To my expense of a journey from New York to RoadIsland, Boston, and eastward of it and back again,when I settled the Post Office there£5000To my expense of a journey from New York to Marylandand Virginia and back again to settle the office there5000To several other journeys and incident charges relatingto the Post Office16180
In America as in England, from the first erection of the posts, the correspondence went on steadily increasing year after year. Thus, in the first year beginning the 1st of May 1693 the "New York Post" produced £61; in thesecond, £82; in the third, £93; and in the fourth year, ending the 1st of May 1697, it produced £122. The same progress is to be seen in what were called the "Boston, Road Island, Connecticut and Piscataway Posts." In the first two years beginning also in May 1693 these produced £296 or at the rate of £148 a year; in the third year they produced £227; and in the fourth, £298. The returns of the Philadelphia post also kept improving; but here Hamilton encountered difficulties of management, as will be seen by his own entries:—
By the produce of the Philadelphia post from the 22ndof August 1693 to the 23rd of April 1694, atwhich time I was forced to change the Postmaster£1096By the produce of the same post from the 23rd of April1694 to the 13th of February 1697, at which timeI was forced to change the Postmaster again10537
The Virginia and Maryland posts were the single exception. Of these Hamilton records "The Virginia and Maryland posts never yielded anything, but cost Mr. Neale near £600." However much these posts might be improved, he dared not reckon upon the correspondence exceeding one hundred letters a year.
There is only one more entry which we will quote from Hamilton's account. It is this:—
By cash which the Postmaster of New York gatheredup upon the road in Connecticut for letters£6160
Promising as the prospect was on the whole, Neale's receipts from the posts fell far short of his expenses in erecting and maintaining them. His expenses up to May 1697 were £3817, and his receipts £1457, leaving him not only out of pocket to the amount of £2360, but with his means and his credit exhausted. It was admitted on all hands that the posts must before long become self-supporting, even if they should not prove remunerative. But meanwhile how were they to be carried on? Hamilton had his own plan to propose. This was first that within America the postage rates should be raised, and "that the post and his horse should go fferry-free"; and second, thatbetween England and America rates should be settled, and that shipmasters should be required on the other as on this side of the Atlantic to take their letters at once to the Post Office of the port at which they first touched, and hand them to the postmaster, receiving as remuneration one penny a letter.
For inland letters the increased rates which Hamilton proposed were as follows, all but the first two entries being in his own words:—
Pence.Where the distance from New York does not exceed 80 miles6Where it exceeds 80, and does not exceed 150 miles9To and from Boston and New York, 300 miles12To and from Boston and Jersey, 370 miles18To and from Boston and Philadelphia, 390 miles20To and from Boston and Annapolis in Maryland, 550 miles36To and from Boston and James Towne in Virginia, 680 miles42To and from New York and Annapolis, 250 miles24To and from New York and James Towne, 380 miles, and manybroad and dangerous bays and rivers to be ferryed over30
It may surprise our readers to learn that between England and America there actually existed, 200 years ago, what now is little more than the dream of the postal reformer,—an ocean penny postage. Yet such is the fact. In 1698 it was the custom of the masters of ships bound for America to hang up bags in coffee-houses, and any letters that might be dropped into these bags they carried, and were glad to carry, over for one penny or twopence a letter, according as it was a single or a double one. This custom, as Hamilton pointed out, was liable to abuse. In the first place, any one who had put a letter into a coffee-house bag might, under pretence of wanting his own letter back, possess himself of the letter of somebody else. And secondly, on arrival in America, the shipmasters being under no obligation to make a prompt delivery, were apt to deliver the letters, not when they reached a port, but when they were on the point of leaving it, and after they had disposed of their lading. All this would be remedied if rates of postage were settled between England and America. The letters would then be in the custody of the Post Office until delivered to the shipmaster, and the shipmaster would bebound to restore them to the same custody as soon as he arrived at his destination.
But Hamilton's main argument in favour of establishing sea-rates of postage was the impossibility of things remaining as they were. Neale was without resources, and the posts were not self-supporting. Unless, therefore, some means should be devised for increasing the receipts, the posts must be given up. Let sea-rates be imposed, and the receipts would be increased at once, for all letters from Europe, which on arrival in America were now being delivered by private hand, would then fall into the post, and be forced to pay American postage. It was true that between the mother country and her colonies a packet service did not exist, and that to impose a charge where no service was rendered in return would be contrary to Post Office usage; but the object to be gained was too important to allow this consideration to prevail. Such were the arguments by which Hamilton supported his proposal that on letters between England and America postage should be charged—of 6d. for a single letter, 1s. for a double letter, and 1s. 6d. for "a packet."
There were one or two points on which Cotton and Frankland did not agree with Hamilton. Experience had taught them, as they stated on another occasion, that the way to improve the Post Office revenue was to "make the intercourse of letters easy to people." So now, in their representation to the Treasury, they condemned the inland rates which Hamilton proposed as altogether too high. They had been long enough at the Post Office, they said, to know that "the easy and cheap corresponding doth encourage people to write letters, and that this revenue was but little in proportion to what it is now till the postage of letters was reduced from 6d.[33]to 3d."
Hamilton had contemplated the passing of a fresh Act of Parliament in order to impose sea-rates and to oblige shipmasters to give up their letters as soon as they reached port. Cotton and Frankland were not satisfied that a fresh Act of Parliament was necessary; nor did they express any opinionas to the particular rates which should be imposed. They recommended, however, the appointment of an officer whose duty it should be "to take care of" all letters for America, and to put them into a special bag to be sealed with the office seal. Public notice should at the same time be given prohibiting the collection of such letters by other persons. To the shipmaster to whom the bag might be delivered the inducement to take it without delay to the Post Office of the port at which he should first arrive would be that he would there receive one penny for each letter the bag might contain. Hitherto, under the coffee-house arrangement, the penny had been paid in England; for the future, it would be paid in America. In other words, the shipmaster, instead of receiving his recompense in advance, would receive it after his work was done and only provided it was done properly.
On one point the postmasters-general held a decided opinion. Towards the support of the posts the Government of New York had made an annual contribution of £50, in consideration of which the Government letters appear to have been carried free; but otherwise Neale's undertaking had not received from the authorities that countenance and support which, in Cotton and Frankland's opinion, were essential to its success. They expressed themselves convinced that, for want of due encouragement, the posts would never prosper in private hands, and recommended that they should be transferred to the Crown.
