Prepayment.
I again considered the question of totally abolishing prepayments in money. Both Mr. Tilley and Mr. Johnson (the excellent surveyor of the home district), whom I consulted, agreed in the practicability of the measure, and spoke strongly of its importance, as greatly simplifying, and therefore economising, the mechanism of the department; but, for fear of inconvenience to the public, I hesitated to take the step all at once. To Mr. Tilley, however, I mentioned, in confidence, a plan which I had conceived for dealing with unpaid letters, viz., that wherever posted they should be sent in the first instance to the Metropolitan office, thence to be forwarded to their respective destinations. This arrangement would have tended much to economy, as it would have wholly superseded the “by-accounts,” i.e., the accounts between one provincial office and another. This device I must myself have afterwards forgotten, for certainly it was never acted upon. Some years later, it was attempted to make prepayment in respect of inland letters absolutely compulsory, but public objection proving too strong, the attempt was abandoned. I believe that this forgotten plan would still be the best step towards attaining the desired end.
Mail Conveyance.
I discovered instances in which the serious expense of railway conveyance was incurred, when, speed being unimportant, a cheaper mode served equally well. It is obviously of no use to a place that its letters should arrive in the middle of the night, every purpose being answered if they come in time to be included in the earliest practicable delivery. Consideration of this led me to propose, in such cases, the substitution of mail-carts. In one such case this year the effect was an annual saving of about £800, and in one in the following year more than £2000.[89]
A Summary.
A statement of the savings which, without counting the rejection of applications for needless increase of force or salary, I had secured by the end of 1850, either by prevention of unnecessary augmentation in expenditure, or by positive reductions, showed an amount of nearly £40,000 a year; although I believe my clerks, in hastily preparing the statement (for it was suddenly required) had made several omissions.
Further Economy in Conveyance.
The surveyor for the South of Ireland had recommended that the night mails to Waterford should be conveyed by a new line of railway between Carlow and that city. The entry on the subject in my Journal (13th of January, 1851) thus concludes:—
“On the Postmaster-General calling for my opinion, I was able to show that the adoption of such recommendation would cost about £10,000 a-year, that it would afford scarcely any convenience, ... but that a day-mail ... might be established at a comparatively small cost, and would be of great service to Waterford. The Postmaster-General has adopted my view.