Single Letter.Double letter."If bigger."Under 80 miles2d.4d.6d. an oz.80 miles and not exceeding 1404d.8d.9d. "Above 140 miles6d.12d.12d. "To or from Scotland8d.??To or from Ireland9d.After two ounces, 6d. the ounce.
This was the introduction of postage. The object of the exceptional rate in the case of Ireland was to avoid interference with a Proclamation which had been recently issued by the Lord Deputy and Council there.
Henceforth the posts were to be equally open to all; all would be at liberty to use them; all would be welcome. Important as this provision was, it followed as a natural consequence from the imposition of postage. The carriage of the subjects' letters was now to be a matter of purchase, and, unless the purchasers were sufficiently numerous, the posts would not be self-supporting. The custom of the public, therefore, was a necessity of their very existence.
In other respects the regulations remained much as they had been, except that now there would be the means of enforcing them. Every postmaster was to have ready in his stable one or two horses, according as Witherings might direct, the charge to be for one horse 2-1/2d. a mile and for two horses 5d. This 5d., however, was to include the cost of a guide who was always to accompany the horses when two were taken. On the day the post was expected, the horses were not to be let out on any pretext whatever, this being the first indication on record of letters enjoying precedence over travellers. And finally, with certain specified exceptions, no letters were to be carried or delivered in any part where posts should be established except by such persons as Witherings might appoint. The letters excepted were those sent by a friend, by a particular messengeremployed for the particular occasion, and by common known carrier. On the common carrier, however, restrictions were imposed. He was to confine himself to his ordinary known journey, and was not, for the sake of collecting or delivering letters, to lag behind or outstrip his cart or horse by more than eight hours.
The reason for this last exception is not far to seek. The established posts were few in number, and even where they existed in name they had fallen into disuse. The common carriers had thus become the chief carriers of letters, and Witherings, in the furtherance of his project, was anxious to disarm their opposition. This he had already attempted to effect by argument; and now, as a practical step in the same direction, he procured their exemption from the State monopoly. But what may have appeared and was probably intended to appear as a valuable concession was really no concession at all. The carrier took eight days to go 120 miles. By the posts the same distance was to be accomplished in a day and a night. The carrier's charge for a letter from Cambridge to London, a distance of about sixty miles, was 2d. A postage of 2d., according to Witherings's plan, was to a carry a letter for eighty miles. If the posts were to be both faster and cheaper than the common known carrier, it might safely be predicted that as a carrier of letters he could not long survive.
In October 1635 Witherings, having completed the necessary arrangements, proceeded to carry his plan into effect. The results he anticipated from it, as shewn in a memorandum which he delivered to the Secretary of State, were promotion of trade and intercourse and the cultivation of better relations with Scotland and Ireland. That the posts might one day be more than self-supporting, that they would become a source of revenue, does not appear to have entered into his calculations; or, if it did, his silence on the point would seem to shew that, as compared with the other advantages, he deemed it too insignificant to mention.
It was probably about this time that the practice ofwriting "Haste, post, haste" on the outside of letters began to be discontinued. The term "post," as here used, meant nothing more than the carrier or bearer of the letter; and an injunction to make the best speed he could, properly as it might be given to a messenger who had a particular letter to carry, would be altogether out of place if addressed to a general letter-carrier who was bound by his instructions not to exceed a given distance within a given time. "For thy life, for thy life" had sometimes been added, as in the case of Protector Somerset's letter to Lord Dacre. "To our very good Lord, the Lord Dacre, Warden of the West Marches, in haste; haste, post, haste, for thy life, for thy life, for thy life";[6]and it seems probable, if the barbarity of the punishments in those days is considered, that this was no empty threat. It was "on payn of lyfe" that, according to Sir Brian Tuke, all townships were to have horses ready for their Sovereign's service. Among the Ashburnham manuscripts is a letter from Sir Edward Nicholas to Sir John Hippisley, Lieutenant of Dover Castle, written in 1627 or eight years before the introduction of postage. This letter is endorsed by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and the cover is inscribed "for His Majesty's special affairs; hast, hast, hast, post, hast, hast, hast, hast, with all possible speede." The absence of any threat in this instance may of course have been due to the individual character of the writer, but it is more agreeable to think of it as a sign of the advance of civilisation.
In 1637, Lord Stanhope having surrendered his patent, Witherings was appointed in his room, and thus became centred in one person the offices of postmaster for inland and for foreign letters. In the same year a letter office, the erection of which had formed an important part of Witherings's plan, was opened in the city of London, and nothing remained to hinder him from carrying his project into full effect. But, fair as everything promised, hardly three years had elapsed before Witherings met with the fate which has overtaken so many of his distinguished successors. In 1640,on a charge of divers abuses and misdemeanours in the execution of his office, this eminent man was deprived of his appointment. Whether the charge was well or ill founded we have no means of judging. Only the fact has come down to us that after this miserable fashion ended the career of one who had the sagacity to project and the energy to carry out a system, the main features of which endure to the present day.
Among those who had lent money to the King was Philip Burlamachi, a naturalised British subject, and one of the principal merchants of the city of London. He had advanced, on the security of the sugar duties, no less than £52,000, an immense sum in those days; and it was probably this fact rather than any special qualification on his part that pointed him out as Witherings's successor. Be that as it may, into Burlamachi's hands the office of Master of the Posts was sequestered, subject to the condition that he was to discharge the duties under the control of the Secretary of State. The sequestration was announced to the public by means of placards fixed up on the old Exchange, and Witherings lost no time in fixing up counter-placards by way of protest.
And now began an unseemly contention which, arising ostensibly out of the rights of individuals, went far to bring the two Houses of Parliament into collision. In 1642, after struggling for the best part of two years to maintain his position, Witherings assigned his patent to the Earl of Warwick, and, under the influence of this peer, both Houses declared the sequestration to be illegal and void. Meanwhile Burlamachi had fallen into the power of one in whose hands he was the merest puppet. This was Edmund Prideaux, afterwards one of the Commissioners of the Great Seal and Attorney-General under the Commonwealth. At his instigation Burlamachi still kept possession of the letter office. In vain the Lords ordered him to give it up to Lord Warwick, and summoned him before them to explain his contumacy. It was true, he replied, that the office was still kept at his house, but this house and hisservants had been hired by Mr. Prideaux, and it was he that disposed of the letters.
Incensed at such contempt of their orders, the Lords authorised Warwick to seize the mails. After one or two half-hearted attempts to carry this authority into effect, arrangements were made for a more strenuous effort. On the 19th of December two of Warwick's agents lay in wait at Barnet and there surprised the mail as it came from Chester. Seizing the letters and the man that carried them, they made the best of their way towards London, but had not proceeded further than the foot of the hill beyond Highgate when they were themselves surprised by five troopers "on great horses with pistols," who barred the road, and, in the name of the House of Commons, captured the captors.
