The opposition to Mr. Palmer's scheme, manifested by the Post-Office officials before it was adopted, does not seem to have given way before the manifest success attending its introduction. Perhaps Mr. Palmer's presence at the Council Board did not conduce to the desirable unanimity of feeling. However it was, he appears for some time to have contended single-handed with officials determinately opposed to him. When goaded and tormented by them, he fell into their snares, and attempted to carry his measures by indirect means. In 1792, when his plans had been in operation about eight years, and were beginning to show every element of success, it was deemed desirable that he should surrender his appointment. A pension of 3,000l. was granted to him in consideration of his valuable services. Subsequently he memorialized the Government, setting forth that his pension fell far short of the emoluments which had been promised to him, but he did not meet with success. Mr. Palmer never ceased to protest against this treatment; and his son, Major-General Palmer, frequently urged his claims before Parliament, until, in 1813, after a struggle of twenty years, the House of Commons voted him a grant of 50,000l. Mr. Palmer died in 1818.
Now that Mr. Palmer was gone from the Post-Office, his scheme was left to incompetent and unwilling hands. All the smothered opposition broke out afresh; and if it had been less obvious how trade and commerce, and all the other interests promoted by safe and quick correspondence, were benefited by the new measures; and if it had not been for the vigilant supervision of the Prime Minister—who had let the reformer go, but had no intention of letting his reforms go with him—all the improvements of the past few years might have been quietly strangled in their infancy. Though we know not what the country lost in losing the guiding-spirit, it is matter of congratulation that the main elements of his scheme were fully preserved. Though the Post-Office officials scrupled not to recommend some return to the old system, Mr. Palmer's plans were fully adhered to until the fact of their success became patent to both the public and the official alike. In the first year of their introduction, the net revenue of the Post-Office was about 250,000l. Thirty years afterwards the proceeds had increased sixfold, to no less a sum than a million and a half sterling! Though, of course, this great increase is partly attributable to the increase of population, and the national advancement generally, it was primarily due to the greater speed, punctuality, and security which the new arrangements gave to the service. Whilst, financially, the issue was successful, the result, in other respects, was no less certain. In 1797, the greater part of the mails were conveyed in one-half of the time previously occupied; in some cases, in one-third of the time; and on the cross-roads, in a quarter of the time, taken under the old system. Mails not only travelled quicker, but Mr. Palmer augmented their number between the largest towns. Other spirited reforms went on most vigorously. Three hundred and eighty towns, which had had before but three deliveries of letters a-week, now received one daily. The Edinburgh coach required less time by sixty hours to travel from London, and there was a corresponding reduction between towns at shorter distances. Ten years before the first Liverpool coach was started, a single letter-carrier sufficed for the wants of that place; before the century closed, six were required. A single letter-carrier sufficed for Edinburgh for a number of years;[61] now four were required.
No less certain was it that the mails, under the new system, travelled more securely. For many years after their introduction, not a single attempt was made, in England, to rob Palmer's mail-coaches. It is noteworthy, however, that the changes, when applied to Ireland, did not conduce to the greater security of the mails. The first coach was introduced into Ireland in 1790, and placed on the Cork and Belfast roads, a few more following on the other main lines of road. Though occasionally accompanied by as many as four armed guards, the mail-coaches were robbed, according to a competent authority, "as frequently as the less-aspiring riding-post."
Not many months after the establishment of mail-coaches, an Act was passed through Parliament, declaring that all carriages and stage-coaches employed to carry his Majesty's mails should henceforth be exempt from the payment of toll, on both post- or cross-roads. Previously, all post-horses employed in the same service travelled free of toll. This Act told immediately in favour of the Post-Office to a greater extent than was imagined by its framers. Innkeepers, who, in England, were the principal owners of stage-coaches,[62] bargained for the carriage of mails, very frequently at merely nominal prices. In return, they enjoyed the advantages of the coach and its passengers, travelling all roads free of toll.