Whether any, and if so, what action was taken upon the postmaster-general's representation we do not know. There is some reason to think that between England and America sea-rates of postage were settled, as had been done a few years before in the case of Jamaica; but we possess no certain information on the point. All we know is that, upon Neale being informed of the postmaster-general's opinion that the inland posts should be transferred to the Crown, he immediately offered to surrender his patent, and that the offer was not accepted. The payment he demanded was either a capital sum of £5000 or else £1000 a year for life or for the unexpired term of his grant.
Hamilton returned to America. The next we hear of him is in 1700. Neale was then dead, having shortly before his death assigned his interest in the posts as security for his debts. To Hamilton he owed £1100, and to an Englishman of the name of West he owed for money advanced £200; and into the hands of these two persons, in default of any one willing to act as Neale's executor or administrator, the posts now came. In April 1703 Hamilton also died; and for three or four years his widow carried on the posts at her own charge.
In 1706 Mrs. Hamilton and West urged that their patent, which had seven and a half years yet to run, might be enlarged for a further term of twenty-one years, and that they might have permission to set up packet boats between England and America. To this Cotton and Frankland were opposed, being still of opinion that the posts should not remain in private hands; and they recommended, as a more politic measure, that the patent should be purchased for £1664, a sum which the patentees had expressed themselves willing to accept. Whether this was the sum actually given we know not; but in the following year the patent was surrendered and the posts of America became vested in the Crown.
In connection with the transfer John Hamilton, Andrew's son, was appointed to his father's place of deputy postmaster-general, and this appointment he retained until 1722, when he resigned. It was then and not until then that the posts became self-supporting. "We have now," write the postmasters-general on the 10th of August in that year, "put the Post Office in North America and the West Indies upon such a foot that for the future, if it produce no profit to the revenue, it will no longer be a charge to it, but we have good reason to hope there will be some return rather from thence."
Such, hardly 200 years ago, were the humble beginnings of a Post Office with which, in the magnitude and diversity of its operations, no other in the world can now compare.
In 1707, on the passing of the Act of Union between England and Scotland, the first step taken by the postmasters-general was to alter the colours of the packets. The cross of St. Andrew, with its blue ground, united with the red cross of St. George, now became the national ensign; and the packets no less than the ships of the Royal Navy were under obligation to carry it.
The Post Office in Scotland was at this time held in farm at a rent of £1194 a year. The lease expired on the 11th of November, and from that date the postmasters-general held themselves responsible for the Scotch no less than the English posts. They at once proceeded to frame an establishment. George Main, the farmer, was appointed deputy-postmaster of Edinburgh at a salary of £200, this being the amount which one year with another he had made out of his contract. Three persons were appointed to assist him, an accomptant and two clerks. These, with three letter-carriers at a crown a week each, and a postmaster at the foot of the Canongate, constituted the Edinburgh establishment.
In the country there were thirty-four postmasters, of whom only twelve were paid by salary, the remaining twenty-two receiving as their remuneration a certain proportion of the postage on inland letters. Thus, three had one-half of this postage, one had one-third, and eighteen had one-fourth. The highest salaries were given to the postmasters of Haddingtonand Cockburnspath, who received £50 apiece, the reason being no doubt that these two towns were on the direct line of road between Edinburgh and London. At Aberdeen, the postmaster's salary was £28; at Glasgow, £25; at Dundee, Montrose, and Inverness, £15; and at Dumfries and Ayr, £12. Runners[34]at a fixed charge were maintained between town and town—as, for instance, between Edinburgh and Aberdeen at £60 a year, between Aberdeen and Inverness at £30 a year, and between Inverness and Thurso at £18 a year: but except at Edinburgh there was no letter-carrier, and except between Edinburgh and Berwick there was no horse-post north of the Tweed. The establishment charges for the whole of Scotland, Edinburgh included, were less than £1000 a year.
But something more was necessary than to frame an establishment and to alter the colours of the packets. Serious doubts had arisen whether, as the law stood, the postmasters-general of England were competent to deal with the posts of Scotland; and, this vital consideration apart, between the two divisions of the kingdom certain inequalities existed which only fresh legislation could redress. Under the Scotch Act of 1695 the postage on a single letter between Edinburgh and Berwick was 2d. Under the English Act of 1660, 2d. would carry a single letter from Berwick northwards for only forty miles, and considerably more than forty miles separated Berwick from Edinburgh. This difference arose no doubt from mere inaccuracy of reckoning on the English side; and yet it was one which nothing less than a new Act, an Act by the united Parliament, would adjust.
It is the more singular that at this time the postmasters-general should not have taken steps to promote legislation, because, in connection with the English no less than the Scotch Post Office, there were several matters on which freshlegislation had become necessary. The statute on which the very existence of the Post Office itself depended had been found difficult to deal with, on account of its loose and ambiguous wording. The postage to America and the West Indies rested on no legal sanction. For the pence paid upon ship-letters the postmasters-general had no authority to produce, and the auditors had threatened to disallow, the payment. Even the penny post was of doubtful legality. The Courts had indeed decided that Dockwra's undertaking was an infraction of the rights of the Crown; but they had not decided, nor had they been called upon to decide, whether in the hands of the Crown the same undertaking would be legal. The law, as it stood, prescribed no postage lower than twopence. By the penny post the postage was one half of that amount.
With these and other matters requiring adjustment, it might well be supposed that the postmasters-general would have been glad of the opportunity which the Act of Union afforded to set their house in order. Yet, so far from taking any steps in that direction, they now remained perfectly passive. Of the reason for this inaction we are not informed; but we venture to suggest an explanation. Cotton and Frankland were advocates of cheap postage. Should fresh legislation be entered upon, what guarantee had they that postage would not be made dearer? So far, indeed, as they could judge, such was much more likely than not to be the case. As early as William's reign they had been asked to estimate how much an additional penny of postage would produce; and the necessities of the Civil List which had prompted the inquiry had since become more and more pressing.
