Rambles on Railways

by Sir Cusack P. Roney

But the result which the above calculations justify is a great deal more favourable than is at all necessary for the purpose of disproving Mr. Stephenson’s argument, that the expenses of carrying out penny postage would have been so large as to have entailed a certain loss.

Let us suppose that, partly to meet the increase of weight, either daily or on the heavy newspaper night only, and partly to provide for the establishment of additional day mails (they were already in existence on some of the lines), the number of mail coaches would have been doubled all over the kingdom, and that their cost would also have been doubled (an improbable supposition, considering the increase in the number of passenger coaches which must, in the absence of railways, have necessarily taken place to meet the increase of traffic). The expenditure of the department for mail-coach service would in that case have been advanced from £155,000[147] to only £310,000 per annum, while the present expenditure for the railway and mail coach service of the department is £443,000, of which sum £400,000 is paid to railway companies alone. Not only, therefore, would penny postage without railways have been both practicable and remunerative, but it would have been even more profitable (assuming the existing increase of letters) than it now is.

In order to show the impracticability of carrying out the penny postage system without the use of railways, Mr. Stephenson states, while speaking of the mails now carried by the London and North-Western Railway, that “not one mail coach alone, but fourteen or fifteen mails would have been needed to carry on with regularity the Post Office traffic.” It is probable that Mr. Stephenson is not very far wrong in this assumption, although he deduces from it the erroneous conclusion that penny postage must have entailed a certain loss. The facts of the case are, that in 1838 twelve or thirteen mail coaches from London were actually employed to carry the mails which now leave London by the London and North-Western Railway; so that, on Mr. Stephenson’s own estimate, only two or three additional mail coaches would have been required for forwarding those mails, which, it may be observed, constitute about one-half of the whole of the night mail leaving London.

The mail coaches which formerly carried the mails now leaving London in a concentrated form by the London and North-Western night mail train, were as follows, viz.:—

London and Edinbro’		Night Mail.
London and Leeds		”
London and Halifax		”
London and Holyhead		”
London and Liverpool		”
London and Manchester		”
London and Glasgow		”
London and Carlisle		”
London and Derby		”
London and Birmingham		”
London and Birmingham	}	”
(Dublin Express)
London and Hull	}[148]	”
London and Worcester

In alluding to the advantages which have been conferred by railways, Mr. Stephenson is unfortunate in putting forward as an illustration, the cheap transmission of the printed proceedings of Parliament. Under the old postal system, and during the existence of mail coaches, Parliamentary reports and proceedings were conveyed by post free of all charges. On the introduction of penny postage, a postal charge for their conveyance was imposed, and this charge has continued up to the present day.

Referring to the relations between the Post Office and railway companies as to the remuneration for mail service, I should observe, that under the old mail-coach system, the Post Office was protected from undue demands for the transmission of its mails along the public highways of the kingdom by means of competition. The principle of free trade in locomotion operated as a safeguard against extravagant charges. Coach proprietors, who had established themselves on any road, were prevented from taking advantage of their occupation of the line to levy unreasonable charges for either passengers or mails, by a wholesome fear of opposition. The result was, that by constantly offering its contracts to public competition, the Post Office insured the performance of its service on terms which afforded only a fair and moderate profit to the contracting parties.

The introduction of railways practically destroyed competition, and placed large monopolies in the hands of a few private companies; but, to compensate for this, Parliament took the precaution of insuring moderate charges for passenger conveyance, by special provision in each Railway Act. Strange to say, a similar provision as regards the remuneration for Post Office service was omitted, and it was deemed sufficient to specify that the remuneration should be “reasonable;” a most indefinite term, and one which has given rise to infinite variety of opinion.

It is true that, failing an amicable settlement, provision is made for a reference to arbitration; but, in the absence of any general principles to guide the arbitrators or umpire in their judgment of what is or is not reasonable, the question resolves itself into one of individual opinion, and the consequence has been that the most conflicting decisions have been arrived at in cases which, if not identical, have been so nearly alike as to render it impossible to reconcile the strange variation in the rates awarded.

Without, however, dwelling upon the uncertainty of arbitration, which is by no means its least objectionable feature, it can readily be shown that this mode of determining payments has led to results very different from those implied by Mr. Stephenson, who states that for trains put on to suit the Post Office service, very little remuneration is allowed beyond the absolute outlay which the service entails, and that the Post Office insists on the right of travelling at the mere actual cost.