Rambles on Railways

by Sir Cusack P. Roney

In connection with this branch of the subject, it may not be immaterial to mention, that in the finance accounts printed by order of Parliament last year, the gross amount of the passenger tax paid to the Government by railway companies in the preceding year is stated to have been £309,000. As the amount paid by the Post Office to railway companies for the postal service of the year 1854 was £392,600, it follows that the Government paid to railway companies for the carriage of the mails very nearly one-third more than it received from them in the shape of passenger tax.

The third allegation of Mr. Stephenson is that the Post Office has lately entered into a competition which is injurious to railway companies, by conveying books and other parcels at very reduced rates.

Without stopping to inquire whether railway companies (most of whose Acts of Incorporation are of a later date than the Penny Postage Act, and several of whose lines have been opened since the commencement of the book parcel regulations) have any legal or equitable right to the monopoly of parcel traffic, it may be sufficient to state, that with very trifling exceptions it is only to books and other printed matter (the general circulation of which is so intimately connected with the diffusion of knowledge and the promotion of education), that any reduction below the ordinary postal charges for letters has been applied. Now, even assuming for a moment, that every book parcel that the Post Office carries is abstracted from parcels which would otherwise be conveyed by railway, it is obvious that the companies would not sustain any loss by such parcels becoming part of the mail, if the Post Office paid to the companies for its mail rates only as high as the booksellers pay them for their parcels, in which, for the most part, such books would be conveyed, if they were sent at all. But it is a matter of fact, that the general rates paid by the Post Office to railway companies are largely in excess of those paid by the booksellers for their parcels. It follows, therefore, that the companies, instead of being injured, would be benefited by any such abstraction, seeing that, besides receiving a higher rate of remuneration for the carriage of those book parcels, they are entirely relieved of the cost of collection and delivery, a cost which, as Mr. Stephenson shows, renders goods traffic less profitable to railway companies than passenger traffic.

But a more careful consideration of this question will establish good grounds for the opinion that by far the larger portion of the book parcels which the Post Office carries would not be sent at all, but for the peculiar facilities offered by the extensive organisation of the Post Office, contrasted with which the facilities which railway companies can of themselves afford sink into insignificance.

As bearing strongly upon this comparison of facilities, I may mention the somewhat remarkable fact, that copies of the very Report of the Committee of Consultation of the London and North-Western Railway, in which the Post Office is represented as unduly competing with railway companies for the carriage of books and parcels, were extensively circulated to that company’s shareholders through the medium of the Book Post, not merely to towns and villages at a distance from their railway, but even to Liverpool to which the company’s own trains might have carried them without any charge whatever. When it is recollected that there are about 10,500 Post Offices scattered throughout the United Kingdom, that there is scarcely a village without a Post Office, and scarcely even a hamlet without a regularly-established official means of communication with a Post Office, and that consequently persons even in the most secluded districts, can communicate by post with all parts of the kingdom with tolerable certainty, and with very little trouble or expense, it will readily be seen that such facilities as these must lead to the transmission of books and documents which otherwise would never be sent.

In fact, the book post service is one so different in its character and objects from that to which the parcel arrangements of the railway companies are adapted, that it may fairly be assumed it would hardly exist at all, but for the extensive facilities for its development which the Post Office possesses. The evidence given before the Select Committee on Conveyance of Mails by Railways (1854), especially that of Mr. Charles Knight, the eminent publisher, is very decided on this point. He says (3872) that the cases in which books are sent by post may be nearly all considered as exceptional cases to the ordinary commercial operations of publishing; and again (3870 and 3892) that the book post may be looked upon as a mere auxiliary to the conveyance of parcels by other means; and (3860) that if the existing regulations were stopped, the public would not be able to derive the same advantages through any other channel. The Select Committee, in their Report, admitted their conviction that “a large proportion of the parcels would not be sent but for the facilities offered by the Post Office in their distribution.”

Following, however, another line of argument, let us again assume for a moment that all the book packets conveyed by Post have been abstracted from the companies’ vans. It can on the other hand, be shown, that the imposition of a postal charge on Parliamentary proceedings,—the limitation as to size of packets passing through the Post,—and lastly (the most important alteration of all), the abolition of the compulsory newspaper stamp,—are changes, the combined operation of which must have been to give to the companies a far greater weight of parcel traffic than the weight of the whole of the book packets passing through Post Office. It has been ascertained, with regard to the night mails from London, by which by far the largest proportion of books is conveyed, that the reduction in the number and total weight of newspapers conveyed by these mails since the alteration in the Newspaper Stamp Act is more than six times the total number and weight of all the book parcels. To show the extent to which weight has thus been abstracted from the mails, I may mention that the number of carriage-loads of bags sent from the General Post Office to the Euston Square Station on Friday nights, has, since the recent Newspaper Stamp Act took effect, been five less than previously; and that the average nightly reduction of weight of newspapers despatched from London is upwards of two tons and a half. At the same time it is beyond doubt that the effect of the Act in question has been largely to increase the newspaper circulation of the kingdom, and consequently to add still further to the earnings of the railway companies.

If, as Mr. Stephenson states, uncertainty, irregularity, and delay are observable in the service at the Post Office, they result to a great extent from the irregularity which often occurs in the working of the mail trains by the companies, and not from any difficulties experienced at the Post Office in dealing with its vastly and rapidly increasing business.

Admitting, however, that slight detentions do occasionally occur from pressure of Post Office work, it is right to mention that the Post Office has long since urged upon the principal companies the adoption of a plan by which they and the Post Office shall be mutually bound to pay certain penalties for delay, from whatever cause; the Post Office further offering to pay in addition a premium to the companies in every instance in which the prescribed time is not exceeded. This proposal was, however, rejected at the time by every company to whom it was submitted, and since that date (1851) it has only been agreed to by one of the Scotch companies. It should be mentioned, that the Post Office offered in each case to reopen the award, and to readjust the payment by an arbitration, in which the proposed agreement for fines and premiums should be taken into consideration, the object being to render the arrangement as equitable as possible to the companies. I believe that the department is willing to renew this offer on the former basis, or, indeed, to adopt any equitable scheme for insuring greater punctuality.

Before concluding this report, it is but just to record a brief admission of the points in regard to which railways have, to a material extent, improved the postal communication of the kingdom.