, the payments proposed by it, and those awarded differed very widely. This, however, did not make any difference in the crusading energy of the department. Long before the issue of Postmaster-General’s reports,[27] whenever an opportunity offered, either in giving evidence before a Committee of Parliament, or in furnishing information, there was sure to be an insinuation, an innuendo, or a more open attack upon the railway authorities who had succeeded in not allowing the Post Office to have it all its own way.

The Postmaster-General’s First Report partakes more of the character of an historic document than of a record of the transactions of an official year. There are, therefore, only some few unimportant remarks in it upon the subject of railways. It was otherwise in the second, as will appear by the following somewhat lengthy extract:—

“Undoubtedly great advantage has arisen from the employment of railways in respect of rapid conveyance. Between districts which, even in the best days of the mail coach system, were, postally speaking, two days apart, the letters now pass in a single night.

“The facilities thus afforded to commerce, and to the business of life in general, can hardly be exaggerated, nor is there any doubt that they have tended largely to increase the amount of postal correspondence, while in return cheap postage has equally tended to increase railway traffic.

“Again, the service has been most materially promoted by the introduction of travelling Post Offices,[28] i. e., carriages in which the mail bags are opened and made up, the letters being assorted while the train is in progress; an arrangement which not only obviates the necessity of the stoppages which would otherwise be required at certain ‘forward’ offices, but has greatly tended to reduce the number of mail bags and accounts, and to simplify the whole system.