It is not impossible that there was another, though subordinate, reason. Between Whitehall and Lombard Street communications had been passing from time to time, which might fairly raise the presumption that advantage would be taken of any fresh Act to insert a clause under which all Post Office servants, the postmasters-generalincluded, would be disfranchised. Cotton and Frankland, who still retained their seats, the one for Cambridgeshire, and the other for the borough of Thirsk, were not the men to be deterred by personal considerations from doing what they conceived to be their duty; but if on principle they objected to an increase in the rates of postage, it was little calculated to reconcile them to a measure which they regarded as mischievous that, as a probable consequence of its introduction, they would lose their seats. But be the reason what it might, the fact remains that, whereas at one time they were continually suggesting the propriety of fresh legislation in order to clear up ambiguities in the existing statute, no such suggestion had been recently made, and they now remained perfectly silent.
Thus matters stood when, in October 1708, or a year and a half after the Act of Union had passed, an incident occurred which made silence no longer possible. Letters of Privy Seal had been issued granting salaries payable out of the revenue of the Scotch Post Office to certain professors of the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and warrants for payment of these salaries were sent to Lombard Street to be signed. The postmasters-general, being in doubt whether their signature would be valid, took the precaution of consulting the law officers. The law officers' opinion, which was not given until the end of December, must have struck dismay into the hearts of those who sought it. It was to the effect that the postmasters-general of England could not act as postmasters-general of Scotland until they had been to Edinburgh and taken the oaths prescribed by the Scotch law. A journey to Edinburgh in those days, especially in the depth of winter, was no light undertaking. But this was not all. And as soon—the opinion proceeded—as they have taken the oaths and qualified as postmasters-general of Scotland, they will cease to be postmasters-general of England.
The warrants were returned to the Treasury unsigned. And now that silence had once been broken, the postmasters-general offered suggestion after suggestion, each having forits object to remove the difficulty. Might not a clause be inserted in some bill now before Parliament, a clause under which they should be constituted postmasters-general of Great Britain, and be given jurisdiction over the Scotch as over the English Post Office? Would not the Scotch bill for drawbacks answer the purpose, or if that were likely to be displeasing to the North British members, some one of the many money-bills that were then pending? Would not the requirements of the law be satisfied if for the management of the Scotch Post Office some one were appointed by letters patent under the Privy Seal of Scotland, and placed under the orders of the postmasters-general of England? Or in view of a recent Act passed by the united Parliament, might not the English postmasters-general themselves be so appointed? To these suggestions, of which the first was made in December 1708, and the last in April 1710, the Lord Treasurer returned no reply. It was clear that Godolphin had other intentions.
Meanwhile events had taken place in London which must have gone far to convince the postmasters-general that, impolitic as an increase in the rates of postage might be, the need for fresh legislation was urgent. Charles Povey had set up a halfpenny post or, as he called it himself, a "half-penny carriage." For the sum of one halfpenny he undertook to do what Dockwra had done, and what the postmasters-general were now doing, for the sum of one penny. There were indeed points of difference. The penny post extended not only over the whole of London proper, but to the remote suburbs; the halfpenny post was confined to the busy parts of the metropolis, to the cities of London and Westminster and to the borough of Southwark. For the halfpenny post, again, letters were collected by the sound of bell. That is to say, Povey's men carried bells, which they rang as they passed along the streets, and so gave notice of their approach. This, though no doubt intended merely as an advertisement, possessed the merit of convenience. People had only to await the coming of one of these bell-ringers, and letters and parcels which they must otherwisehave carried to the post themselves were carried for them.
Povey fancied himself a second Dockwra; but the two men were as unlike as the circumstances under which their undertakings were launched. Dockwra was gentle and conciliatory. Povey was violent and aggressive. Dockwra disclaimed all intention of transgressing the law. It was only necessary that his undertaking should become better known, and His Royal Highness, he felt sure, would withdraw his opposition. Povey expressed the utmost indifference whether his undertaking was legal or illegal, and defied the law to do its worst. Dockwra was a pioneer. When he established his penny post, there was nothing in existence at all resembling it, nothing with which it competed, and by supplying an acknowledged want he conferred an inestimable boon upon the community. Povey, on the contrary, was a mere adventurer. His halfpenny carriage was in direct opposition to an institution already existing and in full activity, an institution which supplied every reasonable want, and which it was the sole purpose of his enterprise to supplant for his own advantage.
So impudent an infringement of the rights of the Crown could not, of course, be tolerated, and the postmasters-general called upon Povey to desist from his undertaking. Povey's reply must have extinguished any hope they may have entertained of avoiding an appeal to the Courts. He should certainly not, he said, be so unjust to himself as to lay down his undertaking at their demand. If they were resolved on trying the matter at law, he was quite content. And happily, he added, we live not under such a constitution as Dockwra lived, a constitution made up of an arbitrary government and bribed judges. Thus defied, the postmasters-general had only one course to pursue, and that was to bring an action. As a preliminary step Povey and the keepers of the shops at which he had opened offices were served with notices setting forth the illegality of their proceedings. The shopkeepers closed their offices at once, and Povey was left alone with his bell-ringers.
The man now revealed himself in his true character. When first informed that an information would be filed against him, he published a pamphlet in which, after loading the postmasters-general with ridicule and abuse, he dared them to proceed to trial, declaring that a trial in the Court of Exchequer was the very thing he desired; but as time drew on and he found them to be in earnest, he became alarmed and desired to effect a compromise. With this object he attended at the Post Office and pleaded his cause in person. If only his bell-ringers might continue to collect letters for the general post and "such as pass between man and man," he would pay to the Crown one-tenth more than had yet been received from the penny post. Or let him take the penny post to farm, and he would pay double what that post had ever produced. Or was it to his bells that exception was taken? If so, and if only proceedings were stayed, his bells should cease to-morrow. But even if at one time such overtures could have been listened to, it was now too late, and the postmasters-general so informed him. At this announcement, and while they were still speaking, Povey bounced from his chair and flung himself out of the room. The case came on for hearing in Easter term 1710, and Povey was fined £100.
