“Against these great advantages, however, there is an important set-off in increased expense; for, strange as it may seem, that change, which to the public at large has so much reduced the charge for the conveyance, whether of persons or of goods, has had precisely the reverse effect as respects the conveyance of mails.
“No doubt this result is attributable partly to the necessity for running certain mail trains at hours unsuitable for passenger traffic; but even when the Post Office uses the ordinary trains established by the companies for their own purposes, the rate of charge, especially considering the regularity and extent of custom, is almost always higher than that made to the public for like services.
“It is important that these facts should be correctly understood, especially by those who may have to arbitrate between the Post Office and the Railway Companies, because from time to time great efforts have been made to represent the service as underpaid.
“The total payments to the companies for the year 1854 were £392,600, which it may be observed, exceeds by £83,000 the five per cent. passenger tax for the same period. The above points are fully discussed in an able report by Mr. Edward Page (Inspector General of Mails), which will be found at page 45 of the appendix.
“To this report I would also refer for an investigation of the claims frequently made by the railway companies for compensation on the ground of
alleged injury by the book post. The report clearly shows: first, that the service which is alleged to be an injury, is, in reality, a benefit; second, that even if it were otherwise, the law relieving newspapers from the compulsory stamp, must have had the effect of transferring from the mail bags to the companies’ vans a weight of newspapers many times exceeding that which the book post is erroneously alleged to have withdrawn from the companies’ vans to the mail bags.”
The foregoing is in the body of the report, what follows appears as a foot-note.
“As nearly as it can be estimated it appears that, while the whole number of book packets conveyed annually by the Post Office is probably over stated at three millions, the number of newspapers[29] passing through the post has decreased by about twenty-five millions, or by more than eight times the number of all the book packets. Besides this reduction in number, there has been a decrease in the average weight of the newspapers sent through the post; and the combined effect of these changes has been to reduce the total weight of the newspapers by an amount more than nine times as great as the total weight of all the book packets.”
There never has been anything to show, either at the time those paragraphs were written, or subsequently, that cheap postage has tended to increase railway traffic. We are therefore at a loss to understand why such an assertion should be adduced as an argument. The same remark applies to the connection attempted to be set up between the amount paid by the Post Office for the transmission of mails through the country, and the tax which railway companies pay to the Government as their contribution to the fiscal burdens, unavoidably and of necessity imposed upon industry by the State: and it must also be considered strange that the Post Office should make a Postmaster-General’s Report the medium of conveying to arbitrators its opinion as to the mode in which they should arbitrate between it and the companies.