The following facts are given by way of example: If, when residing at Birmingham, we received a letter from London, the lowest charge was ninepence, while the slightest enclosure raised it to eighteenpence, and a second enclosure to two shillings and threepence, though the whole missive might not weigh a quarter of an ounce. We had relatives at Haddington; the lowest rate thence was thirteenpence-halfpenny; others at Shrewsbury, but the postage thence I do not remember, as we never used the Post Office in our correspondence with them, since a tradesman in our town who had occasion to send and, in turn, to receive a weekly packet, was kind enough to enclose our letters, we carrying them more than half a mile to place them in his hands, while the return letters, being dropped by him into the Birmingham Post Office, came to us charged with merely the local rate of one penny. In looking over letters of the period antecedent to the Post Office reform, I find constant reference to expedients for saving postage; thus, in writing to a friend at a particular town, we would trouble him to call upon such and such others to communicate intelligence, or to make inquiries, the result to be reported in his next letter; sometimes, even, we would ask him to call upon tradesmen to give orders, or to urge despatch in commissions previously given. If a friend were about to make a journey to a town where we had connections, we did not hesitate to place letters in his hands, regardless alike of his trouble and the chance of his forgetfulness; being ourselves, of course, ready in turn to perform the like service. In the year 1823, taking a holiday excursion through the lake district[92] to Scotland, and wishing to keep my family informed as to my movements and my health (then in a depressed state), I carried with me a number of old newspapers, and in franking these, according to the useless form then required, while I left the postmark with its date to show the place, I indicated my state of health by selecting names according to previous arrangement; the more Liberal members being taken to indicate that I was better, while Tories were to show that I was falling back; “Sir Francis Burdett” was to imply vigorous health, while probably “Lord Eldon” would almost have brought one of my brothers after me in anxiety and alarm.[93] In later days, more especially after our removal to the neighbourhood of London, and most of all while my eldest brother was in Parliament, we sometimes procured franks, particularly when for any reason we had unusual regard to appearances; but as at that time we were in easier circumstances, we felt some compunction in using franks for general purposes, thinking it questionable to evade an impost by the use of means from which, as we well knew by earlier experience, those lower down were utterly debarred. This feeling became stronger as we learnt the monstrous abuses which had grown up in connection with the franking system; when we found, for instance, that though a member’s frank would cover but an ounce, there were franks of another kind which served for unlimited weight, and were said to have been actually used to free a greatcoat, a bundle of baby-linen, and a pianoforte.
Even in our early days, however, necessity being the mother of conception as well as of invention, my father, while testifying great admiration for the postal system generally, had repeatedly expressed the opinion that, even for fiscal purposes, postage was unwisely high, an opinion which in all probability tended to draw my attention to postal affairs. Be this as it may, the earliest record on the subject that I can find in my memoranda, and which is dated August, 1826 (that is, ten years before the publication of my pamphlet), gives my first conception of a travelling post office. It is as follows:—
“The mails reach London at six in the morning, and the distribution of letters does not commence till after nine. Might not the mails arrive three hours later, and consequently leave the respective towns three hours later, if the letters could be assorted and marked on the road? And might not this be done by the guard, if he had the inside fitted up with shelves, &c., for the purpose? The charge for postage might be marked with a stamp; as each bag was received, all the London letters it contained would require the same stamp-mark, except in cases of double and treble letters, when the mark might be repeated. If, from any defects in the address, the guard should not be able to assign any letter to its proper district, he might put it by for assortment at the General Post Office, to be delivered the next day.... An additional body might be added to the coach for inside passengers, or, the load being less, two of the horses might perhaps be spared, which would enable the speed to be increased (as with a proportionate load two will go quicker than four horses), and would save time in changing them.”
At a yet earlier date than this, however, though how many years before I do not know, I had given some little thought to the subject of more rapid locomotion; having mainly in view, I believe, the speedier conveyance of the mail. I had considered, as well as some others, the question of propulsion by steam, being of course entirely unaware of the great invention then progressing in the mind of George Stephenson; and, indeed, having no notion that the laying of a railway would be a necessary preliminary. Steam, however, I soon abandoned for a more potent as well as more portable agent, viz., gunpowder;[94] and with this I made some experiments; but these proving unsatisfactory, I carried my researches no further, and so escaped, perhaps, a serious explosion. My next memorandum bears date January 11th, 1830, and suggests the feasibility of conveying the mails through tubes by atmospheric means; but this, also, remained a crude and unpublished conception.
I have already mentioned[95] that our opinion was from first to last, and without reserve or exception, in favour of free trade. Such being our views, we had welcomed with joy the gradual relaxation of the protective system, which, commencing under Mr. Huskisson, never absolutely stopped until protection was no more. We had remarked, with satisfaction, that the lowering of the tariff had not produced a corresponding reduction in the public revenue; and we indulged in sanguine hopes that, even where reduction appeared in a particular department, it either would be temporary or would be made up in some other.
The year 1835 having brought a large surplus in the general revenue, we naturally speculated as to its application in the reduction of duties;[96] and it was then that my thoughts first turned earnestly to the Post Office. I now examined more in detail the result of the late financial reforms: and I found (as subsequently stated in my pamphlet[97]) that in the reductions hitherto made, the relation between the relief to the public and the loss to the revenue had varied greatly; so that, while in the instance of leather and soap the reduction of one half of the duty had eventually caused to the revenue a loss of one third, in that of coffee the same reduction had actually produced a gain of one half. This brought me to the conclusion that, “when a reduction of taxation is about to take place, it is exceedingly important that great care and judgment should be exercised in the selection of the tax to be reduced, in order that the maximum of relief may be afforded to the public with the minimum of injury to the revenue.”[98]
My next attempt was to arrive at some rule which might serve for general guidance in such cases; and I came to the conclusion that, with some allowance for exceptions, the best test would be found by examining each tax “as to whether its productiveness has kept pace with the increasing number and prosperity of the nation. And the tax which proves most defective under this test is in all probability the one we are now in quest of.”[99]
This test brought the tax I had in mind, viz., that on the transmission of letters, into bad pre-eminence; since, during the previous twenty years, viz., from 1815 to 1835 (my investigations being made in 1836), the absolute revenue derived from the Post Office, whether gross or net, instead of increasing, had even somewhat diminished; whereas, if it had merely kept pace with the growth of population, to say nothing of the concurrent spread of education, extension of trade, and advancement in prosperity, the revenue—I mean the net revenue—would have increased by no less than £500,000.[100]
To try the matter further, I looked out for some other tax, which, while less exorbitant, was in other respects liable to as nearly as possible the same influences, and I naturally took the duty on stage-coaches. I found that the amount yielded by this, instead of diminishing, like that in question, had more than doubled in the same period; increasing from less than £218,000 to nearly £500,000, or about one hundred and twenty-eight per cent. I found, again, that if the Post Office revenue had risen in like proportion (and it seemed scarcely to be doubted that the demand for the conveyance of letters had increased in the same ratio as that for the conveyance of persons and parcels), the increase of net revenue would have been no less than £2,000,000.[101] The general fairness of this conclusion was afterwards shown by the fact; 116 per cent. having been the ratio of increase in the net revenue of the Post Office during the twenty years between 1847 and 1867.
For yet further comparison, I turned to the accounts of the Post Office revenue in France, where the rates of postage were less exorbitant than with us, and taking the gross revenue (the net revenue not being given), I found that this had risen from somewhat less than £1,000,000 in 1821 to nearly £1,500,000 in 1835, about fifty-four per cent. in fourteen years.[102]