It may here be mentioned that the practice of collecting letters by the sound of bell did not cease with the halfpenny carriage. It was adopted by the Post Office, became general throughout the kingdom, and continued down to a time well within the recollection of persons still living.[35]
Although the postmasters-general had won their suit, they were not altogether satisfied. What Povey had done might be done by others, and his proceedings, they did not attempt to conceal, had caused them great annoyance. As soon as he found them bent on suppressing his undertaking, he had had recourse to artifice. In order that his bell-ringers might escape molestation, he had changed themabout from place to place and made them assume fictitious names, so that the man who appeared in Holborn to-day under one name might appear in Westminster to-morrow under another. The task of fixing evidence had thus been made extremely difficult, and the postmasters-general had at one time almost given it up in despair. They also bitterly complained of the law's delays. For no less than seven months—from the 4th of October 1709 to the 4th of May 1710—the halfpenny post had been in full activity, to the serious injury of the penny post. Must the institution which had been committed to their charge remain, for periods of longer or shorter duration, at the mercy of any unscrupulous person who might choose to follow Povey's example? Or against future assaults of the same kind was it not possible to provide themselves with some less cumbrous weapon than they had now to their hands?
Whether the Act which subsequently passed conferred upon the postmasters-general all the powers they desired may be open to question, but there can be no doubt that, after the experience of the past few months, the prospect of fresh legislation, if not actually welcome, had lost half its terrors. For fresh legislation, however, the time had not even yet arrived. It is true that Povey's case, pending the consideration of which nothing of course could be done, had been heard and determined; but now political difficulties arose. Godolphin, the Lord Treasurer, gave way to Harley; and Harley's advent to power was followed by a general election. It was not until the beginning of November, or three weeks before the Houses met, that a decision was at last announced. Subject to the consent of Parliament, the rates of postage were to be increased, and a bill to carry out the object was to be prepared at once.
The office of Secretary to the Treasury was at this time held by William Lowndes, member of Parliament for the borough of Seaford. Lowndes had written a silly book on the currency, a book in which he endeavoured to prove that an Act of Parliament, by calling a sixpence a shilling, can double its purchasing power. He had seriously believed,when the postmasters-general recommended that the course of post to Warwick should be direct instead of by way of Coventry, that the recommendation was due to a bribe. When the postmasters-general were at their wits' end to put a stop to the illicit traffic in letters, he had suggested—and it was the only consolation which he had had to offer them—that in order to defray the expenses of the Civil List every letter passing through the post should be charged with an additional rate of 1d. Such was the man to whom was now entrusted the oversight of the Post Office bill. If confidence in the merits of the measure which the bill was designed to promote were any recommendation, a better selection could not have been made. Lowndes had long advocated an increase in the rates of postage. He had, there can be little doubt, brought Godolphin over to his views, and now, under Godolphin's successor, he obtained permission to carry them into effect.
At the Post Office, unfortunately, there was at this time no one to sound a note of alarm. Cotton was no more. Evelyn, Cotton's successor, was new to his duties. Frankland was old and gouty. Between Frankland and Lowndes, moreover, relations we suspect were somewhat strained. At all events, the fact remains that the postmasters-general, who never tired of inculcating as the result of experience that low postage attracts correspondence and high postage repels it, received notice of the intention to raise the rates without even an attempt to avert the mischief.
By the middle of December, or little more than six weeks from the time of the Post Office receiving notice to prepare for fresh legislation, the bill was in Lowndes's hands. Containing as it did some fifty clauses, and dealing with a matter of no little complexity, such despatch might do no discredit even to our own days of high pressure. At the beginning of the eighteenth century it was out of the common. But the explanation is simple. Swift, the solicitor to the Post Office, who was profoundly dissatisfied with the law as it stood, had for years past employed his leisure moments in framing clauses founded upon his conceptionof what the law ought to be, less probably in the hope of seeing them passed than with the view of giving relief to his feelings. These clauses he now collected, arranged, and added to, producing what he conceived to be a model measure. But while the bill had taken only six weeks to prepare, nearly double that period was occupied in revising it. Whatever may be thought of Lowndes's understanding, there can be no question about his industry. Day after day during the next three months he devoted to the task he had undertaken every moment he could snatch from his numerous other engagements. In conjunction with Swift, who now passed most of his time at Whitehall, he went through the bill clause by clause, discussing and arguing every point, and not seldom making alterations. Swift, as the representative of the Post Office, knew well what the Post Office wanted; but Lowndes knew, or thought that he knew, better, and in this as in other instances superior authority passed current for superior knowledge. It was not, however, to what for distinction's sake may be called the Post Office clauses of the bill that the chief interest attached. To these Lowndes added others, of which one, while dealing with a matter of the most delicate character, revealed an intention of which the Post Office had had no previous notice. The preparation of this clause severely taxed the abilities of its framers.
As the Post Office revenue was at this time vested in the Crown, the Crown would, of course, in the absence of express provision to the contrary, reap the benefit of any increase which additions to the rates of postage might produce. To divert the increase, or part of the increase, from the Crown to the public was the object of the clause on which Lowndes and Swift were now engaged. This clause having at length been settled to their satisfaction, the bill came before Parliament, and was with some modifications passed. The new rates as compared with the old were as follows:—
1660.1711.From London.Single.Double.Ounce.Single.Double.Ounce.80 miles and under2d.4d.8d.3d.6d.12d.Above 80 miles3d.6d.12d.4d.8d.16d.To Edinburgh5d.10d.20d.6d.12d.24d.To Dublin6d.12d.24d.6d.12d.24d.1711.From Edinburgh, within Scotland.Single.Double.Ounce.50 miles and under2d.4d.8d.Above 50 and not exceeding 80 miles3d.6d.12d.Above 80 miles4d.8d.16d.From Dublin, within Ireland.40 miles and under2d.4d.8d.Above 40 miles4d.8d.16d.
The old rates during the year ending the 29th of September 1710 had produced £111,461, and the new rates were estimated to produce £36,400 more. Of this increase the whole was to be paid into the Exchequer by weekly instalments of £700, so that a fund might be established for the purpose of carrying on the war; and of the surplus, if any, over and above £147,861, one-third was to be reserved to the disposal of Parliament for the use of the public. These provisions were to hold good for thirty-two years, after which the old rates were to be reverted to.
We have already seen how difficult the postmasters-general had found it, even with the lower rates of postage, to prevent the smuggling of letters; and of course, in exact proportion as the rates should be increased, the temptation to smuggle would become greater. This consequence had been foreseen and provided for. After declaring in the preamble that, as a condition of the new rates, provision must be made "for preventing the undue collecting anddelivering of letters by private posts, carriers, higglers, watermen, drivers of stage-coaches, and other persons," the bill went on to give to the postmasters-general large powers of search. This clause was regarded as of the highest importance. Without it, indeed, even Lowndes would hardly have ventured to suggest that the rates should be increased. To his dismay, however, and, truth compels us to add, to the dismay also of the Post Office, the House of Commons, while passing the rates, rejected the searching clause. Only the declaration in the preamble remained, an enduring monument of a foolish intention.
