Rambles on Railways

by Sir Cusack P. Roney

However, we pass over these minor and insignificant points, to come to the very serious misrepresentation which is embodied in the foot-note. If the reader will be so good as to read it again, he will see words, which, if they mean anything, mean that the number of newspapers circulating through the post was 25,000,000 less in 1855, than it was in 1854, the object being to show that although 3,000,000 of book packets were carried through the post in 1855, railways were not sufferers thereby, as these packets only formed one-eighth of the number of newspapers that had been withdrawn from postal circulation, owing to the abolition of the compulsory stamp duty. Now we know that in consequence of the reduction in 1836 of the Stamp Duty upon newspapers,[30] from nominal 4d. and real 3¼d. each, to 1d., the number posted had steadily increased each year. Therefore, if the assertion of the foot-note were correct, newspapers posted would have suddenly fallen, in 1855, to 46,000,000, that is to only 1,500,000 more than they were in 1839; yet at page 19 of the identical Second Report, it is stated that 71,000,000 of newspapers were posted in 1855. Thus at page 15, to serve one purpose, figures are given which would show that only 46,000,000 were posted, but four pages farther, to serve another purpose, that of showing how postal business has increased, they are stated at 71,000,000.

Let us now turn to the Third Report. At page 10, the number of newspapers transmitted through the post in 1856, is stated to be 71,000,000. If this statement be correct, it would show, either that the number transmitted in 1855 had in reality been about 71,000,000, or that, on the mechanical principle of action and reaction being equal and contrary, there had been a fall of 25,000,000 in 1855, and that precisely the same rise had taken place in 1856. This rise in one year would have to be considered all the more remarkable, inasmuch as the total number, not only of newspapers, but of book post packets transmitted in 1865, was 97,250,000 according to one statement, 2,766 more according to another. Owing to the unceasing changes in the mode of imparting information to the public by means of the Postmaster-General’s reports, the number of newspapers, exclusive of book post packets, cannot be given, but, including these latter, there was, according to the Postmaster-General’s Twelfth Report, an increase of only 26,250,000 in ten years, as against an alleged fall of 25,000,000 in one year, and a recovery to the same amount in the next.

We come now to deal with the Report, dated the 29th February, 1856, by Mr. Edward Page, an excellent officer within the limits of his duties as Inspector-General of Mails, as well as a courteous and agreeable gentleman. He is consequently much esteemed and respected.

But before going farther, let us premise that the late Mr. Robert Stephenson, in the course of the inaugural address which, as President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, he delivered on the 8th of January, 1856, made the following observations upon the connection between the Post Office and the railways:—

“The facilities afforded by railways to the Post Office are, no doubt, of the highest public consequence. The speed which is attained in the transmission would appear, at first, to be the greatest item in the catalogue of those facilities; but it may be doubted if it is the most important. What is really of the greatest value to the Post Office, is the facility afforded for conveying bulk. It is not too much to say 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. The first essential to the success of those plans would have been wanting; for there would have been no sufficient means of conveying the greatly-increased mass of correspondence necessary to be carried in order to render the reduced rates of postage profitable. The old mail coaches were never planned for bulk, which would, indeed, have been fatal to that regularity and speed, upon which the Post Office could alone rely as the means of securing to the Government the monopoly of the letter carriage of the nation. The aggregate weight of the evening mails despatched from London in 1838, in twenty-eight mail coaches, amounted, as was shown by the Report of the Select Committee on Postage, to only 4 tons 6 cwt. or an average of about 3¼ cwt. per coach. But now 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 it occupies also six or eight additional vans. It is obvious, therefore, that if the existing system of the Post Office had been in operation, with the present results, in the days of mail-coach communication, not one mail alone, but fourteen or fifteen mails, such as were used in those days, would have been needed to carry on, with regularity, the Post Office traffic between (say) London and Birmingham. Nearly every coach that ran in 1830, between Birmingham and London, would now have been needed for Post Office purposes, if the London and North-Western Railway had not been brought into existence. The expenses would, consequently have been so large, that a universal penny postage would have entailed a certain loss. For the great blessing, therefore, derived from cheap postal communication, the nation is, in a great degree, indebted to the facilities offered by railways. It must be borne in mind here, that the boon conferred upon the public is not limited to written correspondence. Viewed in reference to the postal facilities they afford, the railways are the great public instructors and educators of the day. Contrast the size of the Times, in 1830, and in 1856. Do you suppose that the huge mass of paper, which you are permitted to forward by to-night’s post, would have been conveyed upon the same terms, if the means of conveyance had remained limited to the mails and its four horses? Look at the immense mass of parliamentary reports and documents, now distributed, every session, amongst all the constituencies of the Empire, at almost a nominal charge. To what do the public owe the valuable information embodied in those documents, but to railways? except as parcels, by waggons or by canal boats, they never could have been conveyed prior to the existence of the railway system; and if they never could have been distributed, we may rely upon it they never would have been printed. The reasoning which applies to the Times and to State Papers, applies to newspapers generally, and to the distribution of the prices current of merchants, and of magazines, monthly publications, and bulky parcels of every description. Without railway facilities they would probably never have been circulated at all. Certainly they never could have been circulated to the extent necessary to make them profitable. Hence, the railway, as before observed, is the greatest engine for the diffusion of knowledge.”