Arrived at the end of the century, we find the mail-coach system is now an institution in the country. Other interests had progressed at an equal rate. Travelling, as a rule, had become easy and pleasant. Not that the service was performed without any difficulty or hindrance. On the contrary—and it enters within the scope of our present object to advert to them—the obstacles to anything like a perfect system seemed insurmountable. Though the difficulties consequent on travelling, at the beginning of the present century, were comparatively trifling on the principal post-roads, yet, when new routes were chosen, or new localities were designed to share in the common benefits of the new and better order of things in the Post-Office, these same difficulties had frequently to be again got over. Cross-roads in England were greatly neglected—so much so, in fact, that new mail-coaches which had been applied for and granted, were often enough waiting idle till the roads should be ready to receive them. The Highway Act of 1663, so far as the roads in remote districts were concerned, was completely in abeyance. Early in the century we find the subject frequently mentioned in Parliament. As the result of one discussion, it was decided that every inducement should be held out to the different trusts to make and repair the roads in their respective localities; while, on the other hand, the Postmaster-General was directed by the Government to indict all townships who neglected the duty imposed upon them. Under the Acts of 7 & 8 George III. c. 43, and 4 George IV. c. 74, commissioners were appointed to arrange for all necessary road improvements, having certain privileges vested in them for the purpose. Thus, they recommended that certain trusts should have loans granted to them, to be employed in road-making and mending. Mr. Telford, at his death, was largely employed by the Road Commissioners—the improvements on the Shrewsbury and Holyhead road being under his entire superintendence. And it would seem that the above-mentioned road needed improvement. When, in 1808, a new mail-coach was put on to run between the two places, no fewer than twenty-two townships had to be indicted by the Post-Office authorities for having their roads in a dangerous and unfinished state.
In Scotland and Ireland, great improvements had also been made in this respect, considering the previously wretched state of both countries, Scotland especially. At a somewhat earlier period, four miles of the best post-road in Scotland—namely, that between Edinburgh and Berwick—were described in a contemporary record as being in so ruinous a state, that passengers were afraid of their lives, "either by their coaches overturning, their horses stumbling, their carts breaking, or their loads casting, and the poor people with burdens on their backs sorely grieved and discouraged;" moreover, "strangers do often exclaim thereat," as well they might. Things were different at the close of the last century; still, the difficulties encountered in travelling, say by the Bar, may well serve to show the internal state of the country. "Those who are born to modern travelling," says Lord Cockburn,[63] "can scarcely be made to understand how the previous age got on. There was no bridge over the Tay at Dunkeld, or over the Spey at Fochabers, or over the Findhorn at Forres. Nothing but wretched peerless ferries, let to poor cotters, who rowed, or hauled, or pushed a crazy boat across, or more commonly got their wives to do it.... There was no mail-coach north of Aberdeen till after the battle of Waterloo.... I understand from Hope, that after 1784, when he came to the bar, he and Braxfield rode a whole north circuit; and that, from the Findhorn being in a flood, they were obliged to go up its bank for about twenty-eight miles, to the Bridge of Dulsie, before they could cross. I myself rode circuits when I was an Advocate Depute, between 1807 and 1810." A day and a half was still, at the end of the last century, taken up between Edinburgh and Glasgow. In 1788, a direct mail-coach was put on between London and Glasgow, to go by what is known as the west coast route, viâ Carlisle.[64] The Glasgow merchants had long wished for such a communication, as much time was lost in going by way of Edinburgh. On the day on which the first mail-coach was expected, a vast number of them went along the road for several miles to welcome it, and then headed the procession into the city. To announce its arrival on subsequent occasions, a gun was fired. It was found a difficult task, however, to drive the coach, especially in winter, over the bleak and rugged hills of Dumfriesshire and Lanarkshire; the road, moreover, was hurriedly and badly made, and at times quite impassable. Robert Owen, travelling between his model village in Lanarkshire and England, tells us[65] that it often took him two days and three nights, incessant travelling, to get from Manchester to Glasgow in the coach, the greater part of the time being spent north of Carlisle. On the eastern side of the country, in the direct line between Edinburgh and London, a grand new road had been spoken of for many years. The most difficult part, viz. that between Edinburgh and Berwick, was begun at the beginning of the present century, and in 1824, a good road was finished and opened out as far south as Morpeth, in Northumberland. A continuation of the road from Morpeth to London being greatly needed, the Post-Office authorities engaged Mr. Telford, the eminent engineer, to make a survey of the road over the remaining distance. The survey lasted many years. A hundred miles of the new Great North Road, south of York, was laid out in a perfectly straight line.[66] All the requisite arrangements were made for beginning the work, when the talk of locomotive engines and tramways, and especially the result of the locomotive contest at Rainhill in the year 1829, had the effect of directing public and official attention to a new and promising method of travelling, and of preventing an outlay of what must have been a most enormous sum for the purposes of this great work.[67] The scheme was in abeyance for a few months, and this time sufficed to develop the railway project, and demonstrate its usefulness to the postal system of the country. But we are anticipating matters, and must, at any rate, speak for a moment of the services of Mr. Macadam. The improvements which this gentleman brought about in road-making had a very sensible effect on the operations of the mail-coach service. Most of the post-roads were macadamized before the year 1820, and it was then that the service was in its highest state of efficiency. Accelerations in the speed of the coaches were made as soon as ever any road was finished on the new principle. From this time, the average speed, including stoppages, was nine miles, all but a furlong. The fastest coaches (known as the "crack coaches" from this circumstance, and also for being on the best roads) were those travelling, in 1836, between London and Shrewsbury (accomplishing 154 miles in 15 hours), London and Exeter (171 miles in 17 hours), London and Manchester (187 miles in 19 hours), and London and Holyhead (261 miles in 27 hours). On one occasion, the Devonport mail, travelling with foreign and colonial letters, accomplished the journey of 216 miles, including stoppages, in 21 hours and 14 minutes.