Meanwhile a still more exciting scene was enacting before Warwick's office near the Royal Exchange. There two of his men kept watch for the mail from Plymouth, and, as it passed on its way to Burlamachi's house hard by, they dashed into the street and seized the letters. Their success was but for the moment. Before they could regain the office, Prideaux had swooped down upon them at the head of some half-dozen adherents, and with his own hands had torn the letters away. "An order of the House of Commons," cried one of the bystanders, "ought to be obeyed before an order of the House of Lords."
On these occurrences being reported to the Lords, Burlamachi and all others who had been concerned in them, Prideaux alone excepted, were ordered to prison. Among these was the man who had been captured at Barnet and afterwards rescued, one Hickes by name; and this fellow proved to be Prideaux's own servant. On the part of that wily politician one looks in vain for any effort to procure Burlamachi's release, or even for the slightest indication of concern that he had been arrested; but the arrest of his own servant, the servant of a member of the House of Commons, excited his keenest resentment. This, in Prideaux's view, was a clear breach of privilege, and theHouse was pleased to agree with him. No sooner, therefore, had Hickes been imprisoned by the Lords than he was released by the Commons, and no sooner had he been released by the Commons than the Lords ordered him to be imprisoned again.
Matters having come to this pass, the two Houses held a conference. The result might easily have been foreseen. The Lords yielded to the Commons, and Burlamachi, on rendering an account which had long been called for, was released from custody together with the others who had been imprisoned at the same time. Concerning the next two years little is known; but it seems probable that Burlamachi, who in his petition praying for release had pleaded old age and infirmities, did not long survive the indignity to which he had been exposed. At all events, in 1644, either by death or resignation, the office of Master of the Posts had become vacant, and, as Burlamachi's successor, the House of Commons appointed Prideaux.
Thus ended the battle of the patents, which had raged more or less fiercely for more than twenty years. It was long indeed before Lords Warwick and Stanhope ceased urging their claims, Warwick as Witherings's assignee, and Stanhope on the allegation that at the Council Table the Lord Keeper Coventry had cajoled him into surrendering his patent; but after Prideaux's appointment there was no farther appeal to force.
Hardly had Prideaux assumed the direction of the letter office before he gave public notice that there would be a weekly conveyance of letters into all parts of the kingdom. There is reason to doubt, however, whether under his rule as much or nearly as much as this was accomplished. Next to Norwich, Yarmouth was then, as it is now, the chief town in the eastern counties; and yet it is certain that a post to Yarmouth was not established until after Prideaux's rule had ceased; and more than fifty years later we find his successors lamenting that, while Lincolnshire generally was ill provided with posts, there were several towns in that county which had no post at all.
But to whatever extent Prideaux's professions exceeded his performance, it is beyond question that he spared no effort to extend the posts, and that he is justly entitled to the credit, not indeed of improving upon Witherings's scheme, but of carrying that scheme into more general effect. Despite his exertions, however, he failed to keep pace with the wants of the time. Indeed, what facilities for intercourse had been given already seem to have created a demand for more. In 1649 the Common Council of the city of London, not content with a post only once a week to Scotland, established a post of their own. Along the whole line of road between London and Edinburgh they appointed their own postmasters and settled their ownpostage, and the same plan they proceeded to adopt in other parts. Prideaux, who to his office of Master of the Posts had recently added that of Attorney-General, was highly incensed. Only a few years before, the State monopoly of letters, when the State was represented by the Crown, had been the object of his fiercest denunciation, and now this same monopoly was a cherished possession to be defended at all hazards. First he remonstrated. Then he threatened. And neither threats nor remonstrances having any effect upon the city authorities, he reported their proceedings to the Council of State, and the Council of State reported them to Parliament. Parliament was in no mood for concession. The city posts were promptly suppressed, and more than thirty years elapsed before private enterprise again embarked upon a similar venture.
The report which Prideaux made to the Council of State had another result, which probably he little contemplated. In that report he had taken credit to himself that, although the charges of management had risen to £7000 a year, or about twice the amount they had been in Witherings's time, he had relieved the State from the whole of this burden. In other words, the posts had become self-supporting, but, so far as appeared from the report, were nothing more. The House of Commons was not satisfied. Accordingly the Council was instructed to examine and report whether the terms on which the letter office was held were the best that could be obtained. The investigation was soon made. Heretofore, in consideration of his defraying the charges, Prideaux had been allowed to receive the postage and make what he could out of it. For the future, besides defraying the charges, he was to pay to the State a fixed rent of £5000 a year. This was the introduction of the system of farming, a system which, as regards the posts generally, continued to nearly the end of the seventeenth and, as regards the by-posts, beyond the middle of the eighteenth century.
In 1653 Prideaux ceased to be Master of the Posts. Two years before he had been elected a member of the Council of State, and shortly after his election, andprobably as a consequence of it, the arrangements for communicating with the army had reached a high state of perfection. Between the Council and the forces in Scotland messengers, we are told, were passing almost every hour. But, useful as he may have made himself, Prideaux seems to have been altogether wanting in those qualities which are calculated to inspire confidence. At the Treaty of Uxbridge, where he was one of the commissioners, even his own colleagues had regarded him as a spy. This feeling of distrust may possibly explain how it happened that, after the expulsion of the Long Parliament, he was forced to content himself with his appointment as Attorney-General. The Council of State, as then reconstructed, did not include him among its members, and one of the first acts of the new Council was to relieve him from the responsibilities of the letter office. Grasping as he was, it is impossible to suppose that this can have been done by his own wish, for the appointment of Master of the Posts, though weighted with a rent of £5000 a year, was still a very lucrative one. His successor paid a rent of double that amount, and is reputed to have derived from his farm an enormous profit.
After Prideaux's death in August 1659, it transpired that his interest in the letter office had not ceased when he ceased to administer it. What was the interest he retained we do not know; but the matter seems to have been considered sufficiently serious to call for parliamentary inquiry. In the following February the House of Commons ordered "that the whole business concerning the Post Office, and what has been received by Mr. Prideaux, late Attorney-General, out of the same, and what account hath been made thereof he referred to a committee to examine, and to state matter of fact and report it to the Parliament and their opinion therein." To this order, however, no return appears to have been made. It is probable that at the Restoration the committee had not concluded its labours.
