The plan of limited mails, when brought into operation, raised the speed along the North Western route to forty miles an hour, including stoppages, a rate the very notion of which would have been regarded thirty years before as a madman’s dream.
The great extent of the acceleration in the northern mails eventually obtained may be exemplified as follows. When I first took the matter in hand, though there was railway conveyance over the whole distance, a letter leaving London by the night mail for Edinburgh or Glasgow could not receive an answer until the afternoon of the next day but one. The answer to a Monday night’s letter, for instance, did not arrive until the afternoon of Wednesday; since the Monday night-mail did not reach its destination until after the departure of the return mail appointed to reach London on Wednesday morning; whereas now (1870)—the Monday night-mail from London reaching Edinburgh or Glasgow on Tuesday morning, and the return mail not starting until Tuesday evening—not only is the answer to a Monday night’s letter received on Wednesday morning, but also there is allowed for writing it an interval of not less than ten or eleven hours; in effect, a whole day. This result is easily stated, but were I to attempt to detail the preliminary arrangements essential to the series of changes by which it was effected, or the various devices by which difficulties had to be surmounted, I should weary out the reader and even tire myself. Let it suffice to give some notion of the multiplicity of arrangements affected, and the almost theatrical suddenness of the transition. The day before each successive change everything remained exactly in statu quo. Every branch mail along the whole line had to bring up its mail at the established time. Every office, sub-office, receiving-house, and pillar-box, had to yield up its letters in accordance with this arrangement, closing therefore to the public, at such an hour as best suited such requirement. Every rural messenger, on foot or on horseback, had to arrive in accordance with the time for such closing; and, in this case, thousands of receiving places and thousands of messengers were concerned. All this being the proceeding of one day, on the next everything was different, the hour everywhere altered, so much so that, at some of the places remote from the starting point the alteration involved even substitution of day for night or night for day. Of course every person concerned had to be apprised of the change, and prepared for it. A single surveyor might have to issue instructions to a thousand offices, and these to as many messengers, since ignorance or neglect in any member of the force would inevitably have produced confusion fruitful of annoyance and complaint in the places served. It must be added that the highly complicated provision thus made for the mails in one direction had all to be repeated for those in the opposite direction.
I need not say that innovation is often pointed to as the source of evils with which it has no real connection. Thus, great irregularity having occurred in the mails to the north of Scotland, through long detention at Forfar—purposely made by the railway company in consequence of the Post Office disputing their right to claim extra payment for forwarding the mails (when late) by the train which actually carried on their passengers—there was great dissatisfaction and anger at Aberdeen and elsewhere; the blame being unjustly laid on the Post Office, and, through mere coincidence of time, charged upon the recent acceleration of the mails.
Of course the higher the speed the greater, other things equal, is the danger of irregularity; and complaint on this head arose in no measured tone. As our representations to the companies were met by allegations of unpunctuality on our part, I proposed a covenant by which they and the Post Office should be mutually subjected to fine whenever any irregularity occurred, but the offer found little acceptance. Finding this to be the case, and that the continued irregularity of the northern mails still provoked severe attacks on the Post Office, I sought defence by publishing a circular which I had addressed to the railway companies concerned. This step, however, produced a number of letters in reply, some of them equally skilful and unscrupulous. Effectual rejoinder would have made an intolerable demand on my time and strength, so that I began to repent having resorted to publicity at all. Objectionable as it is to allow to misrepresentation the advantage of inferences to be drawn from silence, it may be questioned if it be not better to leave rectification to the hand of time than to involve oneself and one’s department in distracting controversy.[110] Indeed, one of our Post Office officials goes so far as to declare that if he found himself charged in a newspaper with parricide, he would hold his tongue lest the accusation should be repeated next day with the aggravation of matricide.
While, however, submitting to misconception, I sought means to obtain substantial ends; and for this purpose, in preparing a scheme of mutual fines, I added premiums for punctuality, hoping thereby both to obtain the consent of the companies to the plan as a whole, and to supply a new motive to exertion and care. I also planned the conveyance of the mails on one of the principal lines by special trains absolutely limited to mail service, which I hoped to accomplish at a moderate expense by inducing the companies to join in an arrangement under which, the bare additional cost in each instance being ascertained by a neutral authority (some eminent engineer), we should be bound to pay a certain fixed multiple of that amount. Captain Galton, of the Board of Trade, and Sir William Cubitt the eminent engineer, entirely approved of both these plans, the latter estimating the cost in question at from one shilling to one shilling and threepence per mile, and advising that we should offer to pay two-and-a-half times that amount. Under this rule, it may be observed, the Post Office would have to pay less for the whole train than it now frequently pays for only a small part of one.
The proposal of mutual fines for unpunctuality, notwithstanding its sweetener of rewards for punctuality, found but little favour with the companies, and the same remark applies to the plan of charge by fixed scale; but the proposed special mail service was ultimately adopted.
The introduction of the apparatus for exchanging bags without the stoppage of the train naturally excited considerable attention. Probably, however, many of my readers know little of the process beyond its result. That which takes place is as follows: The bags to be forwarded, being suspended from a projecting arm at the station, are so knocked off by a projection from the train as to fall into a net which is attached to the mail carriage, and is for the moment stretched out to receive them, while, at the same time, the bags to be left behind, being hung out from the mail carriage, are in like manner so struck off as to be caught in a net fixed at the station; the whole of this complex movement being so instantaneous that the uninformed eye cannot follow it.
“April 9th, 1853.—The mail inspector reports that the people on the line of the [recently] accelerated mail assemble in crowds to see the bags exchanged at those stations at which the train does not stop. ‘Half Yorkshire,’ he says, ‘was assembled at Northallerton; but, though very much delighted, the people appear to have had no notion of what was really accomplished. Seeing a set of bags hanging from a sort of lamp-post before the train arrived, and a similar set in a net below after it had passed, their notion was that the use of the machinery was merely to transfer the bags from the one to the other.”
Interest and amusement, however, were not unmingled with feelings of a very different kind. It scarcely need be said that the operation in question requires very careful management both in the train and at the station. Even with such management an element of danger remains, increasing in proportion to the speed of the train and weight of the bags. In fact, as the use of the bag-apparatus extended, some slight accidents occurred. In my anxiety I induced the Postmaster-General to call for a report from Sir William Cubitt on the subject; and this being delayed through Sir William’s indisposition, I took upon myself, (the Postmaster-General just then being absent), to issue instructions restricting, and in some cases suspending, their use. This difficulty, I may however state, was ultimately overcome by an improvement, devised by my son, in the bag-exchanging apparatus. I may be allowed to add that Sir William Cubitt, who had himself failed to devise means for surmounting the difficulty, candidly and kindly expressed a very high opinion of my son’s expedient.
RECTIFICATION OF ACCOUNTS.