The Project Gutenberg eBook, Her Majesty's Mails, by William Lewins

Transcriber's Note:

Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including non-standard spelling and inconsistent hyphenation. Some changes of spelling and punctuation have been made. They are listed at the end of the text.

HER MAJESTY'S MAILS:

AN HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE
ACCOUNT OF
THE BRITISH POST-OFFICE.
TOGETHER WITH AN APPENDIX.

BY
WILLIAM LEWINS.

"OUR ENGLISH POST-OFFICE IS A SPLENDID TRIUMPH
OF CIVILIZATION."—Lord Macaulay.

LONDON:
SAMPSON LOW, SON, AND MARSTON,
14, LUDGATE HILL.

1864.

LONDON:
R. CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,
BREAD STREET HILL.

[PREFACE.]

This volume is the first of a contemplated series designed to furnish some account of the history and ordinary working of the revenue departments of the country—to do for the great Governmental industries what Mr. Smiles has so ably done (to compare his great things with our small) for the profession of civil engineering and several national industries. Few attempts have ever been made to trace the rise and progress of the invaluable institution of the Post-Office. We have more than once seen the question asked in Notes and Queries—that sine quâ non of the curious and the learned—where a continuous account might be found of English postal history. In each case, the inquirer has been referred to a short summary of the history of the Post-Office, prefixed to the Postmaster-General's First Report. Since that, the Messrs. Black, in the eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, have supplied an excellent and more extended notice. Still more recently, however, in an admirable paper on the Post-Office in Fraser's Magazine, Mr. Matthew D. Hill has expressed his astonishment that so little study has been given to the subject—that it "has attracted the attention of so small a number of students, and of each, as it would appear, for so short a time." "I have not been able to find," adds Mr. Hill, "that even Germany has produced a single work which affects to furnish more than a sketch or outline of postal history." The first part of the following pages is offered as a contribution to the study of the subject, in the hope that it will be allowed to fill the vacant place, at any rate, until the work is done more worthily. With regard to that most interesting episode in the history of the Post-Office which resulted in the penny-post reform, the materials for our work—scanty though they undoubtedly are in the earlier periods—are here sufficiently abundant. The scope, however, of the present undertaking would not allow of much more than a proportionate amount of space being devoted to that epoch. Besides, the history of that eventful struggle can be properly told but by one hand, and that hand, if spared, intends, we believe, to tell his own story. Mr. Torrens MacCullagh, in his Life of Sir James Graham, has thrown much new light on the letter-opening transactions of 1844, and we have been led, on inquiry, to concur in many of his views on the subject.

The greater portion of the second division of this volume, as well as a portion of the first part, appeared originally in the pages of several popular serial publications—principally Chambers's Journal and Mr. Chambers's Book of Days; the whole, however, has been thoroughly revised, where it has not been re-written, and otherwise adapted to the purposes of the present work. We are indebted to Mr. Robert Chambers, LL.D., not only for permitting the republication of these papers in this form, but also for kindly indicating to us sources of information from the rich storehouse of his experience, which we have found very useful. On collateral subjects, such as roads and conveyances, besides having, in common with other readers, the benefit of Mr. Smiles's valuable researches in his Lives of the Engineers, we are personally indebted to him for kindly advice. We have only to add that, while in no sense an authorized publication, personal acquaintance has been brought to bear on the treatment of different parts of it, and that we have received, in describing the various branches of the Post-Office, much valuable information from Mr. J. Bowker and several gentlemen connected with the London Establishment. It is hoped that the information, now for the first time brought together, may prove interesting to many letter-writers who are ignorant, though not willingly so, of the channels through which their correspondence flows. If our readers think that the Wise Man was right when he likened the receipt of pleasant intelligence from a far country to cold water given to a thirsty soul, surely they will also admit that the agency employed to compass this good service, which has made its influence felt in every social circle, and which has brought manifold blessings in its train, deserves some passing thought and attention.

The [Appendix] is designed to afford a source of general reference on many important matters relating to the Post-Office, some parts of it having been carefully collated from Parliamentary documents not easily accessible to the public.

April 16, 1864.

[CONTENTS.]

[PART I.]
HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE POST-OFFICE.

[HER MAJESTY'S MAILS.]

[CHAPTER I.]
INTRODUCTORY.

Circular letters, and a kind of post for conveying them, are frequently mentioned both in sacred and profane history. Queen Jezebel is remarkable as being the first letter-writer on record, though it is not surprising to find that she used her pen for purposes of deception. According to the sacred chronicler, she "wrote letters in Ahab's name, and sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters unto the elders and to the nobles in the city." From the Book of Esther we learn that Ahasuerus, king of Persia, being displeased at the disobedience of his wife, Vashti, sent letters into every province of his vast empire, informing his subjects that it was his imperial will that "every man should bear rule in his own house." The first recorded riding post was established in the Persian empire by Cyrus, who, when engaged in his Scythian expedition, in order to have news brought expeditiously, "caused it to be tried how far a horse could go in a day without baiting, and, at that distance, appointed stages and men whose business it was to have horses always in readiness."[1] Another authority[2] tells us that there were one hundred and eleven postal stages, a day's journey distant from one another, between Susa and the Ægean Sea, and that at each stage a large and beautiful structure was erected, with every convenience for the purpose designed.

It is certainly remarkable that neither in this nor in any other recorded instance have the posts in ancient times developed into one for the conveyance of private correspondence. It is certain that the Greeks and Romans, even when at the height of their civilization, had no regular public post. There are some traces of statores and stationes under the Roman Republic; and Augustus, we find, instituted posts on the principal trunk-roads, for the use of the Imperial Government. He also established a class of mounted messengers, called tabellarii, who went in charge of the despatches. That these messengers should have been strictly forbidden to convey letters for private persons, or that no provision was subsequently made for that purpose, is the more wonderful, when we consider the high character of the nations themselves, and the fact, often pointed out, that the progress of civilization has always been intimately and essentially connected with, and dependent upon, facilities for intercommunication—keeping pace, in fact, with the means which nations possessed for the interchange of person and property, and with them of thought and knowledge. That those nations to which we are so greatly indebted for so much that exalts the intellect and adorns life, should not have left us an example of such a useful and (considering the vast extent of their respective territories), we should have thought, indispensable institution as that of a public letter-post, is marvellous.

Marco Polo, the famous Venetian, who travelled in China in the fourteenth century,[3] describes the government post as similar to that in use in Persia under Cyrus. The posts had existed in China from the earliest times. Every twenty-five miles there were posts, called jambs, where the imperial envoy was received. There were frequently as many as three or four hundred horses in waiting at one of these places. Polo further states that there were ten thousand stations of this kind in China, some of them affording sumptuous accommodation to travellers. Two hundred thousand horses are said to have been engaged in the service. The fact affords a curious commentary on the progress of civilization in the Celestial Empire, that, though this gigantic and elaborate establishment has been in existence so long and up to the present century, it is only within the last few years that provision has been made in China for public letter-posts.

The earliest date in modern history at which any postal service is mentioned, is the year 807, when an organization was planned by the Emperor Charlemagne. The service, however, did not survive him. The first regular European letter-post was established in the Hanse Towns in the early part of the thirteenth century. This federation of republics required constant communication with each other; for, being largely engaged in similar commercial pursuits, it became indispensable to their existence that some system of letter-conveyance should be originated. The next establishment was a line of letter-posts connecting Austria with Lombardy, in the reign of the Emperor Maximilian, said to have been organized by the princes of the house of Thurn and Taxis. The representatives of the same house established another line of posts from Vienna to Brussels, thus further connecting the most distant parts of the vast dominions of the Spanish Emperor, Charles V. It may be mentioned here, that the Counts of Thurn and Taxis have, in virtue of their original establishment, which they controlled from the first, always held peculiar rights and privileges in relation to the postal systems of Germany; and up to this day the posts of the house of Thurn and Taxis are entirely distinct from the existing Crown establishments, and, in fact, are maintained in rivalry to those of some of the German states. In France, in the fifteenth century, Louis XI. revived the system of Charlemagne, organizing a body of 230 couriers for purposes of state.

We may gather from the existing materials, scanty though they be, something like a continuous account of the early history of the English post-office, tracing, very clearly, its progress from the fifteenth century to its present position.

While the general post dates from the Stuarts, the establishment of a regular riding post in England owes its origin to Edward IV. The English post seems from the first to have been fully commensurate with the demands for its service, its growth depending on the gradual advance which the country made in other measures of social progress. Four or five centuries ago, few private persons could either read or write. On the other hand, the business of the State demanded correspondence. The king had his barons to summon, or his sheriffs to instruct, and letters of writ were issued accordingly, a few Government messengers supplying all the wants of the time. Now and then the nobles would require to address each other, and sometimes to correspond with their dependents, but, as a general rule, neither the serf nor his master had the power, even if they had the will, to engage much in writing. As time wore on, and we come nearer the age of the Tudors, the desire for learning spread, though still the few who engaged in literary or scientific pursuits were either attached to the Court or to the monastic establishments. Even when the Tudor dynasty came in, trade with foreign countries, and remote districts in our own country, was almost equally unknown. Each district dwelt alone, supplied its own wants, and evinced very little desire for any closer communication.

In the earliest times in England, and prior to the first regular horse posts, both public and private letters were sent by private messengers, travelling when required. In the reign of Henry I. messengers were first permanently employed by the king. So early as the reign of King John the payments to Nuncii—as these messengers were now called—for the conveyance of Government despatches, are to be found entered in the Close and Misæ Rolls, "and the entries of these payments may be traced in an almost unbroken series through the records of many subsequent reigns." Nuncii were also attached to the establishments of the principal barons of the time, and communications passed between them by means of those functionaries. In the reign of Henry III., the son and successor of King John, these messengers began to wear the royal livery. At first it was necessary for them to keep horses of their own, or use those belonging to the royal or baronial mansion. In the reign of Edward I. we find that fixed stations or posts were established, at which places horses were kept for hire, the Nuncii ceasing to provide horses of their own, or borrowing from private individuals. Several private letters are in existence, dating as far back as the reign of Edward II., which bear the appearance of having been carried by the Nuncii of that period, with "Haste, post, haste!" written on the backs of them.

With the machinery thus ready to his hand, the improvements contrived by Edward IV. were easily accomplished. In 1481 this monarch was engaged in war with Scotland, when, in order to facilitate the transmission of news from the English capital, he ordered a continuous system of posts, consisting of relays of horses and messengers every twenty miles. By this arrangement, despatches were conveyed to him at the English camp with marvellous expedition, his couriers riding at an average rate of seventy miles a day. When peace was restored, the system of relays was allowed to fall into disuse, only to be revived in cases of urgency. Little improvement in communication could be expected under such a course of procedure, and little was effected. Henry VIII. was the first monarch who endeavoured to keep the posts in a state of efficiency, and improve their organization, in peace as well as in war; though still it is noticeable that the post stages are kept up purely and exclusively as a convenience to the Government for the conveyance of its despatches.

Henry VIII. instituted the office of "Master of the Postes,"[4] with entire control of the department. During the king's lifetime the office was filled by one Brian Tuke, afterwards Sir Brian. We gain some insight into the duties of the office, and also into the manner in which the work is done, from the following letter (found in the voluminous correspondence of Thomas Cromwell) from the "Master of the Postes," no doubt in exculpation of himself and his arrangements, which seem to have been in some way called in question by the Lord Privy Seal. "The Kinge's Grace hath no moo ordinary postes, ne of many days hathe had, but betwene London and Calais. For, sir, ye knowe well, that, except the hackney horses betwene Gravesende and Dovour, there is no suche usual conveyance in post for men in this realme as in the accustomed places of France and other parties; ne men can keepe horses in redynes without som way to bere the charges; but when placardes be sent for such cause, (viz. to order the immediate forwarding of some state packet,) the constables many tymes be fayne to take horses oute of plowes and cartes, wherein can be no extreme diligence." The king's worthy secretary thus charges the postmaster with remissness, and the mails with tardiness, when the facts, as gathered from the above letter, show that the Government had not gone to the trouble and expense of providing proper auxiliaries, as in France; ergo, they could not expect the same regularity and despatch. Master Tuke then defends the character of his men. "As to the postes betwene London and the Courte, there be now but 2; whereof the on is a good robust felowe, and wont to be diligent, evil intreated meny times, he and other postes, by the herbigeours, for lack of horse rome or horse mete, withoute which diligence cannot be. The other hathe been a most payneful felowe in nyght and daye, that I have knowen amongst the messengers. If he nowe slak he shalbe changed as reason is."

During the insurrection in the Northern Counties in the reign of Henry VIII., the rebel leaders, in order to insure a rapid transmission of orders, established regular posts from Hull to York, York to Durham, and Durham to Newcastle.[5]

The council of Edward VI. finding that a great many irregularities existed in the hire of post-horses, had an Act passed (2 & 3 Edward VI. c. 3) fixing the charge at a penny per mile for all horses so impressed.

Up to the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, no further improvements seem to have been made, although her council took steps to make the existing service as efficient as possible, by reforming some abuses which had crept into it during Queen Mary's reign. Before Elizabeth's death, the expenses of the post were reduced to rather less than 5,000l. per annum. Before the reduction, the sum charged for conveying Her Majesty's despatches from stage to stage was enormous. Up to the thirty-first year of her reign, a rate of 20d. a letter was levied by the proprietors of the post-horses, for every post travelled over. The council resolved to pay the proprietors 3s. a day for the service, irrespective of the distance travelled. The payment was reduced to 2s. and ultimately to 18d. a day. Much information respecting the service—the different stages, the routes taken at this early period, &c. &c. has been found in old records of the "Master of the Postes," exhumed some twenty years ago from the vaults of Somerset House. This functionary, it would appear, paid all current expenses appertaining to his department, "the wages and entertainment of the ordinary posts," and he was reimbursed in full under the grant "for conveyance of Her Highness's letters and her Council's." The information respecting the routes taken is especially interesting, because it serves to show that even at this early period arrangements were made with great circumspection, and that some of these early routes existed, with only trifling modifications, down to the present century, and to the time of railroads. The route from London to Berwick is shown by the lists of posts (or stages) laid down between the two places in the fifteenth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign. They run as follows:—1. London; 2. Waltham; 3. Ware; 4. Royston; 5. Caxton; 6. Huntingdon; 7. Stilton; 8. Stamford; 9. Grantham; 10. Newark; 11. Tookesford (Tuxford); 12. Foroby (Ferriby); 13. Doncaster; 14. Ferry Bridge; 15. Wetherby; 16. Bouroughbridge; 17. Northallerton; 18. Derneton (Darlington); 19. Durham; 20. Newcastle; 21. Morpeth; 22. Hexham; 23. Hawtwistle; 24. Carlisle; 25. Alnwick; 26. Belford; 27. Berwick. For three centuries, therefore, the High North Road took in all these posts with the exception of Tuxford. A considerable diversion, it will be noticed, was made at Morpeth towards the west, in order to take in the then important towns of Hexham and Carlisle; but it is more probable that the direct post-road continued north through Alnwick to Berwick, and that the west road was only a kind of cross-post. There were no less than three post routes to Ireland in this reign, and all of them were used more or less. The first and most important, perhaps, left London and took the following towns in its way; the distance between each town constituting a "stage;" viz. Dunstable, Dayntry (Daventry), Collsill (Coleshill), Stone, Chester and Liverpool, from which latter place a packet sailed. The remaining two mails took slightly different routes to Holyhead, whence also a packet sailed for Ireland. We find there were also two posts between London and Bristol and the west of England; the first going by way of Maidenhead, Newbury, Marlborough and Chippenham; the other, by Hounslow, Maidenhead, Reading, Marlborough, Maxfield to Bristol. To Dover there were also two posts; the one passing through Dartford, Gravesend, Rochester, Sittingbourne, Canterbury, Margate and Sandwich; the other passing through Canterbury direct, without calling at the two last-named places. The posts above enumerated were called the "ordinary" posts, and may be supposed to have been the permanent arrangements for the transmission of the Government despatches. When these posts did not avail—and it must be understood that they were never allowed to make a détour into the cross-roads of the country—"extraordinary posts" were established. Generally speaking, these extra posts were put on for any service which required the greatest possible haste. Here is an extract from the records of which we have spoken, on this point. "Thomas Miller, gent. sent in haste by special commandment of Sir Francis Walsingham, throughout all the postes of Kent to warn and to order, both with the posts for an augmentation of the ordinary number of horses for the packet, and with the countries near them for a supply of twenty or thirty horses a-piece for the 'throughe posts,' during the service against the Spanish navy by sea, and the continuance of the army by land." Again, in 31st Elizabeth, special or "extraordinary" posts were laid between London and Rye, upon unwelcome news arriving from France, "and for the more speedy advertisement of the same." "Thomas Miller, gent. sent at Easter, 1597, to lay the posts and likest landing places either in Kent or Sussex, upon intelligence given of some practices intended against the Queen's person." Mr. Miller seems to have judged Rye to be the "likest landing place" for the purpose, and, returning, "received seven pound for his services." Other extraordinary posts were often laid down between Hampton Court and Southampton and Portsmouth, for the "more speedy advertisement" of occurrences from the ports of Normandy and Bretaigne.

In the early part of Queen Elizabeth's reign, disputes were frequent with the foreign merchants resident in London with regard to the foreign post, which, up to this reign they had been allowed to manage among themselves. In 1558, the Queen's Council of State issued a proclamation "for the redresse of disorders in postes which conveye and bring to and out of the parts beyond the seas, pacquets of letters." It would seem that soon after the arrival of the Flemings in this country, in the previous century, they established a post-office of their own, between London and the Continent, appointing one of themselves as postmaster, by the sufferance and favour of the reigning sovereign. "Afterwards," says Stowe,[6] "by long custom, they pretended a right to appoint a master of the Strangers' Post, and that they were in possession of from the year 1514." This continued till 1558, in which year the foreign merchants fell out among themselves over the question of appointing a postmaster. The Flemings, aided by the Spanish ambassador, chose one Raphael Vanden Putte; the Italians, by this time a considerable body of foreigners, chose one of their number for the vacant place. Not being able to agree, the disputants referred their case to the English Council, when, to the surprise of the foreigners, their right to appoint at all was publicly disputed. The English merchants took up the matter very warmly, and addressed the Privy Council in two or three petitions. They took the opportunity to complain that the authorities of the foreign post had frequently acted unfairly to them, in keeping back their continental letters, and so giving the foreigners the advantage of the markets. In one of the petitions, they urged, "that it is one of the chief points of the prerogative belonging to all princes, to place within their dominions such officers as were most trusty of their own subjects; that the postmaster's place was one of great trust and credit in every realm, and therefore should be committed to the charge of the natural subjects and not strangers, especially in such places as had daily passages into foreign realms, and where was concourse of strangers." Further, "The strangers were known to have been the occasion of many injuries in the staying and keeping back of letters, and, in the meantime, an extraordinary would be despatched to prevent the markets and purpose." The English merchants urged that it would be doing the foreigners no injustice to appoint an English postmaster; no new exactions need be imposed upon them, "and such men might be placed in the office as could talk with them in their own language, and that should make as good promise, and as faithfully perform the same in all equity and upright dealings, as any stranger had done." The result was, that it was finally settled that the "Master of the Postes" should have the charge of both the English and foreign offices, and that the title of this functionary should be changed to "Chief Postmaster." Thomas Randolph was the first "Chief Postmaster" of England.

