Another class of letters presenting a difficulty (here I am careful to quote the exact words) “would be half-ounce letters weighing an ounce or above.” I could not but admit that letters exhibiting so remarkable a peculiarity might present difficulties with which I was not prepared to deal.[215]
“The ninth class,” said the Secretary, “is packets improperly sent through the Post Office. You may send anything now if you pay the postage.”
What could be more obvious than the answer? I gave it as follows: “The fact is, you may send anything now, whether you pay the postage or not.”[216]
But the Secretary continued, “The committee is aware that there is no prohibition as to what description of packets persons should put into the Post Office; the only protection to the Post Office at present is the postage that would be charged on such packets.”[217]
My answer was easy: “The fact is, that ‘the only protection’ is no protection at all. The Post Office may charge, certainly, but it cannot oblige any one to pay; and the fact of there being a deduction in the Finance Accounts for 1837, amounting to £122,000, for refused, missent, and redirected letters, and so forth, shows that the Post Office is put to a considerable expense for which it obtains no remuneration whatever.”
Among the advantages claimed for the proposed use of stamps was the moral benefit of the arrangement; and this was strongly urged by Sir William Brown, who had seen the demoralising effect arising from intrusting young men with money to pay the postage, which, under the existing arrangement, his house was frequently obliged to do.[218] His view was supported by other witnesses.
It seems strange now that it should ever have been thought necessary to inquire gravely into the expediency of substituting a simple charge by weight for the complicated arrangement already mentioned. But the innovation was stoutly resisted, and had to be justified; evidence therefore was taken on the question. Lord Ashburton being called on for his opinion, thought that the mode in use was “a hard mode, an unjust mode, and vexatious in its execution.”[219]
On the other hand, though the Secretary admitted the frequent occurrence of mistakes, which indeed it must have been impracticable to avoid, viz., “that a great number of letters are charged as double and treble which are not so, and give rise to returns of postage,”[220] and though Sir Edward Lees thought “that charging by weight would, to a certain extent, prevent letters being stolen in their passage through the Post Office,”[221] yet most of the witnesses from the Post Office were unfavourable to taxing by weight. The Superintending President described an experiment made at the office, from which he concluded that a greater number of letters could be taxed in a given time on the plan then in use, than by charging them in proportion to the weight of each letter. The value of this test was pretty well shown by the fact that in this experiment the weighing was not by the proposed half-ounce, but by the quarter-ounce scale, and that nearly every letter was put into the scale unless its weight was palpable to the hand.[222]
The probable effect of the adoption of my plan on the expenditure of the Post Office department was a question likely to elicit opposite opinions. It was to be considered, for instance, whether the staff then employed in the London Inland Office, viz., four hundred and five persons,[223] would suffice for that increase of correspondence on which I counted; or whether, again, supposing the increase not to be attained, it would, through economy of arrangement, admit of serious reduction. On these questions[224] there was much difference of opinion, even within the office. Thus, while one high official stated that payment in advance, even though it occasioned no increase of letters, would not enable the Post Office to dispense with a single clerk or messenger,[225] another was of opinion that four times the number of letters might be undertaken by the present number of hands.[226]
Again, as to the sufficiency of the existing means of conveyance, the Superintendent of the Mail-coaches, after stating “that a mail-coach would carry of mail fifteen hundredweight, or one thousand six hundred and eighty pounds, represented that if the letters were increased to the extent assumed, the present mail-coaches would be unable to carry them;”[227] while Colonel Colby stated that the first circumstance which drew his attention to the cheapening of postage was that in travelling all over the kingdom, particularly towards the extremities, he had “observed that the mails and carriages which contained the letters formed a very stupendous machinery for the conveyance of a very small weight; that, in fact, if the correspondence had been doubled or trebled, or quadrupled, it could not have affected the expense of conveyance.”[228]