Before my examination, however, I had been enabled, by the civility of the Postmaster-General, to obtain further information, chiefly as to the number of letters delivered and postage collected in Birmingham; and this had led me so far to modify my former estimate, as to reduce it to seventy-nine and a-half, or, in round numbers, to eighty millions.[161] I may here add that yet further information, supplied on the requisition of the committee, enabling me to make yet further correction, I again reduced my estimate to seventy-eight millions.[162] By the same time, the Post Office, having abandoned the statement so confidently put forth, had raised the number to fifty-eight and a-quarter millions,[163] and this, after the counting mentioned above, it again advanced to seventy and a-quarter millions.[164] The committee, after very elaborate calculations made by Mr. Warburton, fixed it at seventy-seven and a-half millions,[165] that is, ten and a-half millions below my first rough estimate, made on very limited information, and thirty-five and a-half millions above the authoritative statement of the Postmaster-General, made with all means of correction at command. The committee’s conclusion as to the number of letters confirmed also my estimate as to the average single postage, viz., sixpence farthing.[166] It seems invidious, but I think it not superfluous, thus distinctly to report the result, since it may serve usefully to show, when other reforms are called for, in this or any other department, that official authority ought not imperiously to bear down conclusions arrived at by earnest, laborious, and careful investigation.
On the question as to the propriety of the existing rates, Colonel Maberly, the Secretary, and other witnesses from the Post Office, nearly all gave it as their opinion that these rates were too high, at once for the general interests of the public and also for those of the revenue. Indeed, Colonel Maberly believed that “every Postmaster-General had [so] thought them for many years.”[167] He did not, however, explain why this opinion, so generally entertained, had been so barren in result; and, indeed, when the Postmaster-General and the Secretary were interrogated by the committee as to any general or even specific abatements they might wish to recommend, no satisfactory reply could be obtained.
The committee received much evidence, both as to the extent to which the law was evaded by the irregular conveyance of letters, and as to the evils produced by suppression of correspondence where circumstances rendered such evasion difficult or impracticable. Thus Mr. Parker and other publishers reported that it was a common practice, in their trade, to write a number of letters for different individuals in the same district, all on one sheet; and that this, on first coming to hand, was cut up into its several parts, each being delivered either by hand or through the local posts.[168] Mr. Dillon, of the firm of Morrison, Dillon, and Co., reported a similar practice, in respect of money payments.[169] By other witnesses it was established that illicit correspondence was “carried on throughout the country, in systematic evasion of the law, if not in open violation of it, to an extent that could hardly have been imagined, and which it would be difficult to calculate;” this occurring “principally in the neighbourhood of large towns, and in populous manufacturing districts;” some carriers making it “their sole business to collect and distribute letters,” which they did “openly, without fear of the consequences; women and children” being “employed to collect the letters.”[170] Throughout one district the practice was “said to be universal, and was known to have been established there for nearly fifty years.”[171] “The average number of letters thus sent daily throughout the year by a house in the neighbourhood of Walsall exceeded fifty, and by that house more than a hundred and twenty had been sent in one day. Not one-fiftieth part of the letters from Walsall to the neighbouring towns was sent by post.”[172]
Mr. Cobden, as yet new to fame, but who had been deputed by the Chamber of Commerce at Manchester to give in evidence the results of its inquiries, reported thus—
“The extent to which evasion is there practised is incredible; five-sixths of the letters from Manchester to London do not pass through the Post Office.”[173]
Similar evidence was received from Glasgow.[174] Mr. Brewin, of Cirencester, reported that—
“The people in that town did not think of using the post for the conveyance of letters; he knew two carriers who carried four times as many letters as the mail did.”[175]
Further evidence, equally weighty and equally striking, came in from other quarters.[176] Various devices, now doubtless forgotten through disuse, were then in constant requisition; thus letters for travellers and others in the trade were habitually enclosed in the parcels sent by the great London booksellers to their customers in the provinces; similar use was made of warehousemen’s bales and parcels, and of boxes and trunks forwarded by carriers; as also of what were termed “free packets,” containing the patterns and correspondence of manufacturers, which the coach proprietors carried free of charge, except fourpence for booking. In the neighbourhood of Glasgow recourse was had to “weavers’ bags,” that is, bags containing work for the weavers, which the manufacturers forwarded to some neighbouring town, and of “family boxes”—farmers having sons at the University forwarding to them once or twice a week boxes containing provisions, and the neighbours making a Post Office of the farmer’s house.[177]
Colonel Maberly, however, did not attach much value to all this evidence, knowing “from long experience, when he was in Parliament, that merchants and interested parties are very apt to overstate their case,” and his view was supported by some of his subordinates, though strongly contradicted by others, especially by the late solicitor to the General Post Office, Mr. Peacock, who “apprehends the illegal conveyance of letters to be carried to a very great extent at the present moment, and has no doubt that persons of respectability in the higher, as well as the humbler walks of life, are in the habit of sending letters by illegal conveyance to a great extent.”[178] The same general opinion was strongly expressed by the solicitor to the Irish Post Office who represented even the drivers and guards of the mail-coaches as constantly engaged in the illegal traffic.