Under the Tudor dynasty, marvellous strides were taken in the social progress of the country. The habits of a great nation can, of course, only change slowly; but, notwithstanding, the England of the Plantagenets was a different country to the England which Elizabeth left in 1603. The development of trade, which really commenced with the Tudors, gave the first great impulse to a new social era. People began to feel more interest in each other, and as this became manifest, the demand for interchange of thought and news became more and more urgent. In the reign of Henry VIII. the English people began a considerable trade with Flanders in wool. A commercial treaty subsequently gave free ingress and egress to the ships of both nations. The change that this new trade wrought was immediate and striking. English rural districts which had before been self-supporting—growing their own corn and feeding their own cattle—now turned their corn-land into pasture-land, and sought grain among their neighbours. The dissolution of the monasteries under the same monarch had the effect, among other results, of scattering broadcast over the country those who had previously lived together and enjoyed almost a monopoly of learning. The Reformation civilized as well as christianized the people. Other causes were at work which operated in opening out the country, and encouraging habits of locomotion and the spread of intelligence generally. Amongst many such, were changes, for instance, in the routine of law procedure, introduced by Henry. Up to his time, courts of arbitration had sat from time immemorial within the different baronies of England, where disputes, especially those between landlord and tenant, were cheaply and equitably adjusted. Now, such cases were ordered to be taken to London, and country people found themselves compelled to take journeys to London and sue or be sued at the new courts of Westminster.[7]

We could not well exaggerate the difficulties which encompassed travellers at this early period. As yet there were but one or two main roads. Even in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, and certainly in all the remote parts of the country, the roads were not unlike broad ditches, much waterworn and strewn with loose stones. Travellers had no choice but to ride on horseback or walk. Everybody who could afford it rode. The sovereign and all gentlefolk rode. Judges rode the circuit in jackboots. Ladies rode on pillions fixed on the horse, and generally behind some relative or serving-man. In this way Queen Elizabeth, when she rode into the city, placed herself behind her Lord Chancellor. The wagon was an invention of the period. It was a rude contrivance; nothing, in fact, but a cart without springs, the body of it resting solidly upon the axles. The first conveyance of this sort was constructed for the Queen's own use, and in it she journeyed to open Parliament.[8] Elizabeth rode in it but on this one occasion, and has left behind her a curious and most graphic account of her sufferings during the journey, in a letter, written in the old French of that period, to the French ambassador at her court, who seems to have suggested the improvement to her. The wagon, which had been originally contrived for ladies, now that the Queen discarded it, was not brought into great use during her reign. It seems to have found its way into the provinces, however, the gentry of that time being delighted with it. "On a certaine day in 1583," according to Mr. Smiles, "that valyant knyght, Sir Harry Sydney, entered Shrewsbury in his wagon, with his trompeter blowynge, verey joyfull to behold and see." Under such circumstances, it cannot be wondered at that general intelligence travelled slowly. Among the common people, few ever saw a letter. Pilgrims, as they travelled between the monasteries of the period, or who, after their dissolution, visited their shrines, dispensed news to the poor, and would occasionally carry letters for the rich.[9] Public and private couriers riding post were sometimes surrounded, at the villages or towns on their route, by crowds of people desirous of obtaining some information of the world's doings. At times, they were not suffered to pass without furnishing some kind of information. The letters of the period, many of which survive, show that great care was taken to protect them from the curiosity of the bearer; and precautionary measures were resorted to to prevent delay. They were usually most carefully folded, and fastened at the end by a sort of paper strap, upon which the seal was affixed, whilst under the seal a piece of string or silk thread, or even a straw, was frequently placed, running round the letter. The following letter, still extant, will serve to give an insight into the way letters were dealt with at this period, and the speed at which they were forwarded.—(Vide Postmaster-General's 2nd Report, p. 38.)

Archbishop Parker to Sir W. Cecil.

Sir,

According to the Queen's Majesty's pleasure, and your advertisement, you shall receive a form of prayer, which, after you have perused and judged of it, shall be put in print and published immediately, &c. &c.

From my house at Croyden, this 22d July, 1566, at four of the clock, afternoon.

Your honour's alway,

Matthew Cant.

This letter is thus endorsed by successive postmasters, according to the existing custom.

• Received at Waltham Cross the 23d of July, at nine at night.
• Received at Ware the 23d of July at 12 at night.
• Received at Croxton the 24th of July, between 7 and 8 of the morning.

So that his Grace's letter, which would appear to have been so important as that one or more messengers were required to travel night and day in order to deliver it at the earliest possible moment, took 40 hours to travel 63 miles.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Xenophon.

[2] Herodotus.

[3] Travels of Marco Polo, pp. 139, 140.

[4] Camden's Annals.

[5] Froude's History, Vol. III. p. 185.

[6] Surveye of London, Vol. II.

[7] Froude's History, Vol. III. p. 94.

[8] Smiles's Lives of the Engineers, Vol. I.

[9] Historian of Craven, speaking of the close of the sixteenth century.

[CHAPTER II.]
THE RISE OF THE GENERAL POST-OFFICE.

It was reserved for the Stuarts to organize for the first time in England a regular system of post communication, the benefits of which should be shared by all who could find the means. England was behind other European nations in establishing a public letter-post. It was not until the foreign post had been in existence a hundred years, and until the foreigners had drawn particular attention to their postal arrangements by their constant disputes, that the English government established a general post for inland letters, similar to the one whose benefits "the strangers" had enjoyed even prior to the reign of Henry the Eighth. Little progress towards this end was made in the reign of the first James, if we except a better organization for the conveyance of official despatches. At the same time, it ought to be stated, that the improved organization here referred to was the groundwork for the subsequent public post.

One of the results attendant on the accession[10] of the Scotch king to the English Crown necessitated important improvements in the system of horse posts, for which it called loudly. Immediately on his accession, the high road from Edinburgh to London was thronged night and day with the king's countrymen. All ordinary communications fell far short of the demand; so much so, that post messengers riding from the Council at Edinburgh to the king in London, or vice versâ, were stopped whole days on the road for want of horses, which had been taken by the Scottish lords and gentlemen rushing forward to the English capital to offer their congratulations to his majesty. As a remedy, the lords of the English council issued a proclamation, calling upon all magistrates to assist the postmasters "in this time so full of business," by seeing to it that they were supplied with "fresh and able horses as necessitie shall require." They were to be "able and sufficient horses," well furnished "of saddles, bridles, girts and stirropes, with good guides to look to them; who for the said horses shall demand and receive of such as shall ride on them the prices accustomed" (Book of Proclamation, 1603-1609).

As the general intercourse between the two capitals now promised to be permanent, and travelling along the North Road increased rather than diminished, further general orders were published from time to time by royal proclamation. Two kinds of post were established during the reign of James the First, both being in operation together towards its close. They were known as the "thorough post," and "the post for the packet." The first, consisting of special messengers who rode "thorough post," that is, through the whole distance "with horse and guide," was established in 1603. The couriers were ordered to pay at the rate of "twopence-halfpenny the mile" for the hire of each horse, and to pay in advance. Further, they must not ride any horse more than one stage (or seven miles in summer, and six in winter), except "with the consent of the post of the stage at which they did not change." For the service of the second post, or "the post for the packet," every postmaster was bound to keep not less than two horses ready, "with furniture convenient," when on the receipt of a "packet" or parcel containing letters, from a previous stage, he was to send it on towards the next within a quarter of an hour of its receipt, entering the transaction in "a large and faire ledger paper book." As a further precaution, and in order to prevent the courier loitering on the road with any important despatch, each postmaster was required to endorse each single letter with the exact time of the messenger's arrival, just as we have seen in the case of the one found in the collection of Archbishop Parker's correspondence. For the purposes of this packet-post, we find it arranged that each postmaster should have ready "two bags of leather, at the least, well lined with baize or cotton, so as not to injure the letters." It also rested with the different postmasters to furnish the couriers with "hornes to sound and blowe as oft as the post meets company, or at least four times in every mile."[11] Thus arose a custom which, under slightly different circumstances, was strictly observed in the days of mail-coaches.

It will be readily observed that in the arrangements of the packet-post there was nothing to prevent its being extensively used, except the important restrictions which the King put upon its use. During the reign of James nothing but the despatches of ambassadors were allowed to jostle the Government letters in the leather bags, "lined with baize or cotton," of "the post for the packet." It was not until Charles the First had succeeded his father, that this post came to be used, under certain conditions, by merchants and private persons.

It was during the reign of James the First that the Government secured, and kept for a hundred years, certain privileges with respect to the hiring of post-horses. We have seen that the royal couriers, travelling with despatches by either of the two posts, had priority of claim to sufficient horses and proper accommodation on their journeys. They also settled, by order in Council, that any person, whether travelling on the business of the Government or not, should, if furnished with warrants from the Council, have prior claim to private individuals, over post-horses and proper entertainment, demanding them in the name of the King. In a warrant of Council, for instance, dated Whitehall, May 12, 1630, we find the Privy Council ordering all postmasters to furnish Sir Cornelius Vermuyden with horses and guides to enable him to ride post from London to Boston, and thence to Hatfield, where he was engaged in draining the royal chase for the King.[12]

Little as James the First did towards establishing an inland post, though with materials so ready to his hand, in the posts of which we have spoken, yet he deserves some credit for setting on foot a general post for letters to foreign countries. It would seem that the abuses complained of by English merchants, with regard to letters coming from abroad, had been lessened by the appointment of an English Postmaster for the Foreign Office, but not so with letters sent abroad: hence the independent foreign post projected by the King. In another of the very numerous proclamations of his reign, it is stated that the King had created the office of Postmaster-General for Foreign Parts, "being out of our dominions, and hath appointed to this office Matthew de Quester the elder, and Matthew de Quester the younger." The duties of this new office are stated to consist in the "sole taking up, sending, and conveying of all packets and letters concerning his service, or business to be despatched into forraigne parts, with power to grant moderate salaries." These appointments interfering in some way with his department, gave great offence to Lord Stanhope, the English "Chief Postmaster," and mutual unpleasantness sprung up between the officers of the two establishments. A suit was instituted in the law courts, and whilst it was pending, both offices got completely disarranged, some of Lord Stanhope's staff going without salary for as long as eight years; "divers of them," as we find it given in a petition to the Council, "lie now in prison by reason of the great debt they are in for want of their entertainment." The dispute was not settled until after Charles the First had become king—namely, in 1632—when Lord Stanhope was induced to retire from the service as "Chief Postmaster," the De Questers at the same time assigning the office they had jointly held to William Frizell and Thomas Witherings. A royal proclamation was thereupon issued, to the effect that the King approved of the above assignment. "The King," it went on to say, "affecting the welfare of his people, and taking into his princely consideration how much it imports his state and this realm, that the secrets thereof be not disclosed to forraigne nations, which cannot be prevented if a promiscuous use of transmitting or taking up of forraigne letters and packets should be suffered, forbids all others from exercising that which to the office of such postmaster pertaineth, at their utmost perils."

Witherings seems to have made good use of his time, for in 1635, or only three years from the date of his appointment, he saw the great necessity which existed for some improvement in the postal resources of the country, and proposed to the King to "settle a pacquet post between London and all parts of His Majesty's Dominions, for the carrying and recarrying of his subjects' letters." In this memorial, which justly entitles him to a front rank in the number of great postal reformers, Witherings stated some curious facts relating to the service of those days. "Private letters," it was said, "being now carried by carriers or persons travelling on foot, it is sometimes full two months before any answer can be received from Scotland or Ireland to London." "If any of his Majesty's subjects shall write to Madrid in Spain, he shall receive answer sooner and surer than he shall out of Scotland or Ireland." Witherings proposed that the existing posts should be used; that the journey between London and Edinburgh should be performed in three days, when—"if the post could be punctually paid—the news will come sooner than thought." Witherings' memorial had the desired effect on the Council, who at once set about making the machinery already in use applicable for a general post for inland letters. In 1635 they issued a proclamation, in which they state that there had not been hitherto any constant communication between the kingdoms of England and Scotland, and therefore command "Thomas Witherings, Esquire, His Majesty's Postmaster for forraigne parts, to settle a running post or two, to run night and day between Edinburgh in Scotland and the City of London, to go thither and back again in 6 days." Directions were also given for the management of the correspondence between the principal towns on the line of road. Bye posts shall be connected with the main line of posts, by means of which letters from such places as Lincoln, Hull, Chester, Bristol, or Exeter, shall fall into it, and letters addressed to these and other places shall be sent. Other bye posts are promised to different parts of the country. All postmasters on the main line of posts, as well as those of the bye posts, were commanded to have "always ready in their stables one or two horses." The charges settled by James I. were ordered to be the charges under the new system, "2½d. for a single horse, and 5d. for two horses per mile." In a subsequent proclamation two years afterwards, a monopoly of letter-carrying was established, which has been preserved ever since, in all the regulations of the Post-Office. No other messengers or foot posts shall carry any letters, but those who shall be employed by the King's "Chief Postmaster." Exceptions were made, however, when the letters were addressed to places to which the King's post did not travel; also, in the case of common known carriers; messengers particularly sent express; and to a friend carrying a letter for a friend. These exceptions, trifling as they were, were withdrawn from time to time, as the Post-Office became more and more one of the settled institutions of the country. As it was, the prohibitory clauses caused great dissatisfaction in the country. The middle of the seventeenth century was certainly a bad time for introducing a measure that should bear any appearance of a stretch of the royal prerogative. That no one but the servants of the King's Postmaster should carry private letters was regarded as an unwarrantable interference with the liberty of the subject; so much so, that in 1642 a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to inquire into that part of the measure. The subject was also frequently mentioned in Parliament; notwithstanding which, the Government strictly adhered to the clause.[13]

The first rates of postage for the new service were fixed at twopence, for a single letter, for any distance under 80 miles; 4d. up to 140 miles; 6d. for any longer distance in England; and 8d. to any place in Scotland. Of course the distances were all reckoned from London.

The control of the English letter-office was entrusted to the Foreign Postmaster-General, who had suggested the new undertaking. Witherings held the joint offices for five years, when in 1640 he was charged with abusing both his trusts, and superseded by Philip Burlamachy, a London merchant. It was arranged, however, that Burlamachy should execute the duties of his offices under the care and inspection of the principal Secretary of State. And now began a quarrel which lasted incessantly from 1641 to 1647. When the proclamation concerning the sequestration of his office was published, Witherings assigned his patent to the Earl of Warwick. Mindful of this opportunity, Lord Stanhope, the "Chief Postmaster" under the King's father, who had surrendered his patent some years before, now came forward and stated that the action had not been voluntary, but, as we learn from his petition to the House of Lords, he "was summoned to the Council table, and obliged, before he was suffered to depart, to subscribe somewhat there penned upon your petitioner's patent by the Lord Keeper Coventry." Lord Stanhope found a staunch friend and adherent in Mr. Edmund Prideaux, a member of the House of Commons, and subsequently Attorney-General to the Commonwealth. Two rival offices were established in London, and continued strife was maintained between the officers of the two claimants. On one occasion, Prideaux himself helped to seize the Plymouth mail which had just arrived in London, and was proceeding to the office of the Earl of Warwick near the Royal Exchange. Burlamachy and the Government failed to restore peace. In the Commission on the Post-Office, to which we have already referred, the subject was taken up, but the resolution of the Committee only rendered matters more complicated. The Committee, though Prideaux contrived to be made Chairman of it, declared that the sequestration of two years before "was a grievance and illegal, and ought to be taken off," and Mr. Witherings restored to office. The Commission decided against the Government, both as regards the sequestration and the monopoly of letter-carrying, which the King proclaimed in 1637. Both questions were left in abeyance for two years, when, in 1644, the Parliamentary forces having begun to gain an ascendancy over those of the King, the Lords and Commons by a joint action appointed Edmund Prideaux, the Chairman of the Committee of 1642, "and a barrister of seven years' standing," to the vacant office. It is somewhat amusing to note how the monopolizing tendencies of the Crown, denounced but two years ago by the Parliament, were now openly advocated and confirmed by an almost unanimous vote of both Houses. The resolution establishing Prideaux in the office states,[14] that the Lords and Commons, "finding by experience that it is most necessary for keeping of good intelligence between the Parliament and their forces, that post-stages be erected in several parts of the kingdom, and the office of Master of the Post and Couriers being at present void, ordain that Edmund Prideaux shall be and hereby is constituted Master of the Posts, Couriers, and Messengers." Prideaux must have been an energetic and pains-taking manager. He was very zealous and greatly improved the service, "establishing," says Blackstone, "a weekly conveyance of letters to all parts of the country, thereby saving to the public the charge of maintaining postmasters to the amount of 7,000l. per annum." It seems to have been clearly seen in Parliament that the Post-Office would eventually pay its own expenses, and even yield a revenue; for, in deciding on Prideaux's proposal, their object is stated quite concisely in one of the clauses sanctioning it:—"That for defraying the charges of the several postmasters, and easing the State of it, there must be a weekly conveyance of letters to all parts of the country." For twenty years previously the establishment of the post had been a burden to the extent of three or four thousand pounds a year on the public purse. Prideaux at first was allowed to take the profits of his office, in consideration of his bearing all the charges. In 1649, five years after his appointment, the amount of revenue derived from the posts reached 5,000l. and a new arrangement was entered into. The practice of farming the Post-Office revenue began from the year 1650, and lasted, as far as regards some of the bye posts, down to the end of the last century. In 1650 the revenue was farmed for the sum of 5,000l.

In the year 1649 the Common Council of London deliberately established a post-office for inland letters in direct rivalry to that of the Parliament. But the Commons, although they had loudly denounced the formation of a monopoly by the Crown, proceeded to put down this infringement of the one which they had but lately secured to themselves. The City authorities, backed, as they were in those days, by immense power, stoutly denied that the Parliament had any exclusive privilege in the matter. They could see no reason why there should not be "another weekly conveyance of letters and for other uses" (this latter clause most probably meaning conveyance of parcels and packets). Though pressed to do so, "they refused to seek the sanction of Parliament, or to have any direction from them in their measure."[15] "The Common Council," it is further stated by way of complaint, "have sent agents to settle postages by their authority on several roads, and have employed a natural Scott, who has gone into Scotland, and hath there settled postmasters (others than those for the state) on all that road." Prideaux took care to learn something from the rival company. He lowered his rates of postage, increased the number of despatches, and then resolutely applied himself to get the City establishment suppressed. Prideaux, who had now become Attorney-General, invoked the aid of the Council of State. The Council reported that, "as affairs now stand, they conceive that the office of Postmaster is, and ought to be, in the sole power and disposal of Parliament." After this decision the City posts were immediately and peremptorily suppressed, and from this date the carrying of letters has been the exclusive privilege of the Crown. Though the Government succeeded in establishing the monopoly, public opinion was greatly against the measure. The authorities of the city of London, as may well be imagined, were incessant in their exertions to defeat it, not only at that time, but on many subsequent occasions. Pamphlets were written on the subject, and one book, especially, deserves mention, inasmuch as its author bore a name now memorable in the annals of the British Post-Office. In 1659 was published a book, entitled John Hill's Penny Post; or a vindication of the liberty of every Englishman in carrying merchants' or other men's letters against any restraints of farmers of such employment. 4to. 1659.

Under the Protectorate, the Post-Office underwent material changes. Whilst extending the basis of the Post-Office, Cromwell and his Council took advantage of the State monopoly to make it subservient to the interests of the Commonwealth. One of the ordinances published during the Protectorate sets forth that the Post-Office ought to be upheld, not merely because it is the best means of conveying public and private communications, but also because it may be made the agent in "discovering and preventing many wicked designs, which have been and are daily contrived against the peace and welfare of this Commonwealth, the intelligence whereof cannot well be communicated except by letters of escript." A system of espionage was thus settled which has always been abhorrent to the nature and feelings of Englishmen. But perhaps we ought not to judge the question in the light of the present day. And we would do justice to the Council of the Commonwealth. The Post-Office now for the first time became the subject of parliamentary enactments, and the acts passed during the interregnum became the models for all subsequent measures. In the year 1656 an Act was passed, "to settle the postage of England, Scotland, and Ireland," and henceforth the Post-Office was established on a new and broad basis.[16] It was ruled that there "shall be one General Post-Office, and one officer stiled the Postmaster-Generall of England, and Comptroller of the Post-Office." This officer was to have the horsing of all "through" posts and persons "riding post." "Prices for the carriage of letters, English, Scottish, and Irish," as well as foreign, and also for post-horses, were again fixed. All other persons were forbidden "to set up or employ any foot-posts, horse-posts, or packet-boats." Two exceptions, however, were made under the latter head, in favour of the two universities, "who may use their former liberties, rights, and privileges of having special carriers to carry and recarry letters as formerly they did, and as if this Act had not been made." The Cinque Ports also must "not be interfered with, and their ancient rights of sending their own post to and from London shall remain intact."

At the Restoration this settlement of the Post-Office was confirmed in almost all its particulars. The statute 12 Car. II. c. 35 re-enacts the ordinance of the Commonwealth, and on account of its being the earliest recognised statutory enactment, is commonly known as the "Post-Office Charter." It remained in full force until 1710. The following is the important preamble to the statute in question: "Whereas for the maintainance of mutual correspondencies, and prevention of many inconveniences happening by private posts, several public post-offices have been heretofore erected for carrying and recarrying of letters by post to and from all parts and places within England, Scotland, and Ireland, and several posts beyond the seas, the well-ordering whereof is a matter of general concernment, and of great advantage, as well for the preservation of trade and commerce as otherwise."