Oldmixon speaks of Prideaux as "a very fierce republican, who got a great estate by his zeal against the Church and Churchmen"; and it is certain that to that estate his zealfor the Post Office brought him no inconsiderable addition. Of the destination of a part of his wealth we are not left uninformed. Towards the close of the century a judge, before whose ferocity even Prideaux's pales, set out on a circuit, the infamy of which will endure to the end of time. Arrived in Somersetshire, he found residing at Ford Abbey, in the neighbourhood of Axminster, an inoffensive country squire, son of the former Master of the Posts, and named after him, Edmund Prideaux. From this gentleman, apparently because he was his father's son, and for no better reason, Jeffreys under threat of the gallows extorted £15,000, and he bought with the money an estate "to which," Lord Macaulay tells us, "the people gave the name of Aceldama, from that accursed field which was purchased with the price of innocent blood."
In 1653 the posts were farmed to Captain Manley at a rent of £10,000 a year; and in 1655, Manley's contract having expired, Cromwell on the advice of his Council placed them in the hands of Mr. Secretary Thurloe, on his giving security to the same amount. The change of management was followed two years later by an important step in advance. This was the passing of an Act of Parliament intituled an Act for settling the postage of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Legislative sanction was now given to what had hitherto rested on no better authority than Proclamation or Order in Council. A general office, to be called the Post Office of England, was to be established for the receipt and despatch of letters; and under the title of Postmaster-General and Comptroller of the Post Office an officer was to be appointed who was to have the exclusive right of carrying letters and of furnishing post-horses. At the Restoration the Act of 1657, the "pretended" Act as it was now called, could not of course be recognised as possessing any legal validity, and so it was replaced by another; but the later Act was little more than a re-enactment of the earlier one. Virtually, it is to the Act of 1657 that the General Post Office owes its origin, although the Act of 1660, as being unimpeachable, has been commonly called its charter.
Similar as the two Acts are in the main, there is one important difference between them. The Act of 1657 gives as a reason for making the posts the subject of parliamentary enactment that they are and have been "the best means of discovering and preventing many dangerous and wicked designs which have been and are daily contrived against the peace and welfare of this Commonwealth, the intelligence whereof cannot well be communicated but by letter of escript." To the odious practice here implied no countenance is given in the Act of 1660. But, indeed, it needed not this evidence to prove that during the Commonwealth the Post Office was largely used as an instrument of police. Thurloe's "intercepted" letters are matter of history; and the journals of the two Houses of Parliament shew that the foreign mails, both inward and outward, were stopped for whole weeks together, and committees appointed to open and read the letters. On one occasion the Venetian ambassador, whose letters had shared the same fate as the rest, entered an indignant protest. "He could not persuade himself," he said, "that the Government of England, so noble and generous, should have so inferior a mind as to open the letters of an ambassador, and by this means to violate the laws, and to give an example to the world so damnable, and of so little respect towards the minister of the Serenissima Respublica." Nor was his indignation appeased until four peers had waited upon him in the name of the House of Lords, and tendered an ample apology.
The rates of postage prescribed by the Act of 1657 were only slightly varied by the Act of 1660. As finally adjusted, they were as follows:—
OnOnSingle Letter.Double Letter.Per Ounce.80 miles and under2d.4d.8d.Above 80 miles3d.6d.12d.To or from Berwick3d.6d.18d.From Berwick within Scotland—40 miles and under2d.4d.8d.Above 40 miles4d.8d.12d.To or from Dublin6d.12d.24d.From Dublin within Ireland—40 miles and under2d.4d.8d.Above 40 miles4d.8d.12d.
How these rates compare with those which had gone before we have no means of judging. We only know that during Prideaux's management the postage on a single letter was 6d.; that at some time between 1655 and 1657 it was reduced to 3d.; and that the credit of this reduction was due to Clement Oxenbridge. Oxenbridge, after acting as deputy first to Prideaux and then to Manley, appears to have taken a farm under Thurloe; and, rightly or wrongly, he affirmed that, as soon as he had improved the posts at a cost to himself of more than £5000, and had made his farm profitable, he was turned adrift by Cromwell.
If the comparison be carried forward instead of backward, and the rates of 1660 be contrasted with those of later years, there is an important consideration which cannot be too carefully borne in mind. It is this, that in 1660 cross posts did not exist. Between two towns not being on the same post road, however near the towns might be, letters could circulate only through London; and the moment London was reached an additional rate was imposed. Hence the apparent charges, the charges as deduced from the table of rates, might be very different from the actual charges. Bristol and Exeter, for instance, are less than eighty miles apart; but in 1660 and for nearly forty years afterwards letters from one to the other passed through London, and would be charged, if single, not 2d. but 6d., and if double, not 4d. but 1s. That is to say, the postage[7]or portage, as it was then called, would consist of two rates, and each of these rates would be for a distance in excess of eighty miles. David Hume, writing more than a hundred years later, observes that before 1657 letters paid only about half as much postage as they did in his own time. This, no doubt, is true if rate be compared with rate according to the distance; but the fact we have mentioned very materially qualifies the force of the remark.
On foreign letters the rates ranged from 4d., the lowest rate for a single letter, to 2s., the highest rate for a double letter, and from 1s. 6d. to 4s. an ounce for letters of greater bulk. No provision was made for any charge except on letters from Europe. Letters came indeed from other parts; but as the Post Office did not bring them and paid nothing for their carriage, no postage was demanded. From India, for instance, a letter brought to England and posted there would pay only the home postage.
For post-horses the charge was fixed at 3d. a mile for each horse, besides 4d. to the guide of every stage. Two concessions were made to the public. Horses were no longer to be seized without the consent of the owners; and a traveller if kept waiting half an hour without being supplied might hire a horse wherever he could. That the seizure of horses had been a source of intense annoyance seems beyond question. In a Proclamation of 1603, as a reason for helping the postmasters to keep horses in sufficient number for the service of the posts, the townships are reminded of "the ease and quiet they reape thereby"; and long after the immunity from seizure had been granted, the allusions to the former practice leave no room for doubt that, though the sore was healed, the recollection of it still rankled.
According to Lord Macaulay, a part of the Post Office revenue was derived from post-horses.[8]With all deference to that eminent authority, and with all modesty we venture to think that such was not the case. The Proclamation of 1603, which was the origin of the monopoly, while giving to those who horsed the posts "the benefit and preheminence of letting horses" to all comers, expressly provided that, except for the service of the posts or for the use of persons travelling on affairs of State, no postmaster need keep horses unless he pleased, and that, if he did so, he should be atliberty to make his own terms. On this last point the words are, "But of all others riding Poste with horne and guide about their private businesses, the hire and prices are left to the parties discretions to agree and compound within themselves." Again, an account is still extant, dated 1623, or twenty years after the monopoly had been established, and giving in minute detail the particulars of the expenses of the posts as they then were; records also exist extending in almost unbroken succession over more than eighty years of the period during which the monopoly lasted, and dealing with every variety of Post Office question; and neither in the records nor the account is there the remotest allusion to the receipt of any sums on account of post-horses. Yet one reason more for the opinion we hold. About the middle of the eighteenth century, as the result of legislation which then took place, the roads were measured, and the measured mile proved to be shorter than the computed mile. As a consequence of this discovery the charge for post-horses was raised. A distance which had hitherto been reckoned as eight miles proved to be ten miles, and a charge as for ten instead of eight miles was made. Travellers were up in arms, and complained that the Post Office had raised its charges. The answer was that the Post Office had nothing to do with the matter; that the postmasters were entitled by law to so much a mile; and that the whole of the charge went into their own pockets. For these reasons we think that no part of the Post Office revenue was derived from the letting of post-horses. Indirectly, no doubt, the monopoly was a source of profit because, except for it, those who horsed the posts would not have been content with the wages they received. These, according to the account of 1623, ranged from 3s. a day to 6d. a day. To supplement the postmasters' pay without expense to the Crown was, we make bold to suggest, the object with which the monopoly was granted. And, of course, the better the object was secured, the more carefully would the monopoly be guarded.
