The Post Office, which during the last ten or fifteen years had done much to impair its own utility, was now to receive a check from without; and this in respect to a branch of its service which was perhaps least open to criticism. The mail-coach system had continued to prosper. In 1811 the number of mail-coaches constantly running in Great Britain was about 220, and the extent of road over which they travelled was between 11,000 and 12,000 miles a day. The country gentry and the commercial classes vied with each other in demanding an extension of the system. Towns lying off the main road were glad to pay 1d. a letter in addition to the postage on condition of the mail-coach passing through them on its way. The mail-coach,moreover, apart from the facilities it afforded for communication, brought traffic in its train. It gave, in the language of the time, publicity to the roads. Palmer had, more than twenty years before, noticed this result and commented upon it. He found as a matter of experience that wherever a mail-coach was set up other traffic followed, and the post-chaises along the road were furbished up and better conducted.
But popular as the new system was on the whole, there was one class of persons with whom it was distinctly the reverse. These were the trustees of the roads. With them the exemption from toll which the mail-coaches enjoyed was a constant source of complaint. Nor was it calculated to abate their discontent that the Post Office, in whose favour the exemption was granted, possessed the power, a power which it constantly exercised, of indicting the roads if they were not kept in proper repair. The state of the trusts was at this time far from flourishing. In the neighbourhood of London and other large towns where traffic was considerable the tolls were low and the receipts high; but in the remoter and less populous parts of the kingdom the exact converse held good. There the tolls were high and the receipts low.
To take the kingdom as a whole, the case stood thus: In very few instances indeed had any part of the debt on the turnpike trusts been discharged, and in fewer instances still had a sinking fund been established with a view to extinction of debt by process of time. With these rare exceptions, nothing more had been done than to keep up payment of the interest agreed upon, while in many instances no interest at all was being paid or interest at a reduced rate. In some instances indeed, the receipts from the tolls were not enough to defray even the cost of maintenance and repairs.
It is not to be wondered at if in these circumstances the trustees of the roads looked with longing eyes to the £50,000 a year which was the estimated value of the tolls that, except for their exemption, the mail-coaches would have had to pay. Of course the postmasters-general werestrongly opposed to the surrender of this large amount; and yet there was one consideration which told heavily against them. It was this, that in Ireland the mails were not exempt from toll. Under an Act passed by the Irish Legislature in 1798, an Act which still remained in force, an account was kept of all tolls leviable at the turnpike gates through which the mail passed, and this account was paid quarterly by the Post Office authorities in Dublin. Why, it was asked, could not a similar system be adopted in Great Britain? It was also urged, and not without force, that in the matter of weight the mail bore to the coach which carried it a very small proportion. The coach with its loading complete weighed from thirty-three to forty cwts., while the mail seldom weighed more than one cwt. For the sake of so small a proportion was it equitable that exemption should extend to the whole?
A strenuous and united effort was now made to force the mail-coaches to pay toll. The question came before Parliament, and a Committee was appointed to inquire and report. The result could hardly have been in doubt. It was by the landed proprietors, the men who had seats in Parliament, that the turnpike roads had been made, and they were generally the creditors on the turnpike funds. The Committee was unanimous in recommending that the exemption from toll which the mail-coaches enjoyed should absolutely cease and determine.
On the Committee's report no action was taken in the session of 1811; but if the Post Office supposed that the matter would be allowed to drop, it was doomed to disappointment. Early in the following year Spencer Perceval forwarded to Lombard Street for any observations the postmasters-general might have to offer upon it a bill having for its object to repeal the exemption. The postmasters-general suggested certain alterations, but upon the subject-matter of the bill, coming as it did from the Prime Minister, and their views being already well known, they confined themselves to once more expressing a doubt whether such a measure could be necessary. In May Perceval wasassassinated; and now the postmasters-general fondly hoped that the matter was at an end. What then was their dismay at learning a month or two later that the Government was resolved to proceed with the bill. The same letter that conveyed this intelligence contained a suggestion as strange as it was original. This was that, in order to meet complaints, the mail-coaches on certain roads should be withdrawn. The postmasters-general, little supposing that such a suggestion could take practical shape, simply replied that not a whisper had yet reached them to the effect that mail-coaches were considered in excess; that, on the contrary, they were being constantly urged to increase the number.
The bill was finally withdrawn; but heavy was the price which had to be paid. With those who were advocating the measure Vansittart, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, effected a compromise behind the back of the Post Office. There was indeed ample room for a satisfactory adjustment. For the conveyance of the mails the mail-coach proprietors received from the Post Office £30,000 a year; they paid to the Government for stamp duty £40,000 a year; and the exemption which they enjoyed from toll was estimated to represent £50,000 a year. These figures seem almost to suggest a feasible arrangement; yet the compromise actually effected took another form. It was that, in accordance with the suggestion of a few months before, mail-coaches should be withdrawn.
Nor was this mere empty talk; Vansittart had pledged himself to specific performance. And now began a general dis-coaching of the roads. The mail-coaches running between Warwick and Coventry, between Shrewsbury and Aberystwith, between Aberystwith and Ludlow, between Edinburgh and Dalkeith, between Edinburgh and Musselburgh, between Chichester and Godalming, between Dorchester and Stroudwater—all were discontinued at once. Notice to quit was served upon the mail-coaches between Worcester and Hereford, between Hereford and Gloucester, between Hereford and Brecon, between Alton and Gosport, and between Plymouth and Tavistock. And, what washardly less important, numerous applications for mail-coaches which, except for Treasury interference, would have been granted, were refused. By Pitt the mail-coach had been regarded as a pioneer of civilisation; in the eyes of Pitt's successors it was a mischievous encumbrance.