It does not appear why Prideaux's connexion with the Post-Office was dissolved, nor yet exactly when. Probably his more onerous duties as first law officer of the Government demanded all his time and energy. However it was, we hear no more of him after his victory over the then formidable City magnates. During the remaining years of Cromwell's life, the revenues of the Post-Office, wonderfully augmented by Prideaux's management, were farmed for the sum of 10,000l. a year to a Mr. John Manley. During Manley's tenure of office, the proceeds must either have increased with marvellous rapidity, or the contracts were under estimated; for when, in 1659, Manley left the Post-Office, he calculated that he had cleared in that and some previous years the sum of 14,000l. annually. A Parliamentary Committee instituted a strict scrutiny into the proceeds of the office in the first year of the Restoration, at which period it became necessary that a new Postmaster-General should be appointed. It was agreed by the members of this Committee to recommend that a much higher sum be asked from the next aspirant to the office, inasmuch as they found that Mr. Manley, instead of over-estimating his receipts, had erred on the other side, and that they could not have come far short of the annual sum of 20,000l. The result of the Committee's investigation was, that Mr. Henry Bishop was only appointed to the vacant place on his entering into a contract to pay to Government the annual sum of 21,500l. In estimating the increase of Post-Office revenue from year to year, it must be borne in mind that a considerable item in the account was derived from the monopoly in post-horses for travelling, which monopoly had been secured under Cromwell's ordinances, and re-secured under 12 Car. II. c. 35. By this Act, no traveller could hire horses for riding post from any but authorized postmasters.[17] This statute remained in force, under some limitations, till 1779.

Many matters of detail in the arrangements of the Post-Office were discussed in Parliament during the first three years of the Restoration. Long-promised bye-posts were now for the first time established; the circulation of the letters, meaning by that the routes the mails shall take, and many such subjects, best settled of course by the authorities, weary the reader of the Journals of the House of Commons about this date. In December, 1660, for instance, we find the House deliberating on a proviso tendered by Mr. Titus to the following effect:—"Provided also and be it enacted, that a letter or packet-post shall once every week come to Kendal by way of Lancaster, and to the town of Penrith in Cumberland by way of Newcastle and Carlisle, and to the City of Lincoln and the borough of Grimsby likewise;" and we are glad to find that this reasonable proviso, to give these "out-of-the-way places" the benefit of a weekly post, was agreed to without cavil. We notice one important resolution of the session of this year, setting forth that, as the Post-Office Bill has been carried through the Houses satisfactorily, "such of the persons who have contributed their pains in improvement of the Post-Office, be recommended to the King's Majesty for consideration, to be had of the pains therein taken accordingly." Let us hope (for we find no further mention of the matter) that all concerned got their deserts. Tardy as the English people were, compared with their continental neighbours, in rearing the institution of the post, the foundation of an establishment was now laid which has, at the present time, far distanced all competitors in its resources and in the matter of liberal provisions for the people. Even before the days of penny postage, the Duke of Wellington, than whom no man was supposed to know better the postal regulations of the Continent, gave it as his deliberate opinion, that "the English Post-Office is the only one in Europe which can be said to do its work." In rewarding, therefore, those who contributed so much to this success at this early period of the history of the establishment, King Charles would simply pay an instalment of the debt which future generations would owe to them.

Mr. Bishop was only left undisturbed for two short years. As it was evident that the revenue of the office was increasing, the House of Commons took advantage, at the close of his second year of office, to desire his Majesty that "no further grant or contract of the Post-Office be again entered into till a committee inspect the same and see what improvements may be made on the Revenue, as well as in the better management of the department." They pray that the office may be given to the highest bidder. His Majesty replies that he has not been satisfied with the hands in which it has been. Notwithstanding that a measure was carried requiring the officers of the Post-Office in London and the country to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and notwithstanding that these oaths were properly subscribed, his Majesty is not at all satisfied, "for the extraordinary number of nonconformists and disaffected persons in that office," and is desirous of a change. The term being expired, his Majesty "will have a care to see it raised to that profit it may fairly be, remembering always that it being an office of much trust as well as a farm, it will not be fit to give it to him that bids most, because a dishonest or disaffected person is likeliest to exceed that way." There can be no manner of doubt now, that the King's words on this occasion were meant to prepare the minds of his faithful Commons for the successor which he had by this time fully resolved upon. Two months subsequently to the above message to the Commons, the entire revenue of the Post-Office is settled by statute, 15 Car. II. c. 14, upon James, Duke of York, and his heirs male in perpetuity. This arrangement existed only during the lifetime of Charles, for when, at his death, the Duke of York ascended the throne, the revenue of the Post-Office, which had by that time reached to 65,000l. a-year, again reverted to the Crown. No means were spared to make the Post-Office fruitful during the remainder of the years of Charles II. Not only were direct measures sanctioned, but others which had only a bearing on the interests of the Post-Office were introduced, and easily carried through the Houses. Now, for the first time, in 1663, the Turnpike Act made its appearance on our Statute-book, and we may gather from the preamble to this useful Act some of the impediments which at that time existed to postal communication. It sets forth that the great North Road—the main artery for the post-roads and our national intercourse—was in many parts "very vexatious," "almost impassable," and "very dangerous." The Act provided for needful improvements, and was the beginning of legislation on that subject.

Letter-franking also commenced in this year. A Committee of the House of Commons which sat in the year 1735 reported, "that the privilege of franking letters by the knights, &c. chosen to represent the Commons in Parliament, began with the creating of a post-office in the kingdom by Act of Parliament." The proviso which secured this privilege to members cannot now be regarded otherwise than as a propitiatory clause to induce a unanimous approval of the bill in general. The account[18] of the discussion of the clause in question is somewhat amusing. Sir Walter Earle proposed that "members' letters should come and go free during the time of their sittings." Sir Heneage Finch (afterwards Lord Chancellor Finch) said, indignantly, "It is a poor mendicant proviso, and below the honour of the House." Many members spoke in favour of the clause, Sir George Downing, Mr. Boscowen, among the number, and Sergeant Charlton also urged "that letters for counsel went free." The debate was, in fact, nearly one-sided; but the Speaker, Sir Harbottle Grimstone, on the question being called, refused for a considerable time to put it, saying he "felt ashamed of it." The proviso was eventually put and carried by a large majority. When the Post-Office Bill, with its franking privilege, was sent up to the Lords, they threw out the clause, ostensibly for the same reasons which had actuated the minority in the Commons in opposing it, but really, as it was confessed some years afterwards, because there was no provision made in the Bill that the "Lords' own letters should pass free." A few years later this important omission was supplied, and both Houses had the privilege guaranteed to them, neither Lords nor Commons now feeling the arrangement below their dignity.

Complaint is made for the first time this year, that letters have been opened in the General Post-Office. Members of Parliament were amongst the complainants. The attention of the Privy Council having been called to the subject, the King issued a proclamation "for quieting the Postmaster-General in the execution of his office." It ordained that "no postmaster or other person, except under the immediate warrant of our principal Secretary of State, shall presume to open letters or packets not directed unto themselves."

Two years before the death of Charles II. a penny post, the only remaining post-office incident of any importance during his reign, was set up in London for the conveyance of letters and parcels. This post was originated by Robert Murray, an upholsterer, who, like many other people living at the time, was dissatisfied that the Post-Office had made no provision for correspondence between different parts of London. By the then existing arrangements, communication was much more easy between town and country than within the limits of the metropolis. Murray's post, got up at a great cost, was assigned over to Mr. William Docwray, a name which figures for many succeeding years in post-office annals. The regulations of the new penny post were, that all letters and parcels not exceeding a pound weight, or any sum of money not above 10l. in value, or parcel not worth more than 10l., might be conveyed at a charge of one penny in the city and suburbs, and for twopence to any distance within a given ten-mile circuit. Six large offices were opened at convenient places in London, and receiving-houses were established in all the principal streets. Stowe says, that in the windows of the latter offices, or hanging at the doors, were large placards on which were printed, in great letters, "Penny post letters taken in here." "Letter-carriers," adds the old chronicler, "gather them each hour and take them to the grand office in their respective circuits. After the said letters and parcels are duly entered in the books, they are delivered at stated periods by other carriers." The deliveries in the busy and crowded streets near the Exchange were as frequent as six or eight times a day; even in the outskirts, as many as four daily deliveries were made.

The penny post was found to be a great and decided success. No sooner, however, was that success apparent, and it was known that the speculation was becoming lucrative to its originator, than the Duke of York, by virtue of the settlement made to him, complained of it as an infraction of his monopoly. Nor were there wanting other reasons, inducing the Government to believe that the penny post ought not to be under separate management. The Protestants loudly denounced the whole concern as a contrivance of the Popish party. The great Dr. Oates hinted that the Jesuits were at the bottom of the scheme, and that if the bags were examined, they would be found full of treason.[19] The city porters, too, complained that their interests were attacked, and for long they tore down the placards which announced the innovation to the public. Undoubtedly, however, the authorities were most moved by the success of the undertaking, and thereupon appealed to the Court of King's Bench, which decided that the new post-office, with all its profits and advantages, should become part and parcel of the royal establishment. Docwray was even cast in slight damages and costs. Thus commenced the London District Post, which existed as a separate establishment to the General Post from this time until so late as 1854. It was at first thought that the amalgamation of the two offices would be followed by a fusion of the two systems; but this fusion, so much desired, and one we would have thought so indispensable, was not accomplished (from a number of considerations to be adduced hereafter), although the object was attempted more than once.

About a year after the new establishment had been wrested from him, Mr. Docwray was appointed, under the Duke of York, to the office of Controller of the District-Post. This was doubtless meant as some sort of compensation for the losses he had sustained.[20]

In 1685, Charles II. died, and the Duke of York succeeding him, the revenues of the Post-Office, of course, reverted to the Crown. Throughout the reign of the second James, the receipts of the Post-Office went on increasing, though (the King being too much engaged in the internal commotions which disturbed the country) no improvements of any moment were made. The only subject calling for mention is, that James first commenced the practice of granting pensions out of the Post-Office revenue. The year after he ascended the throne, the King, acting doubtless under the wishes of the "merry monarch," that provision should be made for her, granted a pension of 4,700l. a-year to Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, one of the late King's mistresses, to be paid out of the Post-Office receipts. This pension is still paid to the Duke of Grafton, as her living representative. The Earl of Rochester was allowed a pension of 4,000l. a-year from the same source during this reign. In 1694, during the reign of William and Mary, the list of pensions[21] paid by the Post-Office authorities stood thus:—

Docwray's pension began in 1694, and was regarded as a further acknowledgment of his claims as founder of the "District-post," or the "Penny-post," as it was then called. He only held his pension, however, for four years, losing both his emoluments and his office in 1698, on certain charges of gross mismanagement having been brought against him. The officers and messengers under his control memorialized the Commissioners of the Treasury, alleging that the "Controller doth what in him lyes to lessen the revenue of the Penny Post-Office, that he may farm it and get it into his own hands;" also, that "he had removed the Post-Office to an inconvenient place to forward his ends." There appears to have been no limit as to the weight or size of parcels transmitted through the district-post during Docwray's time, but the memorial goes on to say that "he forbids the taking in of any band-boxes (except very small) and all parcels above a pound; which, when they were taken in, did bring a considerable advantage to the Post-Office;" that these same parcels are taken by porters and watermen at a far greater charge, "which is a loss to the public," as the penny-post messengers did the work "much cheaper and more satisfactory." Nor is this all. It is further stated that "he stops, under spetious pretences, most parcells that are taken in, which is great damage to tradesmen by loosing their customers, or spoiling their goods, and many times hazard the life of the patient when physick is sent by a doctor or an apothecary."[22] It was hinted that the parcels were not only delayed, but misappropriated; that letters were opened and otherwise tampered with: and these charges being partially substantiated, Docwray, who deserved better treatment, was removed from all connexion with the department.

It was only towards the close of the seventeenth century, that the Scotch and Irish post establishments come at all into notice. The first legislative enactments for the establishment of a Scotch post-office were made in the reign of William and Mary. The Scotch Parliament passed such an act in the year 1695. Of course the proclamations of King James I. provided for the conveyance of letters between the capitals of the two countries; and although posts had been heard of in one or two of the principal roads leading out of Edinburgh, even before James VI. of Scotland became the first English king of that name, it was only after the Revolution that they became permanent and legalized. Judging by the success which had followed the English establishment, it was expected that a Scotch post would soon pay all its expenses. However, to begin, the King decided upon making a grant of the whole revenue of the Scotch office, as well as a salary of 300l. a year, to Sir Robert Sinclair, of Stevenson, on condition that he would keep up the establishment.[23] In a year from that date, Sir Robert Sinclair gave up the grant as unprofitable and disadvantageous. It was long before the Scotch office gave signs of emulating the successes of the English post, for, even forty years afterwards, the whole yearly revenue of the former was only a little over a thousand pounds. About 1700, the posts between London and Edinburgh were so frequently robbed, especially in the neighbourhood of the borders, that the two Parliaments of England and Scotland jointly passed acts, making the robbery or seizure of the public post "punishable with death and confiscation of moveables."

Little is known of the earlier postal arrangements of Ireland. Before any legislative enactments were made in the reign, it is said, of Charles I., the letters of the country were transmitted in much the same way as we have seen they were forwarded in the sister country. The Viceroy of Ireland usually adopted the course common in England when the letters of the King and his Council had to be delivered abroad. The subject is seldom mentioned in contemporary records, and we can only picture in imagination the way in which correspondence was then transmitted. In the sixteenth century, mounted messengers were employed carrying official letters and despatches to different parts of Ireland. Private noblemen also employed these "intelligencers," as they were then and for some time afterwards called, to carry their letters to other chiefs or their dependents. The Earl of Ormond was captured in 1600, owing to the faithlessness of Tyrone's "intelligencer," who first took his letters to the Earl of Desmond and let him privately read them, and afterwards demurely delivered them according to their addresses.[24]

Charles I. ordered that packets should ply weekly between Dublin and Chester, and also between Milford Haven and Waterford, as a means of insuring quick transmission of news and orders between the English Government and Dublin Castle. We have seen that packets sailed between Holyhead and Dublin, and Liverpool and Dublin, as early as the reign of Elizabeth. Cromwell kept up both lines of packets established by Charles. At the Restoration, only one—namely, that between Chester and Dublin—was retained, this being applied to the purposes of a general letter-post. The postage between London and Dublin was 6d., fresh rates being imposed for towns in the interior of Ireland. A new line of packets was established to make up for that discontinued,[25] to sail between Port Patrick and Donaghadee, forming an easy and short route between Scotland and the north of Ireland. For many years this mail was conveyed in an open boat, each trip across the narrow channel costing the Post-Office a guinea. Subsequently, a grant of 200l. was made by the Post-Office in order that a larger boat might be built for the service. This small mail is still continued.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] The special messenger who informed James of Queen Elizabeth's death accomplished a great feat in those days. Sir Robert Carey rode post, with sealed lips, from Richmond in Surrey to Edinburgh in less than three days.

[11] Notes and Queries, 1853.

[12] This instance, showing the usage, gives us an insight into the amount of control under which these public servants were held. Sir Cornelius was in the bad grace of the people of the district through which he had to pass, on account of being a foreigner; so at Royston Edward Whitehead refused to provide any horses, and on being told he should answer for his neglect, replied, "Tush! Do your worst. You shall have none of my horses, in spite of your teeth."—Smiles.

[13] Blackstone, in speaking of the monopoly in letter traffic, states that it is a "provision which is absolutely necessary, for nothing but an exclusive right can support an office of this sort; many rival independent offices would only serve to ruin one another."—Com. vol. i. p. 324.

[14] Journals of the House of Commons, 1644.

[15] Journals of the House of Commons, 21st March, 1649.

[16] In Burton's Diary of the Parliament of Cromwell, an account is given of the third reading of the new Act, which is important and interesting enough to be here partly quoted. "The bill being brought up for the last reading—

Sir Thomas Wroth said: 'This bill has bred much talk abroad since yesterday. The design is very good and specious; but I would have some few words added for general satisfaction: to know how the monies shall be disposed of; and that our letters should pass free as well in this Parliament as formerly.'

Lord Strickland said: 'When the report was made, it was told you that it (the Post-Office) would raise a revenue. It matters not what reports be abroad, nothing can more assist trade and commerce than this intercourse. Our letters pass better than in any part whatsoever. In France and Holland, and other parts, letters are often laid open to public view, as occasion is.'

Sir Christopher Pack was also of opinion, 'That the design of the bill is very good for trading and commerce; and it matters not what is said abroad about it. As to letters passing free for members, it is not worth putting in any act.'

Colonel Sydenham said: 'I move that it may be committed to be made but probationary; it being never a law before.'" The bill was referred to a Committee, and subsequently passed nearly unanimously.

[17] Lord Macaulay states that there was an exceptional clause in this act, to the effect, that "if a traveller had waited half an hour without being supplied, he might hire a horse wherever he could."—History of England, vol, i.

[18] Cobbett's Parliamentary History, vol. ix.

[19] Macaulay's History of England, vol. i. pp. 387-8.

[20] Under William and Mary, Docwray was allowed a pension, differently stated by different authorities, of 500l. and 200l. a year.

[21] Amongst the Post-Office pensions granted in subsequent reigns, Queen Anne gave one, in 1707, to the Duke of Marlborough and his heirs of 5,000l. The heirs of the Duke of Schomberg were paid by the Post-Office till 1856, when about 20,000l. were paid to redeem a fourth part of the pension, the burden of the remaining part being then transferred to the Consolidated Fund.

[22] Stowe's Survey of London.

[23] Stark's Picture of Edinburgh, p. 144.

[24] "Letters and Despatches relative to the taking of the Earl of Ormond, by O'More. A.D. 1600."

[25] In 1784, the line of Milford Haven packets was re-established, the rates of postage between London and Waterford to be the same as between London and Dublin, viâ Holyhead. The packets were, however, soon withdrawn.

[CHAPTER III.]
ON OLD ROADS AND SLOW COACHES.

If we seem in this chapter to make a divergence from the stream of postal history, it is only to make passing reference to the tributaries which helped to feed the main stream. The condition of the roads, and no less the modes of travelling, bore a most intimate relationship, at all the points in its history, to the development of the post-office system and its communications throughout the kingdom. The seventeenth century, as we have seen, was eventful in important postal improvements; the period was, comparatively speaking, very fruitful also in great changes and improvements in the internal character of the country. No question that the progress of the former depended greatly on the state of the latter. James the First, whatever might be his character in other respects, was indefatigable in his exertions to open out the resources of his kingdom. The fathers of civil engineering, such as Vermuyden and Sir Hugh Myddleton, lived during his reign, and both these eminent men were employed under his auspices, either in making roads, draining the fen country, improving the metropolis, or in some other equally useful scheme. The troubles of the succeeding reign had the effect of frustrating the development of various schemes of public utility proposed and eagerly sanctioned by James. Under the Commonwealth, and at intervals during the two succeeding reigns, many useful improvements of no ordinary moment were carried out.

In the provinces, though considerable advances had been made in this respect during the century, travelling was still exceedingly difficult. In 1640, perhaps the Dover Road, owing to the great extent of continental traffic constantly kept up, was the best in England; yet three or four days were usually taken to travel it. In that year, Queen Henrietta and household were brought "with expedition" over that short distance in four long days. Short journeys were accomplished in a reasonable time, inasmuch as little entertainment was required. It was different when a long journey was contemplated, seeing how generally wretched were the hostelries of the period.[26] So bad, again, were some of the roads, that it was not at all uncommon, when a family intended to travel, for servants to be sent on beforehand to investigate the country and report upon the most promising track. Fuller tells us that during his time he frequently saw as many as six oxen employed in dragging slowly a single person to church. Waylen says that 800 horses were taken prisoners at one time during the civil wars by Cromwell's forces, "while sticking in the mud."

Many improvements were made in modes of conveyance during the century. A kind of stage-coach was first used in London about 1608; towards the middle of the century they were gradually adopted in the metropolis, and on the better highways around London. In no case, however, did they attempt to travel at a greater speed than three miles an hour. Before the century closed, stage-coaches were placed on three of the principal roads in the kingdom, namely those between London and York, Chester, and Exeter. This was only for the summer season; "during winter," in the words of Mr. Smiles, "they did not run at all, but were laid up for the season, like ships during Arctic frosts." Sometimes the roads were so bad, even in summer, that it was all the horses could do to drag the coach along, the passengers, per force, having to walk for miles together. With the York coach especially the difficulties were really formidable. Not only were the roads bad, but the low midland counties were particularly liable to floods, when, during their prevalence, it was nothing unusual for passengers to remain at some town en route for days together, until the roads were dry.