Another clause must also be regarded as peculiarly Lowndes's own. This clause—which, unlike the foregoing, was not rejected—prohibited the postmasters-general and all persons serving under them from intermeddling in elections. They were forbidden under heavy penalties "to persuade any one to give or to dissuade any one from giving his vote for the choice" of a member of Parliament. Lowndes can hardly have believed it possible thus to padlock men's mouths. It is still more difficult to suppose that the clause can have been aimed at Frankland; and yet assuredly Frankland was the only person whom it affected. Postmasters and others, it may well be believed, continued to talk and to argue exactly as they had argued and talked before; but Frankland had to give up his seat. At the general election in October he had, there can be little doubt, received a hint of what was coming, for after sitting for his pocket borough of Thirsk for more than twelve years he retired from the representation.
So much of the new Act as originated with the Post Office was mainly directed to clearing up doubts, to supplying omissions, and to making that legal for which the law had not yet provided. Thus, legal sanction was given to the penny post, and competition with it was forbidden under severe penalties. Pence upon ship-letters were not only authorised but directed to be paid. The rates of postage to America and to the West Indies were confirmed; and power was given to impose rates upon letters to other placeswith which communication might be opened. The Act of 1660 had conferred upon the postmasters-general the exclusive right of "receiving, taking up, ordering, despatching, sending post or with speed, and delivering of all letters and packets whatsoever"; but it was silent on the subject of carrying. This omission the Act of 1711 supplied. The later Act also imposed restrictions on the common carrier. Hitherto it had been left in doubt what letters he might carry. These were now defined to be letters which concerned the goods in his waggon or cart; and they were to be delivered at the same time as the goods and without hire or reward.
It was not enough that the penny post should receive legal sanction. By this post, from its first establishment, a single penny had carried only within London proper. For delivery in the outskirts—as, for instance, at Islington, Lambeth, Newington, and Hackney, all of which were at this time separate towns—the Post Office received one penny more. So long, therefore, as the charge by the general post for a distance not exceeding eighty miles stood at 2d., it was a mere question of convenience whether towns in the neighbourhood of London should be served by that post or by the penny post. In either case the postage on a single letter was the same, namely 2d. But now that the initial charge by the general post was raised from 2d. to 3d., it became necessary to assign a limit beyond which the penny post should not extend; and this limit was fixed at ten miles, measured from the General Post Office in Lombard Street.
How little the Post Office had at this time entered into the inner life of the people may be judged by the fact that such restriction was possible. In 1711 there were towns distant nearly twenty miles from London—for instance, Walton-on-Thames, Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, and Tilbury in Essex—which had long been served by the penny post; and the penny post carried up to one pound of weight for the same charge for which the general post carried a single letter. Yet these towns were now deprived of the facilitieswhich the penny post afforded without, so far as appears, exciting a murmur.[36]
Under the new Act the Post Office retained the monopoly of furnishing post-horses. It is to be observed, however, that the charge for each horse, although remaining the same as before—namely, 3d. a mile, with 4d. a stage for the guide—was now re-enacted apologetically, as though some compunction had begun to be felt at the interference with the freedom of contract. The explanation is perhaps to be found in the recent introduction of stage-coaches and the low prices at which these vehicles carried passengers. "There is of late," writes an author of the period, "an admirable commodiousness, both for men and women of better quality, to travel from London to almost any town of England and to almost all the villages near this great city, and that is by stage-coaches, wherein one may be transported to any place, sheltered from foul weather and foul ways; and this is not only at a low price, as about 1s. for every five miles, but with such speed, as that the posts in some foreign countries make not more miles in a day."[37]If a mode of travelling so luxurious as this appears to have been thought could be secured for less than 2-1/2d. a mile, a charge of 3d. a mile for a horse besides a guerdon to the guide may well have appeared to require justification.
It may here be noticed that, although the postmasters-general were under obligation to supply horses on demand, and, failing to do so, became liable to a penalty, the control which they exercised over the travelling post appears tohave been of the slightest. It is true that they would now and again complain of a postmaster for keeping bad horses; but the badness would always be with reference to the horses' capacity to carry the mails. Whether they were fit or unfit for the use of travellers appears never to have troubled headquarters. Except, indeed, for some little exertion of authority on rare occasions and in circumstances out of the common,[38]it would almost seem that the postmasters-general had ceased to regard the travelling post as a matter in which they had any concern. It is not very clear why this should have been so. But perhaps the explanation is that in the case of the travelling post, unlike that of the letter post, a postmaster's interest and duty were identical; if horses were wanted, he was under the strongest inducement to supply them; and the danger to be apprehended was not that travellers would be neglected, but that they might be accommodated at the expense of the mails.
On one point, no doubt because it involved a question of prerogative rather than law, the new Act was silent; and yet it was a point of high importance and, as it afterwards became the subject of legal enactment, this may be a convenient time to mention it. We refer to the privilege conceded to certain persons to send and receive their letters free of postage, or, to use the term by which it was commonly known, the franking system. The persons who enjoyed this privilege were the Chief Officers of State and the members of the two Houses of Parliament. The ChiefOfficers of State, or ministers as they had now begun to be called, were entitled to send and receive their letters free at all times and without limit in point of weight. The members of the two Houses were so entitled only during the session of Parliament and for forty days before and after, and in their case the weight was limited to two ounces.
The privilege had already been greatly abused. Secretaries of State would not scruple to send under their frank the letters of their friends and their friends' friends as well as their own. In 1695 Blaithwaite, who was then Secretary of War, carried the practice to such an extent as to evoke from the postmasters-general a vigorous remonstrance. "We cannot deny," they said, "but this has been too much a practice in all tymes, and we are sure you will not blame us for wishing itt were amended, being soe very prejudicial to His Majestye's revenue under our management." The practice extended, and in 1705 a warrant under the sign-manual, after enumerating afresh the Officers of State who were entitled to frank, expressly charged them not "to cover any man's letters whatsoever other than their own," and, as regards any letters which might come addressed to their care for private persons, to send them to the Post Office to be taxed and delivered.