In May 1660 Clement Oxenbridge, to whose exertions the Act of 1657 would seem to have been largely due,petitioned the Council of State to reimburse him the expenses to which he had been put in improving the posts, and the Council of State, after investigating the claim, reported the particulars to the House of Commons for directions. It was not, however, until after William and Mary had ascended the throne that any further step was taken. Oxenbridge, whose necessities had become greater as his age advanced, was then by the King's direction given an appointment under the Post Office of the annual value of £100; and this salary he continued to draw, although too old to discharge the duties for which it was paid, until his death in 1696.
At the Restoration the Post Office was leased to Henry Bishopp of Henfield in Sussex, for the term of seven years at a rent of £21,500 a year, or more than double the amount which had been paid by the previous farmer. Before three years had elapsed, however, Bishopp surrendered his lease, and was succeeded for the remainder of his term and at the same rent by Daniel O'Neile, Groom of the King's Bedchamber. O'Neile had loyally adhered to Charles during his exile, had attended his Sovereign on his visit to Scotland, had been banished that kingdom, and in connection with his banishment had achieved a singular distinction. He had given a written undertaking consenting to his own death if he ever returned.
Even at a rent of £21,500, as the Court had doubtless by this time learned, the Post Office was not a bad investment. O'Neile, like Bishopp, was to enjoy a monopoly of the carrying of letters, and to make what he could out of it; but he was rigidly to adhere to the rates of postage prescribed by the Act, charging neither more nor less. Old posts were not to be altered nor new posts erected, without the sanction of the Secretary of State; and the Secretary of State was to possess a veto on appointments and, as occasion might require, to "have the survey and inspection of all letters." To these conditions was afterwards added another. This was that no postmaster or other officer was to remain in the service who should not withinsix months obtain and forward to the postmaster-general a certificate, under the hand and seal of the Bishop of the diocese, to the effect that he was "conformable to the discipline of the Church of England."
In 1667, O'Neile's lease having expired, Lord Arlington, Secretary of State in the Cabinet known as the Cabal, was appointed postmaster-general; and, after a while, the office was again let out to farm, this time at a rent of £43,000 a year. Rapidly as the rent had grown, the public demands had grown more rapidly still, and little, if any, effort had been made to satisfy them. How inadequate the posts were, about this time, to meet the public requirements may be judged from a circumstance connected with Bishopp's appointment. The letters patent appointing him were to take effect from the 25th of June 1660, but their validity was to depend on an Act of Parliament, the Act reconstituting the General Post Office, which did not pass until some months afterwards. Meanwhile a whole crop of posts had sprung up between London and the country, which could not be suppressed until the Act was passed. As compensation for the loss he sustained by this encroachment on his monopoly between the 25th of June and the 29th of September Bishopp claimed and received no less than £500.
There is preserved in the Guildhall Library a letter from the Duke of Buckingham, to which the following note is appended:—"The great fire of London broke out on the 2nd of September 1666. It is seen by the date of this letter that the Duke of Buckingham, at that time in the highest position at Court and in the zenith of his power, was at Worthing, and did not receive intelligence of the awful calamity until after the city had been burning for five days." We do not know by what means the Duke was informed of the calamity, nor is it material to our present purpose that we should do so. All we desire now to observe is that if, as is not improbable, he was informed of it by letter, the letter—as we proceed to shew—reached him in due course of post. The fire broke out at midnight on the 2nd of September, and the 2nd of September was a Saturday, after which, exceptto the Downs and to places abroad, there was no post out of London until Tuesday the 5th, or rather, as the mails started after midnight, until early in the morning of Wednesday the 6th. Arundel was then the post-town for Worthing, and for the first part of the distance the course of post was, as it continued to be until the day of railways, through Tooting, Ewell, Epsom or Ebbesham as it was still called, Leatherhead, and Dorking. Continuing thence, not, as in later times, through Horsham, but through the hamlet of Coldharbour, the post-road skirted the foot of Leith Hill and passed through Stone Street, Billinghurst, and Amberley to Arundel, which would be reached late in the afternoon of Wednesday. Between Arundel and Worthing the distance is ten miles, and the postmaster would not, at the earliest, take out the letter for delivery until the morning of Thursday the 7th, or five days after the fire had broken out. Indeed, it may be permitted to us to doubt whether the letter, if letter there was, would have been delivered as early as the 7th, had it been for a less important personage.
Meagre as the means of communication were in those days, even such means as existed were not matter of common knowledge. The Post Office did not advertise its wares; and no newspapers then existed to do for the Post Office what the Post Office omitted to do for itself. What towns possessed post-houses of their own, and how these towns stood in relation to other towns which did not enjoy the same advantage, might well be considered essential information; yet even of this no public announcement was given. Blome, in hisBritannia, printed in 1671, remarks upon this defect, and for the benefit of his readers proceeds to supply it. After commenting upon the convenience which the Post Office affords, and lamenting that this convenience is not more generally known, he gives a list of the post towns which each county possesses, and supplements it with a series of county maps, so that, as he explains, persons desirous of writing to any particular place may be able to find out for themselves where the nearest post-house stands. As late as the end of the seventeenth and beginning of theeighteenth centuries separate maps appear to have been published with the same object, as a matter of private enterprise. In these maps the post towns are indicated by a castle surmounted by the royal standard.
But it was within the metropolis itself that the public need was greatest. Between London and the country posts went at unequal intervals indeed, and at intervals in some cases unduly long, and yet with regularity. To Kent and the Downs there was a post daily; to other parts of England and to Scotland a post every other day; and to Wales and to Ireland a post twice a week. But between one part of London and another there was no post at all. A resident in London having a letter for delivery within the metropolitan area had only one choice, to take the letter himself or to send it by another. And let the bearer of a letter be who he might, there was an inconvenience to which he was constantly exposed. The houses were not numbered, and were mainly to be recognised by the signs they bore. Later on, men who delivered letters over the same ground day after day complained that it was not always easy to find the address. Without local knowledge it must have been sometimes impossible.