Public opinion was divided as to the merits of stage-coach travelling. When the new threatened altogether to supersede the old mode of travelling on horseback, great opposition was manifested to it, and the organs of public opinion (the pamphlet) began to revile it. In 1673, for instance, a pamphlet[27] was written which went so far as to denounce the introduction of stage-coaches as the greatest evil "that had happened of late years to these kingdoms." Curious to know how these sad consequences had been brought about, we read on and find it stated that "those who travel in these coaches contracted an idle habit of body; became weary and listless when they had rode a few miles, and were then unable to travel on horseback, and not able to endure frost, snow, or rain, or to lodge in the fields." In the very same year another writer, descanting on the improvements which had been introduced into the Post-Office, goes on to say, that "besides the excellent arrangement of conveying men and letters on horseback, there is of late such an admirable commodiousness, both for men and women to travel from London to the principal towns in the country, that the like hath not been known in the world, and that is by stage-coaches, wherein any one may be transported to any place, sheltered from foul weather and foul ways; free from endamaging of one's health and one's body by hard jogging or over violent motion; and this not only at a low price (about a shilling for every five miles), but with such velocity and speed in one hour as that the posts in some foreign countreys cannot make in a day."[28] M. Soubrière, a Frenchman of letters who landed at Dover in the reign of Charles II., alludes to stage-coaches, but seems to have thought less of their charms than the author we have just quoted. "That I might not take post," says he, "or again be obliged to use the stage-coach, I went from Dover to London in a wagon. I was drawn by six horses placed one after another, and driven by a wagoner who walked by the side of them. He was clothed in black and appointed in all things like another St. George. He had a brave monteror on his head, and was a merry fellow, fancied he made a figure, and seemed mightily pleased with himself."

The stage-wagon here referred to was almost exclusively used for the conveyance of merchandise. On the principal roads strings of stage-wagons travelled together. A string of stage-wagons travelled between London and Liverpool, starting from the Axe Inn, Aldermanbury, every Monday and Thursday, and occupying ten days on the road during summer and generally about twelve in the winter season. Beside these conveyances, there were "strings of horses," travelling somewhat quicker, for the carriage of light goods and passengers. The stage-wagon, as may be supposed, travelled much slower on other roads than they did between London and Liverpool. On most roads, in fact, the carriers never changed horses, but employed the same cattle throughout, however long the journey might be. It was, indeed, so proverbially slow in the north of England, that the publicans of Furness, in Lancashire, when they saw the conductors of the travelling merchandise trains appear in sight on the summit of Wrynose Hill, on their journey between Whitehaven and Kendal, were jocularly said to begin to brew their beer, always having a stock of good drink manufactured by the time the travellers reached the village![29]

Whilst communication between different large towns was comparatively easy—passengers travelling from London to York in less than a week before the close of the century—there were towns situated in the same county, in the year 1700, more widely separated for all practical purposes than London and Inverness are at the present day. If a stranger penetrated into some remote districts about this period, his appearance would call forth, as one writer remarks, as much excitement as would the arrival of a white man in some unknown African village. So it was with Camden in his famous seventeenth-century tour. Camden acknowledges that he approached Lancashire from Yorkshire, "that part of the country lying beyond the mountains towards the western ocean," with a "kind of dread," but trusted to Divine Providence, which, he said, "had gone with him hitherto," to help him in the attempt. Country people still knew little except of their narrow district, all but a small circle of territory being like a closed book to them. They still received but few letters. Now and then, a necessity would be laid upon them to write, and thereupon they would hurry off to secure the services of the country parson, or some one attached to the great house of the neighbourhood, who generally took the request kindly.[30] Almost the only intelligence of general affairs was communicated by pedlars and packmen, who were accustomed to retail news with their wares. The wandering beggar who came to the farmer's house craving a supper and bed was the principal intelligencer of the rural population of Scotland so late as 1780.[31] The introduction of newspapers formed quite an era in this respect to the gentlefolk of the country, and to some extent the poorer classes shared in the benefit. The first English newspaper published bears the date of 1622. Still earlier than this, the News Letter, copied by the hand, often found its way into the country, and, when well read at the great house of the district, would be sent amongst the principal villagers till its contents became diffused throughout the entire community. When any intelligence unusually interesting was received either in the news letter or the more modern newspaper, the principal proprietor would sometimes cause the villagers and his immediate dependants to be summoned at once, and would read to them the principal paragraphs from his porch. The reader of English history will have an imperfect comprehension of the facts of our past national life if he does not know, or remember, how very slowly and imperfectly intelligence of public matters was conveyed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and what a bearing—very difficult to understand in these days—such circumstances had upon the facts themselves. Thus, a rebellion in one part of the country, which was popular throughout the kingdom, might be quelled before the news of the rising reached another part of the country. Remote districts waited for weeks and months to learn the most important intelligence. Lord Macaulay relates that the news of Queen Elizabeth's death, which was known to King James in three days, was not heard of in some parts of Devonshire and Cornwall till the court of her successor had ceased to wear mourning for her. The news of Cromwell having been made Protector only reached Bridgewater nineteen days after the event, when the church bells were set a-ringing. In some parts of Wales the news of the death of King Charles I. was not known for two months after its occurrence. The churches in the Orkneys continued to put up the usual prayers for him for months after he was beheaded; whilst their descendants did the same for King James long after he had taken up his abode at St. Germains.

In Scotland, all the difficulties in travelling were felt to even a greater degree than in England. There were no regular posts to the extreme north of Scotland, letters going as best they could by occasional travellers and different routes. Nothing could better show the difficulties attendant on locomotion of any sort in Scotland, than the fact that an agreement was entered into in 1678 to run a coach between Edinburgh and Glasgow, to be drawn by six horses, the journey, there and back, to be performed in six days. The distance was only forty-four miles, and the coach travelled over the principal post-road in the country!

The reader has thus some idea of the difficulties which stood in the way of efficient postal communication during the seventeenth century. However much the work of the Post-Office, and the slow and unequal manner in which correspondence was distributed, may excite the scorn of the present generation, living in the days of cheap and quick postage, they must nevertheless agree with Lord Macaulay in considering that the postal system of the Stuarts was such as might have moved the envy and admiration of the polished nations of antiquity, or even of the contemporaries of our own Shakespeare or Raleigh. In Cornwall, Lincolnshire, some parts of Wales, and amongst the hills and dales of Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Yorkshire, letters, it is true, were only received once a week, if then; but in numbers of large towns they were delivered two and three times a week. There was daily communication between London and the Downs, and the same privileges were extended to Tunbridge Wells and Bath, at the season when those places were crowded with pleasure-seekers.[32]

Accounts survive of the Post-Office as it existed towards the close of the seventeenth century, an outline of which, contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine by a correspondent in the early part of the present century, we must be excused for here presenting to the reader. The Postmaster-General of the period, under the Duke of York, was at that time the Earl of Arlington. The letters, it would seem, were forwarded from London to different parts on different days. For instance: Every Monday and Tuesday the Continental mails were despatched, part on the former day, the remainder on the latter. Every Saturday letters were sent to all parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland. On other days posts were despatched to the Downs, also to one or two important towns and other smaller places within short distances of London. The London Post-Office was managed by the Postmaster-General and a staff of twenty-seven clerks.[33] In the provinces of the three countries, there were 182 deputy-postmasters. Two packet-boats sailed between England and France; two were appointed for Flanders, three for Holland, three for Ireland, and at Deal two were engaged for the Downs. "As the masterpiece," so our authority winds up, "of all these grand arrangements, established by the present Postmaster-General, he hath annexed (sic) and appropriated the market-towns of England so well to the respective postages, that there is no considerable one of them which hath not an easy and certain conveyance for the letters thereof once a week. Further, though the number of letters missive was not at all considerable in our ancestors' day, yet it is now so prodigiously great (and the meanest of people are so beginning to write in consequence) that this office produces in money 60,000l. a year. Besides, letters are forwarded with more expedition, and at less charges, than in any other foreign country. A whole sheet of paper goes 80 miles for twopence, two sheets for fourpence, and an ounce of letter for but eightpence, and that in so short a time, by night as well as day, that every twenty-four hours the post goes one hundred and twenty miles, and in five days an answer to a letter may be had from a place distant 200 miles from the writer!"

FOOTNOTES:

[26] There were many exceptions, of course. Numbers of innkeepers were also the postmasters of the period. Taylor, the water-poet, travelling from London into Scotland in the early part of the century, has described one of these men, in his Penniless Pilgrimage, as a model Boniface.

[27] "The Grand Concern of England explained in several Proposals to Parliament."—Harl. MSS. 1673.

[28] Chamberlayne's Present History of Great Britain. 1673.

[29] Private coaches were started in London at the time when the stage- or hackney-coaches were introduced, and Mr. Pepys secured one of the first. Mightily proud was he of it, as any reader of his Diary will have learnt to his great amusement.

[30] There are few traces in this country, at any time, of public letter-writers. This is somewhat remarkable, inasmuch as then, and still in some of the southern states of Europe, the profession of public letter-writer has long been an institution. In England it has never flourished. Some years ago there might have been seen at Wapping, Shadwell, and other localities in London where sailors resorted, announcements in small shop-windows to the effect that letters were written there "to all parts of the world." In one shop a placard was exhibited intimating that a "large assortment of letters on all sorts of subjects" were kept on hand. There were never many, and now very few, traces of the custom.

[31] Chambers' Domestic Annals.

[32] Lord Macaulay. Vol. i. p. 388.

[33] No less interesting are the particulars of one year's postal revenue and expenditure, extracted from the old account-books of the department, by the present Receiver and Accountant-General of the Post-Office. The date given is within a year or two of that referred to in the text, viz. 1686-7. The net produce of the year was a little over 76,000l., and the following is a few of the most important and most suggestive items:—

The Scotch Office appears not only not to have brought in any profits, but we find an item of absolute loss on the exchange of money with Edinburgh to the extent of 210l. 10s. 10d.

Amongst the more interesting items of expenditure we notice that—

The entire total expenditure was 13,509l. 6s. 8d. "Thus we find," adds Mr. Scudamore, "that while the 'whole net produce' of the establishment for a year was not equal to the sum which we derive from the commission on money-orders in a year (Mr. Scudamore is writing of 1854), or to the present 'net produce' of the single town of Liverpool, so also, the whole expenditure of the whole establishment for a year was but a little larger than the sum which we now pay once a month for salaries to the clerks of the London Office alone." If we subtract the total expenditure from the "whole net produce," as it is called, we get a sum exceeding 62,000l. as the entire net receipts of the Post-Office for the year 1686-7.

[CHAPTER IV.]
THE SETTLEMENT OF THE POST-OFFICE.

Ten years after the removal of Docwray from his office in connexion with the "Penny Post," another rival to the Government department sprung up in the shape of a "Halfpenny Post." The arrangements of the new were nearly identical with those of Docwray's post, except that the charges, instead of a penny and twopence, were a halfpenny and penny respectively. The scheme, established at considerable expense by a Mr. Povey, never had a fair trial, only existing a few months, when it was nipped in the bud by a law-suit instituted by the Post-Office authorities.

In 1710, the Acts relating to the Post-Office were completely remodelled, and the establishment was put on an entirely fresh basis. The statutes passed in previous reigns were fully repealed, and the statute of Anne, c. 10, was substituted in their place, the latter remaining in force until 1837. The preamble of the Act just mentioned sets forth, that a Post-Office for England was established in the reign of Charles II. and a Post-Office for Scotland in the reign of King William III.; but that it is now desirable, since the two countries are united, that the two offices should be united under one head. Also, that packet-boats have been for some time established between England and the West Indies, the mainland of North America, and some parts of Europe, and that more might be settled if only proper arrangements were made "at the different places to which the packet-boats are assigned." It is further deemed necessary that the existing rates of postage should be altered; that "with little burthen to the subject some may be increased" and other new rates granted, "which additional and new rates," it is added, "may in some measure enable Her Majesty to carry on and furnish the present war." Suitable powers are also needed for the better collecting of such rates, as well as provision for preventing the illegal trade carried on by "private posts, carriers, higlers, watermen, drivers of stage-coaches, and other persons, and other frauds to which the revenue is liable."

As these alterations and various improvements cannot be well and properly made without a new Act for the Post-Office, the statutes embodied in 12 Charles II. and the statutes referring to the Scotch Post-Office passed in the reign of William and Mary, entitled "An Act anent the Post-Office," and every article, clause, and thing therein, are now declared repealed, and the statute of 9 Anne, c. 10, called "An Act for establishing a General Post-Office in all Her Majesty's dominions, and for settling a weekly sum out of the revenue thereof for the service of the war, and other Her Majesty's occasions," is substituted. This Act, which remained in force so long, and may be said to have been the foundation for all subsequent legislation on the subject, deserves special and detailed notice.

1. By its provisions a General Post and Letter-Office is established within the City of London, "from whence all letters and packets whatsoever may be with speed and expedition sent into any part of the kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to North America and the West Indies, or any other of Her Majesty's dominions, or any country or kingdom beyond the seas," and "at which office all returns and answers may be likewise received." For the better "managing, ordering, collecting, and improving the revenue," and also for the better "computing and settling the rates of letters according to distance, a chief office is established in Edinburgh, one in Dublin, one at New York, and other chief offices in convenient places in her Majesty's colonies of America, and one in the islands of the West Indies, called the Leeward Islands."

2. The whole of these chief offices shall be "under the control of an officer who shall be appointed by the Queen's Majesty, her heirs and successors, to be made and constituted by letters patent under the Great Seal, by the name and stile of Her Majesty's Postmaster-General." "The Postmaster-General shall appoint deputies for the chief offices in the places named above, and he, they, and their servants and agents, and no other person or persons whatsoever, shall from time to time, and at all times, have the receiving, taking up, ordering, despatching, sending post with all speed, carrying and delivering of all letters and packets whatsoever." The only exceptions to this clause must be—[34]

(a) When common known carriers bear letters concerning the goods which they are conveying, and which letters are delivered with the goods without any further hire or reward, or other profit or advantage.

(b) When merchants or master-owners of ships send letters in ships concerning the cargoes of such ships, and delivered with them under the self-same circumstances.

(c) Letters concerning commissions or the returns thereof, affidavits, writs, process or proceeding, or returns thereof, issuing out of any court of justice.

(d) Any letter or letters sent by any private friend or friends in their way of journey or travel.

3. The Postmaster-General, and no other person or persons whatever, shall prepare and provide horses or furniture to let out on hire to persons riding post on any of Her Majesty's post-roads, under penalty of 100l. per week, or 5l. for each offence.[35] The rates of charge for riding post are settled as follows:—The hire of a post-horse shall be henceforth 3d. a mile, and 4d. a mile for a person riding as guide for every stage. Luggage to the weight of 80 pounds allowed, the guide to carry it with him on his horse.

4. The rates of postage under the present Act are settled.

The other Scotch posts were calculated from Edinburgh, and charged according to the distance as in England.

From Dublin to any Irish town the charge was according to distance, at the English rate.

Any letter from any part of Her Majesty's dominions for London would be delivered free by the penny post, and if directed to places within a circuit of ten miles from the General Post-Office, on payment of an extra penny over and above the proper rate of postage.

Other rates were charged to other parts of the American continent, according to the distance from New York, at something less than the English rate.

5. The principal deputy postmasters are empowered to erect cross-posts or stages, so that all parts of the country may have equal advantage as far as practicable, but only in cases where the postmasters are assured that such erections will be for "the better maintainance of trade and commerce, and mutual correspondences."

6. A survey of all the post-roads shall be made, so that the distances between any place and the chief office in each country "shall be settled by the same measure and standard." These surveys must be made regularly, "as necessity showeth;" and when finished, the distances must be fairly shown by "books of surveys" one of which must be kept in each of the head offices, and by each of the surveyors themselves. The surveyors who shall be appointed and authorized to measure the distances must swear to perform the same to the best of their skill and judgment.[36]

7. Letters may be brought from abroad by private ship, but must be delivered at once into the hands of the deputy postmasters at the respective ports, who will pay the master of such ship a penny for every letter which he may thus deliver up to them. It is hoped that, by these arrangements, merchants will not suffer as they had previously done, by having their letters "imbezilled or long detained, when they had been given into the charge of ignorant and loose hands, that understandeth not the ways and means of speedy conveyance and proper deliverance, to the great prejudice of the affairs of merchants and others."

8. The Postmaster-General and the deputy postmasters must qualify themselves, if they have not already done so, by receiving the sacrament according to the usage of the Church of England; taking, making, and subscribing the test, and the oaths of allegiance, supremacy, and adjuration. It is also decided that the Post-Office officials must not meddle with elections for members of Parliament. The officers of the Post-Office must also qualify themselves for the duties of their office by observing and following such orders, rules, directions, and instructions, concerning the settlements of the posts and stages, and the management of post-horses, and the horsing of all persons riding by royal warrant, as Her Majesty shall see fit from time to time to make and ordain.

A short proviso follows concerning the time-honoured privileges of the two English Universities, and guaranteeing the same; and then we come to an arrangement for the attainment of which object, it would appear (almost exclusively), the Post-Office was remodelled in the manner we have shown.

9. "Towards the establishment of a good, sure, and lasting fund, in order to raise a present supply of money for carrying on the war, be it enacted that from the present time, and during the whole term of 32 years, the full, clear, and entire weekly sum of 700l. out of the duties and revenues of the Post-Office shall be paid by the Postmaster-General into the receipts of the Exchequer on the Tuesday of every week."

Whatever else was arranged permanently, the increased rates of postage were only meant to be temporary; for at the end of thirty-two years, it was provided that the old rates shall be resorted to. The clause was simply inserted as a war measure, for the purpose of raising revenue, but we shall see that, so far from returning to the old postages, fresh burdens were imposed at the end of that period and from time to time.[37]

The improvements introduced by the bill of 1710 had the natural effect of increasing the importance of the Post-Office institution, and of adding to the available revenue of the country considerable sums each year. For ten years no further steps were taken to develop the resources of the service; but in 1720 Ralph Allen appears, another and perhaps the most fortunate of all the improvers of the Post-Office. Up to this year, the lines of post had branched off, from London and Edinburgh respectively, on to the principal roads of the two kingdoms; but the "cross-posts," even when established, had not been efficient, the towns off the main line of road not being well served, whilst some districts had no direct communication through them. The Post-Office Bill had given facilities for the establishment of more "cross-posts;" but, till 1720, the authorities did not avail themselves of its provisions to any great extent. Mr. Allen, at that time the postmaster of Bath, and who must, from his position, have been well aware of the defects of the existing system, proposed to the Government to establish cross-posts between Exeter and Chester, going by way of Bristol, Gloucester, and Worcester, connecting in this way the west of England with the Lancashire districts and the mail route to Ireland, and giving independent postal intercommunication to all the important towns lying in the direction to be taken. Previous to this proposal, letters passing between neighbouring towns were conveyed by circuitous routes, often requiring to go to the metropolis and to be sent back again by another post-road, thus, in these days of slow locomotion, causing serious delay. Allen proposed a complete reconstruction of the cross-post system, and guaranteed a great improvement to the revenue as well as better accommodation to the country. By his representations, he induced the Lords of the Treasury to grant him a lease of the cross-posts for life. His engagements were to bear all the cost of his new service, and pay a fixed rental of 6,000l. a-year, on which terms he was to retain all the surplus revenue. From time to time the contract was renewed, but of course at the same rental; each time, however, the Government required Allen to include other branches of road in his engagement, so that at his death, in 1764, the cross-posts had extended to all parts of the country. Towards the last, the private project had become so gigantic as to be nearly unmanageable, and it was with something like satisfaction that the Post-Office authorities saw it lapse to the Crown. At this time it was considered one of the chief duties of the surveyors—whose business it was to visit each deputy postmaster in the course of the year—to see that the distinction between the bye-letters of the cross-posts, the postage of which belonged to Mr. Allen, and the postage of the general post letters, which belonged to the Government, was properly kept up. The deputies were known to hold the loosest notions on this subject, some of them preferring to appropriate the revenues of one or the other post rather than make mistakes in the matter. The disputes and difficulties lasted to the death of Allen.[38] Notwithstanding the losses he must have suffered through the dishonesty or carelessness of country postmasters, the farmer of the cross-posts, in an account which he left at his death, estimated the net profits of his contract at the sum of 10,000l. annually, a sum which, during his official life, amounted in the total to nearly half a million sterling! Whilst, in official quarters, his success was greatly envied, Mr. Allen commanded, in his private capacity, universal respect. In the only short account we have seen of this estimable man, a contemporary writer states[39] that "he was not more remarkable for the ingenuity and industry with which he made a very large fortune, than for the charity, generosity, and kindness with which he spent it." It is certain that Allen bestowed a considerable part of his income in works of charity, especially in supporting needy men of letters. He was a great friend and benefactor of Fielding; and in Tom Jones, the novelist has gratefully drawn Mr. Allen's character in the person of Allworthy. He enjoyed the friendship of Chatham and Pitt; and Pope, Warburton, and other men of literary distinction, were his familiar companions. Pope has celebrated one of his principal virtues, unassuming benevolence, in the well-known lines:—

"Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame,
Do good by stealth, and blush to find its fame."