These words called forth Mr. Page’s Report, and, as the public usually feels interested in matters relating to the Post Office, we have given it in full as an Appendix. We also have done very nearly the same with the Reply to Mr. Page, which Mr. Stephenson read to the Institution on the 20th of May, 1856. Combinedly these documents are long; nevertheless, we think they will repay perusal; at all events, our readers, if they choose to read, will get both views of the question, about which we also wish to say something.

Mr. Page, as it will be seen, passes by “bulk,” and deals, in all his arguments, with weight only. Yet the difference between them, even in the case of mails, the most favourable for the Post Office is very great indeed. Let us, for illustration, take the case of our Eastern mails; being all conveyed in parallel-sided boxes,[31] filled to the uttermost their inner dimensions will permit, they pack closely, and there is no loss of space, as must be in the case of bags, which, even when full, do not lay compactly together. Thus, the weight of one mail conveyed from Southampton to the East, in 1864, was 46 tons; its measurement was 99 tons, and the weight of the heaviest Eastern mail conveyed viâ Southampton, in 1865, was 49½ tons; its measurement 106½ tons. Weight to bulk in mail bags is nearer to 1 to 4 than to any other quantity. Had the weight (or bulk) of chargeable letters only increased about eight-fold between 1839 and 1855, no doubt the addition to the mails would not have been considerable. But Mr. Page, “no doubt without any intention whatever to mislead,” omits from his calculations matters which it is surprising that an officer of his intelligence and experience should have allowed to escape him. In the first place, he omits the fact that “chargeable letters” were very different in their character in 1855 from what they were in 1839. Then chargeable letters were, as has been stated by Mr. Page, about 7 per cent. of the total weight of the mails, but in 1855 letters quite equal in weight to the weight of those chargeable, viz., parliamentary and official franks, are excluded from Mr. Page’s calculation. It is well known that the correspondence of all the public departments has largely increased in the last thirty years, because, owing to the increased magnitude of the business of the nation, the number of clerks in the old offices has been greatly added to, and because several new branches of the public service have been created. To take a few examples at random. The Steam branch of the Admiralty consisted in 1838 of five or six persons; now, owing to rapid and frequent additions, an immense staff is necessarily connected with it. The Railway and the Navigation, the Education and the Scientific Departments of the Board of Trade, “Science and Art” and South Kensington, the Civil Service Commissioners, &c., have either been created or the staff of each has been added to. So that the substitutes for franks should be included among the letters of the general public, and it is quite certain that the weight and bulk of official letters has kept pace with the weight and bulk of ordinary letters. Between 1839 and 1855, notwithstanding the foot-note about newspapers at page 15, of the Postmaster-General’s Second Report, the number circulating through the post had increased from 44,500,000 to 71,000,000, and although the weight per newspaper had slightly diminished in the interval, still the increased weight of newspapers to be carried by the mails was nearly 50 per cent. over that of 1839.

So far as regards the long established articles of conveyance by the Post Office. Let us now come to those of more modern date. The year before the commencement of the penny postal system, the number of money orders issued was 188,921. In 1855 they had risen to 5,807,412. Now, taking the advices that must be sent to each office upon which an order is issued, the returns that are forwarded daily to the accountant’s office in the metropolis of each part of the United Kingdom in which each Post Office Order has been issued, the remittances unceasingly sent from the provincial offices to the metropolis, and from the metropolis to the provincial offices, the receipts for these remittances and the correspondence which they entail, the weekly advices that are sent to London, and the correspondence connected with them, there were at least twelve millions more of letters or documents from this source in 1855 than there were in 1839. None of these letters or documents does Mr. Page bring into calculation, although, each being official, the certainty is that they are heavier in weight and greater in bulk than a like amount of chargeable letters; all these are carried free in the letter bags. And it is a question that it is not necessary to discuss at present, whether they and the letters and documents (we shall see presently that these are enormous in number, and very great as regards weight) connected with the new services and functions which the Post Office performs, should not be brought into account as a postal charge against the department. The other revenue departments, such, for instance, as the Customs, Inland Revenue, &c., transmit large masses of documents necessary in the transaction of their business with their sub-offices all over the kingdom; but these documents are each subjected to postal charges which are regularly debited in the account of the transmitting department.

In 1839 all expenditure was made by the postmasters throughout the kingdom, and the voucher for each item was retained in their offices.

In 1855 the expenditure was made as heretofore, and as it now continues to be, but instead of the vouchers being retained, every tradesman’s bill and every other item of expenditure that is incurred at a provincial office, no matter how small the item may be, is, with the voucher, sent up to its metropolitan office. To specify the number of these documents would be impossible, but there must be tons weight of them through the post every year.