Happily, in England the spirit of enterprise is such that an acknowledged want affecting any considerable section of the public is seldom suffered to endure very long. And so it proved in the present instance. The man who now undertook to relieve the capital from the intolerable inconvenience under which it laboured was William Dockwra, a merchant of the city of London. Dockwra had been a sub-searcher in the Custom House, and through some little interest he possessed at Court had been allowed to dispose of his place. The idea of the penny post is said indeed to have originated with Robert Murray, an upholsterer in Paternoster Row; but, be that as it may, to Dockwra belongs the credit of giving it practical shape. A man of less resolution or less convinced of the inherent merits of his undertaking might well have been daunted by the difficulties he had to encounter. The undertaking had beenconceived in so bold a spirit that to carry it out would involve an expense which Dockwra's unaided resources were altogether unable to bear. A difficulty still greater than the want of funds was the determined opposition of the Duke of York. In 1663 the profits of the Post Office had been settled on the Duke for his support and maintenance, and, with an eye ever intent on his own interests, he discerned or thought he discerned in the new project an infringement of his rights.
Undeterred by these difficulties, Dockwra persevered in the task he had taken in hand. At length the appointed day arrived. On the 1st of April 1680,[9]London, which had hitherto had no post at all, suddenly found itself in possession of one in comparison with which even the post of our own time is cast into the shade. For the purposes of the undertaking London and its suburbs were divided into seven districts with a sorting office in each. From Hackney in the north to Lambeth in the south, from Blackwall in the east to Westminster in the west, there was not a point within the bills of mortality which the new post did not reach. Between four and five hundred receiving offices were opened in a single morning. Placards were distributed and advertisements inserted in the public intelligences announcing where these offices were. Messengers called there for letters every hour. These, if for the country, were carried to the General Post Office, and if for the town, to the respective sorting offices. From the sorting offices, after being sorted and entered in books kept for the purpose, they were sent out for delivery, to the Inns of Court or places of business ten or twelve times a day, and to other places according to distance from four to eight times. Nor was the service confined to letters. It extended also to parcels, the only condition being that neither parcel nor letter should exceed one pound in weight,[10]or ten pounds in value. Subject to these limitations the charge between one part ofLondon and another was one penny. An exception indeed was made in the case of Hackney, Islington, Newington Butts, and Lambeth, which were then separate towns. There one penny carried only to the receiving office, and for delivery at a private house the charge was one penny more. Delivery in the street was not allowed.
But it was not only in the matter of weight and frequency of delivery that the new undertaking was conceived in the most liberal spirit. Provided a letter or parcel was securely tied and sealed and its contents endorsed on the outside, the charge of one penny covered not only cost of conveyance but insurance as well, up to a limit of ten pounds. That is to say, subject to this limit, if a parcel or a letter or its contents were lost, Dockwra would, the conditions being observed, make the value good.
There is yet another novelty which Dockwra introduced. As a check upon his messengers he supplied the seven sorting offices with stamps bearing their own initial letters and denoting the several hours of the day. With one of these stamps all letters and parcels were impressed as they passed through the post, and if in the busy parts of the capital they were not delivered within little more than an hour from the time denoted by the impression, the public were encouraged to complain. The following are specimens of the stamps which Dockwra used:—
Three stamps
This was the introduction of postmarks. In the first and last impressions Mor. 8 signifies of course 8 o'clock in the morning, and Af. 4, 4 o'clock in the afternoon. In the second or middle impression the initial letter L signifies Lyme Street, where the principal office of the penny post was held at Dockwra's private dwelling-house, formerly the dwelling-house of Sir Robert Abdy.
The General Post Office, until lately in Bishopsgate Street, stood at this time in Lombard Street, where it occupied a site on part of which the branch office now stands. There the persons employed, all told, numbered 77. In the country and dependent on the chief office were 227 postmasters, viz. 182 in England and Scotland and 45 in Ireland. Twelve persons were also employed in the office in Dublin. Altogether and throughout the whole of the kingdom the General Post Office, in 1680, gave employment to 316 persons, a number very much less than that which Dockwra employed in London alone.
On Saturday nights the penny post closed, in winter at six, and in summer at seven. On other nights of the week, Sundays excepted, it must have remained open to at least 9 o'clock, for at that hour the country letters were collected from the receiving offices and carried to the General Post Office. Besides Sundays, there were eight days in the year on which the post did not go, viz. three days at Christmas, two days at Easter, two days at Whitsuntide, and also the 30th of January, the anniversary of the death of King Charles the First.
In spite of the enormous advantages it conferred, the penny post was not at first received with unqualified satisfaction. Some fanatics denounced it as a Popish contrivance; and Lord Macaulay tells us how the porters complained that their interests were attacked, and tore down the placards on which the scheme was announced to the public. Even unprejudiced persons and persons who had no interests to protect complained that a large number of things were posted and not delivered. This Dockwra himself admitted, explaining that it was due to the illegible writing of the address or to the omission of some important particular by which the persons addressed might be identified, the omission of their trade, or of the signs which their houses bore, or of some well-known place or object in their vicinity. The manifest utility of the enterprise, however, soon bore down all opposition; and in little more than a year from its introduction the penny post, though weightedwith a scheme of insurance, was very nearly paying its own expenses.
The establishment of the penny post had one effect which had probably not been contemplated. It increased largely the number of letters for the country. Every man had now a post office at his own door. It is true that Dockwra's four or five hundred receiving offices were intended primarily for town letters; but country letters might be posted there, and, as we have seen, were collected at a stated hour every evening. Hitherto the case had been very different. Up to the 1st of April 1680, incredible as it may appear, the General Post Office in Lombard Street was the only receptacle for letters in the whole of London. There and nowhere else could letters be posted. Little wonder if, before 1680, persons whom the cost of postage might not deter from writing were yet deterred by their distance from the Post Office.
Dockwra might reasonably now expect to reap some of the rewards of success. A small band of citizens who had joined in the original venture had afterwards deserted him, and for six months he had carried it on at his sole charge. Others had then come to his aid, and a fresh partnership had been formed. The undertaking prospered, became self-supporting, and at length gave promise of large returns. This very promise excited the greed of the Duke of York. So long as the outgoings exceeded the receipts Dockwra remained unmolested; but no sooner had the balance turned than the Duke complained of his monopoly being infringed, and the Courts of Law decided in his favour. Not only was Dockwra cast in damages, but the undertaking which he had impoverished himself to establish was wrested out of his hands, and the penny post, in less than five years from its introduction, was incorporated into the General Post Office.[11]
Generosity formed no part of James's character, and, so long as he sat on the throne, Dockwra's services remained without the slightest recognition. In 1690, however, upon an address from the House of Commons, William and Mary granted him a pension of £500 for seven years, and in 1697 the grant was renewed for three years longer. In the same year as the renewal of the grant, but a little earlier, he was appointed comptroller of the penny post at a salary of £200, and this appointment he retained until 1700. Then, both appointment and grant came to an abrupt termination together, for, on charges brought against him by his own subordinates, Dockwra, like Witherings, was dismissed. Such was the tribute paid to the man who had conferred on his country benefits which he never tired of predicting would endure to all posterity.