On the death of Allen, the cross-posts were brought under the control of the Postmaster-General. An officer, Mr. Ward, was appointed to take charge of the Bye-letter Office, as the branch was now called, at the salary of 300l. a-year. The success of the amalgamation scheme was so complete, that at the end of the first year, profits to the amount of 20,000l. were handed over to the Crown. Afterwards, the proceeds continued to increase even still more rapidly; so much so, that when, in 1799, the "Bye-letter Office" was abolished, and its management transferred to the General Office, they had reached the enormous yearly sum of 200,000l.!

At the revision of the Post-Office in 1710, the bounds of the penny post were extended, as we have seen, to a district within ten miles of the General Post-Office. This extension was granted on a memorial from several townships in the London district, who volunteered, if such extension were made, that they would pay an extra penny for every letter delivered beyond "the boundaries of the cities of London and Westminster, and the borough of Southwark." Numerous disputes having arisen owing to the wording of the Act, and many inhabitants claiming in consequence to have their letters delivered free within the ten-mile circuit, a supplementary Act was passed in 1727, "for the obviating and taking away such doubts," as to what was the proper charge, and directing that the "penny postmen" must not deliver any letters out of the original limits, but may detain or delay such letters or packets, unless an extra penny were paid for each on delivery.

The statute of Queen Anne provided that a weekly payment of 700l. should be made to the Exchequer from the Post-Office for a period of thirty-two years. This term having expired in 1743, an Act was passed in that year making the payment perpetual, and all clauses, powers, &c. in the Act of 1711 were also made perpetual. In order to keep up this source of revenue, which was too good to relinquish, the rates of postage, instead of being lowered again as stipulated, were kept up, and several times during subsequent years, as we shall see, fresh additions were made to the burdens of letter-writers. While on this subject, we may simply state the clause of Queen Anne's Act relating to the disposal of the surplus revenue. All pensions were to be paid out of it, and the remainder retained by the Queen "for the better support of Her Majesty's household, and for the honour and dignity of the Crown of Great Britain." On the accession of George I. a bill, granting the same rights and privileges during the King's lifetime, was passed in the first session of Parliament. In the first year of the reign of George II. and his grandson George III. the same rights and privileges were obtained under the self-same conditions. Though the conditions of the following Act were, in reality, carried out several years previously, when a salary of 700,000l. a-year was granted to the King for the support of his household, section 48 of 27 George III. enacts that, for the King's lifetime, "the entire net revenue of the Post-Office shall be carried to and made part of the fund, to be called 'the Consolidated Fund.'" It is scarcely needful to say that this arrangement has existed from 1787 to the present time.

From the date of Allen's improvement in 1720 to the year 1761, when the postage of letters was again disturbed and many other alterations made, little of special importance was done in the Post-Office, and we cannot do better than take advantage of this quiet time to give some account of the internal arrangements of the establishment, and to notice certain minutiæ, which, though trifling in themselves, will serve to give the reader an insight into the details, the way and means, of this early period.[40] In the time of George I. the officers of the Post-Office in London consisted of two Postmasters-General, with a secretary and a clerk. There were four chief officers in the Inland-office—viz. a controller, a receiver, an accountant, and a solicitor. The staff of clerks consisted of seven for the different roads—Chester, North West, Bristol, Yarmouth, Kent, and Kent night-road. Thirteen clerks were engaged in other duties, and three more clerks attended at the window to answer inquiries and deliver letters. The foreign office, which was a separate department, included a controller and an alphabet keeper, with eight assistant clerks. The whole London establishment, which at the present day numbers several thousand officers of different grades, was then, without counting letter-carriers, worked with a staff of thirty-two.

"To show the method, diligence, and exactness of our General Post-Office," says a writer of the period, "and the due despatch of the post at each stage, take this specimen." And for our purpose we cannot do better than take Stowe's advice, and insert here a copy of a Post-Office proclamation to postmasters and time-bill, given in his History of London:—

"Whereas the management of the postage of the letters of Great Britain and Ireland is committed to our care and conduct: these are therefore in His Majesty's name to require you in your respective stages to use all diligence and expedition in the safe and speedy conveyance of this mail and letters: that you ride five miles an hour according to your articles from London to East Grinstead, and from thence to return accordingly. And hereof you are not to fail, as you will answer the contrary at your perils.

Signed, Cornwallis.
James Craggs."[41]

To the several Postmasters betwixt London and East Grinstead.

Haste, Haste, Post Haste!

Miles.	From the Letter-Office at half an hour past two in the morning, July 17, 1719.
16	Received at Epsom half an hour past six, and sent away three-quarters past. Alexander Findlater.
8	Received at Dorking half an hour after eight, and sent away at nine. Chas. Castleman.
6	Received at Rygate half an hour past ten, and sent away again at eleven. John Bullock.
16	Received at East Grinstead at half an hour after three in the afternoon.

The speed at which the East Grinstead mail travelled was greater than usual: few post-boys, in the provinces at any rate, were required to go at a greater rate than three or four miles an hour. Not only this, but the boys as a rule were without discipline; difficult to control; sauntered on the road at pleasure, and were quite an easy prey to any robber or ill-disposed persons who might think it worth their while to interfere with them. About this time, we find the Post-Office surveyor complaining dolorously to headquarters, that the gentry "doe give much money to the riders, whereby they be very subject to get in liquor, which stopes the males." Expresses at that time travelled somewhat quicker, but still not quick enough for some persons. On one occasion, Mr. Harley (afterwards Lord Oxford) complained of delay in an express which had been sent to him; but the Postmasters-General thought there were no grounds for complaint, inasmuch "as it had travelled 136 miles in 36 hours, which," added they, "is the usual rate of expresses."

In the year 1696, the Treasury sanctioned an arrangement for conveying the mails between Bristol and Exeter, twice a week, under the stipulation that the distance of sixty-five miles should be performed in twenty-four hours!

In Scotland, about the same time, this work was done even slower, and with greater hardships. The post-boy walked all distances under twenty miles; longer distances required that the messenger should be mounted, though no relays of horses were allowed, however long and tedious the journey might be.[42]

At this time, it was only a secondary consideration, when or how letters should be delivered. For a number of years the authorities were simply bent on raising revenue out of the Post-Office. Thus, about the period of which we are speaking, a request was made to the authorities from certain inhabitants of Warwick, that the London letters for that place should be sent direct to Warwick and not through Coventry, by which latter route a great many hours were lost. A decided negative was returned to this very reasonable request, and for the following cogent official reason, which exhibits well the exacting tendencies of the Government. "From London to Warwick, through Coventry, is more than eighty miles," say the Postmasters-General; "so that we can charge 6d. per letter going that way, whereas we could only charge 3d. if they went direct." No doubt this reply is given to the Lords of the Treasury, through whom all such applications as the foregoing had then, and still have, to pass; for it cannot be imagined that they gave this reply to the people of Warwick themselves. "Perhaps, however," add the Post-Office officials, with some glimmering idea of the true business principle, "we might get more letters at the cheaper rate." Present profits, nevertheless, could not be sacrificed, even though there should be a prospect of increased future revenue. Another instance is on record, proving that in this respect the Post-Office authorities of the period were wiser than the executive that held them in check. The Postmasters-General apply (fruitlessly however) to the Treasury to lower the rates of postage in a particular district, and in urging their request, state that "we have, indeed, found by experience, that where we have made the correspondence more easie and cheape, the number of letters has been thereby much increased, and therefore we do believe such a settlement may be attended with a like effect in these parts."

The Treasury Lords are slow to sanction what appeared to them to be a sacrifice of revenue, and from the frequent applications which were made to them by deputy postmasters in the early part of last century to settle accounts of long standing, or remit the arrears owing to the Government, we may imagine that their hands were full and their temper soured. Many postmasters in the West of England now petitioned the Treasury to the effect that they had been nearly ruined in the times of His Majesty King William, "through much spoiling of their horses by officers riding-post in the late blessed Revolution." Others grumble at the lowness of their salaries. It was all very well, they argued, that the deputies, during the civil wars or at the Revolution, should be contented with low salaries, because they were exempted from having soldiers quartered upon them, but now that the time of peace had come, they submitted that their salaries should be raised.

The Act of Queen Anne provided for one Postmaster-General. How it came to be altered is not clear; but it is nevertheless certain that, for the greater part of the eighteenth century, the office was jointly held by two chiefs. All letters and mandates bore the signature of both of them; though it seems probable that the work of the office was equitably divided between the two gentlemen, the one taking charge principally of the inland business, while the other managed the packets. The duties of the latter department were much more onerous than might be supposed, when viewed in the light of the history of that period. As we have not yet directed attention to this department of the Post-Office, we may here state that some curious accounts survive of the infancy of the postal sea-service, during the former part of last century, when Sir Robert Cotton and Sir Thomas Frankland shared its management. In those sad times when war was raging, and French privateers covered every sea, our Postmasters-General were anxious, though shrewd and active men. The general orders to the captains of the vessels under their control were such as, under the circumstances, they ought to be: "You must run while you can, fight when you can no longer run, and throw the mails overboard when fighting will no longer avail." Notwithstanding such an order, and on account of so many mails travelling short of their destination, the Postmasters-General resolve to build swift packet-boats that shall escape the enemy; but in their inexperience, they get them built so low in the water, that shortly afterwards, "we doe find that in blowing weather they take in soe much water that the men are constantly wet through, and can noe ways goe below, being obliged to keep the hatches shut to save the vessel from sinking." It is clear that better and stronger boats must be built, and stronger boats are built accordingly. To make up for the expense, they order that the freight of passengers shall be raised, though "recruits and indigent persons shall still have their passage free." It is noteworthy here, that about this time no political refugee seeking an asylum in England is ever hard pressed for a fare on the continental packet-boats, but an entry is made in the agent's letter-book that so and so "have not wherewithal to pay their charges," and are sent on their path to liberty without further question.

Every provision is supplied by the authorities in London, and salaries and pensions of all kinds are granted. Thus, in one place, a chaplain is appointed for the crew of one of the packets, with a small stipend, "for doing their offices of births, marriage, and burial." Pensions for wounds received in the service are granted with nice discrimination of the relative parts of the body. In a letter to their agent at Falmouth, the Postmasters-General send a scale of pensions to be granted according to the kind of wound—thus: "For every arm or leg amputated above the elbow or knee, L.8 per annum; below the arm or knee, twenty nobles. Loss of the sight of one eye must be L.4; of the pupil of the eye, L.5; of the sight of both eyes, L.12; of the pupils of both eyes, L.14; and according to these rules, we consider also how much also the hurts affect the body, and make the allowances accordingly." The duties devolving upon the chief Post-Office officials seem not only to have been onerous and heavy—some of their instructions to their agents bearing dates from the middle of the night and other extraordinary hours—but curiously varied. Many of their letters are preserved among the old records in the vaults under the General Post-Office, and some of them are quite sad and plaintive in their tone. "We are concerned," they say to one agent, "to find the letters brought by your boat [one from the West Indies] to be so consumed by the ratts, that we cannot find out to whom they belong." Another letter to their agent at Harwich is evidently disciplinary, and runs as follows:—

"Mr. Edisbury—The woman whose complaint we herewith send you, having given us much trouble upon the same, we desire you will inquire into the same, and see justice done her, believing she may have had her brandy stole from her by the sailors.—We are your affectionate friends[!],

R. C., T. F."

It would be difficult to fancy such a letter as the above proceeding from officialdom in the year of grace eighteen hundred and sixty-four. In another letter we find the authorities affectionately scolding an agent because "he had not provided a sufficiency of pork and beef for the prince" (who this pork-loving prince was does not appear); in another, because "he had bought powder at Falmouth that would have been so much cheaper in London." In other cases they act as public guardians of morality and loyalty, suspending one because "he had stirred up a mutiny between a captain and his men, which was unhandsome conduct in him;" bringing one Captain Clies to trial, inasmuch as "he had spoken words reflecting on the royal family, which the Postmasters-General took particular unkind of him," and can by no means allow; and reprimanding another captain for "breaking open the portmanteau of a gentleman-passenger, and spoiling him of a parcel of snuff." What with all these cares and duties, the Postmasters-General of those days could scarcely have had an easy time of it.

This sole control over the resources of the packet-service explains much in the history of the franking system, which would be quite unintelligible without the information just given. The Treasury warrants of that day franked the strangest commodities—articles which certainly would not be dropped into any letter-box, and which would neither be stamped nor sorted in the orthodox way. The following list of a few franked commodities is culled from a still larger number of such in the packet "agent's book," found amongst the old records to which reference has already been made:—

• "Imprimis. Fifteen couple of hounds, going to the King of the Romans with a free pass.
• "Item. Two maid servants, going as laundresses to my Lord Ambassador Methuen.
• "Item. Doctor Crichton, carrying with him a cow and divers necessaries.
• "Item. Two bales of stockings, for the use of the Ambassador to the Crown of Portugal.[43]
• "Item. A deal case, with ffour flitches of bacon, for Mr. Pennington of Rotterdam."

Whilst referring to the subject of letter-franking, we may as well notice here, that before the control of the packet-service passed out of the hands of the Post-Office authorities, and when the right of franking letters became the subject of legislative enactments, we hear no more of these curious consignments of goods. The franking system was henceforth confined to passing free through the post any letter which should be indorsed on the cover with the signature of a member of either House of Parliament. As it was not then made a rule absolute that Parliament should be in session, or that the correspondence should necessarily be on the affairs of the nation in order to insure immunity from postage, this arrangement led to various forms of abuse. Members signed huge packets of covers at once, and supplied them to friends and adherents in large quantities. Sometimes they were sold. They have been known to have been given to servants in lieu of wages, the servants selling them again in the ordinary way of business. Nor was this all. So little precaution seems to have been used, that thousands of letters passed through the Post-Office with forged signatures of members.[44] To such an extent did this and kindred abuses accumulate, that, in 1763, the worth of franked correspondence passing through the post was estimated at 170,000l. During the next year—viz. in 1764—Parliament enacted that no letter should pass free through the Post-Office unless the whole address was in the member's own handwriting and his signature attached likewise. Even these precautions, though lessening the frauds, were not sufficient to meet the evil, for fresh regulations were thought necessary in 1784. This time it was ordered that all franks should be dated, the month to be given in full; and further, that all such letters should be put into the post on the day they were dated. From 1784 to the date of penny postage no further regulations were made concerning the franked correspondence, the estimated value of which during these years was 80,000l. annually.

The rates of postage ordered by the Government of Queen Anne continued in force for eighteen years after it was designed by the Act that they should cease, and it was only in 1761, at the commencement of the reign of George III., that any alteration was made. Even then the rates were increased instead of diminished. 1 Geo. III. c. 25 provides, that the improvement of correspondence is a matter of such great concernment and so highly necessary for the extension of trade and commerce, that the statutes of Queen Anne need repealing to some extent, and especially as, through vast accessions of territory, no posts and post-rates are arranged to all his Majesty's dominions. The improvements and alterations made at this time may thus be summed up, viz.:—

1. Additions are made to the vessels on the American station. Other and cheaper rates of postage are established between London and North America and all his Majesty's territories in America.
2. Concerning letters brought by private ships from any foreign part, no ship or vessel shall be permitted to make entry in any port of Great Britain, or to unload any of its cargo, until all letters and packets brought by such ship, or any passenger on board such ship, are delivered into the hands of the deputy-postmaster of the port, and until the captain shall receive the deputy's receipt for the same. In cases where the vessel "is liable to the performance of quarantine," the first step must be to deliver the letters into the hands of the superintendent of the quarantine, to be by him despatched to the Post-Office. A penalty of 20l. with full costs to be inflicted on any master not delivering a letter or packet of letters according to this Act, one moiety to go to the King and the other to the person informing.
3. The roads are to be re-surveyed, under the arrangements laid down in Queen Anne's Act, for the purpose of settling the rates of postage afresh.
4. Letters to be charged according to the post-stages travelled, or shorter distances to be paid for; thus:—
5. s. d.
6. For the conveyance of every single letter not exceeding 15 miles
7. 0 1
8. ""double letter
9. 0 2
10. ""ounce
11. 0 4
12. ""single letter, 30 miles and under 40 miles
13. 0 2
14. ""double letter
15. 0 4
16. ""ounce
17. 0 8
18. ""single letter, 40 miles and under 80 miles
19. 0 3
20. ""double letter
21. 0 6
22. ""ounce
23. 1 0
24. And so on.
25. These rates were again altered in the twenty-fourth year of the reign of George III. for the raising of revenue to defray his Majesty's expenses, the alteration, which took effect on the introduction of mail-coaches, consisting of the addition of one penny to every existing charge.[45]
26. Permission is given to settle penny post-offices in other towns in England, on the same basis as the London penny-post establishment. The permission thus granted was soon applied, and long before the establishment of uniform penny-postage, there were at least a thousand penny-posts in existence in different towns. The principle which guided the Department in establishing penny-posts was to select small towns and populous neighbourhoods not situated in the direct line of general post conveyances, which were desirous of obtaining extra facilities, and granting such posts provided that they did not afford the means for evading the general post. The only requisite was, that the authorities should have a reasonable hope that the proposed post would yield sufficient to pay for its maintenance—a thing considered settled if the receipts on its first establishment would pay two-thirds of the entire charges.
27. The weight of any packet or letter to be sent by the London penny-post, or any of the new penny-posts to be established under this improved Act, must not now exceed four ounces.

In 1749, the Act restraining any other but officers of the Post-Office from letting out horses to hire for the purpose of riding post, is stated not to refer to cases where chaises, "calashes," or any other vehicles, are furnished. Vehicles to drive may be provided on either post-roads or elsewhere by any person choosing to engage in the trade. In 1779, all Acts giving exclusive privileges to the Postmaster-General and his deputies as to the letting of post-horses for hire are henceforth repealed.

In the year 1766 the first penny-post was established in Edinburgh by one Peter Williamson, a native of Aberdeen. He kept a coffee-shop in the hall of the Parliament House, and as he was frequently employed by gentlemen attending the courts in sending letters to different parts of the city, and as he had doubtless heard something of the English penny-posts, he began a regular post with hourly deliveries, and established agents at different parts of the city to collect letters. He employed four carriers, who appeared in uniform, to take the letters from the different agents, and then to deliver them as addressed. For both these purposes they were accustomed to ring a bell as they proceeded, in order to give due notice of their approach. The undertaking was so successful, that other speculators were induced to set up rival establishments, which, of course, led to great confusion. The authorities saw the success of the undertaking, and, aware of its importance, they succeeded in inducing Williamson to take a pension for the good-will of his concern, and then merged it in the general establishment.