Vansittart, having dealt one deadly blow at the Post Office, now proceeded to deal another. The war with France had exhausted the Exchequer, and, as part of the ways and means, he called upon the Post Office for a further contribution of £200,000 a year. Once more the screw was turned; and, oppressive as the postage rates were already, they were as from the 9th of July 1812 increased as follows:—
Single.Double.Treble.Ounce.d.d.d.d.Notexceeding15miles481216Above15and not exceeding20miles5101520"20"30"6121824"30"50"7142128"50"80"8162432"80"120"9182736"120"170"10203040"170"230"11223344"230"300"12243648"300"400"13263952"400"500"14284256"500"600"15304560"600"700"16324864Above700miles17345168
This is the highest point to which the rates of postage have ever attained in this country. Freeling would have resented so much as a suggestion that the institution which had now for some years been under his exclusive management was not in the most perfect order to which human foresight and ingenuity could raise it; and yet to the dispassionate observer it may be permitted to doubt whether eighty years ago the Post Office was not in some important particulars more open to criticism than at any time since its first establishment.
Let us compare for a moment the beginning of thenineteenth with the end of the seventeenth century. In 1695 the postage from London to Liverpool or to York or to Plymouth was, for a single letter, 3d.; in 1813 it was 11d. In 1695, wherever letters were being carried clandestinely, the policy was to supplant; in 1813 the policy was to repress. In 1695 the King would not consent to a single prosecution even for the sake of example; in 1813, when the Post Office revenue had passed from the King to the people, prosecutions were being conducted wholesale. In 1695 a circuitous post would be converted into a direct one, even though the shorter distance carried less postage; in 1813 a direct post in place of a circuitous one was being constantly refused on the plea that a loss of postage would result. In 1695 London enjoyed the advantage of a penny post, and this post carried up to one pound in weight; in 1813 the penny post had been replaced by a twopenny and threepenny one, and, except in the case of a packet passing through the general post, the weight was limited to four ounces. In 1813, moreover, the complications were bewildering. In some places there were fifth-clause posts, and in others penny posts; and the charge by these posts was in addition to the charge by the general post. Some towns, over and above all other charges, paid an additional 1d. on each letter for the privilege of the mail-coach passing through them. Of two adjoining houses one might receive its letters free of any charge for delivery and not the other. This difference was to be found in towns where building was going on—as, for instance, at Brighton—old houses being considered within, and new houses without, what was called the usage of delivery.
In London itself the complications, if possible, were more bewildering still. The threepenny post began where the twopenny post ended. Thus far the practice was simple enough. But the general post limits did not coincide with the limits of the twopenny post: and the limits of both the twopenny post and the general post differed from those of the foreign post. Indeed, it is probably not too much tosay that in 1813 there was not a single town in the kingdom at the Post Office of which absolutely certain information could have been obtained as to the charge to which a letter addressed to any other town would be subject. More than ten years later Post Office experts examined before a Committee of the House of Commons were unable to state what, even on letters delivered in London, would in certain cases be the proper postage.
It may here be asked how it was that with rates so oppressive and so vexatiously levied the public were induced to tolerate them. The mail-coaches were popular except with the road trustees; and there is reason to think that even these, or at all events the principal persons among them, only professed a dislike which they did not really feel. The Post Office packets were also popular, and well they deserved to be, distinguishing themselves as they were about this time by deeds of even more than usual daring.
But these considerations, added to the personal popularity which Freeling himself enjoyed, are altogether insufficient to account for the extraordinary patience of the public under the treatment which eighty or ninety years ago they endured at the hands of the Post Office. The explanation we believe to be that the heavy rates of postage, and not a few of the vexations incidental to the levying of them, were tacitly accepted as a part, a necessary part, of the load of taxation which the people were called upon to bear as a consequence of the war in which England was engaged. We further believe that, in respect to its acts of aggression, the Post Office escaped criticism mainly because its proceedings, irritating as they were to individuals, were not generally known. This want of publicity is specially noticeable in the matter of prosecutions. At the present day a single prosecution undertaken by the Post Office would be the subject of comment in every newspaper in the kingdom. Eighty or ninety years ago, numerous as the Post Office prosecutions were, there was not a newspaper in the kingdom that gratuitously publishedparticulars or even announced the fact. Often did the postmasters-general lament this reticence, believing as they did that to make known their repressive measures, and the amount of penalties inflicted, must have a deterrent effect upon the illicit traffic; and at length, for want of any better means of securing publicity, they gave directions that, wherever a prosecution took place, hand-bills giving full particulars were to be struck off and affixed to the doors of the local inns.
The question which two years before had agitated the minds of the road trustees was now revived in Scotland. Among those who pressed for the establishment of mail-coaches none were more persistent than the large landed proprietors north of the Tweed; and as soon as their demands were acceded to, none were louder in their denunciations of the injustice which exempted mail-coaches from toll. The Government yielded at length to the pressure that was brought to bear, and in 1813 an Act was passed repealing, so far as Scotland was concerned, exemption from toll in the case of mail-carriages with more than two wheels. The same Act, in order to indemnify the Post Office for the loss it would thus sustain, imposed an additional postage of 1/2d. upon every letter conveyed by mail-coach in Scotland.
The Post Office was not quite fairly treated in this matter. No sooner had the Act passed than the trustees of the roads raised the tolls. At the old rates the mail-coaches, had they not been exempt, would have had to pay £6865 a year; at the new rates, now that they were exempt no longer, they had to pay £11,759 a year, or more by nearly £6000 than the additional 1/2d. of postage had been estimated to yield. Nor was this all. Some of the Road Acts contained a clause empowering the trustees to demand the sum of 1d. for every outside passenger. This power had never yet been exercised; but now the demand was rigorously enforced in the case of passengers by the mail-coaches, and by these coaches only.
Thus unhandsomely dealt with, the Post Office proceededto do in Scotland what under other circumstances it had done two years before in England. It reduced the number of its coaches. This excited many murmurs. From Glasgow, for instance, a mail-coach had been running through Paisley to Greenock. This was now replaced by a horse post, and the district was not only relieved from the payment of the additional postage of 1/2d. a letter, but—a boon which had long been earnestly sought—was given three posts a day instead of two. Yet all three towns refused to be comforted, and bitterly reproached the postmasters-general for depriving them of their mail-coach. The convenience of travellers, however, was not a matter of which the Post Office took any account. The Post Office was concerned with the transmission of letters; and wherever these could be transmitted with the same or nearly the same expedition and at less expense by other means, the mail-coaches were discarded.
