My moral difficulties found a physical parallel:—
“February 8th.—Returning to Brighton [where I still continued to live] by the 5 p.m. express train, was stopped by a sudden snow-storm. With two engines we were three and a-half hours in advancing three miles from Three Bridges. We came to a dead stand near to the Balcombe Tunnel; remained there till 1 a.m., unable to proceed or return, when, an engine having arrived, and all the passengers having been crammed into three carriages, we returned to Three Bridges, leaving the remainder of the train in the snow. Sat up all night at ‘The Fox.’ Next morning, the line being open to London soon after ten, I returned to town. The other passengers, I found, on my return to Brighton at night, did not complete their journey till 4 p.m. (having been twenty-three hours on the way).”
A few days later, being invited by the Guardian Society at Liverpool to a public dinner, I took opportunity, in my speech of thanks, to explain to a certain extent the duties and powers of the Post Office, misapprehension as to which led then, and doubtless leads still, to unprofitable correspondence, withdrawing attention from practical improvements to futile discussion. I found it particularly necessary to show why suggestions, however valuable, cannot be suddenly adopted, since, in so vast and complex a machine as the Post Office, which must not for one hour be arrested in its motion, it is indispensable to make such preliminary examination and complete arrangement as will yield full security that the change will throw nothing out of gear, but work smoothly from the first. I showed that, while some of the improvements called for by my Liverpool friends seemed feasible, others could not be made.
Thus, it had been demanded that letters should no longer be carried past the office from which they were to be distributed to some office further on, whence they would have to return, but that the distributing office should receive them at once. This demand, not then new, nor yet worn out, I had to meet by showing that the letters for one office were at such times mixed up with those for other offices, and therefore could not be dropped in passing, while the delay in sorting could not be absolutely prevented unless every post town in the United Kingdom made up a bag for every other post town, which, as there were then about one thousand post towns in all, would involve the daily despatch, transmission, and opening of a million of bags in each direction, an immense majority of which would contain no letters whatever. At the same time I assured my auditors that I should do my best to render the Post Office as useful as possible, and that I would carefully inquire into all the defects in its management which they had brought to my notice.[35] To this task I addressed myself on the morrow.
Even here, however, I found old impediments to the progress of improvement; for when I proposed to Mr. Banning, the postmaster of Liverpool, to keep open the Money Order Office to a later hour without waiting for instructions from London, my advice was met by the presentation, though with many apologies, of the Postmaster-General’s restrictive minute, the issue of which had been previously condemned, but unfortunately not revoked. One consequence was that I refrained, for the time, from attempting improvements at Manchester, lest I should encounter another copy of the minute there. On my return I pressed on the Postmaster-General the importance of reconsidering the arrangements affecting my position before his leaving town, which he promised to do, perhaps the more readily because he was much pleased with what I had effected at Liverpool. The consideration, however, produced no immediate result.
“September 28th.—Banning, who called upon me to-day, reports that the restriction of the Liverpool receiving-houses to stamped and unpaid letters, accompanied as it is by an extension of time for posting, is working very satisfactorily; so are the other improvements which, not requiring Treasury sanction, have been carried out; but I find that though the Treasury sanction [to certain further improvements] has been received a month, no steps whatever have as yet been taken thereon. The reply to the weekly inquiry made as to matters in arrears has been, that the papers were with Colonel Maberly, and beyond this nothing could be learnt till to-day, when, getting impatient at the delay, I set Armstrong to learn the cause, when it appeared that the papers were not with Colonel Maberly at all, but in the first clerk’s room, where they had been ‘mislaid’ as usual.”
This transaction, though apparently but of local importance, I have narrated at some length, because it shows how the progress of improvement was clogged, and how much my time was occupied in watching lest that which I had carefully planned should be marred in working. Other difficulties will appear as I proceed with my narrative:—
“February 17th.—Requested that he [the Postmaster-General] would reconsider a minute directing that letters addressed to me by the subordinates shall pass not only through the heads of the departments, as I had proposed, but through Maberly’s office.”
“February 24th.—Finished a minute calling for copies of many of the periodic returns made to Maberly, to which I have added several original ones, with a view of obtaining tolerable statistics. At present they are lamentably deficient.”
“February 27th.—The Postmaster-General is so much engaged in his duties as Cabinet Minister that he rarely comes to the office at present, and I am obliged to defer many points on which it is necessary to consult him. I am much dissatisfied with the little progress made.”