The abuses identified with the letters of members of Parliament were of wider scope. Lavishly as members might use their names as a means of franking, the use was not confined to themselves and their friends. On the part of the London booksellers and other persons who might hesitate to incur the risk of imitating another man's signature it had become a common practice to assume the name of some member of Parliament, and under that name to have their letters addressed to them at particular coffee-houses; and as their correspondents in the country adopted a similar device, the letters passing to and fro escaped postage. Cotton and Frankland had not been long at the Post Office before this practice arrested their attention, and in 1698 the warrant which granted to the members of the new Parliament theusual exemption from postage was expressly designed to check the abuse. "To prevent abuses," thus the warrant ran, "that were formerly practised[39]to the prejudice of our revenue by divers persons who, though they were not members, yet presumed to indorse the names of members of Parliament on their letters and direct their letters to members of Parliament which really did not belong to them," our will and pleasure is that members "will constantly with their owne hands indorse their names upon their owne letters, and not suffer any other letters to pass under their ffrank, cover, or direction but such as shall concerne themselves." Successive warrants issued between 1698 and 1711 were expressed in the same or nearly the same terms, what little variations there were only serving to shew that the practice against which the warrants were directed had become more general.
But now the postmasters-general could no longer conceal from themselves that, unwarrantable as might be the liberties taken with members' names, the members themselves were by no means blameless. That they were scattering their franks with boundless profusion was beyond doubt; and the question which the postmasters-general set themselves to solve was, How was this profusion to be checked? As the best expedient they could devise, they prepared for the Queen's signature a fresh warrant which, as a hint to members for the regulation of their own conduct, referred to Her Majesty's condescension in allocating a portion of the Post Office revenue towards defraying the expenses of the war. Of previous warrants copies had been posted up in the lobby of the House and in the Speaker's chamber. Of the present warrant copies were to be distributed with the votes so as to secure that every member should have a copy.
The immediate effect of the Act of 1711 was, as mighthave been foreseen, enormously to stimulate clandestine traffic. The Post Office could do little to check it. In London officers were appointed whose duty it was to frequent the roads leading into the capital and keep a watch on all higglers and drivers of coaches who were notoriously carrying letters in defiance of the law. In the country the postmasters-general could get nothing done. In vain they urged upon the Treasury the paramount importance of appointing officers who should travel about the country and be authorised to open the mail bags at odd times and unexpectedly. By no other means, they declared, was it possible to keep any check upon either the London or the country letters. The London letters might not be charged correctly by the clerks of the roads; and of the country letters, it was perfectly well known, only a very small proportion was charged at all. But all to no purpose. The officers whom the postmasters-general proposed to appoint were to receive for remuneration and travelling expenses together £1 a day, and the Treasury declined to sanction the expense.
This, even for the Treasury, has always appeared to us a masterpiece of perversity. That large sums were being diverted into the pockets of the postmasters had been admitted in the Act itself;[40]nor could it be denied that the tendency of the Act was to make these sums larger. And yet the abuse was to be allowed to go on unchecked because its correction would involve a small outlay. For four years this penny-wise and pound-foolish policy continued, and it was not until 1715, as the consequence of a strong representation from Frankland and Evelyn's successors, that the officers whose appointment these two postmasters-general had consistently advocated were added to the establishment under the title of surveyors. To surprise the mail bags in course of transit and to check their contents—such wasthe humble function originally assigned to officers who have since become as indispensable to the Post Office as the mainspring is to a watch or the driving wheel to a steam engine.
It may here be noticed that the decisions which the postmasters-general received were not all of them conceived in the same spirit. So different indeed was the treatment of questions relating to home communications and communications with foreign parts as almost to suggest that they had been referred to different tribunals. Was the packet service which had come to an end through Dummer's misfortunes to be re-established or not? The cost was far, very far, in excess of the receipts; and yet the direction to the Post Office was to consult the West India merchants, and to be guided by their wishes. The two packets between Falmouth and the Groyne, which had been left running at the close of the war, were after a time discontinued. They cost £1600 a year to maintain, and the annual receipts from the letters and passengers they carried were less than £450. Yet upon a representation from the merchants trading with Spain pointing out the inconvenience which the stoppage had caused them, the boats were restored at once. But all such questions were decided by the Lord Treasurer himself, and his decisions were communicated under his own signature, or else under the sign-manual.
Very different was it with questions affecting intercourse within the kingdom. These, urgently as the postmasters-general might press them, received little or no attention. They would seem indeed to have been relegated to subordinates, who having been instructed to keep down expense proceeded to obey their orders without discrimination. Whether the packet agent at Dover had in his cups refused to drink to the health of the ministers, or whether the postmaster of Chester had said that Queen Anne, had she pursued the same course as was pursued by Charles the First, would have met with the same fate—these were questions of vital importance which must beinvestigated with all convenient speed; but when the question was merely one of improving the internal posts of the country, it was treated at leisure, and no considerations of public convenience, or even of prospective gain, were allowed to weigh against the bugbear of present expense. In 1710, for instance, the Lord Provost and magistrates of Glasgow had petitioned that the foot-post to Edinburgh might be converted into a horse-post. The mail would thus arrive sooner and leave later, and, as the petitioners pointed out, letters would fall into it which had heretofore been sent by private hand. Between a horse-post and a foot-post the difference in point of cost was £20 a year; and for the sake of this small sum the Treasury had refused the request, just as they now refused to sanction the appointment of surveyors, although the postmasters-general clearly demonstrated that by no other means could the misappropriation of postage be checked, and that within a few months the cost would be covered many times over.
But the addition to the establishment of a few appointments more or less was not the most serious charge which the Act of 1711 entailed. The Post Offices over a great part of England were then in farm. How, within the area over which these Post Offices extended, was the State to derive any benefit from the higher postage? The postage, whatever it might be, was under their leases secured to the farmers; and the farmers were under no obligation to pay any higher rent than that for which they had stipulated. This difficulty, which had without doubt been overlooked, took a most unexpected turn. The farmers had had only a short experience of the new rates before they found that these rates, far from bringing them a golden harvest, were fast contributing to their ruin; that they were in effect prohibitive rates; that the letters passing to and fro were getting fewer and fewer; and that the increase of charge by no means made up for the decrease in number. In short, the Crown or those who represented the Crown had taken for granted that underthe new rates the returns would be relatively higher than under the old, whereas the farmers found to their cost that the returns were actually lower. Never, perhaps, has there been a more striking demonstration of the unwisdom of high rates of postage. In this dilemma the postmasters-general had recourse to an expedient which appears to have been considered satisfactory on both sides. They cancelled all the leases, nine in number,[41]and under the title of managers, appointed the farmers to superintend the Post Offices embraced within the area over which their farms extended. The managers who had heretofore been at the cost of the postmasters' salaries were to be relieved from this and all other payments; and as remuneration for their services they were to receive one-tenth part of the net produce derived from the postage.