Of the charges against Dockwra two deserve special notice, as shewing that the penny post, after its acquisition by the State, continued to be conducted on the same principles as before. These two charges were—1st, that, contrary to his duty, he "forbids the taking in any band-boxes (except very small) and all parcels above a pound"; and 2nd, that he takes money out of letters and "makes the office pay for it," thereby clearly indicating that at that time the State carried on a parcel post and continued the practice of making losses good. A third charge, the truth of which it is more easy to credit, imputed to Dockwra that he spoke and acted as if his object were to get the penny post into his own hands again. It is worthy of remark, as characteristic of the times in which he lived, and may perhaps be regarded as affording some presumption of his innocence, that Dockwra appears to have been at less pains to refute the charges than to prove that he had taken the oath of supremacy, or the oath which had been recently substituted for it, and that he had received the Holy Sacrament.
We have said that to us who live at the end of the nineteenth century it may appear incredible that up to April 1680 the General Post Office in Lombard Street wasthe only receptacle for letters in the whole of London. But it is by no means certain that our descendants may not think it more incredible still that London, with all its boasted progress, has only now recovered a post which, in point of convenience and cheapness, at all approaches that which an enterprising citizen established more than two hundred years ago. When and under what circumstances this post lost its original features will have to be considered hereafter.
In 1685, on the death of Charles the Second, the revenue of the Post Office was settled on James, his heirs and successors. Rochester, the High Treasurer, became postmaster-general; and for the actual discharge of the duties a deputy was appointed under the title of Governor.
Two years before, the panic caused by the discovery of the Rye-House Plot had led to the issue of a Proclamation which, if differing little from others that had gone before, acquires importance from the circumstances under which it appeared. Unauthorised posts had again sprung up in all directions, simply, no doubt, because there was a demand for the accommodation they afforded; but the Government, no less than the persons who denounced Dockwra's undertaking as a Popish contrivance, seem to have been possessed with the idea that these posts were mere vehicles for the propagation of treason. To prevent treasonable correspondence was the avowed object of the present Proclamation, and the means by which the object was sought to be attained was the suppression of private and irregular posts, for by these, the Proclamation went on to declare, the conspirators had been materially assisted in their designs. Mayors, sheriffs, justices of the peace, constables and others were enjoined to make diligent search for letters passing otherwise thanthrough the regular post. Special officers were to be appointed for the same purpose. All such letters, wherever discovered, were to be deemed to be "of dangerous consequence"; and not only were they to be seized and carried to the Secretary of State or the Privy Council for the purpose of being opened and inspected, but both the bearers and senders of them were to be proceeded against at law.
On James's accession to the throne the Proclamation of 1683 was succeeded by another in almost identical terms; and it is certain that during his reign the liberties taken with post letters were hardly less than they had been in the worst days of the Commonwealth. Only a few months before Rochester's dismissal, for no better reason than to gratify curiosity, orders were given that the bags from Scotland should be transmitted to Whitehall, and during a whole week not a single private letter from beyond the Tweed was delivered in London. Happily, however, this state of things was soon to cease. After the Revolution the appointment of postmaster-general was conferred upon persons who were otherwise unconnected with affairs of State, and the effect of this change was, as William no doubt intended, at once to lift the Post Office out of the region of politics. In the eyes of the Rochesters, the Arlingtons, and the Thurloes, busied as they were in the detection of conspiracies against the State, the Post Office had been little else than an instrument which might be usefully employed as a means to that end. With plain citizens unversed in the ways of government, the only consideration was how best they could accomplish the object for which they had been appointed; and this object was so to manage and improve the posts of the country as to secure to their Sovereign the highest possible revenue.
But, before William could give effect to his views, there was an adherent to be provided for. This was Colonel John Wildman, who was appointed postmaster-general in July 1689. Of Wildman's career at the Post Office little is known, except that he was profuse in making promises which he never performed. He might, perhaps, himselfhave pleaded that he was not given time to perform them, for after eight months' tenure of the appointment he was dismissed for some reason which is, and will probably continue to be, a mystery. Far different is the record left behind them by Wildman's immediate successors. These were Sir Robert Cotton and Mr.—afterwards Sir Thomas—Frankland, who became joint postmasters-general in March 1690, and served in that capacity for nearly twenty years. They had sat in James's Parliament, the one for Cambridgeshire, and the other for the borough of Thirsk, and these seats they retained under William. From the writings they have left behind them we are able to see these two men not as a biographer might dress them up, but as they really were. Everything about them, their virtues, their foibles, their habits, their ailments, their devotion to duty, their unwillingness to believe evil of any one, their hatred of injustice or oppression, their unbounded credulity, their anxiety about their re-election, their gratitude for any little scrap of news which they might carry to Court, their fondness for a glass of port wine, their attacks of gout, their habit of taking snuff, even the hour of their going to bed—all this and more is there revealed, and makes up a record of simplicity and benevolence which it is a delight to read.
The establishment over which these two simple gentlemen were called upon to preside had recently received a considerable addition. Out of London, the Post Office servants remained much as they had been ten years before, at about 239 in number, of whom all but twelve were postmasters; but in London the force employed at the General Post Office had been raised from 77 to 185. The Penny Post Office, which had now been wrested out of Dockwra's hands, accounts for the greater part of the difference. This gave employment, exclusive of receivers, to 74 persons—a comptroller, an accomptant, and a collector, 14 sorters and 57 messengers—at a total charge for salaries of £2000 a year. Another part of the establishment, and by no means the least important or the least difficult to manage, consisted of the packet boats. These, in 1690,were eleven in number, viz.—two for France, two for Flanders, two for Holland, two for the Downs, and three for Ireland. Owing to the war, however, the boat-service to France was now in abeyance.
Little more than half a century had elapsed since the introduction of postage, and meanwhile the revenue had risen by strides which were for those times prodigious. In 1635 the posts were maintained at a cost to the Crown of £3400 a year. Within fifteen years not only had they become self-supporting, but a rent was paid for the privilege of farming them. This rent was, in 1650, £5000 a year; in 1653, £10,000; in 1660, £21,500; and some time before 1680, £43,000. In 1690 the net revenue was probably about £55,000. In 1694, according to a return made to the House of Commons two years later, it was £59,972.
