It can hardly be necessary to point out that the Post Office has no more power than a railway company has to fix any particular rate, or to insist upon any principle of its own in regard to payment. The department can do no more than give expression to the views which it believes to be fair and just, leaving the final decision to the umpire. But that those decisions have allowed to railway companies the mere actual outlay, with little or no profit, is a misapprehension which a brief examination of some recent awards will suffice to remove.
It fortunately happens that Mr. Stephenson furnishes in his address the data for checking his own accuracy on this particular point. He says that locomotive expenses on railways do not on an average exceed 9½d. per mile, and that the cost of running a train may be assumed in most cases to be about 15d. per mile. Compare this with some of the rates actually paid by the Post Office to different companies at various periods within the last few years, amounting, it will be seen, in one instance to the enormous price of 4s. 6d. per single mile.
| s. | d. | ||
| Chester to Birkenhead | 2 | 0 | per single mile. |
| Dublin to Drogheda | 2 | 0 | ” |
| Leeds to Selby | 2 | 0 | ” |
| London to Bristol & Gloucester | 2 | 0¼ | ” |
| Ipswich to Colchester | 2 | 0½ | ” |
| Ely to Yarmouth | 2 | 1 | ” |
| Peterboro’ to Grimsby | 2 | 2 | ” |
| London to Dover | 2 | 3 | ” |
| Londonderry to Strabane | 2 | 4 | ” |
| Arbroath to Aberdeen | 2 | 6 | ” |
| Lancaster to Carlisle | 2 | 6 | ” |
| Southampton to Dorchester | 2 | 8¼ | ” |
| Perth to Dundee | 3 | 0 | ” |
| Dublin to Galway | 3 | 0 | ” |
| York to Berwick | 3 | 0 | ” |
| Dundee to Arbroath | 3 | 1 | ” |
| Preston to Liverpool | 3 | 1 | ” |
| Dundalk to Castleblayney | 3 | 2 | ” |
| Parkside to Preston | 3 | 6 | ” |
| Exeter to Plymouth | 3 | 7 | ” |
| Grange Court (near Gloucester) to Haverfordwest | 3 | 7 | ” |
| Drogheda to Dublin | 3 | 9 | ” |
| Drogheda to Dundalk | 4 | 0 | ” |
| Dublin to Cork | 4 | 6 | ” |
| Limerick Junction to Limerick | 4 | 6 | ” |
In these cases it will be seen that the rates paid by the Post Office for the use of only a fraction of the train exceeded the whole cost of running, as calculated by Mr. Stephenson himself, by from 60 to 260 per cent. But these rates, while they no doubt include in some cases special elements of expense not covered by the average of 15d. per mile, are independent of the receipts obtained from passengers, parcels, and in some cases from goods, earnings which, added to the Post Office allowance, have, in many instances, rendered the mail train one of the most profitable trains on the line.
It should be mentioned that the rates of payment quoted above applied, in some few of the cases, to trains which were running as passenger trains before the Post Office employed them for the mails, the times of departure and arrival, places of stopping, &c., being adopted by the Post Office almost exactly as the company had arranged them for their own convenience. In these instances the extravagance of the charge for the mails becomes of course the more remarkable.
I should imagine that the Post Office department would be well satisfied if those mails, the hours of which are absolutely fixed by notice, were conveyed at rates based on Mr. Stephenson’s estimate of the actual running cost, making some allowance, on the one hand, for the benefit derived by the company from the train, and adding, on the other hand, compensation for any special extra expenses to which the company may be subjected by the requirements of the Post Office, together with a full allowance for profit. I believe that some basis such as this has long been considered a desideratum by this department, and it is to be hoped that Parliament may see fit ere long to place the question on a footing of this nature.
It may not be inappropriate to mention here, in further refutation of Mr. Stephenson’s charge of illiberal treatment, that although the law officers of the Crown have given an opinion that Government can claim exemption from toll on railways, such claim has for many years been abandoned by the Post Office. The arbitrators acting for the department always considered the railway companies both as carriers and proprietors of the road, and from their calculations accordingly. It may also be observed that the strongest desire is usually evinced by railway companies to obtain the conveyance of the mails, a desire which is certainly incompatible with the assumption that no profit is allowed for that service, and strangely at variance with Mr. Stephenson’s theory that railway companies are indifferent to postal traffic.
Before dismissing this branch of the subject, I must refer to a description of postal service by railway which has now become very extensive throughout the kingdom. I allude to the cases in which the Post Office sends a certain weight of mail in charge of the companies’ guards, by an ordinary train, over the working of which no control whatever is claimed by the department. For a service of this nature, the payment awarded under arbitration has, in a recent case, amounted to the exorbitant sum of 7d. per single mile, the weight of the mail averaging for the whole line not more than 1 cwt., or about half that of a second-class passenger and his luggage. For this trifling weight of mail the Post Office was thus made to bear very nearly half of the whole cost of running the train; while it has been ascertained that the average charge made by various railway companies for ordinary parcels carried beyond short distances very little exceeds one half-penny per cwt. per mile, the average charge for ordinary goods being of course even less.
I may add, that, although in a few cases, railway companies have been induced to accept moderate sums either for the use of one or two passenger trains, or for the general use of all their trains, it constantly happens that the department is prevented from increasing postal facilities by the refusal of companies to accept rates equal to, and often exceeding, the charges made to the public for the occasional transmission of a corresponding weight of such ordinary light goods as are frequently sent by passenger trains.
At page 7 of his address, Mr. Stephenson gives the total earnings of railways from passengers, for the year 1854, at £9,170,000. The sum paid to railway companies by the Post Office during the year was about £392,000, or about 1/23 part of the gross earnings of all the passenger trains. He estimates the gross weight of passengers conveyed during the year at 8,000,000 of tons; while the gross weight of mails for the entire kingdom (including guards, clerks, &c.) was considerably under 20,000 tons, a large portion of which was not conveyed by railways at all. Assuming, however, that the whole of it had gone by the railways, it would appear that the Post Office paid 1/23 part of the total earnings for the conveyance of less than 1/400 part of the total weight.