“January 18th, 1842.—Mr. —— reports that Lord L. is very apprehensive of attacks in Parliament for the no-progress hitherto made, and uneasy as to the working of his registration scheme. That in this state of mind he is inclined to rely more and more on Maberly, a tendency which he, ——, thinks has been promoted by the officials having persuaded him that the activity of the Merchants’ Committee, and the pressure from the public generally, is attributed to myself. —— says Lord L. works very hard, getting up frequently at six in the morning, but that his attention is given to small matters, and that he constantly changes his objects. This account agrees so well with the spirit manifested in Lord L.’s Report on registration that I cannot doubt its accuracy. Unfortunately Lord L. is both cold and suspicious, otherwise I would go to him and trust to the effect of a plain, open and straightforward statement of the whole case. With such a man as Mr. Baring such would be the true policy; with Lord Lowther it would be useless, perhaps mischievous.
“January 27th, 1842.—Having prepared another letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I sent it in this morning.[320] In this letter I take no notice of the Postmaster-General’s Report, but renew my offer to undertake the registration, and, in so doing, state distinctly that I am ready to submit to the ‘immediate’ authority of the Postmaster-General, so that there is no longer any pretence for misunderstanding my intentions. I also enumerate several important and urgent measures of Post Office improvement which have occupied my attention while the question of registration has been pending, and propose to submit the details for consideration if the decision should be still further delayed. I think this letter will make it very difficult for them to prevent the progress of the measure if they are so disposed.”
My reason for entering into this detail on the subject of registration was that, as already implied, it was my proceedings on this subject which caused me the loss of my post. I had, it appeared, crossed with my advice a strong wish of the Postmaster-General’s. This, as I was afterwards told, was never forgiven, but became, more than any other single circumstance, the ground of the demand which he is said to have made soon afterwards for my dismissal. I have only to add that, even when my opposition was set aside, the course recommended by the Post Office was not taken; the warner was dismissed, but the warning was remembered; and though Lord Lowther remained Postmaster-General as much as three years after my removal, his plan of high-feed compulsory registration was never carried into effect.
I should have felt my own post less assailable had the Post Office revenue been more rapid in its recovery. I have already referred to such depression as was caused by increased Post Office expenditure, and by those circumstances which at the time depressed the revenue in every department; and it must be added that appearances were made worse by the manner in which the accounts of the Post Office were kept, the effect at this time being to reduce an actual increase for the quarter, amounting to between £30,000 and £40,000, to an apparent decrease. Later, however, the improvement began to be manifest:—
“April 6th, 1842.—The [Post Office] revenue accounts show an increase of £90,000 on the year.... The Post Office revenue is the only department ... which does not show a deficiency on the quarter, a phenomenon which puzzles the Tory papers amazingly.”
It had already been shown in the statement made by Sir Robert Peel on March 12th, 1842, that a strong disposition existed somewhere to make the loss resulting from the adoption of penny postage appear as large as possible, nor could I doubt as to the quarter in which this disposition existed. Indeed, subsequent events made everything clear. The inference which it was intended that the public should draw from the statement that the cost of the packet service exceeded the whole Post Office revenue long served to mislead that large portion of the public which, for want of time or ability to examine, takes plausible appearances for facts. The fallacy, nevertheless, was fully exposed within two months of its first appearance. Lord Monteagle, on June 21st, 1842, in a debate on the Income Tax,[321] said:—
“When his noble friend (Lord Fitzgerald) adverted to the revenue formerly derived from the Post Office, and stated that the whole of the revenue had disappeared, his noble friend was labouring under a very great mistake. The expense of the packet service, which was said to swallow up the whole of the revenue now derived from the Post Office, had no more to do with the penny postage than the expense of the war in Afghanistan or China. It was as distinct from the Post Office as the expense of the army or navy.”
At a subsequent period, as will appear in its proper place, I was called upon to expose the fallacy more in detail; but everybody knows that an error once adopted is slow of eradication. This particular one, gross as it really is, is not only still to be met with here and there among the public, but has actually been thrice put forth, since my final withdrawal from office, in the Annual Report of the Postmaster-General;[322] so that even now it is far from superfluous to point out, that in comparing the fiscal results of the new system with those of the old, the cost of the packet service should be excluded from the one as it was from the other. Nor is it less necessary to urge that, whenever it is deemed advisable to maintain a line of conveyance for political purposes, or for any other purposes not really postal, the expense, barring a due charge for such postal service as may incidentally be performed, should be charged, not to the Post Office, but to its appropriate department; confusion of accounts being always detrimental to economy and obstructive to reform.
Naturally, I received, during this difficult period, but limited support from without. The public, satisfied with having obtained the adoption of the penny rate, the reform in which it was most interested, bestirred itself little in advocacy of those further improvements in which its interest was less direct and far less obvious; many persons, indeed, regarding penny postage pure and simple as the be-all and end-all of the matter. Of course, I could no longer communicate with the public, my mouth being officially sealed; and I may observe here, that it were well for the public to understand how completely this is the case with all subordinate officers. Whatever may be their views on the proceedings of their department, whatever schemes they may form or adopt for improvement, or, on the other hand, whatever injustice may be done to them by their official superiors, or whatever charges may be made against them in Parliament, by the public press, or otherwise—comment, or even statement of facts, is forbidden by official rule; a rule, which being unknown to the public, often leads to erroneous inference, and encourages attacks which otherwise would be regarded as cowardly.
From one more quarter, however, assistance was given at this time. The Merchants’ Committee sent in a memorial to the Treasury, signed by every one of its members, Whig or Tory, urging the complete execution of my plan, and followed up this step with a deputation to the Postmaster-General, which ended in their receiving an assurance that Lord Lowther was desirous of carrying out my measures fully and fairly “equally so with his predecessor.” Of the value of the assurance the reader may easily judge by the parallel.