In 1836, there were fifty four-horse mails in England, thirty in Ireland, and ten in Scotland. In England, besides, there were forty-nine mails of two horses each. In the last year of mail-coaches, the number which left London every night punctually at eight o'clock was twenty-seven; travelling in the aggregate above 5,500 miles, before they reached their several destinations. We have already stated how the contracts for horsing the mail-coaches were conducted; no material change took place in this respect up to the advent of railways. Early in the present century, it was deemed desirable that the mail-coaches should all be built and furnished on one plan. For a great number of years, the contract for building and repairing a sufficient number was given (without competition) to Mr. John Vidler. Though the Post-Office arranged for building the coaches, the mail contractors were required to pay for them; the revenue only bearing the charges of cleaning, oiling, and greasing them, an expense amounting to about 2,200l. a-year. In 1835, however, on a disagreement with Mr. Vidler, the contract was thrown open to competition, from which competition Mr. Vidler, for a substantial reason, was excluded. The official control of the coaches, mail-guards, &c., it may here be stated, was vested in the superintendent of mail-coaches, whose location was at the General Post-Office.
Had Hogarth's pencil transmitted to posterity the tout ensemble of a London procession of mail-coaches, or of one of them at the door of the customary halting-place (what Herring has done for the old Brighton coach the "Age," with its fine stud of blood-horses, and a real baronet for driver), the subject could not but have occasioned marked curiosity and pleasure. No doubt he would have given a distinguished place to the guard of the mail. The mail-guard was no ordinary character, being generally d'accord with those who thought or expressed this opinion. Regarded as quite a public character, commissions of great importance were oftentimes intrusted to him. The country banker, for example, would trust him with untold wealth. Though he was paid only a nominal sum by the Post-Office authorities for his official services, he was yet enabled to make his position and place a lucrative one, by the help of the regular perquisites and other accidental windfalls which we need not further specify. Gathering en route scraps of local gossip and district intelligence, he was often "private," and sometimes "special," correspondent to scores of different people. The Muddleton Gazette, perhaps the only newspaper on his line of road, was submissively dependent upon him. More of him anon: here we would only add that he had special duties on special occasions. The mail-coach was looked for most anxiously in times of great excitement. During the trial of Queen Caroline, says Miss Martineau, "all along the line of mails, crowds stood waiting in the burning sunshine for news of the trial, which was shouted out to them as the coach passed."[68] Again, at the different stages in the history of the Reform Bill, the mail-roads were sprinkled over for miles with people who were on the qui vive for any news from London, and the coachman and guards on the top of the coaches shouted out the tidings.[69] When the Ministry resigned, many of the guards distributed handbills which they had brought from London, stating the facts.
In these days of cheap postage and newspapers in every household, it may be difficult to comprehend the intense interest centring in the appearance of the mail on its arrival at a small provincial town. The leather bag of the Post-Office was almost the undisputed and peculiar property of the upper ten thousand. When there was good reason to suppose that any communication was on its way to some member of the commonalty, speculation would be eager among the knot of persons met to talk over the probable event. Thus we may understand with what eagerness the mail would be looked for, and how the news, freely given out, especially in times of war, would be eagerly devoured by men of all ranks and parties.