“I find that with pipes of sufficient diameter, and a vacuum of 11 lbs., a speed of 120 to 150 miles an hour might be obtained, but at a very great cost, both in first outlay and in working expenses.”
I may add that the means recommended was exhaustion of the tube, not the injection of air; that powerful engines would have had to be erected at intervals of only four miles; that the chief weight to be dealt with was not that of the piston and the mail—which really constituted only a small fraction of the whole—but that of the air itself within the tube; that the annual expense, including four per cent. interest on outlay, would be, for a tube ten inches in diameter, about £32,000 the hundred miles, but for a fifteen-inch tube, which I regarded as indispensable, no less than £80,000.
As this latter amount largely exceeds even the high payments for railway conveyance over the same distance, the project was indefinitely postponed, without its very entertainment, so far as I am aware, ever having reached the public ear. And here, I may remark, that almost every improvement, mechanical or otherwise, is preceded by more or less of inquiry, cogitation, and experiment, sometimes involving serious labour and expense, which, ending only in disappointment, remains unknown; while the public, through absence of information, naturally makes its estimate of labour by reference to that only which produces manifest results; an error often productive of great injustice to inventors, who are thus regarded rather as men that have made lucky hits than as those who by energy, perseverance, and generally great pecuniary sacrifice, have, after many failures, worked their way to valuable results. I, indeed, was now able to make needful experiments without any risk to myself, or even much outlay by the department; but projectors are seldom so fortunately placed.
When, some time afterwards, a company was formed for reducing the plan of tubular conveyance to practice, all the information on the subject acquired by the Post Office was handed over for its use. Though greatly pressed we declined to enter into either partnership or covenant with the company until the successful working of the scheme should be established. One line was so laid down as to be available for our purpose, viz., that from the Euston Station to the North Western district Post Office, a distance of about half a mile, and was used accordingly. Unfortunately, however, the whole enterprise proved unprofitable, and for the time, at least, tubular conveyance of mails came to an end. Still, what is recorded here may one day prove useful, since the day may arrive—perhaps is now come—when, on some one line at least, the expense involved, prodigious as it must be, will be justified by the amount of correspondence and the importance of speed. Perhaps the approaching termination of the contract for the Irish mail service may afford convenient opportunity for the trial.[208]
CONTROVERSY WITH MR. ROBERT STEPHENSON.
In the course of this period I was reluctantly drawn into controversy with the eminent engineer, Mr. Robert Stephenson, then President of the Society of Civil Engineers, who, in his inaugural address, in defiance of facts, with which, at his request, I had supplied him, represented the railway system as essential to the fiscal success of penny postage, and even to the conveyance of the mails: and then proceeded to charge the Post Office with harsh and unjust dealing in relation to the railway companies, and with uncertainty, irregularity, and delay in its own proceedings. The dissatisfaction which I naturally felt and expressed at statements and charges so unfounded, being reported to Mr. Stephenson, drew from him a letter in which he expressed regret at my annoyance, thanked me for the information supplied to him, admitted “all the principal facts therein stated,” but retained his own conclusions; at the same time deprecating controversy, and speaking in the highest terms of my public services. To remove, as far as practicable, the erroneous impression necessarily produced by Mr. Stephenson’s address, which of course could not be affected by his private letter, I requested Mr. Edward Page, the Inspector-General of Mails, as the officer most conversant with the whole subject, to prepare a complete exposition of the facts of the case; and this, drawn up with Mr. Page’s usual care and ability, appeared in the Appendix to the Second Report of the Postmaster-General (p. 45), and, I may add, will still repay perusal. In a subsequent address, however, to the Institution, Mr. Stephenson, without any effectual answer to Mr. Page’s definite and accurate statements, repeated his former asseverations. Holding it unprofitable to argue against declamation, I allowed the controversy to drop; nor should I now have thought it needful to trouble the reader with this statement, had not a recent biographer of Mr. Stephenson reopened the question.
NEWSPAPER PRIVILEGES.
I now come to a question on which, I fear, sound views will at no time receive much commendation or support from the newspaper press. Inestimable as is the benefit conferred by the action of the fourth estate, taken as a whole, it is nevertheless unquestionable that this estate, like those more formally recognised, is at times swayed more or less by considerations not relating altogether to the highest public interest. Naturally conscious of its own high merits, it is a little apt to forget that its good work proceeds, for the most part, from the same motive that impels other caterers to the general welfare and convenience, and to suppose that it has claims which itself would be prompt to deny to other crafts. These claims it has great power of enforcing, for bold indeed must be the minister who should maintain to the full the public right against so powerful a brotherhood.
The real question is, whether the conveyance of a newspaper at a lower rate than other printed matter, and, indeed, at a rate too low to cover the cost, be not a sort of bounty or protection granted to a section—in fact, a small section—of newspaper readers at the expense of the general public. My own opinion being strongly in the affirmative—believing, moreover, that such a departure from the principles of free trade is unwarrantable—I found it my duty to prevent, if possible, the establishment of such an anomaly. The better, however, to set forth my proceedings on this point, I must mention some antecedent circumstances.