Nor was I proceeding without authority in thus condemning the existing postal rates as unsound in policy, Sir Henry Parnell having attributed the non-increase of the revenue to the high duty charged on letters; while Mr. McCulloch had not only taken the same general view, but attributed the loss to the illicit conveyance of letters, for which the increased number of coaches gave so much facility.[103] Of the important services of Mr. Wallace in elucidating the same point I shall speak hereafter.
While thus confirmed in my belief that, even from a financial point of view, the postal rates were injuriously high, I also became more and more convinced, the more I considered the question, that the fiscal loss was not the most serious injury thus inflicted on the public; that yet more serious evil resulted from the obstruction thus raised to the moral and intellectual progress of the people; and that the Post Office, if put on a sound footing, would assume the new and important character of a powerful engine of civilisation; that though now rendered feeble and inefficient by erroneous financial arrangements, it was capable of performing a distinguished part in the great work of national education. I became also more alive to the consideration that the duty of rendering its operation as beneficial as possible, incumbent as this must be on any institution, became doubly so on the Post Office, from its being a monopoly; that, as it forbade all others to perform its functions, it was bound to render its own performance as complete as possible.[104] Of this view I found strong confirmation in the recent report of a Government Commission.[105]
Being thus fully convinced that the present arrangements were wrong, I had next to inquire as to the changes most effectual for redress. As I had never yet been within the walls of any Post Office[106] (an advantage which was, indeed, reserved for me until after the adoption of my plan), my only sources of information, for the time, consisted in those heavy blue books, in which invaluable matter too often lies hidden amidst heaps of rubbish. Into some of these, as previously implied, I had already dipped; but Mr. Wallace having supplied me by post with an additional half hundred weight of raw material, I now commenced that systematic study, analysis, and comparison, which the difficulty of my self-imposed task rendered necessary.
I started, however, with the simple notion that rates must be reduced,—but soon came to the conclusion that such reduction might be carried to a considerable extent not only without loss to the revenue, but with positive benefit; that a larger reduction might be made without loss, and a still larger without drawing upon the surplus beyond a reasonable extent.[107] The question to be decided therefore was, how far the total reduction might safely be carried; and this involved two preliminary inquiries; first, what would be the probable increase of correspondence consequent upon such or such reduction; secondly, what would be the augmentation of expense consequent upon such increase.
Investigation upon this latter head brought out three important facts. The first was that one great source of expense was to be found in what is technically called “taxing” the letters, that is, ascertaining and marking the postage to be charged on each; the second, that great expense likewise arose from complicated accounts, postmasters having to be debited with unpaid postage on letters transmitted to their offices, and credited with their payments made in return; while they again had to receive and check the payments of the letter carriers, who, it must be remembered, received, at that time, from the public, almost all the postage paid; the third, that the cost of delivering letters, great as it inevitably was, was much augmented—indeed, save in rural districts, more than doubled—by being saddled with the collection of postage. It further appeared that these expenses must increase in something like direct proportion to increase in the number of letters.
These conclusions led me to perceive that for the effectual reduction of expense it was necessary to obtain simplicity of operation, and therefore to reduce the prodigious variety of rates (then extending, on single inland letters alone, to upwards of forty), and further, to adopt means to induce prepayment, so as to save the time at once of the letter carriers, of the clerks with whom they had to account for postage received, of the provincial postmasters, and, lastly, of the clerks at the central office.
In considering how far the variety of rates might be reduced, I was naturally led to inquire what proportion of postal expense proceeded from the conveyance of letters between town and town, and further, how far such expense, whatever it might be, varied in relation to distance. On pursuing this inquiry, I arrived at results so startling that nothing but the most careful verification could satisfy me of their accuracy. I first perceived that the expense of such conveyance, which one would naturally suppose to be very great, was in fact, when divided by the number of missives, very small.
Having, according to the best information then accessible, estimated the number of letters and newspapers annually passing through the Post Office at 126,000,000, I calculated the apparent cost of what I termed the primary distribution, viz., the receipt, conveyance and distribution of missives passing from post town to post town, and found that this cost, on all such letters, newspapers, &c., within the United Kingdom, was, on the average, only 84-hundredths of a penny each; and that of this sum only one-third, or 28-hundredths of a penny went to conveyance; the remaining two-thirds, or 56-hundredths of a penny, appertaining to the receipt and delivery of letters, the collection of postage, &c. I further remarked that, as the cost of conveyance for a given distance is, under ordinary circumstances, in tolerably direct proportion to the weight carried, and as a newspaper or franked letter (and franked letters were then very numerous) weighs generally as much as several ordinary letters, the average expense of conveying a letter chargeable with postage must be much lower yet; probably about one-third of the sum mentioned above, or, in other words, nine-hundredths of a penny; a conclusion pretty well supported by the acknowledged fact that the chargeable letters did not weigh more than about one-fourth of the whole mail.[108] Beyond this, I found, by another calculation, based on more exact data, that the cost of transit as regards the great mass of letters, small as it appeared to be, was in reality still smaller; being probably loaded with charges not strictly appertaining to it, and certainly enhanced by the carriage of the mail to places which were “not of sufficient importance to repay the expense.”[109]
Having found, with tolerable accuracy, the total cost of conveying the mail from London to Edinburgh;[110] having in like manner estimated the weight of the mail so conveyed, and from these premises deduced the cost per letter, I found this to be no more than one thirty-sixth part of a penny, though the distance, four hundred miles, is far above the average.[111]