Two questions may here be asked, to neither of which is it easy to give even a plausible reply. Of these the first is, How did it happen that the postmasters-general, who without authority from Whitehall could not even convert a foot-post into a horse-post, were able on their own motion to sanction an arrangement, the practical effect of which was to add to the establishment not only a large number of small salaries, amounting in the aggregate to a formidable total, but also a dead-weight annuity of nearly £2000 a year? This is an obscurity which we confess ourselves unable to penetrate. We can only record the fact, a fact the more surprising because only recently Godolphin had laid it down under his own hand that in the Post Office "all extraordinary payments or allowances are to be vouched by warrant from Her Majesty or myself, or from the Lord High Treasurer or the Commissioners of the Treasury for the time being." The second question is hardly less perplexing. How, except in name, did managers differ from surveyors, whose appointment thepostmasters-general were urging, and urging in vain? Or what could surveyors have done which it was not equally competent to managers to do? This question also we cannot answer. We only know that the very men who as farmers had rendered signal service to the Post Office, and earned the gratitude of the districts over which their farms extended, were found as managers to be of little use, even if they did not league themselves with the postmasters to intercept the postage.
Difficulties from an unexpected quarter added to the confusion into which, as the result of the Act of 1711, the Post Office was drifting. As soon as peace was declared, it became necessary to arrive at an agreement with France as to the conditions on which the British mails should pass through French territory. M. Pajot was still comptroller of the posts in Paris; and he proved to be hardly less untractable than before the war. Frankland and Evelyn committed their case to the care of Matthew Prior, who was at that time minister plenipotentiary to the Court of France. Prior, who had hated his commissionership of customs because, as Swift tells us, he was ever dreaming of cockets and dockets and other jargon, could hardly be expected to give his mind to anything so prosaic as postage and letter bills. The matter, moreover, was one of a highly technical character, and, without fuller information than could be contained in the most precise instructions, a far abler negotiator than Prior could claim to be might easily have found himself overmatched. Pajot, presuming on his superior knowledge, put forward the most extravagant demands; and it was not until an expert had been sent from London, upon whom it would have been useless to attempt to impose, that he abated his pretensions. Extravagant demands were now followed by frivolous objections, and at the last moment, when the conditions were practically settled, he actually refused to proceed further unless "Her Britannic Majesty," an expression employed in the Post Office treaty, were altered to "The Queen of Great Britain."
Vexatious as these proceedings were, the result wasmore vexatious still. Before the war a lump sum of 36,000 livres a year had been paid for the transit of the British mails across French territory. Pajot now refused to accept any lump sum at all. He insisted that each letter passing through France should be charged for separately, according to the French postage; and high as the English postage was, the French postage was higher still. In vain the postmasters-general pointed out that by virtue of such an arrangement they would on many letters have to pay more than Act of Parliament permitted them to receive. Pajot replied in effect that this was their affair and not his; and no better terms could they get. The treaty was eventually signed, and its onerous provisions will best be shewn by an example. On a single letter from Italy the postage prescribed by the Act of 1711 was fifteenpence, and on a letter weighing one ounce sixty pence. This was all which the Act permitted the postmasters-general to collect; and yet, under the terms of the treaty, the postage for which they had to account to the French Post Office was in the one case twenty-one sous and in the other eighty-four.
To this treaty we are indeed indebted for one piece of information. It gives us—what is not to be found elsewhere—a definition of the terms single and double as applied to letters. It is strange that the Acts of 1660 and 1711, while imposing distinctive rates on single and double letters, nowhere define what single and double letters are. This omission the treaty of 1713 supplies. "That piece," the treaty provides, "is to be esteemed a single letter which hath no sealed letter inclosed, and that to be esteemed a double letter which hath inclosures and is under the weight of an ounce." It will be interesting to note how far the Post Office adhered to its own definition.
On the accession of George the First, when almost every place of honour and profit under the Crown changed hands, the Post Office did not escape; and Frankland and Evelyn were succeeded by Cornwallis and Craggs. The natural tendency of the provision which had made members of the House of Commons ineligible for the office of postmasters-generalwas to throw the office into the hands of peers; and although this tendency did not fully develop itself until later in the century, the appointment of Lord Cornwallis was a first move in that direction. Peers have in our own time been among the ablest of the many able administrators who have presided over the Post Office; but at the beginning of the eighteenth century the conditions attaching to the appointment were in some respects different from what they are to-day. The postmasters-general had to write their own letters; their attendance was both early and late and during fixed hours; and they were expected to reside at the Post Office. Whether from a disinclination to satisfy these conditions, or on the score of health, which he was constantly pleading, Cornwallis had not been long in Lombard Street before he retired into the country, and left the conduct of affairs pretty much to his colleague. Craggs—or Craggs senior as he was commonly called, to distinguish him from his son, the Secretary of State—was an industrious, plain-spoken man; and deeply as he afterwards became implicated in the South Sea Scheme, there is no reason to suppose that his proceedings as postmaster-general would not bear inspection.
Cornwallis and Craggs had been only a short time at the Post Office before they became profoundly impressed with what they found there. The managers withholding the postmasters' salaries, the postmasters recouping and a good deal more than recouping themselves out of the postage, the post-boys—for so they had begun to be called—clandestinely carrying letters for what they could get, the inordinate number of franked letters—these were among the abuses which arrested the new postmaster-generals' attention; but what excited their most lively surprise was that there should exist a branch of the King's revenue upon the subordinate agents of which there was absolutely no check. At length, on a representation from them as to the scandal of allowing such a state of things to continue, consent was obtained to the appointment of surveyors; and the dismissal of the managers speedily followed.