About this time two measures were introduced which shew a strange forgetfulness of what had gone before. Of these one was a reorganisation of the returned letter office, and the other the passing of a fresh Ship Letter Act. Hitherto, of the letters which could not be delivered only those had been returned to the writers which contained property or enclosures of apparent importance. The others had been torn up and sold as waste paper. Now all were to be presumed to be of importance to the writers and to be returned accordingly. The propriety and even the legality of charging such letters had been questioned in Palmer's time, and Pitt had decided that they were not to be charged. This was now forgotten, and the Post Office proceeded not only to return every letter that could not be delivered, but to charge it with postage. To Freeling, who regarded the Post Office as a mere engine of taxation, the temptation was no doubt a strong one. The measure, before being definitively adopted, had been tried experimentally for one year; and it was found that out of 189,000 letters returned to the writers more than 135,000 were accepted, producing a clear revenue of £4421.
By the new Ship Letter Act the charge on a single letter arriving by private ship was raised from 4d. to 6d., and, what was far more important, no letters were to be sent by private ship except such as had been brought to the Post Office to be charged. The directors of the East India Company, who would seem to have strangely overlooked the bill during its passage through the House, implored the Government to get the Act repealed. It was true, they urged, that their official correspondence was exempted from the operation of the Act; but dependent on them in the East was a small army of servants whose private letters had hitherto gone free, and, under the provisions of the Act, would go free no longer. With the East Indies there was no communication by packet, and surely it was introducing a new principle for the Post Office to make a charge where it did not perform a service. Did not the charge in such a case become a mere tax upon letter-writing?
Freeling, on the other hand, maintained that no new principle was involved, inasmuch as the previous Act, the Act of 1799, recognised the sending of letters by ships other than packet boats and charging them with postage. This was perfectly true; but he forgot to add that, whereas the Act of 1799 was permissive, the Act of 1814 was compulsory, that under the one Act it was optional with the senders of letters whether they would take them to the Post Office or not; and under the other, if they did not take them to the Post Office, they rendered themselves liable to severe penalties. He might indeed have gone further, and said that in 1799 Pitt and the whole of the administration of which Pitt was the head scouted the very idea of anything in the shape of compulsion being employed in the matter.
The Ship Letter Act of 1814 proved a complete failure. It contained no provision obliging private ships to carry letters, and the private ships between England and India were almost entirely in the hands of the East India Company. No wonder, therefore, that the Company, whenasked whether it might be announced to the public that bags would be made up at the Post Office to be conveyed by their ships, replied in the negative. The Court of Directors, their letter said, are not without hopes that Parliament will consent to revise the Act, and meanwhile they "do not see fit to authorise the commanders or owners of any of their ships to take charge of any bag of letters from the Post Office subjected to a rate of postage for sea conveyance." Freeling was filled with dismay. "A vital impediment," he exclaimed, "to the execution of the Act."
The expectations of the India House were not disappointed. In the next session of Parliament the Act of 1814 was replaced by another which granted larger exemptions to the Company and disarmed its opposition. The later Act gave power to the Post Office to establish a line of packets to India and the Cape of Good Hope, and, until a line should be established, to employ as packets any ships it pleased, including ships of war. The mails were to go once a month. By packet—in which term is included the ship which the Post Office might be pleased to designate as packet for the occasion—the postage on a single letter was fixed at 3s. 6d.; by private ship it varied according to direction, outwards 1s. 2d. and inwards 8d.
Such were the main provisions of the Act of 1815; but there were others which introduced new principles. As a result of the action of the East India Company in the preceding year, it was now for the first time made compulsory upon private ships to carry letters when required to do so by the Post Office,[81]and the Post Office was empowered to pay for their carriage a reasonable sum.This sum was to go by way of remuneration to the owners of the vessels, and to be in addition to a gratuity of 2d. a letter which the commander was to receive as his own perquisite. A still more important provision, a provision which assuredly could not have emanated from the Post Office, was one in favour of newspapers. By packet the postage on a letter to India or the Cape weighing as much as one ounce was to be 14s.; on a newspaper of no greater weight, if stamped and in a cover open at the side or end, it was to be 3d. This was the first enactment that provided for newspapers going outside the limits of the United Kingdom for less than the letter rate of postage.
What was virtually a most interesting experiment was now about to be tried. To India and the Cape the Post Office had no packets of its own; and before private ships could be employed as packets, the consent of the owners had to be obtained and the amount of payment to be agreed upon. Practically, the Post Office was at the mercy of others. Mails had to be sent once every month; ships of war could not always be employed; and should the shipping interest combine, the postmasters-general would have to pay pretty much what owners chose to demand. To the credit of that interest nothing in the shape of combination took place. During the first sixteen months the mails were despatched five times by His Majesty's ships, four times by ships of the East India Company, and seven times by ships belonging to private owners. His Majesty's ships carried the mails, of course, without charge. The East India Company, with admirable generosity, placed their ships at the disposal of the Post Office and refused to receive any payment. And the ships belonging to private owners were engaged, the first of them for £500 and the other six for sums ranging from £50 to £150. Altogether, the sum expended during more than a year and a quarter in transporting the mails to India and the Cape of Good Hope did not exceed £1250; and the postage during the same period amounted to £11,658. In the following year, the year 1817, even better terms were obtained, the owners ofprivate ships engaged as packets receiving in no case more than £125, and in one case as little as £25.
The East India Company's generosity was not reciprocated by the Post Office. His Majesty's shipIphigenia, which was lying at Portsmouth, had been appointed to carry out the mails, and the India House had sent down its despatches to be put on board. In strictness these despatches should have been sent through the Post Office, inasmuch as theIphigeniahad been appointed a packet for the occasion; but as the India House paid no postage on its correspondence, whether sent by packet or by ships of its own, it was a mere technical irregularity.
Freeling maintained, however, that there was an important distinction which ought to be observed. It was true that no question of postage was involved. It was also true that the India House would have been at liberty to put its despatches on board theIphigeniahad she been sailing for India without being appointed a packet boat; but as she had been so appointed, the intervention of the Post Office was necessary, and without that intervention the commander ought not to have received them. Accordingly, Freeling urged upon the Government, though happily without success, that orders should be sent to Portsmouth to have the despatches removed from the ship to the local Post Office, to be there kept until instructions should be received from Lombard Street that they might be again taken on board.
