As the day mails were so few, most of the letters arriving in London by the morning mails on their way to other towns had to lie all day at the General Post Office; so that places corresponding through London, even if very near to one another, were, in postal distance, kept as far asunder as London and Durham; and when a blank post-day intervened, the delay was even more remarkable. Thus, a letter written at Uxbridge after the close of the Post Office on Friday night was not delivered at Gravesend, a distance of less than forty miles, until Tuesday morning.
If two letters were put in the proper district receiving-houses in London between five and six o’clock in the evening, one addressed to Highgate, the other to Wolverhampton (which lies one hundred and twenty miles further on the same road), the Highgate letter was delivered last.
The postage of a letter from Wolverhampton to Brierley Hill, conveyed by a cross-post passing through Dudley, was only one penny; whereas if the letter stopped short at Dudley, thus saving some miles in conveyance, the charge rose to fourpence.
The absurd rule of charging by the number of enclosures, instead of by weight, often caused great irritation, especially when any one of the enclosures was very diminutive. Thus, in an instance reported to me at the time, a certain letter from London to Wolverhampton, which now would be conveyed for one penny, came charged with a postage of two shillings and sixpence, viz., tenpence for the letter, tenpence for a returned bill of exchange enclosed therein, and tenpence for a small scrap of paper attached to this latter at the notary’s office.
On the poorer classes the inconveniences fell with special weight, for as letters almost always arrived unpaid, while the postage was often too heavy to be met at the moment, letters were sometimes withheld for days, or even weeks, until the means of discharge could be raised.
The necessity for ascertaining the number of enclosures compelled the examination of every doubtful letter, by the light of a lamp or candle placed behind it; and this inspection, leading to the discovery of bank-notes, &c., which otherwise might have escaped remark, exposed the clerks to needless temptation, led to many acts of dishonesty, and brought much loss to correspondents.
In addition to the dishonesty thus directly injurious to individuals, there were other frauds which materially affected the revenue. Such was the complication of accounts, that the deputy postmasters could not be held to effectual responsibility as respects the amounts due from them to the General Office; and as many instances of deficit came at times to light, sometimes following each other week after week in the same office, there can be no doubt that the total annual loss must have reached a serious amount.[141]
A third edition of my pamphlet being called for within the year, I took advantage of this, both to notify new facts, and to indicate any further development of my own views.
The net revenue of the Post Office for the year 1836 (unknown at the time of my previous publication) showed some increase, and was expected moreover to be in turn surpassed by that for 1837. This progress was encouraging; for as the recent changes in the Post Office arrangements, though not of a decided character, consisted chiefly in reduced charges and increased facilities, the results were, pro tanto, confirmatory of the soundness of the principles which I had advocated. The augmentation in net revenue, moreover, was the more striking because, by the reduction of the stamp duty on newspapers, these had so increased in number, that their conveyance and distribution, all of course gratuitous, now comprised several additional millions; and because, at the same time, commercial depression had reduced the revenue in every other department.