We cannot attempt more than a short résumé of the incidents in the previous history of the Scotch Post-Office, although the annals of the seventeenth century contain little of interest, and might, therefore, soon be presented to the reader. The first regular letter-post was established in the reign of James I. (of England). In 1642, owing to the sending of forces from Scotland to put down the Irish Rebellion, it was found that the post arrangements in the south-west of Scotland were defective in the extreme. The Scotch Council proposed to establish a line of posts between Edinburgh and Portpatrick, and Portpatrick and Carlisle, and the English, being more immediately concerned in the Rebellion, agreed to bear the whole expense.[46] In the Privy Council records of the period, we find a list of persons recommended by the Commissioners for appointment on the two lines of road as postmasters, "such persons being the only ones fit for that employment, as being innkeepers and of approved honesty." Seven years afterwards we find the Post-Office at Edinburgh was under the care of John Mean, husband of the woman who discharged her stool at the bishop's head when the service-book was introduced into St. Giles's in 1637. He seems to have himself borne the charges of attending to the office "without any reasonable allowance therefor;" and petitioning the Committee of Estates to that effect, they allowed him to retain the "eighth penny on all letters sent from Edinburgh to London (no great number), and the fourth penny upon all those coming from London to Edinburgh." At the Restoration the office was bestowed on Robert Main, and considerable improvements were made under his management, although only with existing posts. Little was done for other parts of Scotland. A traveller in Scotland so late as 1688, commenting on the absence of stage or other coaches on most Scotch roads, says,[47] that "this carriage of persons from place to place might be better spared, were there opportunities and means for the speedier conveyance of business by letters. They have no horse-posts besides those which ply between Berwick and Edinburgh, and Edinburgh and Portpatrick for the Irish packets.... From Edinburgh to Perth, and so on to other places, they use foot-posts and carriers, which, though a slow way of communicating our concerns to one another, yet is such as they acquiesce in till they have a better." Our traveller is somewhat wrong in his date, for in 1667 a horse-post to Aberdeen from Edinburgh, twice a week, was started, with the consent of Patrick Graham, of Inchbrakie, his Majesty's Postmaster-General, "for the timous delivery of letters and receiving returns of the samen." Two years afterwards Inverness got dissatisfied with the want of postal communication, when Robert Main, the Edinburgh postmaster, was commissioned to establish a constant foot-post between Edinburgh and Inverness, going once a week, "wind and weather serving."[48] "Wind and weather serving" is an amusing qualification, as pointed out by Mr. Chambers, considering that there was only one ferry of six or seven miles, and another of two miles, to cross. In 1661, we find the Edinburgh postmaster useful in another capacity, for in that year the Privy Council grant a warrant to him "to put to print and publish ane diurnal weekly, for preventing false news which may be invented by evil and disaffected persons."

We must now pass over many years, as not offering any incidents of any moment. In the year 1730 we find that the Scotch establishment yielded the sum of 1,194l. as the whole gross revenue. From about the year 1750, the mails began to be carried from stage to stage, as in England, by relays of fresh horses and different post-boys, though not entirely to the exclusion of the post-runners, of whom we have previously spoken.

In 1723, the Edinburgh Post-Office occupied the first-floor of a house near the cross, above an alley which still bears the name of the Post-Office Close. It was afterwards removed to a floor on the south side of the Parliament Square, which was fitted up shop-fashion, and where the letters were given out from behind an ordinary shop counter, one letter-carrier doing all the out-door work. The Post-Office was removed to its present situation in 1821. Towards the close of 1865, it is expected, the handsome building now rising up near the old office will be finished and opened for postal purposes.[49]

Even less interest attaches to the early annals of the Irish Post-Office. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was certainly more remunerative than the Scotch, though much less remunerative than the English departments. Previous to the introduction of mail-coaches, all mails were conveyed, or supposed to be conveyed, by the postmasters, to whom certain special allowances were made for each particular service. "There were no contracts, and no fixed rules as to time. Three miles and a half (per hour) seems to have been the pace acknowledged to have been sufficient. The bags were usually conveyed by boys. In the immediate neighbourhood of the metropolis, some sort of cart was used, but with this exception the bags were carried either on ponies or mules, or on foot."[50] The same authority tells us further that, "at this time, the bags were carried to Cork, Belfast, Limerick, and Waterford, six days a week; and three days a week to Galway, Wexford, and Enniskillen. There were three posts to Killarney; but for this the Government refused to pay anything. The postmaster had a salary of 3l. a-year, but the mail was carried by foot-messengers, who were maintained at the cost of the inhabitants and of the news-printers in Cork. Carrick-on-Shannon was the only town in county Leitrim receiving a mail, and this it did twice a week. Now it has two every day. Except at the county-town, there was no post-office in the whole county of Sligo; and there were but sixteen in the province of Connaught, where there are now one hundred and seventy-one."

FOOTNOTES:

[34] These exceptions were again made in the Act 1 Vic. c. 33. s. 2, and still remain the law.

[35] This clause was repealed in the reign of George II.

[36] The office of Post-Office Surveyor, of which we here see the origin, still exists (though the officers now so designated have very different duties) among the most responsible and lucrative appointments in the Department.

[37] "There cannot be devised," says Blackstone, "a more eligible method than this of raising money upon the subject; for therein both the Government and the people find a mutual benefit. The Government requires a large revenue, and the people do their business with greater ease, expedition, and cheapness than they would be able to do if no such tax existed."—Com. vol. i. p. 324.

[38] At this time, and for some years subsequently, the mails were carried on horseback in charge of post-boys. Some of these post-boys were sad rogues, who, besides taking advantage of confusion in the two posts, were accustomed to carry letters themselves concealed upon them and for charges of course quite unorthodox. In old records of the Post-Office, principally the Surveyor's Book, referring to country post-offices from the year 1735, there are long complaints from the surveyor on this head. The following, "exhibiting more malice than good grammar," may be taken as a specimen, and will suffice to show the way things were managed at that date:—"At this place (Salisbury) found the post-boys to have carried on vile practices in taking the bye-letters, delivering them in this cittye and taking back answers, especially the Andover riders. On the 15th found on Richard Kent, one of the Andover riders, 5 bye-letters, all for this cittye. Upon examining the fellow, he confessed he had made it a practice, and persisted to continue in it, saying he had noe wages from his master. I took the fellow before the Magistrate, proved the facts, and he was committed, but pleading to have no money or friends, desired a punishment to be whipped, which accordingly he was to the purpose. Wrote the case to Andover and ordered the fellow to be dismissed, but no regard was had thereto, but the next day the same rider came post, ran about the cittye for letters and was insolent. Again he came post with two gentlemen, made it his business to take up letters; the fellow, however, instead of returning to Andover, gets two idle fellows and rides off with three horses, which was a return for his master not obeying my instructions." Our shrewd surveyor thus amply got his revenge, and the Post-Office and Mr. Allen suffer no more from the delinquencies of Richard Kent.—From Mr. Scudamore's Notes.

[39] Gentleman's Magazine, August, 1760.

[40] Mr. Scudamore, of the General Post-Office, to whom we are indebted for much of the minutiæ in question, has been successful in his efforts to preserve permanently some of the old records of the Post-Office; and the result of his labours may be found in the Appendix to the Postmaster-General's First Report.

[41] Son of the James Craggs who succeeded Addison as Secretary of State, and who obtained such an unusual portion of the poetical praise of Pope. The son came in for a share also, as, for example:—

"Statesman, yet friend to truth! of soul sincere,
In action faithful, and in honour clear."

[42] Campbell, in his Tales of the Highlands, relates two or three incidents which show that little improvement had taken place in post communications in some part of Scotland even a hundred years later. The English order of posts and express posts seem there to have been reversed, express work being done the worst. For instance: "Near Inverary, we regained a spot of comparative civilization, and came up with the post-boy, whose horse was quietly grazing at some distance, whilst Red Jacket himself was immersed in play with other lads. 'You rascal,' I said to him, 'are you the post-boy and thus spending your time?' 'Nae, nae, sir,' he answered, 'I'm no the post, I'm only an Express!'"

[43] What the Right Hon. John Methuen wanted with two bales of stockings is, of course, a mystery, if he was not embarking in the haberdashery line. It may be he was desirous of regaining the favour of the Portuguese Court, by supplying the whole with English stockings. This was the Methuen who gave his name to a well-known treaty, which, by the way, was found so distasteful to the Portuguese that when, in 1701, he carried it to Pedro II. for his signature, that monarch gave vent to his displeasure by kicking it about the room.—Marlborough Despatches, vol. v. p. 625.

[44] At the investigation in 1763 it was related that "one man had, in the course of five months, counterfeited 1,200 dozens of franks of different members of Parliament."

[45] As an example of the summary proceedings of those days, we may here just note the remarks which Mr. Pitt made in his place in Parliament when he proposed this increase, calculating that the change would produce at least 120,000l. additional revenue out of the Post-Office. The tax upon letters, said he, could be calculated with a great degree of certainty, and the changes he had to propose would by no means reduce the number sent. It was idle to suppose that the public would grumble in having to pay just one penny additional for valuable letters safely and expeditiously conveyed. He proposed "to charge all letters that went one stage and which now paid one penny in future the sum of 2d., and this would bring in the sum of 6,230l. All that now pay 2d. paying an additional penny would yield 8,923l. Threepenny letters paying another penny would produce 33,963l. The increase of fourpenny letters would produce 34,248l." The cross-roads he could not speak of with great certainty, but he thought they might calculate on at least 20,000l. from that source, and so on, till the estimated sum was reached.

[46] Domestic Annals of Scotland. By Mr. R. Chambers. Vol. ii. p. 142.

[47] A Short Account of Scotland, published in London in 1702.

[48] The wording of the qualifying clauses in the proclamations of stage-coaches, &c. are very various, and sometimes exceedingly amusing. In England the Divine Hand was generally recognised in the formula of "God willing," or, "If God should permit." On the contrary, the human element certainly preponderated—whether it was meant so or not—in the announcement made by a carrying communication between Edinburgh and a northern burgh, when it was given out that "a waggon would leave the Grass market for Inverness every Tuesday, God willing, but on Wednesday whether or no."

[49] It will be remembered that the late lamented Prince Consort laid the foundation-stone of this structure in 1862, being the last occasion on which he assisted at any public ceremony. For further information of the Scotch Office, see Mr. Lang's Historical Summary of the Post-Office in Scotland.

[50] Appendix to Postmaster-General's Third Report, supplied by Mr. Anthony Trollope, then one of the Post-Office Surveyors for Ireland.

[CHAPTER V.]
PALMER AND THE MAIL-COACH ERA.

We have now arrived at a most important epoch in the history of the English Post-Office. Fifteen years after the death of Mr. Allen, John Palmer, one of the greatest of the early post-reformers rose into notice. To give anything approaching to a proper account of the eminent services that Palmer rendered towards the development of the resources of the Post-Office, it is requisite that we notice the improvements which had been made up to his time in the internal communications of the country. Trade and commerce, more than ever active, were the means of opening out the country in all directions. Civil engineering had now acquired the importance and dignity of a profession. This was the age of Brindley and Smeaton, Rennie and Telford, Watt and Boulton. Roads were being made in even the comparatively remote districts of England; bridges were built in all parts of the country; the Bridgewater and other canals were opened for traffic, whilst many more were laid out. And what is perhaps more germane to our special subject, many improvements were apparent in the means of conveyance during the same period.[51] While, on the one hand, the ordinary stage-coach had found its way on to every considerable road, and was still equal to the usual requirements, the speed at which it travelled did not at all satisfy the enterprising merchants of Lancashire and Yorkshire. So early as 1754, a company of merchants in Manchester started a new vehicle, called the "Flying Coach," which seems to have owed its designation to the fact that the proprietors contemplated an acceleration in the speed of the new conveyance to four or five miles an hour. It started with the following remarkable prospectus:—"However incredible it may appear, this coach will actually (barring accidents) arrive in London in four days and a half after leaving Manchester." In the same year a new coach was brought out in Edinburgh, but the speed at which it travelled was no improvement on the old rate. It was of better appearance, however; and the announcement heralding its introduction to the Edinburgh public sought for it general support on the ground of the extra comfort it would offer to travellers. "The Edinburgh stage-coach," says the prospectus, "for the better accommodation of passengers, will be altered to a new genteel two-end glass machine, hung on steel springs, exceedingly light and easy, to go (to London) in ten days in summer and twelve in winter."[52] Three years afterwards, the Liverpool merchants established another "flying machine on steel springs," which was designed to, and which really did, eclipse the Manchester one in the matter of speed.[53] Three days only were allowed for the journey between Liverpool and London. Sheffield and Leeds followed with their respective "fly-coaches," and by the year 1784 they had not only become quite common, but most of them had acquired the respectable velocity of eight miles an hour.

The post-boy on horseback travelling at the rate of three or four miles an hour, had been an institution since the days of Charles II., and now, towards the close of the eighteenth century, the Post-Office was still clinging to the old system. It was destined, however, that Mr. Palmer should bring about a grand change. Originally a brewer, Mr. Palmer was, in 1784, the manager of the Bath and Bristol theatres. He seems to have known Mr. Allen, and to have been fully acquainted with his fortunate Post-Office speculations. In this way, to some extent, but much more, doubtless, through his public capacity as manager of two large theatres, he became acquainted with the crude postal arrangements of the period. Having frequently to correspond with the theatrical stars of the metropolis, and also to journey between London and the then centres of trade and fashion, he noticed how superior the arrangements were for travelling to those under which the Post-Office work was done, and he conceived the idea of improvements.

Palmer found that letters, for instance, which left Bath on Monday night were not delivered in London until Wednesday afternoon or night; but the stage-coach which left through the day on Monday, arrived in London on the following morning.[54] Not only did the existing system of mail conveyance strike him as being exceedingly slow, but insecure and otherwise defective. As he afterwards pointed out, he noticed that when tradesmen were particularly anxious to have a valuable letter conveyed with speed and safety, they never thought of giving it into the safe keeping of the Post-Office, but were in the habit of enclosing it in a brown paper parcel and sending it by the coach: nor were they deterred from this practice by having to pay a rate of carriage for it far higher than that charged for a post-letter. Robberies of the mails were so frequent, that even to adopt the precaution recommended by the Post-Office authorities, and send valuable remittances such as a bank note, bills of exchange, &c. at twice, was a source of endless trouble and annoyance, if it did not prove entirely ineffective. Who can wonder at the Post-Office robberies when the carelessness and incompetency of the servants of the Post-Office were taken into account? A curious robbery of the Portsmouth mail in 1757 illustrates the careless manner in which the duty was done. The boy who carried the mail had dismounted at Hammersmith, about three miles from Hyde Park Corner, and called for beer, when some thieves took the opportunity to cut the mail-bags from off the horse's crupper, and got away undiscovered. The French mail on its outward-bound passage viâ Dover was more than once stopped and rifled before it had got clear of London. A string stretched across a street in the borough through which the mail would pass has been known to throw the post-boy from his horse, who, without more ado, would coolly retrace his steps, empty-handed, to the chief office, and report the loss of his bags. What could be expected, however, in the case of raw, unarmed post-boys, when carriages were stopped in broad daylight in Hyde Park, and even in Piccadilly itself, and pistols pointed at the breasts of the nobility and gentry living close at hand? Horace Walpole relates that he himself was robbed in Hyde Park in broad daylight, in a carriage with Lord Eglinton and Lady Albemarle.

Mr. Palmer, however, was ready with a remedy for robbery, as well as for the other countless defects in the existing postal arrangements. He began his work of reform in 1783, by submitting a full scheme in a lengthy report to Mr. Pitt, who was at that time Prime Minister. He commenced by describing the then existing system of mail transmission. "The post," he says, "at present, instead of being the quickest, is almost the slowest conveyance in the country; and although, from the great improvements in our roads, other carriers have proportionately mended their speed, the post is as slow as ever." The system is also unsafe; robberies are frequent, and he saw not how it could be otherwise if there were no changes. "The mails," continued Palmer, "are generally intrusted to some idle boy without character, mounted on a worn-out hack, and who, so far from being able to defend himself, or escape from a robber, is more likely to be in league with him." If robberies were not so frequent as the circumstances might lead people to suppose, it was simply because thieves had found, by long practice, that the mails were scarcely worth robbing—the booty to be obtained being comparatively worthless, inasmuch as the public found other means of sending letters of value. Mr. Palmer, as we have before stated, knew of tradesmen who sent letters by stage-coach. Why, therefore, "should not the stage-coach, well protected by armed guards, under certain conditions to be specified, carry the mail-bags?" Though by no means the only recommendation which Mr. Palmer made to the Prime Minister, this substitution of a string of mail-coaches for the "worn-out hacks" was the leading feature of his plans. Evincing a thorough knowledge of his subject (however he may have attained that knowledge), and devised with great skill, the measures he proposed promised to advance the postal communication to as high a pitch of excellence as was possible. To lend to the scheme the prospect of financial success, he laboured to show that his proposals, if adopted, would secure a larger revenue to the Post-Office than it had ever yet yielded; whilst, as far as the public were concerned, it was evident that they would gladly pay higher for a service which was performed so much more efficiently. Mr. Pitt, who always lent a ready ear to proposals which would have the effect of increasing the revenue, saw and acknowledged the merits of the scheme very early. But, first of all, the Post-Office officials must be consulted; and from accounts[55] which survive, we learn how bitterly they resented proposals not coming from themselves. They made many and vehement objections to the sweeping changes which Palmer's plans would necessitate. "The oldest and ablest officers in the service" represented them "not only to be impracticable, but dangerous to commerce and the revenue."[56] The accounts of the way in which they met some of his proposals is most amusing and instructive. Thus, Palmer recommended Mr. Pitt to take some commercial men into his councils, and they would not fail to convince him of the great need there was for change. He also submitted that the suggestions of commercial men should be listened to more frequently, when postal arrangements for their respective districts should be made. Mr. Hodgson, one of the prominent officers of the Post-Office, indignantly answered that "it was not possible that any set of gentlemen, merchants, or outriders (commercial travellers, we suppose), could instruct officers brought up in the business of the Post-Office. And it is particularly to be hoped," said this gentlemen, with a spice of malice, "if not presumed, that the surveyors need no such information." He "ventured to say, that the post as then managed was admirably connected in all its parts, well-regulated, carefully attended to, and not to be improved by any person unacquainted with the whole. It is a pity," he sarcastically added, "that Mr. Palmer should not first have been informed of the nature of the business in question, to make him understand how very differently the post and post-offices are conducted to what he apprehends."

Mr. Palmer might not be, and really was not, acquainted with all the working arrangements of the office he was seeking to improve: yet it was quite patent to all outside the Post-Office that the entire establishment needed remodelling. Mr. Hodgson, however, and his confrères "were amazed," they said, "that any dissatisfaction, any desire for change, should exist." The Post-Office was already perfect in their eyes. It was, at least, "almost as perfect as it can be, without exhausting the revenue arising therefrom." They could not help, therefore, making a united stand against any such new-fangled scheme, which they predict "will fling the commercial correspondence of the country into the utmost confusion, and which will justly raise such a clamour as the Postmaster-General will not be able to appease." Another of the principal officers, a Mr. Allen, who seems to have been more temperate in his abuse of the new proposals, gave it as his opinion, "that the more Mr. Palmer's plan was considered, the greater number of difficulties and objections started to its ever being carried completely into execution."

From arguing on the general principles involved, they then descend to combat the working arrangements of the theatre-manager with even less success. Mr. Palmer complains that the post is slow, and states that it ought to outstrip all other conveyances. Mr. Hodgson "could not see why the post should be the swiftest conveyance in England. Personal conveyances, I apprehend, should be much more, and particularly with people travelling on business." Then followed Mr. Draper, another official, who objected to the coaches as travelling too fast. "The post," he said, "cannot travel with the expedition of stage-coaches, on account of the business necessary to be done in each town through which it passes, and without which correspondence would be thrown into the utmost confusion." Mr. Palmer had proposed that the coaches should remain fifteen minutes in each town through which they passed, to give time to transact the necessary business of sorting the letters. Mr. Draper said that half an hour was not enough, as was well enough known to persons at all conversant with Post-Office business. Living in this age of railways and steam, we have just reason to smile at such objections. Then, as to the appointment of mail-guards, Mr. Palmer might, but Mr. Hodgson could, see no security, though he could see endless trouble, expense, and annoyance in such a provision. "The man would doubtless have to be waited for at every alehouse the coach passed." He might have added that such had been the experience with the post-boys under the régime which he was endeavouring to perpetuate. Mr. Palmer stipulated, that the mail-guards should in all cases be well armed and accoutred, and such officers "as could be depended upon as trustworthy." But the Post-Office gentlemen objected even to this arrangement. "There were no means of preventing robbery with effect,[57] as the strongest cart or coach that could be made, lined and bound with iron, might easily be broken into by determined robbers," and the employment of armed mail-guards would only make matters worse. Instead of affording protection to the mails, the following precious doctrine was inculcated, that the crime of murder would be added to that of robbery; "for," said the wonderful Mr. Hodgson, "when once desperate fellows had determined upon robbery, resistance would lead to murder"! These were peace and non-resistance principles with a vengeance, but principles which in England, during the later years of Pitt's administration, would seldom be heard, except in furtherance of some such selfish views as those which the Post-Office authorities held in opposition to Mr. Palmer's so-called innovations.