On the close of hostilities in 1815 domestic matters began once more to occupy a place in men's thoughts; and it was next to impossible that the Post Office should escape attention. Its heavy and capricious charges, its high-handed proceedings, its disregard of the public requirements, its prosecutions, its constant indictment of roads which it largely used and yet contributed nothing to maintain, and, above all, the fact that its administration was virtually in the hands of one man, and that man not the nominal head, who could be reached by constitutional means—signs were not wanting that these and other matters had created anamount of dissatisfaction which must sooner or later find expression. Yet Freeling either could not or would not see. Were not his immediate superiors, the postmasters-general, satisfied with his management, so satisfied indeed that they seldom, if ever, found it necessary to pay a visit to Lombard Street? And had not the contributions which, under his guidance, the Post Office kept pouring into the Exchequer raised him high in the Chancellor's favour? If so, what more could a loyal and industrious public servant desire?
That Freeling was elated with what he considered his unbounded success is clear from a letter which about this time was written to the Treasury, enclosing a return of the Post Office revenue, and shewing how it had responded to the successive increases of rate which had been imposed during his tenure of the office of secretary. This letter, drafted by himself, as all the official letters were, though signed by the postmasters-general, concluded thus: "We flatter ourselves that we shall not be considered as exceeding the limits of our duty in drawing your Lordships' attention to a circumstance which has made a strong impression on ourselves in the course of our inquiry, namely, that the office of secretary during the whole of this flourishing period has been executed by the same faithful and meritorious servant of the Crown." The return, with a copy of this letter appended, was afterwards presented to Parliament.
There is no more tolerant assembly in the world than the House of Commons; and yet even the House of Commons is intolerant of egotism. It may have been, and probably was, a mere coincidence, but the fact remains that from the date of the presentation of this return Freeling's influence began to wane.
At the Union with Ireland the Irish Post Office was not merged into the Post Office of England as the Scotch Post Office was merged at the Union with Scotland. The existence of two separate establishments, presided over by different heads, who had not always the same objects in view, and were influenced by different considerations, was not unattended with inconvenience.
Between the Post Offices of the two parts of the kingdom, moreover, there were differences not only of practice but of law, the statutes passed during the seventeen years that the Post Offices were separate not having been repealed at the time of the Union. Thus, the law which regulated franking was stricter in Ireland than in England, although, it must be confessed, the practice was looser. The law prohibiting the illicit conveyance of letters was also stricter. In England the Post Office was not empowered to search for letters; in Ireland the Post Office might search both vehicles and houses from sunrise to sunset. In England the mail-coaches were exempt from toll; in Ireland no such exemption was allowed. In Ireland, again, the Post Office was legally bound not, as in England, to deliver letters but only to carry them; and except in Dublin there was not a single letter-carrier in the kingdom. Even the constitution of the two Post Offices, though apparently similar, was really different. In Ireland, as in England, there were twoheads commonly called joint postmasters-general; but whereas in England the assent of both was necessary to make a decision operative, in Ireland the assent of one was sufficient. This, while probably designed to facilitate the despatch of public business, was, as will be seen later on, attended with a curious result, a result which the framers of the statute can have little contemplated.
Of such differences of practice as were not rendered necessary by any difference of law it may be sufficient to mention a few. In England the mail-coach contractors supplied horses only; in Ireland they supplied coaches as well. In England the contract was for short periods and for short distances, seldom for more than one or two stages; in Ireland, where there was little or no competition, the contract was for the whole of the road over which the coach travelled, and for as much as twenty and even thirty years. Meanwhile no alteration was possible except with the contractors' assent. In England the horse-posts were provided upon the most advantageous terms of which each particular case would admit; in Ireland the obligation to provide them was imposed upon the local postmasters, who received for the service, cost what it might, one uniform rate of 5d. a mile. In London there was no despatch on Sundays; in Dublin the mails were despatched on Sundays as on other days. In Dublin, again, the men who collected letters by the sound of bell, bellmen as they were now called, received not as in London 1d. a letter but 1d. a house, a difference of which the inhabitants were wont to shew their appreciation by sending to a single house for delivery to the letter-carrier the letters of an entire street.
In Dublin there was one institution to which there was no counterpart in London. This was the British Mail Office, an office set apart for the management of the mails passing between England and Ireland. Other mails were dealt with in the Inland Office; but those to and from England were considered of such paramount importance as to deserve exceptional treatment. At the present day the term "office" as applied to the public service conveys thenotion possibly of a palace and certainly of a building or part of a building consisting of several rooms. The British Mail Office, though destined to play a not unimportant part in the history of the Irish Post Office at the beginning of the present century, consisted of one room only, and this room was exactly six feet square.
The establishment of this office was one of many measures which owed their origin to Lord Clancarty, who was joint postmaster-general with Lord O'Neill from 1807 to 1809. Clancarty enjoyed an honourable distinction. Other postmasters-general were habitual absentees, their visits to the Post Office, if visits they made, being confined to the rare occasions on which they passed through Dublin on their way to London and back. Clancarty, on the contrary, devoted to his official duties all the powers of a keen intellect and a singularly energetic nature. Shortly after his appointment he proceeded to London, and having made himself master of the system pursued in the Inland Office in Lombard Street, returned to Dublin, resolved that, as far as circumstances would permit, a similar system should be established there.
