There is no doubt that the Post Office charge upon newspapers, especially with the facilities which the railways now afford to the department of transmission to any extent, is much too high. This is particularly so as regards the smaller, general, as well as many of what are called “class” papers, several of which do not exceed an ounce or so in weight. The author has given much attention to this subject, as also to the reduction of postage upon local letters not exceeding a quarter of an ounce in weight, to one half-penny each, but neither of these questions can be entered upon here. It may, however, not be inappropriate to say at present, that “local letters,” that is, letters which never leave the district of the office in which they are posted, are those that yield by far the largest revenue per letter to the Post Office; in fact, a very considerable portion of the total net revenue of the department is derived from them. The history and development of London local letters since the commencement of the present century is curious. In 1801 they were estimated at about 3,200,000. In 1803 they had increased to 6,000,000; and in 1813, to 9,400,000; but in the following ten years they had advanced only to 10,500,000, that being the estimated number in 1823. They were almost stationary during the next ten years, notwithstanding the increase of population; indeed, they rather retrograded, their number in 1833 being estimated at only 10,200,000. In 1835 they rose to about 11,200,000. In 1839, the year before the introduction of the penny postage, they were 12,480,000. In 1840, they bounded suddenly to 20,372,000, and in 1844 they reached 27,000,000. In nine years afterwards (1853) they were 43,000,000. In 1855 London was divided for postal purposes into ten districts, by which very much more rapid delivery was obtained for local letters. The consequence was, that, in 1858, the third complete year after the alteration, local letters had risen to 58,404,000; and in 1862, to 71,961,000. In 1865 they were about 90,000,000, of which upwards of 16,000,000 were delivered in the districts in which they were posted. At the present time the average delivery of letters in London is about 560,000, of which about half are local and half from the provinces and abroad. The daily number of newspapers and book packets delivered is about 55,000. If London correspondence continue to increase as it has in recent years, it will soon be necessary to have half-hourly collections and deliveries during certain parts of the day.
(A) This is the number stated at page 2 of the Postmaster-General’s Twelfth Report, but at page 15, it is 97,250,000, a difference of 2,766. The difference between the number of letters, as stated at pages 2 and 15 of the same report, is 7,007; of packets by pattern post, 6,116.
[31] In March of the present year the Post Office commenced sending the Eastern mails in bags, but no doubt the department will not be able to continue their use. When cholera prevails, like as it has done during the present year, Eastern mails contained in bags are said to be certain conductors and disseminators of the subtle poison.
[32] We recently had twenty shillings’ worth of penny postage stamps weighed; with the border all round the sheet, 240 stamps weigh a little more than half an ounce; without the border, the weight is a little less than half an ounce. Consequently £32 worth weigh one pound, £3,584 one cwt., £71,680 one ton, £716,800 ten tons.
[33] It is at times very difficult to understand the statistics of the department as given in consecutive Postmaster-General’s reports. For instance, in the report (the third) following that from which the figures in the text are taken, we find that the number of the post offices was increased by 368 in 1856, “making the whole present number 10,866,” of these 845 are head post offices (75 less than in 1855). In the Fourth Report, although the post offices of the United Kingdom were increased in 1857 to 11,001, the number of head offices is stated at 810, or 35 less than in 1856 and 110 less than in 1855. In the Fifth Report, 134 post offices were added during 1858, making 11,235, but the head offices were 4 less than in 1857. In 1859 the head offices became 825. In 1860 they were 818. In 1861, 813. In 1862, 808. Since 1862 the generic terms, “receptacles of letters” are, in the Postmaster-General’s reports, applied to all places at which letters can be posted. By a Parliamentary return issued on the 1st of October, 1867, it appears that there are 11,282 post offices in the United Kingdom, of which 814 are head offices, and 10,468 are sub-offices and receiving offices. These numbers are irrespective of about 7,000 pillar boxes all over the kingdom.
[34] The Postal Guide, although containing a great deal of useful information relating to postal matters, is not a work implicitly to be relied upon. Recently the author pointed out, in addition to many other errors and modes of imparting information calculated to mislead the public, 146 errors upon one subject only. These first appeared in No. 44, published on 1st of April 1867, and they were repeated in No. 45, published on the 1st of July. In the reply of the Post Office, all these errors were designated “minor points.” The amende, however, was made in subsequent communications, and improvements promised in the October edition. The promise has been, in a large measure, fulfilled.