Mr. Palmer's propositions also included the timing of the mails at each successive stage, and their departure from the country properly regulated; they would thus be enabled to arrive in London at regular specified times, and not at any hour of the day or night, and might, to some extent, be delivered simultaneously. Again: instead of leaving London at all hours of the night, he suggested that all the coaches for the different roads should leave the General Post-Office at the same time; and thus it was that Palmer established what was, to the stranger in London for many years, one of the first of City sights. Finally, Mr. Palmer's plans were pronounced impossible. "It was an impossibility," his opponents declared, "that the Bath mail could be brought to London in sixteen or eighteen hours."

Mr. Pitt was less conservative than the Post-Office authorities. He clearly inherited, as an eloquent writer[58] has pointed out, his father's contempt for impossibilities. He saw, with the clear vision for which he was so remarkable, that Mr. Palmer's scheme would be as profitable as it was practicable, and he resolved, in spite of the short-sighted opposition of the authorities, that it should be adopted. The Lords of the Treasury lost no more time in decreeing that the plan should be tried, and a trial and complete success was the result. On the 24th of July, 1784, the Post-Office Secretary (Mr. Anthony Todd) issued the following order:—"His Majesty's Postmasters-General, being inclined to make an experiment for the more expeditious conveyance of mails of letters by stage-coaches, machines, &c., have been pleased to order that a trial shall be made upon the road between London and Bristol, to commence at each place on Monday, the 2d of August next." Then follows a list of places, letters for which can be sent by these mail-coaches, and thus concludes: "All persons are therefore to take notice, that the letters put into any receiving-house before six of the evening, or seven at this chief office, will be forwarded by these new conveyances; all others for the said post-towns and their districts put in afterwards, or given to the bellmen, must remain until the following post at the same hour of seven."

The mail-coaches commenced running according to the above advertisement, not, however, on the 2d, but on the 8th of August. One coach left London at eight in the morning, reaching Bristol about eleven the same night. The distance between London and Bath was accomplished in fourteen hours. The other coach was started from Bristol at four in the afternoon on the same day, reaching London in sixteen hours.

Mr. Palmer was installed at the Post-Office on the day of the change, under the title of Controller-General. It was arranged that his salary should be 1,500l. a-year, together with a commission of two and a half per cent. upon any excess of net revenue over 240,000l.—the sum at which the annual proceeds of the Post-Office stood at the date of his appointment.

The rates of postage, as we have before incidentally pointed out, were slightly raised—an addition of a penny to each charge; but, notwithstanding this, the number of letters began at once, and most perceptibly, to increase. So great was the improvement in security and speed, that, for once, the additions to the charges were borne ungrudgingly. Coaches were applied for without loss of time by the municipalities of many of our largest towns,[59] and when they were granted—as they appear to have been in most of the instances—they were started at the rate of six miles an hour. This official rate of speed was subsequently increased to eight, then to nine, and at length to ten miles an hour.[60]

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.

It only remains to notice, in conclusion, the annual procession of mail-coaches on the king's birthday, which contemporaries assure us was a gay and lively sight. One writer in the early part of the century goes so far as to say that the cavalcade of mail-coaches was "a far more agreeable and interesting sight to the eye and the mind than the gaud and glitter of the Lord Mayor's show," because the former "made you reflect on the advantages derived to trade and commerce and social intercourse by this magnificent establishment" (the Post-Office). Hone, in his Every-day Book, writing of 1822, tells us that George IV., who was born on the 12th of August, changed the annual celebration of his birthday to St. George's-day, April 23d. "According to custom," says he, "the mail-coaches went in procession from Millbank to Lombard Street. About twelve o'clock, the horses belonging to the different mails with entire new harness, and the postmen and postboys on horseback arrayed in their new scarlet coats and jackets, proceed from Lombard Street to Millbank and there dine; from thence, the procession being re-arranged, begins to march about five o'clock in the afternoon, headed by the general post letter-carriers on horseback. The coaches follow them, filled with the wives and children, friends and relations, of the guards or coachmen; while the postboys sounding their bugles and cracking their whips bring up the rear. From the commencement of the procession, the bells of the different churches ring out merrily and continue their rejoicing peals till it arrives at the Post-Office again, from whence the mails depart for different parts of the kingdom." Great numbers assembled to witness the cavalcade as it passed through the principal streets of the metropolis. The appearance of the coachmen and guards, got up to every advantage, and each with a large bouquet of flowers in his scarlet uniform, was of course greatly heightened by the brilliancy of the newly-painted coach, emblazoned with the royal arms.

FOOTNOTES:

[51] No one who has read Roderick Random can forget the novelist's description of his hero's ride from Scotland to London. As it is generally believed to be a veritable account of a journey which Smollett himself made about the middle of the last century, the reader may be of opinion that the improvement here spoken of was not so great as it might have been. Roderick, however, travelled in the "stage-waggon" of the period. He and his faithful friend Strap having observed one of these waggons a quarter of a mile before them, speedily overtook it, and, ascending by means of the usual ladder, "tumbled into the straw under the darkness of the tilt," amidst four passengers, two gentlemen and two ladies. When they arrived at the first inn Captain Weazel desired a room for himself and his lady, "with a separate supper;" but the impartial innkeeper replied he "had prepared victuals for the passengers in the waggon, without respect of persons." Strap walked by the side of the waggon, changing places with his master when Roderick was disposed to walk. The mistakes, the quarrels, and the mirth of the passengers, are told by the novelist with a vivacity and humour which would have been admirable but for their coarseness. After five days' rumbling in the straw, the passengers get quite reconciled to each other; "nothing remarkable happened during the remaining part of our journey, which continued six or seven days longer."

There were also a few bad roads. Arthur Young, in his famous Tour in the North of England, has described a Lancashire turnpike-road of about the same period in the following vigorous phraseology:—"I know not in the whole range of language terms sufficiently expressive to describe this infernal road. To look over a map and perceive that it is a principal road, one would naturally conclude it to be at least decent; but let me most seriously caution all travellers who may purpose to travel this terrible country to avoid it as they would the devil, for a thousand to one they will break their necks or their limbs by over-throws or breakings-down. They will here meet with ruts which actually measured four feet deep and floating with mud, and this only from a wet summer; what, therefore, must it be after a winter? The only mending which it in places receives is the tumbling in some loose stones, which serve no other purpose but jolting a carriage in the most intolerable manner. These are not merely opinions, but facts, for I actually passed three carts broken down in these eighteen miles of execrable memory." The road in question was that between Wigan and Preston, then a regular post-road and now on the trunk line of mail conveyance into Scotland.

[52] Chambers' Traditions of Edinburgh, vol. i. p. 168.

[53] Baines's History of Lancashire, p. 83.

[54] The Bath post was no exception. The letters which left London at two o'clock on Monday morning did not reach Worcester, Norwich, or Birmingham till the Wednesday, Exeter not till Thursday, and Glasgow and Edinburgh for about a week.

[55] Vide Report of the Committee of House of Commons in 1797, on "Mr. Palmer's Agreement for the Reform and Improvement of the Post-Office and its Revenue," p. 115.

[56] Report of the Committee appointed to inquire into the state of the Public Offices in 1788.

[57] Post-Office robberies had been exceedingly numerous within a few years of the change which Palmer succeeded in inaugurating. Though one prosecution for a single robbery cost the authorities no less a sum than 4,000l., yet they regarded the occurrences as unavoidable and simply matters of course.

[58] Mr. M. D. Hill, in Fraser's Magazine, November, 1862.

[59] The Liverpool merchants were the first to petition the Treasury for the new mail-coach. "This petition being complied with in the course of a few months, the letters from London reached Liverpool in thirty hours. At first these coaches were small vehicles, drawn by two horses, which were changed every six miles. They carried four passengers, besides the coachman and guard, both dressed in livery, the latter being armed to the teeth, as a security against highwaymen."—Baines's History of Liverpool. In October, 1784, York applied for a mail-coach, to pass through that place on its way to the North.

[60] This velocity was not attained without considerable misgivings and distrust on the part of travellers. When the eight was increased to ten miles an hour, the public mind was found to be in different stages of alarm and revolt. Vested interests indulged in the gloomiest forebodings on those who should thus knowingly spurn the way of Providence. Lord-Chancellor Campbell relates that he was frequently warned against travelling in the mail-coaches improved by Palmer, on account of the fearful rate at which they flew, and instances were supplied to him of passengers who had died suddenly of apoplexy from the rapidity of the motion.

[61] Sir Walter Scott relates that a friend of his remembered the London letter-bag arriving in Edinburgh, during the year 1745, with but one letter for the British Linen Company. About the same time the Edinburgh mail is said to have arrived in London, containing but one letter, addressed to Sir William Pulteney, the banker.

[62] In Ireland, on the contrary, the trade was in the hands of two or three large contractors, who charged heavily for work only imperfectly performed. Until the introduction of railways, the mail service of Ireland, owing to the absurd system adopted, was always worked at a greater cost, comparatively, than in England. In 1829, the Irish service, of considerably less extent, cost four times as much as the entire mail establishment of England. Mr. Charles Bianconi has been the Palmer of Ireland. In the early part of the present century he observed the want of travelling accommodation and formed plans for serving the country by a regular system of passenger-cars. He succeeded in inducing the different postmasters (who, up to the year 1830, had the conveyance of mails in their own hands, getting certain allowances for the service from Government, and then arranging for carriage in the cheapest way possible) to let him carry their mails. This he did at a cheap rate, stipulating, however, that he should not be required to run his cars at any inconvenient time for passenger traffic. On the amalgamation of the English and Irish Offices in 1830, Mr. Bianconi, who had now established a good reputation, entered into contracts with the general authorities to continue the work, though on a larger scale than ever, the extent of which may be judged by the fact that in 1848 he had 1,400 horses employed. The growth and extent of railway communication necessarily affected his establishment, but, with unabated activity, Mr. Bianconi directed his labours into new districts when his old roads were invaded by the steam-engine and the rail. He is described to have been "ready at a moment's notice to move his horses, cars, and men to any district, however remote, where any chance of business might show itself." A year or two ago this indefatigable man was still busy, and held several postal contracts; his establishment (1860) consisting of 1,000 horses, and between sixty and seventy conveyances, daily travelling 3,000 or 4,000 miles and traversing twenty-two counties.

[63] Memorials of his Time, vol. i. p. 341.

[64] Dr. Cleland, in his Statistical Account of Glasgow, tells us that before this time, viz. in 1787, the course of post from London to Glasgow was by way of Edinburgh, five days in the week. Only five mails arrived in Glasgow from London on account of no business being transacted at the Edinburgh Office on Sundays. It now occurred, however, to some one of the astute managers of the Post-Office, that the sixth mail, which the Sunday regulations of the Edinburgh Office prevented being passed through that medium, might be sent by the mail-coach to Carlisle, while a supplementary coach should travel every sixth night between Carlisle and Glasgow. This was done, and the result was the saving of an entire day between London and Glasgow. The other mails continued, as usual, for twelve months longer, it having taken the authorities the whole of that time to discover that the five mails, which required five days to reach Glasgow by way of Edinburgh, might, like the sixth, be carried by way of Carlisle, in four days. Dr. Cleland, however, does not seem to have perceived that there might be some other reason for adhering to the old route, such as increased outlay, &c.

[65] Life of Robert Owen. Written by himself. London, 1857.

[66] Smiles' Lives of the Engineers.

[67] Ibid.

[68] History of England during the Thirty Years' Peace, vol. i. p. 257.

[69] Ibid. vol. ii. p. 62.

[CHAPTER VI.]
THE TRANSITION PERIOD AT THE POST-OFFICE.

It must not be supposed that the improvements in mail-conveyance were the only beneficial changes introduced into the Post-Office during the fifty years which we have designated as the mail-coach era. It is true that, compared with the progress of the country in many other respects, the period might be termed uneventful. Still, there are incidental changes to chronicle of some importance in themselves, and likewise important in their bearing on the present position of the Post-Office. If we retrace our steps to the year 1792, we shall find, for instance, that in that year an entirely new branch of business was commenced at the General Post-Office. We refer to the origin of the Money-Order establishment. The beginnings of this system, which, as the reader must be aware, has of late years assumed gigantic proportions, were simple and unassuming in the extreme. The Government of the day had expressed a desire for the establishment of a medium by which soldiers and sailors might transmit to their homes such small sums as they could manage to save for that purpose. Three officers of the Post-Office jointly submitted a scheme to make a part of the Post-Office machinery available in this direction, and a monopoly was readily conceded to them. The undertaking was further favoured with the sanction of the Postmasters-General. The designation of the firm was to be "Stow & Co.," each of the three partners agreeing to find a thousand pounds capital. The stipulations made were, that the business should be carried on at the cost and at the risk of the originators, and that they, in return, should receive the profits. It was agreed, also, that they should enjoy the privilege of sending all their correspondence free of postage—no inconsiderable item saved to them. Contrary to anticipations, the proceeds were considerable—not so much on account of the number of transactions, as on the high commission that was charged for the money-orders. Their terms were eightpence for every pound; but if the sum exceeded two pounds, a stamp-duty of one shilling was levied by Government in addition. No order could be issued for more than five guineas; and the charge for that sum amounted to four shillings and sixpence, or nearly five per cent. When it is considered that the expense did not end here, but that a letter containing a money-order was subjected to double postage, it cannot be wondered at that those who dealt with the three monopolists were few in number, and only persons under a positive necessity to remit money speedily. Such a system, it will be admitted, could not of itself be expected to foster trade. When the general public were admitted to the benefits of the Money-order Office—as they were some few years after the establishment of the office—it does not appear that the business was greatly increased. Almost from the commencement, the managers drew yearly proceeds, which varied but slightly from year to year, averaging about 200l. each. While, on the one hand, this office was seen to be a most useful institution, good in principle, and likely, if properly managed, to contribute largely to the general revenue of the Post-Office; on the other hand, it was clearly stationary, if not retrograde in its movements. In 1834, the attention of practical men was more immediately called to the question by a return which was asked for by the House of Commons, for a detailed account of the poundage, &c. on money-orders of each provincial post-office, and the purpose or purposes to which the monies were applied. The Postmaster-General replied, that the Money-order Office was a private establishment, worked by private capital, under his sanction; but he could give no returns, because the accounts were not under his control. In 1838, a new Postmaster-General, Lord Lichfield, sought and obtained the consent of the Treasury to convert the Office into a branch under his immediate direction. In that year the chief Money-order Office commenced business in two small rooms at the north end of St. Martin's-le-Grand, with a staff of three clerks. Though the charges were reduced to a commission of sixpence for sums under two pounds, and of one shilling and sixpence for sums up to five pounds, the new branch was worked at a loss, owing to the high rates of postage and the double payment to which letters containing enclosures were subjected. After the introduction of penny postage, the change was so marked, that the immense success of this branch establishment may be considered as entirely owing to the reduction of postage-rates. Had the penny-postage scheme done no more for the nation than assisted the people in the exercise of a timely prudence and frugality, stimulating them, as it can be proved, to self-denial and benevolence, it would have done much. But we are anticipating an important era. Soon after the passing of the Penny-postage Act, the commission on money-orders was reduced to threepence instead of sixpence, and sixpence for any amount above two pounds and under five pounds. In 1840, the number of money-order transactions had increased to thousands, in the place of hundreds under the old régime. The money passed through the office in the advent year of cheap postage amounted to nearly half a million sterling, the Post-Office commission on the sum exceeding 6,000l. The rate of increase, subsequently, may best be shown by taking a month's work ten years afterwards. Thus, during one month of 1850, twice as many orders were taken out and paid as were issued and paid during 1840, the particulars of which year were given above. The same rate of increase has continued up to the present moment. During the year 1862, the number of orders had, in round numbers, risen to more than seven and a half millions, or a money-value exceeding sixteen millions sterling, the commission on the whole amounting to more than one hundred and thirty-six thousand pounds.[70]

By the statute of Queen Anne, letters might be brought from abroad by private ships under certain distinctly-specified regulations. On the contrary, no law existed enabling the Postmaster-General to send bags of letters by the same medium until 1799, when an Act was passed with this object. Masters of such ships refusing to take bags were subjected to heavy penalties.[71] The postage of letters so sent (on account of the slowness of transit in the majority of cases) was fixed at half the usual rates. This Act is the foundation of the ship-letter system, by means of which, besides the regular packet communication, letters are forwarded to all parts of the world. At the same period the Government rigorously adhered to the law as laid down with regard to letters brought by private vessels. A case was tried in 1806 in the Court of King's Bench—"King v. Wilson"—in which the defendant—a merchant who had had letters brought from the Continent in a ship of his own, and pleaded that he had a right to do so—was cast in heavy damages, and told that "all and every such letters, as well as others," must pass through the Post-Office in the usual way.

In the year 1814, the business of the Post-Office had increased so greatly, that an agitation was commenced with the object of securing better accommodation for its despatch than was afforded by the office in Lombard Street. The first General Post-Office was opened in Cloak Lane, near Dowgate Hill, and removed from thence to the Black Swan in Bishopsgate Street. After the Great Fire of 1666, a General Office was opened in Covent Garden, but it was soon removed to Lombard Street, to a house which had been the residence of Sir Robert Viner, once Lord Mayor of London. It was now proposed that a large and commodious building should be specially erected in some central part of the City, and the business once more transferred. In the Session of 1814 we find a Mr. Butterworth presenting a petition to the House of Commons from four thousand London merchants, in favour of an early removal of the Post-Office from Lombard Street. He was assured, he said, that the present office "was so close and confined, as to be injurious to the health of those concerned;" he further stated, that "two guineas were expended weekly for vinegar to fumigate the rooms and prevent infectious fevers." Another hon. member stated that the access to the office was so narrow and difficult, that the mail-coaches were prevented from getting up to it to take the letter-bags. It is curious to note that even this change was contested. Counter-petitions were presented to Parliament, stating that the Lombard Street office was convenient enough, and that the movement was got up by interested parties. Many years passed before the discussions ended and the preliminary arrangements were made. Nothing could better serve to show the stationary character of the Post-Office than the fact that, year by year, and in the opinion of the authorities, the Lombard Street establishment sufficed for its wants and requirements. In 1825, however, Government acquiesced in the views of the great majority of London residents, and St. Martin's-le-Grand—the site of an ancient convent and sanctuary—was chosen for a large new building, to be erected from designs by Sir R. Smirke. It was five years in course of erection, and opened for the transaction of business on the 25th of September, 1829. The building is of the Grecian-Ionic order, and is one of the handsomest public structures in London. The basement is of granite, but the edifice itself, which is 400 feet in length and 80 feet in width, is built of brick, faced all round with Portland stone. In the centre is a grand portico with fluted columns, leading to the great hall, which forms a public thoroughfare from St. Martin's-le-Grand to Foster Lane.