A formidable difficulty, however, presented itself in the different hours of attendance in the London and Dublin offices. In London the attendance was daily, on every night and every morning; in Dublin it was only on alternate days, on every other night and every other morning. How to get rid of this difference was the question which Clancarty now set himself to solve. There was at this time in the Inland Office a clerk of the name of Donlevy, whose parts pointed him out as qualified to take the lead among his fellows. Clancarty sent for this young man, and told him that under the plan which was about to be introduced he would have to attend daily. Donlevy objected that a plan which would involve such attendance was an unreasonable, an oppressive plan, and that no man's constitution, strong as he might be, would stand it. "But," said Clancarty, "I will make you vice-president." "My Lord," replied Donlevy, "I am very much obliged to you; butunder the conditions proposed I would not accept even the office of president." "Very well," rejoined Clancarty, laying his watch on the table, "I will give you three hours to consider of it." Long before the three hours had expired, Donlevy, who knew the character of the man with whom he had to do, and what would be the penalty of refusal, had accepted the vice-presidentship, and opposition to the introduction of daily attendance was at an end.[82]
But Clancarty was an exception to the general rule. Lord Rosse, who succeeded him and remained postmaster-general in conjunction with O'Neill for more than twenty years, was, like his colleague, an habitual absentee; and the consequence was to place large power in the hands of the chief permanent officer on the spot. This was Edward Smith Lees, who had been appointed joint secretary with his father in 1801, and who on his father's death some years afterwards became sole secretary. The power which Lees must in any case have possessed as chief resident officer was enormously increased by the fact to which we have already referred, that the signature of either of the two postmasters-general was sufficient. Of this fact Lees took advantage to an extent which may seem incredible. If the particular postmaster-general to whom the case was referred agreed to the course recommended, no reference to the other appears to have been considered necessary; but if he did not agree, a reference to the other took place without the fact of disagreement being made known, or even an intimation that his colleague had been consulted. By thus playing off one postmaster-general against the other, Lees generally contrived to secure approval of his own recommendations; but when, as occasionally happened, such approval could not be obtained from either, he claimed and exercised the right, as chief officer on the spot, to take his own course.
Thus Lees, like Freeling, was an autocrat within his own domain; but the means by which the two men attained this result were essentially different. Freeling kept the postmasters-general informed of every incident, however trivial. Lees gave no information which could with decency be withheld. Freeling supported his views by a perfect wealth of explanation. Lees explained no more than enough to carry his point. Freeling's candour, like his loyalty, knew no bounds. It is to his candour, indeed, that we owe our materials for criticising his own proceedings. Lees's candour and loyalty, on the contrary, so far as these can be said to have had any existence, were held in rigid subjection to considerations of expediency and personal advantage.
The circumstances attending the appointment of Lees's brother, a searcher in the Customs at Wexford, to a position in the secretary's office only inferior in point of rank and emolument to his own, well exemplify the mode in which the business of the Irish Post Office was conducted during the first two or three decades of the present century. The minute appointing him was signed, not by O'Neill and Rosse, nor by either of them, but by one of Lees's own subordinates, and purported to embody a decision come to at a Board at which the two postmasters-general were present. "At the Board"—so ran the minute—"present the Earls." The whole thing was a fiction from beginning to end. The Earls had not been present, and there had been no Board. Indeed, as Lees was afterwards forced to admit before a Committee of the House of Commons, during a period of twenty years that O'Neill and Rosse had been joint postmasters-general and he their secretary, he had seen them only once together in the same room, and that was in the drawing-room at Parsonstown.
The example set in high quarters was not without its effect below. Every one seems to have been left to do pretty much as he liked. The force was maintained at a level very far in excess of the actual requirements, and it was no uncommon thing for one-half of the entire numberto absent themselves without notice in a single morning. Some of the clerks never attended at all, while others gave to their Post Office duties only such fragments of their time as they could snatch from other and more lucrative employments. Thus, one was a clerk in a private bank, another a clerk in a merchant's office, a third was a surgeon, several held appointments under the Customs or the Imprest Office, and many were practising attorneys. To most of these the object of holding an appointment in the Post Office appears to have been not so much the salary attaching to it as the privilege which they enjoyed, or rather which they assumed to themselves, of sending and receiving their letters free. The attorneys, indeed, were credited with a still less respectable motive. All, as soon as a mail arrived, helped themselves to their own letters and the letters of the firms in which they were interested. The president of the Inland Office held a valuable appointment in the Bank of Ireland, and was not in a position to check on the part of his subordinates a license which he allowed to himself. The receiver-general, the highest financial officer on the establishment, was a private banker and money-lender, and, beyond signing the balance-sheet at stated periods, the only Post Office function he performed was to frank his own correspondence.
That in Ireland the Post Office arrangements were made subservient to private interests does not admit of a doubt. A suspicion will indeed now and again cross the mind that even in England the readiness to raise the rates of postage, and the hostility shewn to newspapers except when supplied by the clerks of the roads, were not unconnected with personal considerations; but what in the case of England is at best only a matter of suspicion becomes in the case of Ireland an absolute certainty. In Ireland, as in England, the clerks of the roads had from the first establishment of the Post Office enjoyed the privilege of franking newspapers; but soon after the British Mail Office had been established by Clancarty, two other clerks, styling themselves express clerks, undertook to supply newspapers express. Their planwas very simple. In London the newspapers were made up in a parcel addressed to the express clerks; and these clerks had in readiness messengers of their own, who proceeded to deliver the newspapers as soon as they arrived in Dublin and without waiting, as others had to do, for the sorting of the mail. This alone would have given to the express clerks a considerable advantage over the ordinary news-vendor. But, more than this, the British mail was irregular in its arrival, and the latest hour in the evening at which a delivery by letter-carrier took place in Dublin was seven o'clock. The express clerks delivered the English newspapers by their own messengers as late as eleven o'clock.
In the case of the country the advantage which the express clerks enjoyed was still greater. The mails for the interior of Ireland left the Inland Office in Dublin at seven o'clock in the evening; but under a rule, on the observance of which the authorities rigidly insisted, no mails from the British Mail Office were to be received in the Inland Office for despatch the same evening unless they were brought there ready sorted full twenty minutes before that hour. Practically, therefore, as the sorting occupied about twenty-five minutes, mails from England arriving later than a quarter past six were detained until the following evening. No such detention, however, was sustained by the express newspapers, which, addressed as they were to the express clerks, could be forwarded up to the last moment. It may readily be supposed that, with such advantages in their favour, the express clerks and the clerks of the roads, for the two bodies had amalgamated and formed one common purse, found many customers. That they realised and fully appreciated their position will be seen from the following advertisement which was issued no longer ago than April 1822:—
British Newspaper Office, General Post Office.The clerks of roads and clerks of express newspapers having, under the authority of the postmasters-general, reformed their establishment in this department for the transmission of British and foreign newspapers, lottery, commercial, army and navy lists, periodical and other publications, the nobility and gentry of Dublin are respectfullyinformed that they can be supplied with those articles either by an express delivery (which is made by special messengers immediately on the arrival of the packets) or by the regular course of post.Country correspondents will have a peculiar advantage, as upon all occasions when a packet arrives before the despatch of the inland mails but too late for general transmission, their newspapers will be forwarded at the last possible moment.Newspapers exchanged at pleasure any time during the period of subscription.Subscriptions to be paid in advance.Further particulars known by application to Messrs. Leet and De Joncourt, General Post Office, who will receive subscriptions.Daily attendance from twelve till four o'clock.London daily newspapers to Dublin by general delivery, £10:17:6 per annum.
