Rambles on Railways

by Sir Cusack P. Roney

And, again, as regards the constantly reiterated Post Office grievance, that it is impossible to despatch mails by ordinary trains, except at a higher rate than is charged for the conveyance of ordinary parcels of similar weights, and that the department is in consequence deprived of the opportunity of sending mails as frequently as they otherwise would despatch them. This however, as has already been shown, is a grievance, almost imaginary, inasmuch as successive Postmaster-General’s Reports show (see ante page 106) that contracts have been entered into with almost every railway company—beyond all doubt with all the leading companies—by which the right of sending mails by any train, whether passenger or goods, it may choose to select from, has been acquired by the Post Office. In fact, out of 12,000 miles of railway which the department sends mails over, it has, as we believe, this right or privilege over 11,000 of them. But all doubt on the matter can be removed by a return on the subject being laid before either House during the next session of Parliament.

But even supposing the Post Office had not the power it in reality possesses, of sending mail bags by whatever trains it pleases, let us consider for a moment upon what ground either of right or of equity, the department can claim the privilege of sending its mail bags at the same rates as the general public pays for its parcels, for the same distances. This question must be dealt with in two portions: transmission of mail bags with a Post Office mail guard, and transmission in charge of the guard of the railway. As regards the first. Why, in the first place, is the Post Office to have the privilege of sending a passenger in the shako and red coat of a mail guard, at a second-class fare, who is to have, free, the usual amount of luggage (not personal luggage, be it remembered) allowed to a passenger? This luggage, let it also be remembered, the mail guard is to have the right of taking along with himself into the compartment in which he is to travel, instead of its being deposited in the luggage van. There would, probably, not be any objection offered to this arrangement if the guard were to remain quietly and peaceably in the compartment with his luggage beside him, until the end of his journey. But this is not what is required or expected. As the train stops at each station, the guard is to get out of his compartment and then to hand certain portions of his mail bags to another servant of the Post Office who is on the platform waiting the arrival of the train. This person is to receive the bags handed to him by the mail guard, and this latter is to receive fresh mail bags, and then to return to his compartment. The same process is to be repeated on the platform of every station at which the train may stop, and during the running of the train between station and station, the mail bags are to be continuously sorted and arranged, so as to ensure correct delivery throughout the entire journey. It is not the space of one second class passenger, but that of eight or ten, that would be required. Yet it is persistently contended that the proper remuneration for this service, conveyance, business, or whatever may be its appropriate name, is to be the single fare of a second class passenger—and no doubt, if the mail guard could travel within the limits of a return ticket, his employers would consider that that is the amount he should pay for the double journey—not a farthing beyond it.

But if the services of the mail guard are to be dispensed with, and the duties just described are to be performed by a Company’s guard, the Post Office considers that the ordinary parcels rate from end to end is what should be paid—nothing for intermediate changes and shiftings, for the coming in of new mail bags and the going out of old ones. Yet the Post Office itself considers that all these parcels are entitled to special attention and consideration, for before a railway servant is entrusted with the charge of them he takes an oath or makes a declaration—the same, we believe, as is taken by Post Office mail guards; and in order that they may be considered Post Office servants pro hac vice, they receive, if we recollect rightly, a gratuity of a few shillings per annum. If this be not so, it does not, in reality, affect the man’s responsibility: it is the oath or declaration that binds, not the gratuity.

It is impossible for any reasonable, unblassed, or practical man of business to assert that the railway companies would not be entitled to a somewhat higher rate of remuneration than second class fare, if bags are in charge of a mail guard, or that the rate for one from end-to-end parcel, is the proper figure for mail bags placed in charge of a Company’s servant, to be worked by him as if he were a mail guard.

One more point on the subject of postal conveyance by railway. It shall be the last.

The Post Office discharges three functions in connection with letters and other postal documents. They are, collection, transmission, and delivery. The first and last are performed by Post Office servants; transmission, except for certain portions of foot rural transport, is invariably by contract. It is transmission alone that makes a letter of value as a means of intercommunication between persons residing, or situated, more or less distantly from one another. If, as traders, we purchased a ton of letter paper, its price would probably be about £62, or say 7d. a pound; and supposing it came some 80 to 100 miles, its cost would be increased by another twenty shillings, a sixty-second of the first cost of the article. Convert this pound, or this ton of paper into a ton of written letters, and, if we take each chargeable letter at a third of an ounce (the Post Office considers each to weigh a little more than a quarter of an ounce, but for the purposes of this calculation they are taken at the higher figure), a pound of letters, with a postage[51] stamp on each letter, becomes worth four shillings to the Post Office, instead of sevenpence as a pound of paper; and, by the same process, a ton becomes changed from £63 to £448.