From the date of the opening of the new General Post-Office, improvements were proposed and carried out very earnestly. Under the Duke of Richmond, reforms in the establishment set in with considerable vigour.[72] He seems to have been the first Postmaster-General during the present century who thought the accommodation which the Post-Office gave to the public was really of a restrictive nature; that more facility might easily be given to the public; and that the system of management was an erroneous one. In 1834, the Duke of Richmond submitted a list of improvements to the Treasury Lords, in which there were at least thirty substantial measures of reform proposed. It is true that many of these measures had been strongly recommended to him by the Commissioners of Post-Office Inquiry, who had sat yearly on the Post-Office and other revenue branches of the public service. The previous policy, however, of the authorities was to put on a bold front against any recommendations not originating with themselves. The Duke of Richmond had considerably less of this feeling than some of his predecessors. Thus, to take the principal measure of reform concluded in his time—namely, the complete amalgamation of the Scotch and Irish Offices with the English Post-Office—we find that the twenty-third report of the Commissioners, signed by "Wallace," W. J. Lushington, Henry Berens, and J. P. Dickenson, spoke strongly on the inadequacy "of the present system of administration to reach the different parts of the country," and urging the expediency "of providing against any more conflict of opinion, and of securing a more extended co-operation, as well as unity of design, in the management of the distinct Offices of England, Scotland, and Ireland." Again, in 1831, on the recommendation of the Commission, the Postmaster-General ordered that the boundaries of the London district post—which, in 1801, became a "Twopenny Post," and letters for which post, if delivered beyond the boundaries of the cities of London and Westminster and the borough of Southwark, were charged threepence—should now be extended to include all places within three miles of the General Post-Office. Two years afterwards, on the recommendation of another Commission, the limits of the "Twopenny Post" were again extended to places not exceeding twelve miles from St. Martin's-le-Grand, and this arrangement continued till the time of uniform penny postage. The Duke of Richmond likewise appointed a daily post to France, established a number of new mail-coaches, and abolished, in great part, the system of paying the clerks, &c. of the Post-Office by fees, substituting fixed salaries in each case.[73]

In 1830, on the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the mails of the district were consigned to the new company for transmission. The railway system developed but slowly, exerting little influence on Post-Office arrangements for the first few years. After public attention had been attracted to railways, many proposals were thrown out for the more quick transmission of mails, to the supercession of the mail-coach. One writer suggested the employment of balloons. Professor Babbage threw out suggestions, in his Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, 1832, pp. 218-221, deserving more attention, because in them we see shadowed forth two at least of the greatest enterprises of our time. After proceeding to show, in a manner which must have been interesting to the post-reformers of 1839-40, that if the cost of letter-carrying could be reduced, the result might be (if the Post-Office people chose) a cheaper rate of postage and a corresponding increase in the number of letters, he proceeded to expound a scheme which, though vague, was described in words extremely interesting, seeing that he wrote long anterior to the time of the electric telegraph. Imagine, says he, a series of high pillars erected at frequent intervals, as nearly as possible in a straight line between two post-towns. An iron or steel wire of some thickness must be stretched over proper supports, fixed on these pillars, and terminating at the end, say of four or five miles, in a very strong support, by which the whole may be stretched. He proposed to call each of these places station-houses, where a man should be in attendance. A narrow cylindrical tin case, to contain bags or letters, might be suspended on two wheels rolling upon the wire, whilst an endless wire of smaller size might be made to pass over two drums, one at each end, by which means the cylinder could be moved by the person at the station. Much more of the details follow, and our author thus concludes:—"The difficulties are obvious; but if these were overcome, it would present many advantages besides velocity." We might have two or three deliveries of letters[74] every day; we might send expresses at any moment; and "it is not impossible that a stretched wire might itself be made available for a species of telegraphic communication yet more rapid." After the first few years of railways, all other speculators quietly withdrew into the shade. In the Post-Office, towards 1838 and 1839, the influence of railways promised soon to be paramount, and it was now that Acts were passed in Parliament "to provide for the conveyance of mails by railways."

In 1836, Sir Francis Freeling, the Secretary of the Post-Office, died, when his place was filled by Lieutenant-Colonel Maberly. The latter gentleman, who was an entire stranger to the department, was introduced into the Post-Office by the Treasury for the purpose, as it was stated, of zealously carrying out the reforms which another commission of inquiry had just recommended.[75] On the premature fall of Sir Robert Peel's first Cabinet, early in the previous year, the Earl of Lichfield had succeeded to the office of Postmaster-General under Lord Melbourne. The two new officers set to work in earnest, and succeeded in inaugurating many important reforms. They got the Money-order Office transferred, as we have already seen, from private hands to the General Establishment; they began the system of registering valuable letters; and, taking advantage of one of Mr. Hill's suggestions, they started a number of day-mails to the provinces. Towards the close of 1836, the stamp duty on newspapers was reduced from about threepence-farthing net to one penny, a reduction which led to an enormous increase in the number of newspapers passing through the Post-Office.

Though all these improvements were being carried out, and in many respects the Post-Office was showing signs of progression, the authorities still clung with a most unreasonable tenacity to the accustomed rates of postage, and of necessity to all the evils which followed in the train of an erroneous fiscal principle. Contrary to all experience in any other department, the Government obstinately refused to listen for a moment to any plan for the reduction of postage rates, or, what is still more remarkable, even to the alleviation of burdens caused directly by the official arrangements of the period. For example, Colonel Maberly had no sooner learnt the business of his office, than he saw very clearly an anomaly which pressed heavily in some cases, and was felt in all. He at once made a proposition to the Treasury that letters should be charged in all cases according to the exact distance between the places where a letter was posted and where delivered, and not according to the distance through which the Post-Office, for purposes of its own, might choose to send such letters. It may serve to show the extent to which this strange and anomalous practice was carried, if we state that the estimated reduction in the postal revenue, had Colonel Maberly's suggestion been acted upon, was given at no less than 80,000l. annually! The Lords of the Treasury promptly refused the concession.

In 1837 the average general postage was estimated at 9½d. per letter; exclusive of foreign letters, it was still as high as 8¾d. In the reign of Queen Anne the postage of a letter between London and Edinburgh was less than half as much as the amount charged at the accession of Queen Victoria, with macadamized roads, and even with steam. Notwithstanding the heavy rates, or let us say, on account of these rates, the net proceeds of the gigantic monopoly of the Post-Office remained stationary for nearly twenty years. In 1815, the revenue derivable from the Post-Office was estimated at one and a half millions sterling. In 1836, the increase on this amount had only been between three and four thousand pounds, though the population of the country had increased immensely; knowledge was more diffused, and trade and commerce had extended in every direction. Had the Post-Office revenue increased, for instance, in the same ratio as population, we should have found the proceeds to have been increased by half a million sterling; or at the ratio of increase of stage-coach travelling, it must have been two millions sterling.

The high rates, while they failed to increase the Post-Office revenue, undoubtedly led to the evasion of the postage altogether. Illicit modes of conveyance were got up and patronised by some of the principal merchants in the kingdom. Penal laws were set at defiance, and the number of contraband letters became enormous. Some carriers were doing as large a business as the Post-Office itself. On one occasion the agents of the Post-Office made a seizure, about this time, of eleven hundred such letters, which were found in a single bag in the warehouse of certain eminent London carriers. The head of the firm hastened to seek an interview with the Postmaster-General, and proffered instant payment of 500l. by way of composition for the penalties incurred, and if proceedings against the firm might not be instituted. The money was taken, and the letters were all passed through the Post-Office the same night.[76] For one case which was detected, however, a hundred were never made known. The evasion of the Post-Office charges extended so far and so wide that the officials began to declare that any attempt to stop the smuggling, or even to check it, was as good as hopeless. Prosecutions for the illicit conveyance of letters had, in fact, ceased long before the misdemeanours themselves.

The Post-Office was now ripe for a sweeping change. Mr. Wallace, the member for Greenock, had frequently called the attention of the House of Commons to the desirability of a thorough reform in the Post-Office system. We find him moving at different times for Post-Office returns. For instance, in August, 1833, Mr. Wallace[77] brought forward a subject which, he said, "involved a charge of the most serious nature against the Post-Office—viz. that the Postmaster-General, or some person acting under his direction, with the view of discovering a fraud upon its revenue, has been guilty of a felony in the opening of letters." He moved on this occasion for a return of all and every instruction, bye-law, or authority, under which postmasters are instructed and authorized, or have assumed a right, to open, unfold, apply strong lamp-light to, or use any of them, or any other means whatever, for ascertaining or reading what may be contained in words or in figures in any letter, of any size or description, being fastened with a wafer or wax, or even if totally unfastened by either. At the same time he moved for a return of all Post-Office prosecutions,[78] especially for the expenses of a recent case at Stafford. In reply, the Post-Office answered in a parliamentary paper that no such instruction had ever been issued from the General Post-Office. Every person in the Post-Office was required to take the oath prescribed by the Act of 9 Queen Anne, c. 10. It was added, that "whenever it is noticed that a letter has been put into the post unfastened, it is invariably sealed with the official seal for security." In reply to the other return, the Post-Office were forced to admit that the cost of prosecuting a woman and a female child at the suit of the Post-Office at the late Stafford Assizes exceeded three hundred and twenty pounds.

There can be no question that Mr. Wallace's frequent motions[79] for Post-Office papers, returns, statistics, detailed accounts of receipt and expenditure, &c., were the means of drawing special attention to the Post-Office, and that they were of incalculable service to the progress of reform and the coming reformer. Mr. Wallace seems to have been exceedingly honest and straightforward, though he was somewhat blunt and outspoken. He succeeded in gaining the attention of the mercantile community, though the Government honoured him with just as much consideration as he was entitled to from his position, and no more.[80] In estimating properly the penny-post system, and the labours of those who inaugurated the reform, the share Mr. Wallace had in it should by no means be lost sight of.

FOOTNOTES:

[70] These items are exclusive of those relating to colonial money-orders.

[71] The Government can grant a release to any ship fixed for this service. It will be remembered by many readers that after the Peterhoff was taken by Admiral Wilkes of the United States' navy, February, 1863, the proprietors of the vessel, who had other ships on the same line (with all of which the Post-Office sent ship-letters), asked the Government for the protection of a mail-officer. On the principle of choosing the least of two evils, and rather than take such a decisive step, which might lead to troubles with the United States' Government, Earl Russell relieved the Sea Queen from the obligation to carry the usual mail-bag to Matamoras.

[72] The Duke of Richmond, though opposed to the Reform Bill, was a member of Lord Grey's Cabinet. Indefatigable in the service of the department over which he was placed from 1830 to 1834, he refused at first to accept of any remuneration of the nature of salary. In compliance, it is stated, with the strong representation of the Treasury Lords, as to the objectionable nature of the principle of gratuitous services by public officers, "which must involve in many cases the sacrifice of private fortune to official station," His Grace consented to draw his salary from that time only.

[73] The salary of the Secretary to the Post-Office in the last century was 600l. a-year, and a commission of 2½ per cent. on the produce of the mail-packets.—(Vide Pitt's Speeches, vol. i. p. 53-5, Debate of June 17, 1783.) In 1830 the Secretary's salary was 300l. a-year, but what with compensations, fees, and other emoluments, his annual income is stated to have amounted to no less than 4,560l.—(Mirror of Parliament, 1835). The clerks, according to a Parliamentary return, were paid small salaries, regulated on different scales, but their income consisted principally of emoluments derived from other sources. The established allowances, charged on the public revenue, consisted of sums for postage, stationery, payment in lieu of apartments, and for continuing indexes to official books. The remaining emoluments, of course not chargeable against the revenue, arose from fees on deputations, commissions, expresses, profits on the publication of the Shipping and Packet Lists, payments for franking letters on the business of the Land-Tax Redemption, and for the Tax-Office, &c. and from Lloyd's Coffee House for shipping intelligence, &c. There were, besides, other gratuities for special services.

[74] We give the following simply to show the vagaries of clever, scientific men. Speaking of London, the Professor said:—"Perhaps if the steeples of churches, properly selected, were made use of—as, for instance, St. Paul's—and if a similar apparatus were placed at the top of each steeple, and a man to work it during the day, it might be possible to diminish the expense of the twopenny post, and make deliveries every half-hour over the greater part of the metropolis." P. 221.

[75] Evidence of Colonel Maberly before the Select Committee on Postage, 1843, p. 170.

[76] Mr. Matthew Devonport Hill. 1862.

[77] Mirror of Parliament. Barrow. 1833.

[78] Now and then the House was enlivened and amused by even Post-Office discussions. Thus, in the discussion on the above motion, Mr. Cobbett complained that a letter of his, which "was not only meant to be read, but to be printed," had never been received by him, nor could he get any satisfaction out of the Post-Office authorities. He advised all honourable members who had complaints to make against the Post-Office, to make them at once to the House, without having any interview with Ministers. For his own part, with regard to letters being opened, he felt sure that the Post-Office read all the letters it cared to read; so he took care to write accordingly. He didn't care about his letters being read, provided they were allowed to go on, as he addressed them.

Mr. Secretary Stanley (the present Lord Derby) thought it would be a subject of deep regret that any negligence on the part of the Post-Office had prevented the elaborate lucubrations of the hon. member for Oldham from appearing in the Register on the appointed Saturday.

Mr. Cobbett. It never appeared at all.

Mr. Secretary Stanley was grieved. He felt sure, however, that the hon. member spends too much time over the midnight oil not to have kept a copy of his precious essay. He protested against hon. members taking up the time of the House with complaints against a department which managed its work very well.

[79] Some of his motions must have been far from palatable to the powers that were, and we confess to thinking some of them wanting in charity and good taste. For example, September 7, 1835, we find him moving for a return, to supplement another which had been sent in imperfectly drawn up, which should show "what the special services are for which Sir Francis Freeling receives 700l. a-year, the number of rooms allotted to him at the General Post-Office, and how often he resides there. Also the number allotted to the Under-Secretary; whether the whole or part, and what parts are furnished at the public expense; also the annual sum for coals and candles, for servants, &c.; also the probable expense of expresses, messengers, and runners, passing between the Post-Office and the Secretary at his private residence," and a number of other items still more trifling.

[80] The Quarterly Review, for October, 1839, speaking of his motions for different papers, says, "What grounds he had for making them could only be imagined. They were, in fact, the kind of random motions with which a member fishes for abuses, but is still more anxious to catch notoriety." The italics are not ours.

[CHAPTER VII.]
SIR ROWLAND HILL AND PENNY POSTAGE.

Miss Martineau, in her history of the Thirty Years' Peace, narrates a somewhat romantic incident to account for Mr. Hill's original relation to our subject, tracing the fiscal reform with which his name is indissolubly connected to the "neighbourly shilling" well laid out of a "pedestrian traveller in the Lake District." Unluckily for the historian, the incident never happened to Mr. Hill. The repeated motions of Mr. Wallace in the House of Commons are proved beyond dispute to have brought home the subject to the consideration of many thoughtful minds, and amongst those, to one who had scholarly leisure and philosophical ingenuity to bring to its service.

Born in 1795, and for many years a tutor in his father's school near Birmingham, Mr. Rowland Hill was, at this time, the secretary of the Commissioners for conducting the Colonization of South Australia, upon the plan of Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield. At this post, according to the testimony of the commissioners themselves, Mr. Hill laboured unweariedly, "evincing," as they said, "considerable powers of organization." Mr. Hill, in one place,[81] gives a clear account of the way he prepared himself for the work he took in hand, when once his attention was arrested by the subject. "The first thing I did was to read very carefully all the reports on post-office subjects. I then put myself in communication with the hon. member for Greenock, who kindly afforded me much assistance. I then applied to the Post-Office for information, with which Lord Lichfield was so good as to supply me. These were the means I took to make myself acquainted with the subject." In January, 1837, Mr. Hill published[82] the results of his investigations, and embodied his scheme in a pamphlet entitled Post Office Reform: its Importance and Practicability. This, the first edition, was circulated privately amongst members of the legislature and official men; the second edition, published two months afterwards, being the first given to the world. The pamphlet, of which we will here attempt a résumé, immediately created a sensation; especially so in the mercantile world. Mr. Hill may be said to have started with the facts to which we have already adverted[83], namely, that the Post-Office was not progressing like other great interests; that its revenue, within the past twenty years, instead of increasing, had actually diminished, though the increase of population had been six millions, and the increase in trade and commerce had been proportionate. The increase in the ratio of stage-coach travellers was still more clear; but this fact need not be pressed, especially as one smart quarterly reviewer answered, that, of course, the more men travelled, the less need of writing.

From the data which Mr. Hill was enabled to gather—for accounts of any sort were not kept as accurately at the Post-Office then as now, and there were no accounts of the number of inland letters—he estimated the number of letters passing through the post. He then took the expenses of management and analysed the gross total amount. He proved pretty clearly, and as nearly as necessary, that the primary distribution, as he termed the cost of receiving and delivering the letters, and also the cost of transit, took two-thirds of the total cost of the management of the Post-Office. Of this sum, the amount which had to do with the distance letters were conveyed, Mr. Hill calculated at 144,000l. out of the total postal expenditure of 700,000l. Applying to this smaller sum the estimated number of letters—deducting franks and taking into account the greater weight of newspapers—he gave the apparent average cost of conveying each letter as less than one-tenth of a penny. The conclusion to which he came from this calculation of the average cost of transit was inevitable, and that was, that if the charge must be made proportionate (except, forsooth, it could be shown how the postage of one-tenth or one-thirty-sixth of a penny could be collected) it must clearly be uniform, and for the sake of argument, and not considering the charge as a tax, or as a tax whose end was drawing near, any packet of an equal weight might be sent throughout the length and breadth of the country at precisely the same rate.

The justice and propriety of a uniform rate was further shown, but in a smaller degree, by the fact that the relative cost of transmission of letters under the old system was not always dependent on the distance the mails were carried. Thus, the Edinburgh mail, the longest and most important of all, cost 5l. for each journey. Calculating the proportionate weight of bags, letters, and newspapers, Mr. Hill[84] arrived at the absolute cost of carrying a newspaper of an average weight of 1½ oz. at one-sixth of a penny, and that of a letter of an average weight of ¼ oz. at one-thirty-sixth of a penny. These sums being the full cost for the whole distance, Mr. Hill assumed, fairly enough, that the same rating would do for any place on the road. It was admitted on all hands, that the chief labour was expended in making up, opening, and delivering the mails; therefore the fact whether it was carried one mile or a hundred made comparatively little difference in the expenditure of the office. The expenses and trouble being much the same, perhaps even less at Edinburgh than at some intermediate point, why should the charges be so different? But the case could be made still stronger. The mail for Louth, containing as it did comparatively few letters, cost the Post-Office authorities, as the simple expense of transit, one penny-farthing per letter. Thus, an Edinburgh letter, costing the Post-Office an infinitesimal fraction of a farthing, was charged one shilling and three-halfpence to the public, while a letter for Louth, costing the Post-Office fifty times as much, was charged to the public at the rate of tenpence! Nothing was clearer, therefore, that if Mr. Hill's propositions were opposed (and his opponents did not advocate the payment according to the actual cost of transit), that those who were adverse to them must fall into the absurdity of recognising as just an arrangement which charged the highest price for the cheapest business! At first sight it looked extravagant, that persons residing at Penzance or near the Giant's Causeway, at Watford or Wick, should pay equal postage for their letters. The intrinsic value of the conveyance of a letter, it must be admitted, is a very different thing from its cost, the value being exactly equal to the time, trouble, and expense saved to the correspondents, of which, perhaps, the only measure appeared to be the actual distance. Looked at more narrowly, however, in the clear light of Mr. Hill's investigations, it became obvious that it was really "a nearer approximation to perfect justice"[85] to allow distant places to feel the benefits of the measure; passing over the little inequalities to which it might give rise; while all might pay such a sum as would cover the expenses in each and every case.[86]

Mr. Hill succeeded likewise in proving many of the facts adverted to in the preceding chapter. He showed that the high rates were so excessive (not only varied according to distance, but doubled if there was an enclosure, with fourfold postage if the letter exceeded an ounce in weight) as greatly to diminish, where they did not absolutely prevent, correspondence. Not only so, but the high rate created an illicit traffic, involving all classes of the country in the meshes of a systematically clandestine trade. These facts and their results on the public revenue shine out of the pamphlet as clear as noonday.

But this was not all. The expenses of the department, or the secondary distribution, might be much reduced by simplifications in the various processes. The existing system resulted in a complicated system of accounts, involving great waste of time as well as offering inducements to fraud. The daily work of exposing letters to a strong light, in order to ascertain their contents, also offered a constant temptation to the violation of the first duty of the officers of the State, in respect to the sanctity of correspondence. If, instead of charging letters according to the number of sheets or scraps of paper, a weight should be fixed, below which, whatever the contents of a letter, a certain rate be charged, much trouble would be saved to the office, not to speak of any higher reason. Again, he suggested that if anything could be done to expedite the delivery of letters by doing away with the collection of postage from door to door, a great object would be gained; that five or six times the number of letters might be delivered with the existing machinery, and this even in less time than under the old system. The only requisite was, that some plan for the prepayment of letters should be devised, so that the Post-Office might be relieved from the duty of charging, debiting, &c. and the letter-carriers from collecting the postage. The Post-Office authorities had had the question of prepayment, by means of some kind of stamp or stamped covers, under consideration prior to this time. The Commissioners of Post-Office Inquiry deliberated on the measure in the early part of 1837 (after Mr. Charles Knight had suggested a penny stamp, or stamped cover, for collecting the now reduced postage on newspapers), considering it very favourably. Hence it arose that that part of the proposals relating to prepayment by stamped labels or covers, formed part of Mr. Hill's scheme, and was considered with it.