British Newspaper Office, General Post Office.
The clerks of roads and clerks of express newspapers having, under the authority of the postmasters-general, reformed their establishment in this department for the transmission of British and foreign newspapers, lottery, commercial, army and navy lists, periodical and other publications, the nobility and gentry of Dublin are respectfullyinformed that they can be supplied with those articles either by an express delivery (which is made by special messengers immediately on the arrival of the packets) or by the regular course of post.
Country correspondents will have a peculiar advantage, as upon all occasions when a packet arrives before the despatch of the inland mails but too late for general transmission, their newspapers will be forwarded at the last possible moment.
Newspapers exchanged at pleasure any time during the period of subscription.
Subscriptions to be paid in advance.
Further particulars known by application to Messrs. Leet and De Joncourt, General Post Office, who will receive subscriptions.
Daily attendance from twelve till four o'clock.
London daily newspapers to Dublin by general delivery, £10:17:6 per annum.
Leet and De Joncourt were the two express clerks; but among the clerks of the roads, on whose behalf they wrote as well as their own, was Lees, the secretary, who participated in the profits derived from the sale of newspapers, and received the lion's share.
The news-vendors bitterly complained. That the newspapers supplied by the express clerks and clerks of the roads should be exempt from postage[83]was bad enough; but that they should also enjoy priority of transmission and delivery was past all endurance. How was it possible to compete under such conditions as these? The booksellers also complained, for the express service, though originally confined to newspapers, had now extended to periodicals as well. On aQuarterlyorEdinburgh Review, for instance, when sent by coach from Dublin into the country, the bookseller's customers had to pay for carriage from 1s. 8d. to 2s. 6d., whereas the express clerks and clerks of the roads sent it, through the medium of the post, carriage free. A heavier indictment remains. The law permitted theexamination of newspapers passing through the post with a view to ascertain whether they contained unauthorised enclosures; and it was confidently alleged that of this power the Post Office servants took advantage in order to retard the transmission and delivery of newspapers that were not supplied by themselves. A ring, the news-vendors maintained, had been formed at the Post Office, and they were the victims.
The management of what was technically termed the alphabet appears to have been influenced by similar considerations. This was nothing more than a rack with divisions corresponding to the letters of the alphabet, into which might be sorted ready for delivery all correspondence addressed to the Post Office to be called for. Such was its primary object; but in course of time the bankers and merchants, finding that through the alphabet they could get their letters sooner than if delivered by letter-carrier—as soon indeed as the mail arrived—made use of this expedient for their ordinary correspondence, readily paying for the accommodation a fee ranging from three to five guineas a year. This had gone on for a considerable period, when Lees appears to have been suddenly seized with compunction at the unfairness of a practice which, in the matter of delivery, gave to one man an advantage over another; and he issued instructions that henceforth, after the arrival of each mail, there should be a certain interval during which letters should not be delivered from the alphabet. The pretence imposed upon no one. Men readily discerned that in proportion as the advantages of the alphabet were restricted the express service was rendered more valuable.
It would be unjust to the memory of the Irish Post Office of seventy years ago not to mention here one good practice and, as far as we know, the only good one that then existed. By virtue of an arrangement with, the War Office, soldiers' wives, on presentation of a formal document with which the military authorities provided them, could draw from any Post Office in the kingdom a certain sum of small amount until the entire sum mentioned in thedocument was exhausted. Thus, a soldier's wife desirous of joining her husband could pass from one end of the country to another, and, without carrying anything in her pocket, could be supplied with money on her way. Of this practice, curiously enough, not a vestige now remains.
It is also pleasant, amid so much indifference as was at that time exhibited to the convenience of the public, to be able to record one instance to the contrary. Thomas Whinnery, the postmaster of Belfast, had read an account of the alphabet at Liverpool—how the letters were sorted into a rack according to the initials of the merchants to whom they were addressed, so as to be ready to be delivered when they should be called for—and he resolved to introduce something of the same kind into his own office. Instead, however, of adopting the alphabetical order he assigned to each merchant a particular number, letting him know what his number was, and instead of a fixed rack as at Liverpool he contrived a revolving one; and this, with the numbers conspicuously exhibited over each division, he placed in full view of a window opening to the street. Thus, any one looking through the window could see for himself whether there were any letters for him, and was saved the trouble of inquiring.
Equality of treatment as between man and man had not yet become one of the canons of the Post Office, and even Whinnery, well-meaning as he was, made a distinction as remarkable as it was invidious. Belfast not being supplied with an official letter-carrier, he employed a man of his own to deliver the letters, and charged on their delivery 1d. apiece. The letters, however, instead of all being delivered at one time, were arbitrarily divided into two classes, termed particular letters and ordinary letters; and the delivery of the ordinary letters was not begun until that of the particular letters was finished, a difference in point of time of two and a half hours. In order to maintain the distinction, the man had actually to go over the same ground twice. Particular letters were defined to be letters for merchants and other busy men, letters to which it waspresumably of importance that replies should be given promptly.