The headquarters of the Post Office were at this time in Lombard Street. Here the postmasters-general resided; and here, far from shutting themselves up, they were to be found at all hours by any one who might wish to consult them on business connected with their office. Freedom of communication with those among whom they lived, and not inaccessibility, appears indeed to have been a part of their policy. With the foreign merchants especially they maintained the most friendly intercourse, and were wont to defer to their wishes and suggestions in the arrangement of the packets. Besides giving constant attendance during the day, the postmasters-general sat as a Board every morning and night. To these Board-meetings they attached the highest importance, especially on the nights of Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, when mails were despatched into all parts of the country. These were known as the "Grand Post Nights," and the others as "Bye-Nights."
The Post Office building appears to have been not ill adapted to its purpose. A massive gate opened into a court of oblong shape. This court was paved from end to end for the merchants to walk in while waiting to receive their letters. On the right was the Board-room with theresidence of the postmasters-general attached; on the left the office for foreign letters; and in front, immediately facing the entrance, was the sorting office. The office for the letter-carriers was in the basement. The rest of the building was devoted to the use of the Post Office servants, who, owing to their unseasonable hours of attendance, were required to live in the office itself or else in its immediate vicinity.
The machinery for the dispersion of letters was very simple. For Post Office purposes the kingdom was divided into six roads—the North Road, the Chester or Holyhead Road, the Western Road, the Kent Road, and the Roads to Bristol and to Yarmouth; and these roads were presided over by a corresponding number of clerks in London whose duty it was to sort the letters and to tax them with the proper amount of postage. At the present time, when, owing to the system of prepayment, there is comparatively little taxing to be done, no less than 2800 clerks and sorters are engaged every evening in despatching the letters into the country. Two hundred years ago the whole operation was performed, both sorting and taxing together, by the six clerks of the roads, and they had not even a sorter to assist them until 1697.
The letters, as soon as they had been sorted, were despatched into the country, the usual hour of despatch being shortly after midnight; but, of course, with a force to prepare them of only six persons, a rigid punctuality such as that which now distinguishes the operations of the Post Office could hardly be observed. An instance remains on record of the disturbance caused by any unusual pressure. The 25th of February 1696, we are told, was a foreign post night, and it happened that the letters for the country as well as abroad were more than ordinarily numerous. On this occasion the mails which should have gone out before three o'clock in the morning could not be despatched until between six and seven.
Once clear of London, the letters passed into the hands of the postmasters, who were alone concerned in theirtransmission and distribution. At the present time, multifarious as the duties of a postmaster are, it is not one of them to transport the mails from town to town. But such was not the case in 1690. The post roads were then divided into sections or, as they were commonly called, stages; and these stages were presided over by a corresponding number of postmasters, whose duty it was to carry the mails each over his own stage. This had been the original object of their appointment, the object for which they had been granted the monopoly of letting post-horses, and it still remained their primary duty, to which every other was subordinate. And yet traces of this original function were already beginning to disappear. The posts settled on the six main roads of the kingdom had not been long in extending themselves to other roads; and on these branch roads one postmaster would be charged with the carrying of the mails over two or more stages, leaving another without any transport duty at all. Kendal, for instance, lay on a branch road leaving the Holyhead Road at Chester; and from Wigan the letters for Kendal were fetched by the postmaster of Preston, who passed not only his own town but the town of Lancaster on his way.
In 1690 no provincial town had a letter-carrier of its own, as that term is now understood. Even at Bristol and at Norwich, which ranked next to the capital in size and importance, there was for all Post Office purposes one single agent, and that was the postmaster. Upon him and him alone devolved all the duties which now, at all but the smallest towns, a body of sorters and letter-carriers is maintained to perform. Whether out of London there was any settled mode of delivery is uncertain; but there seems little doubt that, soon after the establishment of the Post Office, to deliver letters in his own town had come to be a part, though a secondary part, of a postmaster's duty. At Maidstone, indeed, the delivery appears to have reached a high state of perfection. The postmaster there fetched the mails from Rochester and carried them to Ashford, dropping the letters for his own town as he passed through. Thesewere at once taken out by two men of his own and delivered, so that, as he took pride in relating, a letter from London arriving by the morning post at noon could he answered by the return post, which left Maidstone at six o'clock in the evening.
But this must have been an exceptional case. Except perhaps at the largest towns, letters were yet too few to make such an arrangement necessary; and it seems probable that the hour at which the delivery was made and the area over which it extended were very much in the postmaster's discretion. One check there was, and, so far as appears, one only. This was the letter bill which accompanied the letters, and in which was inserted the postage which a postmaster had to collect and bring to account; but it frequently happened that he advanced the amount himself, and of course, where this was so, there was nothing to shew that any particular letter had been delivered, still less that it had been delivered within a particular time. Far more effective, it may well be believed, than any official check was the desire, the natural desire, to stand well with his neighbours; and the substantial marks of kindness which they seldom failed to bestow upon him whenever he was so unfortunate as to get into trouble, preclude the idea that, in the matter of delivery or otherwise, remissness or inattention can have been at all general.
In London, owing to recent malpractices there, attention had been directed to the salaries, and these had been improved. The six clerks of the roads received four of them £60 a year, one £50, and one as much as £100. The sorters received £40 a year, and the general post letter-carriers 11s. a week. The wages of the penny post letter-carriers or messengers, as for distinction's sake they were called, were 8s. In addition to their salaries the clerks of the roads enjoyed the privilege of franking newspapers or, as they were then called, gazettes. This privilege, which dated from the first establishment of the Post Office, had arrested the attention of James when Duke of York, and he had desired to take it away; but, on learning thatcompensation would have to be given, he decided to let it continue. By post the gazettes would have cost from 4d. to 6d. apiece. The clerks of the roads supplied them for 2d. The emoluments from this source kept steadily growing during William's reign. At first the longer and more frequent sessions of Parliament, and, later on, the war in which England was engaged, excited an appetite for news to which the two previous reigns afford no parallel. A statement which the postmasters-general made to the Treasury about this time, while evincing perhaps some little credulity, evinces also how keen, in the judgment of two shrewd and intelligent men, was the hunger after early intelligence. "In England," they say, "there are many postmasters, who some of them serve without salary, others for less than they would otherwise do, in consideration of their being allowed gazets by the office ffrank."
Another curious custom prevailed in 1690, and continued indeed for nearly a century afterwards. This was the distribution among the Post Office servants in London of a certain sum annually as "drink and feast money." The sum so distributed in 1685 had been no less than £60; and this was in addition to two "feasts" which were given them at the expense of the Crown, one at midsummer and the other at Christmas.