These remedial measures, though good as far as they went, affected only the internal administration of the Post Office. Of its troubles from without, and how they had been increased by recent legislation, Cornwallis and Craggs were no less sensible than their predecessors; but here they had no remedy to apply. "The additional penny," they wrote in March 1716, within eighteen months of their appointment, "has never answered in proportion, and we find by every day's experience that it occasions the people to endeavour to find out other conveyances for their letters." "The additional tax," they wrote again two years later, "has never answered in proportion to the produce of the revenue at the time it took place, the people having found private conveyances for their letters, which they are daily endeavouring to increase, notwithstanding all the endeavours that can be used to prevent them."
As with the clandestine traffic, so with the abuse of the franking privilege. In isolated cases, where the abuse was more than usually glaring, the postmasters-general would write to the erring member a letter of mild expostulation, affecting to believe him more sinned against than sinning;[42]but even if this had any effect in the particular instance, to stem the torrent was beyond their power. In Great Britain alone the postage represented by the franked letters, excluding those which were or which purported to be on His Majesty's service, amounted in 1716 to what was for that time, relatively to the total Post Office revenue, the enormous sum of £17,500 a year. In Ireland the members followed the example of their English colleagues, if indeed they did not improve upon it. In 1718 the Irish Parliament sat for three months, and in 1719 it sat for nine months; and it was only during the session, and for forty days before and after, that letters could be franked. Cornwallis and Craggs had now been some years at the Post Office; and yet, with all their experience of the extent to which the abuse of franking was carried, they were startled to see the effect which the duration of Parliament had upon the receipts. In 1718 the gross revenue of the Irish Post Office—and in the gross revenue was reckoned the postage on members' letters, the postage which these letters would have paid if they had not been franked—amounted to £14,592, and the net revenue to £3066. In 1719, although the gross revenue rose to £19,522, an amount higher by £4930 than in the preceding year, the net revenue fell from £3066 to £753. Such was the effect upon the revenue of a difference of six months in the duration of the two Parliaments.
To add to the postmaster-generals' troubles, the merchants of London, groaning under the onerous rates of postage, had recourse to an expedient in order to evade them. They associated themselves together, and all those who had occasion to write to a particular place, though to different persons, would write on the same piece of paper and under the same cover. The postmasters-general contended that these several writings should be charged as separate letters; the merchants contended that there was but one letter, and that it should pass for a single rate of postage.
Their next step was to dispute the postmaster-generals'reading of the statute. Under the law as passed in 1660, and re-enacted in 1711, merchants' accounts not exceeding one sheet of paper, and all bills of exchange, invoices, and bills of lading, were "to be allowed without rate in the price of letters"; in other words, the weight of these documents was not to be reckoned in the weight of a letter for the purpose of charging it with postage. This exemption, however, had hitherto been allowed only in the case of foreign letters; and the postmasters-general held that such was the intention of the statute. The merchants retorted that no such intention was expressed, and that to act as though it had been brought about this anomaly—that on a letter containing any one of the documents in question the charge from Constantinople was actually less than from Bristol. Was it possible that the Legislature could ever have enacted such an absurdity? It was an old contention, as old as the Post Office itself,[43]and the merchants took the present opportunity to revive it. On both questions Northey, the Attorney-General, advised that the Post Office should adhere to its ancient practice as the best expositor of the meaning of the new law; but excellent as this advice may have been, its adoption failed to satisfy the merchants and it was not until a declaratory Act had been passed that they ceased to contest the points.
Much the same sort of thing occurred a few years later in connection with the penny post. From the first establishment of this undertaking 1d. had carried only within the bills of mortality; for delivery beyond those limits had been charged 1d. more. Some persons now refused to pay the additional penny, on the ground that it was not prescribed by law. This was perfectly true. The penny post owed itslegal sanction to the Act of 1711; and this Act merely provided that "for the post of all and every the letters and packets passing or repassing by the carriage called the penny post, established and settled within the cities of London and Westminster and borough of Southwark and parts adjacent, and to be received and delivered within ten English miles distant from the General Letter Office in London [shall be demanded and received the sum of] 1d." Again an Act of Parliament had to be passed in order to assimilate law and practice. This Act, which was not obtained until 1730, made legal the twopenny post, just as the penny post was made legal by the Act of 1711; although, as a matter of fact, both posts had been in existence since April 1680.
In 1721 Lowndes, who was still at the Treasury, called for a return of the Post Office income and expenditure. Ten years had now elapsed since the imposition of the new rates. Of these ten years eight, as compared with the eight which preceded them, had been years of prosperity and peace; the population had increased, and the reductions in the packet service had effected a saving of many thousand pounds a year. Certainly the circumstances had not on the whole been unfavourable for testing the results of the new policy. The return was rendered. During the year ending the 29th of September the gross Post Office revenue was, in 1721, £168,968, and in 1710, £111,461, being an increase of £57,507; in 1721 the cost of management was £69,184, as against £44,639 in 1710; and the net revenue, which in 1710 had been £66,822, was in 1721 £99,784, an increase of £32,962. But the case does not end here. Under the terms of the Act the sum of £700 a week, or £36,400 a year, was to be allocated to a specific object. This sum had been regularly paid into the Exchequer, and, after deducting it from the net revenue, there remained for the use of the Sovereign a balance of £63,384, or less than in 1710 by £3438.
While the contingency of a loss to the Civil List had not been either foreseen or provided against, elaborate precautions had been taken for the disposal of a surplus. If the grossPost Office revenue should exceed the sum of £147,861, the excess was to be divided between the Sovereign and the public in the proportion of one-third to the public and two-thirds to the Sovereign. As a matter of fact, the gross Post Office revenue in 1721 had exceeded, and exceeded by a considerable amount, the sum of £147,861; and yet there was no excess to divide. The plain truth is that, in preparing the Act of 1711, Lowndes had forgotten the cost of management. It must have sounded strange in the ears of an assistant Chancellor of the Exchequer to be told, as Cornwallis and Craggs did not scruple to tell him, that he had confounded gross and net revenue, and that by this blunder Parliament had been misled.
The Act of 1711, disastrous as it proved in its effects on the wellbeing and morality of the nation, is only one more instance of the mischief which may be done with the best intentions; and it was perhaps meet that its author should have remained long enough at his post to witness the results of his own handiwork.