We have said that in Ireland the mail-coach contracts were not, as in England, for short distances but for the whole of the road over which the coach travelled. The explanation is that, while in England the local inn-keepers were eager to horse the mail for one or two stages, in Ireland, where the coach had to be provided as well as the horses, the venture was too serious to be undertaken lightly, and the contracts fell into the hands of a few persons of means who dictated pretty much their own terms. Thus, in Ireland the cost of conveying the mails by coach was considerably higher than in England, though forage and labour were cheaper.[84]
All this was soon to be changed. In one of the early years of the century a young lad had arrived in Dublin, a lad without means and without friends, a foreigner who was unable to speak one word of English, and yet who, despite these drawbacks, did for the country of his adoption more probably than was accomplished by all the legislation that took place during the fourscore years and more over which his life extended. This was Charles Bianconi, a man to whom the Post Office owes a debt of gratitude which, as it seems to us, has never been sufficiently recognised. After serving an eighteen months' apprenticeship to a foreign print-seller in a small way of business, Bianconi passed the next two or three years of his life in hawking prints about the country on his own account, and in 1806, at the age of twenty, he turned carver and gilder and opened a shop at Carrick-on-Suir. From Carrick he removed shortly afterwards to Waterford, and finally settled down at Clonmel.
The experience of these few years determined Bianconi'sfuture career. While roaming over the country with his prints for sale, he had had forcibly impressed upon him the difference between a pedlar like himself who was doomed to tramp on foot and his more fortunate fellow who could post or ride on horseback. At Carrick the want of facilities for travelling had been brought home to him in a hardly less cogent manner. Gold-leaf for the supply of his shop he had to fetch from Waterford, and Waterford is distant from Carrick twelve or thirteen miles. Between the two towns, however, the only means of communication was by water, and by water, owing to the windings of the river, the distance is twenty-four miles. A single boat, moreover, was then the only public conveyance, and, besides being obliged to wait for the tide, it took from four to five hours to accomplish the journey. From this time Bianconi appears to have become possessed with the idea that his mission in life was to devise some cheap and easy means of communication between town and town. Imbued with this notion, he gave up his shop in the summer of 1815, and started a single-horse car for the conveyance of passengers from Clonmel to Cahir, a distance of about eight miles. At the end of the same year he started similar cars from Clonmel to Cashel and Thurles, and from Clonmel to Carrick and Waterford. From such humble beginnings sprang that splendid service of cars which, extending from Sligo and Enniskillen in the north to Bandon and Skibbereen in the south, and from Waterford and Wexford in the east to Galway and Belmullet in the west, carried passengers daily over more than 4000 miles of road at an average cost to each passenger of 1-1/4d. a mile.
But we are anticipating. The Post Office, largely as it availed itself in later years of the means of communication which Bianconi placed at its disposal, was slow to perceive the advantage which his enterprise offered. The country postmasters were wiser in their generation. Located on the spot, and with their perception quickened by the motive of self-interest, they made use of the cars as fast as these were put on the roads. No sooner had a car been startedfrom Clonmel than the postmaster sent by it the mails which he had been used to send by horse-post. For this service he received an allowance of 5d. a mile. Bianconi performed the service for him for an allowance of 2-1/2d. a mile. The same thing took place elsewhere. It was not until the year 1831, when the Post Office of Ireland was amalgamated with that of England, that Bianconi was brought into direct relations with headquarters. Meanwhile, through a strange lack of vigilance on the part of the Irish authorities, his very existence was ignored, and the postmasters continued to receive 5d. a mile for a service which, wherever Bianconi's cars extended, they were getting done for one-half of that amount.
But it is not only with the Irish Post Office in relation to its internal affairs that this chapter proposes to deal. The communication between England and Ireland or rather between the capitals of the two countries had, since the Act of Union, been under constant review, and it becomes important to see how, during the first two or three decades of the present century, this communication stood both by sea and by land.
By the Act of 1784, which made the Irish Post Office independent of that of Great Britain—an Act not repealed by the Union—Great Britain and Ireland were to receive, in respect to letters passing between the two countries, each its own proportion of the postage. The Channel service remained; and with this Ireland was to have nothing to do, at all events in the first instance. Great Britain was to provide the packets and to receive the packet postage. Ireland, on the other hand, until she should have established packets of her own, was to receive from Great Britain the sum of £4000 a year "in lieu as well of the profits of the said packets as in compensation for other purposes." This arrangement appears to have worked smoothly enough until after 1801, when, owing to the increase of correspondence as a consequence of the Union, the Irish Post Office began to complain that the conditions were hard, and that Great Britain had the best of the bargain. Surely, under the very terms of the statute, Ireland was entitled tohave packets of her own; and if this were denied her, did not justice demand that the conditions should be reconsidered? The question had come before successive Governments and always with the same result—that the existing arrangement was not to be disturbed. What Pitt and Portland and Perceval had decided was not to be done Lees now proceeded to do on his own account.
We doubt whether travellers of the present day who cross from Holyhead to Dublin in the magnificent boats which modern science has provided have any idea of the misery to which our grandfathers were exposed in making the passage. His Majesty's packets afforded the best, if not the only means of transit; and these were six in number, and ranged from 80 to 100 tons in burthen. Customs duties were at this time levied on goods passing between the two countries, and passengers' luggage was subjected to strict examination. Thus, to the discomforts of a sea-passage made in vessels of light tonnage were added the vexations incidental to a rigorous search of personal baggage; and these vexations were rendered all the greater by faulty arrangements. Passengers were unnecessarily detained, and often, even after detention, had to proceed on their journey leaving their luggage behind. In course of time, indeed, an exception was made in the case of peers and members of Parliament. After December 1819, as the result of incessant complaints, the luggage of these privileged persons was allowed to pass unexamined on their giving a certificate on honour that it contained no articles liable to duty; but at the time of which we are writing, the year 1813, all travellers, whether of high or low degree, were treated alike.
Despite conditions which at the present day would be considered intolerable, the number of passengers carried to and fro by the Holyhead packets was between 14,000 and 15,000 a year;[85]and there can be no doubt that theadvantage which the British Post Office derived from this traffic was considerable. It is true that the fares went to the captains; but of course, except for the fares, the Post Office would have had to pay more for its packets. These were supplied at an annual cost of £365 apiece, or £2190 altogether; and such being the terms on which boats could be hired, Lees was confirmed in his opinion that Ireland would do better if, instead of receiving from Great Britain a compensation allowance of £4000 a year, she were to provide her own packets and share the packet postage.