In the country, where there was no one to watch over the postmasters' interests, the salaries were merely nominal. The postmaster of Sudbury in Suffolk received a salary of £26 a year; and for this he had, three times a week, to carry the letters to Braintree and back, a distance of thirty-two miles, over a road that was barely passable. At Maidstone, in order to keep the delivery up to his own standard of excellence, the postmaster expended 2s. a day in what he called "horse-meate and man's-meate," yet his salary was only £5. Many postmasters received no salary at all. Even at Bristol, which stood next to London in population and wealth, the salary was only £60, having been recently raised to that amount from £50.
Nor was it only in the matter of salary that the postmasterswere objects of compassion. The disturbed state of the country during the last few years had brought back old abuses. Officers of the army and others who had not the officers' excuse of urgency would override the post-horses, and when, as frequently happened, these were lamed or killed, no compensation appears to have been given. Another class of persons infested the roads, persons who, taking advantage of the general confusion, would hire post-horses and not return them. During the last twelve or thirteen years of the seventeenth century many postmasters were languishing in prison through inability to pay what they owed for postage; and among these there were few who did not trace their misfortunes to the fact that immediately before and after William's accession to the throne their horses had been killed or spoiled through reckless riding or else run away with.
But neither the loss of their horses nor the inadequacy of their remuneration was so galling to the postmasters as the liability to which they now became subject, of having soldiers quartered upon them. A standing army had been recently authorised, and there was little or no barrack accommodation. Hence a liability, which in our own time might be little more than nominal, was, in 1690, tantamount to a heavy tax. Under Charles and James[12]the postmasters had been exempt from this annoyance; but the exemption had been granted by virtue of the royal prerogative, and William could not be induced to continue it. In vain it was urged that, if a burden were cast upon them as novel as it was oppressive, justice demanded that their salaries should be increased. The King resolutely refused to make a distinction which the law did not recognise, and, except in a few isolated cases, the salaries remained unchanged.
Despite these drawbacks, there is no reason to think that the appointment of postmaster was not eagerly sought for, or that when obtained there was any general disposition to throw it up. The explanation is obvious. In the first place the appointment carried with it the exclusive right of letting post-horses. This monopoly, at all events on the more frequented roads, must have been remunerative; and it must have been especially remunerative where, as appears to have been generally the case, the postmaster was also innkeeper. Travellers were drawn to his house, for it was only there that they could procure horses to pursue their journey. He was, in a word, assured of custom. Other sources of emolument were—1st, gratuities, varying according to distance, from 1d. to 3d., on every letter he collected or delivered; and 2nd, what were technically called "Bye-letters." This term, whatever may have been the case a century before, had now a distinctive meaning. It meant letters which stopped short of London,[13]letters upon which at that time there was no check. In 1690 the postage on these letters was probably not large; but, large or small, the whole or all but the whole of it found its way into the pockets of the postmasters, and it was one of the first cares of the new postmasters-general to consider how the diversion might be stopped.
Such, in England, was the condition of the Post Office when Cotton and Frankland assumed the direction of it in the month of March 1690. In Scotland the posts were under separate direction, the direction of the Secretary of State for that part of the kingdom, and subject to the control of the Scotch Parliament. For purposes of convenience, however, an arrangement had been made between the two Post Offices. On letters between London and Edinburgh in both directions the English Post Office took not only its own share of the postage but the whole; and, in return, it paid the salaries of all the postmasters and defrayed the cost of all expresses between the Border town of Berwick-on-Tweedand Edinburgh. The correspondence at this time passing between the two capitals was of the slightest. It is true that for the three years ending March 1693 the amount due to the London office for postage on letters to Edinburgh was £1500, or at the rate of £500 a year; but the correspondence of the Secretary of State for Scotland, or "Black-box" as it was called, from the colour of the box in which it was carried, would probably account for nearly the whole. In 1707, which no doubt was a busy year in consequence of the Act of Union, the cost of carrying this box to and fro averaged £66 a month.
In Ireland the Post Office was managed by a deputy-postmaster, who was directly responsible to the postmasters-general in London. The method of business was the same as in England. Instead, however, of six "roads," there were only three—the Munster Road, the Ulster Road, and the Connaught Road. The Dublin establishment, clerks and letter-carriers included, consisted of twelve persons, of whom five received £20 a year, and no one, the deputy-postmaster excepted, more than £80. The deputy-postmaster himself received £400. Such at least was the normal establishment; but all was now confusion. The battle of the Boyne had not yet been fought, and Tyrconnel was still Lord Deputy. By his direction the Post Office servants in Dublin, down to the youngest letter-carrier, had been turned out of their appointments; and the mails from England, instead of being opened at the Post Office, were being carried to the castle and opened there.
The new postmasters-general had not long taken up their quarters in Lombard Street before they began to feel serious alarm for the revenue committed to their charge. It was in the matter of bye-letters that their apprehensions were first aroused. London, as the metropolis, sent and received more letters than any other town, more probably than all the other towns of the kingdom put together. Through London, too, as the centre of the Post Office system, many letters passed in those days which would not so pass now, because there were no cross-posts. Still there was aresidue, a residue considerable in the aggregate, consisting of letters which did not touch London in any part of their course; and of these comparatively few were accounted for. Some thirty years later, after a check had been established, the revenue derived from bye-letters was only a little over £3000 a year. At the end of the seventeenth century it probably did not amount to as many hundreds.
It was, however, not the letters that fell into the post, but those that were kept out of it, the illicit traffic in fact, that caused the greatest concern. This traffic was assuming larger proportions every day. Under Charles and James searchers had been appointed, men who searched for letters as baggage is searched at the Custom House. No suspected person, no suspected vehicle, was safe from inspection. But there was no legal sanction for the practice, and it had ceased on William's accession. Early in the present reign it had been mooted whether a prosecution should not be undertaken, at all events against the principal offenders; but the King refused to consent to a step which he regarded as impolitic and calculated to excite discontent. License waxed bolder with impunity. Along the road from Bristol to Worcester and from Worcester to Shrewsbury men might be seen openly collecting and delivering letters in defiance of the law. Openly or clandestinely the same thing was being done in other parts. "Wherever," wrote the postmasters-general, "there are any townes which have commerce one with another so as to occasion a constant intercourse by carryer or tradesman, there we do find it a general practice to convey at the same time a considerable number of letters."
But the illicit traffic between one part of the country and another, large as were the dimensions it had assumed, was insignificant as compared with that which was taking place between the country and London. This was the natural result of the establishment of the penny post. At the first introduction of postage care had been taken so to fix the rates that for single letters the post should be cheaper than the common carrier. But the commoncarrier, in competition with the State, had one enormous advantage. He could reduce his terms at will. So long, therefore, as there was a profit to be made, the relative cheapness of the post had proved only an imperfect check.