[35] We think we shall he able to show clearly in a work on the Post Offices of England and France, preparing for publication early next year, that the penny postal system only began to be profitable to the nation about the time that Mr. Page wrote his report, notwithstanding that the statements of net revenue given in Post Office reports would make it appear to be otherwise. Until 1860, the charges for mail packets and contract mail steamers were borne on the Naval, and not on the Post Office Estimates, and the Postal Department debited itself specifically, for several years, with a charge for packets of about £4,500 a year! Last year, the total amount voted for our Ocean Postal Services and Packet Establishments was £821,163, of which £90,601 were for water conveyance of mails between different parts of the United Kingdom. Eight-ninths of it (£79,900) were for the mail service between Holyhead and Kingston. The vessels employed in this service are the finest and fastest afloat; they usually perform 63 statute miles in three hours and forty minutes, or at the rate of 17 miles an hour. The passages have, on some few occasions, been performed in three hours and twenty-five minutes, or over 18 miles an hour.
[36] We perceive by recent advertisements in the French papers, and by a letter from Mr. Daniel A. Lange, the “English representative of the Suez Maritime Canal Company,” inserted in the Times of the 26th September 1867, that the company proposes to raise £4,000,000 of capital by means of debentures, in addition to the £12,000,000 it has already expended. It is stated that the Great or Grand Canal will, by means of this loan, positively be finished by the first of October 1869. The debentures issued at £12 each, bear interest at the rate of 8½ per cent. per annum, and are to be paid off in the usual manner adopted in France, that is by lottery at the rate of £20 each. The original capital of the Suez Canal Company was fixed, at its formation in 1858, at £8,000,000. The length of the canal, when finished, is to be 100 miles, whilst the railway is 250. The reason is that Cairo is only about eight miles less distant from Alexandria than the Mediterranean mouth of the canal is from that of the Red Sea. Suez and Cairo are, practically, in the same latitude, but when the railway running nearly due south from Alexandria reaches Cairo, it makes a right angle towards the east to reach Suez.
[37] In France the number of receptacles for letters is nearly three times as great as in the United Kingdom. On the 1st of January, 1866, they were over 43,000, counting the receiver in each railway bureau ambulant as one. The staff of the French Post Office is also greatly in excess of that of the United Kingdom. On the 1st of January, 1866, the latter consisted of 25,082 persons, in which are included “rural messengers.” At the same date the French staff was 27,749, exclusive of 16,406 rural messengers. Total men, 44,155. The system of rural posts in France is of extreme interest. For the first thirty years of the present century, out of 38,000 communes 35,587 were without direct relations with the Post Office. To obtain a letter it was necessary to send, in many districts, distances varying from fifteen to twenty-five miles. By a law passed in May, 1829, every commune of the kingdom was to be afforded, from the 1st of April, 1839, postal communication, not less than every second day, with every other part of France. The service commenced with the appointment of 11,036 rural postmen, and the system has gradually extended to the employment of 16,406, for there is not at present a commune in France that has not a daily collection and delivery. “These 16,406 rural postmen,” says M. A. De Camp, in the Revue des deux Mondes, of January, 1867, “start every morning from 4,700 post offices. They travel through every commune, village, and hamlet, they convey correspondence to the most remote and to almost inaccessible houses and cottages. Every commune has, at its ‘Chef lieu,’ a letter-box, which is opened by the rural postman. The letters which he finds in it are delivered by him if they are addressed for any place in his walk; if not, they are conveyed by him to his post office, whence they are despatched every evening en route for their ultimate destinations.” So complete and penetrating is the system, that immediately after the annexation of Savoy, and of its Alpine regions, the rural postmen were installed, and now they present themselves daily at every habitation in the mountains, whenever there is a letter or even a newspaper to be delivered. “Let,” says a pleasant writer in a French periodical, “but an Englishman afflicted with ‘le splene,’ or any other man, but take up his permanent residence on the highest Alpine peak on French territory, it matters not Monte Rosa, Monte Cervino, or Monte Bianco, the rural postman of the mountain will be bound, if necessary, to visit him daily.”
The rural postmen of France walk an average of sixteen miles each,—a total of 267,600 miles daily. Of their number, 5,248 walk seventeen miles a day and “upwards.” In this last word is included a certain number who complete twenty-five miles, “a fact,” as M. Vandal informs us in the Annuaire des Postes for 1866, “of melancholy notoriety.”