The total cost of the Post Office service for 1865 was £2,941,086; the net revenue, £1,482,522, a little over 50 per cent.; consequently, a ton of letters, by no act of the Post Office, except by its monopoly, which recent criminal proceedings show that it is determined to interpret rigidly, is worth £225 net to it. According to the ideas of Messrs. Hill (2), Page, and Gregory, the railway should carry the ton of paper, converted into letters, at a high rate of speed, and with numerous conditions of a penal character, at the same scale of payment, or, if possible, at a lower, than the price which was charged for the original ton of paper sent by ordinary goods train, at slow speed, and without any special conditions attached to its conveyance.

The railway companies are willing to carry letters and other postal matter at a rate not bearing any proportion or ratio whatever to the profit which the monopoly gets the benefit of by their conveyance, but at a fair and equitable scale of remuneration, which scale shall be decided, in case of difference, by two impartial men (Mr. Gregory, do you come quite within that definition?), and if they disagree, by an umpire who, at all events, is expected to be impartial.

But, before we conclude, we must again ask on what grounds, other than the hollow ones of pretence, can the Post Office claim special exemptions, as regards payments, as well as special rights and privileges, without adequate remuneration for them? Neither the Post Office nor any other department of the State assisted railways during their inception, or during their construction; on the contrary, whenever they had the chance of raising their hands against or making exorbitant demands upon railways, they never failed to do so. Innumerable instances in proof could be cited, but one only must suffice “in this connection,” as our American cousins would say. When, in 1855, the Bill for the improved “passenger and postal communication between London and Dublin,” was in progress through the House of Commons, the late Mr. Wilson, then Secretary of the Treasury, gave notice of the introduction of clauses to exempt the Post Office from payment for this improved service. It was only on the strongly expressed determination of the promoters of the Bill, that if these clauses were persevered in, it would be withdrawn, that they were abandoned. Mr. Wilson excused himself—for he felt excuse was necessary—on the plea that he was forced to give notice of their proposed introduction, at the instance of the Post Office, and that he remonstrated, in vain, against them.

It is quite right, it is absolutely necessary in the interests of the community at large, that, inasmuch as railways are the public highways of the land, the right of postal transmission upon them shall be secured in the most complete, prompt, and absolute manner that law can enforce. There must be no doubt or hesitation upon this point; but that limit passed, the postal department is, notwithstanding that its officials are of “Her Majesty’s service,” nothing more than, as a whole, an extremely well-organised, efficient trading establishment, protected, as a monopoly, by many Acts of Parliament. The railways have never shown themselves otherwise than ready, it might rather be said anxious, to serve the Post Office; but in this land of trade and commerce, their managers look for proper remuneration for services rendered. No more is asked, and no more is expected. The law and practice have very wisely instituted a distinction between the manner in which ocean and railway mail contracts shall be entered into. Because the ocean highway is open to all, tenders for conveyance upon it are invited from all; on the other hand, with railways it has been very properly decided that they shall convey the mails, whether they like to do so or not; but the same law that has enacted this compulsion, has also prescribed the manner by which a just and reasonable remuneration shall, in case of difference, be obtained. Others than the lawfully-constituted monopolists of St. Martin’s-le-Grand would long since have been satisfied. Unhappily, however, Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megæra[52] have lashed them into furor. Cannot the crème? de la crème of the gods, the uppermost crust of society in Cælestia, invent or discover a Townsend’s Sarsaparilla to purify their bloods; a Soothing Syrup—a Dalby’s Carminative—a Balm of Gilead that can assuage their anguish? Or, if the gods fail, might not a dose or two of Holloway’s Ointment, taken internally, be tried? In former days, the Earl of Aldborough, then in the flesh, but now, alas, only of “glorious, pious,” and pillular memory, was wont to testify of it, as a wonderful remedy in the cure of ulcers.