Freeling took a different view. The better the bargain was for the British Post Office, the more determined he was that with his consent the terms should not be altered. And, more than this, he little relished the prospect of competition between English and Irish packets. Indeed, so long had he been accustomed to deal with a monopoly that the very name of competition was hateful to him. At this very time he tried, and tried in vain, to repress a boat which had been set up between Weymouth and the Channel Islands in opposition to the packets. Another similar attempt which he made a little later was hardly more successful. The War Office had chartered vessels to convey troops between Bristol and Waterford, and these vessels had assumed the title of "Government Packets," a title which, according to Freeling, induced persons to go by them who would otherwise have gone by the Post Office packets from Milford. Lord Palmerston was then Secretary at War, and we think we see the twinkle in his eye as he replied to Freeling's letter of remonstrance. Freeling's objection was of course to the Bristol boats being styled packets, but he had spoken of them by the title by which they were known of "Government Packets." The contractors, wrote Lord Palmerston, had been directed to drop the word Government forthwith, and the boats would henceforth be called War Office packets, to distinguish them from the packets employed by the Post Office.
Attached to the Irish Post Office, by virtue of a contractwhich had yet some years to run, were boats called wherries. Originally designed to carry between the two countries special messengers and despatches during the period immediately succeeding the Union, they had long lost their original character, and were now being employed in picking up what goods and passengers they could, and transporting them across the Channel in opposition to the packets. These boats were not ill adapted to the purpose which Lees had in hand. On the 19th of July 1813 he despatched a letter to Freeling, incidentally mentioning that "as the intended packet station at Howth had sufficient depth of water for the vessels belonging to the Irish Post Office, it was in contemplation, until such time as the regular packets should be stationed there, that the mails from Ireland should be despatched in its own vessels, and that, as soon as the arrangements now in progress should be completed, the measure would take effect." This letter was received in London on the 23rd of July, and on the next day intelligence reached Lombard Street that the mail from Ireland had been refused to the British packet and had been given to the Irish wherry.
And now might be witnessed a most unedifying spectacle—in Dublin Lees placarding the walls of the city with advertisements,[86]vaunting the merits of his own packets; atHolyhead the authorised packets arriving without the mails, and the mails being brought by boats which did not arrive until after the mail-coach for London had started; and in London Freeling wringing his hands and invoking the aid of the Government to check the vagaries of his brother-secretary on the other side of the Channel. "For the first time," he wrote, "the postmasters-general of Great Britain have not the means of redressing grievances connected with their own department, and the most serious remonstrances may be expected from the merchants and traders of London on this alarming and unnecessary evil."
The prediction was a safe one. Not only were the mails often one day behindhand in arriving in London, but the letters they brought were charged with an additional rate of postage in respect of the distance between Dublin and Howth. The merchants flocked to the Post Office to inquire the reason. No reason could be given them, and they were invited to let their applications for a return of the charge stand over until the postmasters-general should have informed themselves on the subject. Some assented; others accused the postmasters-general of trifling, and demanded instant redress. Matters had thus gone on for a fortnight when Lord Liverpool, to whom an appeal had been made, directed that the wherries should be withdrawn. One is left to suppose that this direction cannot have been communicated in the proper quarter, for as a matter of fact it had no result. In vain the captains of the packets applied at the Dublin Post Office for the British mails. All such applications met with a flat refusal, and the mails continued to be sent by the wherries as before. At length an end was put to the scandal, but not until it had lasted for more than six weeks.
The question now arose whether for the forty-four days during which the wherries had acted as packets thecompensation of £4000 a year which Ireland received from Great Britain should not be withheld. Freeling had not only taken it for granted that such would be the case, but had been unable to conceal his regret that this was the only penalty of which the circumstances would admit. Liverpool, however, decided otherwise. Lees might have been wrong-headed and even perverse, but there could be no doubt that law was on his side. Accordingly, the compensation was paid for the period during which the packets had not carried the mails, and not long afterwards the Government brought in a bill raising the amount which Ireland was to receive from £4000 a year to £6000.
We now pass over six years. In July 1819 a curious invention, which had for some little time been in practical operation on the Thames between London and Margate, was brought into use between Holyhead and Dublin. This was no other than a vessel propelled by steam. Two vessels of this class were now set up by private individuals styling themselves the Dublin Steam Packet Company; and of this company, to the amazement of the authorities in Lombard Street, Lees had become a director. The quality which the new vessels possessed of being able to go against wind and tide, and the comparative speed with which they accomplished the passage, soon commended them to the favour of the public; and the consequence was a reduction to the extent of nearly one-half in the number of passengers by the Post Office packets.[87]The matter was serious, for it was in consequence of the fares which the captains received that they let their boats to the Post Office at little more than a nominal sum: and ofcourse this sum would have to be increased according as the fares diminished.
We now see the Post Office at its best. Not possessing in the case of passengers a monopoly such as influenced and often perverted its action in the case of letters, the department proceeded to do much as private persons with sufficient capital at command would have done in similar circumstances, namely to build better boats than those already employed, and endeavour by the superior excellence of its service to recover the custom it had lost. Orders were given for two steam packets, the best that Boulton and Watt could build; and on the 31st of May 1821 theRoyal Sovereign, of 206 tons burthen, with engines of 40 horse-power, and theMeteor, of somewhat smaller dimensions, began to ply. "Hitherto," wrote the postmasters-general eight days later, "they have answered the most sanguine expectations that had been formed of them; the letters have been delivered in Dublin earlier than was ever yet known, and Ireland has expressed herself grateful for the attention that has been shewn to her interests."
The Post Office behaved in this matter with a moderation which was altogether wanting where its monopoly was concerned. To be outdone by a private company, to employ inferior boats, boats of an obsolete type and of a low rate of speed—this would not be creditable to a public department, still less to a department whose special function it was to carry the correspondence of the country at the highest speed attainable; and properly enough the Post Office might take steps to establish its pre-eminence. But it would be quite another thing for a public department to undersell a private company, and, by charging lower fares, to run its boats off the line. This, it appeared to the authorities in Lombard Street, would exceed the bounds of fair competition. Accordingly the fares by the Post Office steam packets were fixed at the same amounts as those charged by the company; and these fares were somewhat higher than those which had been charged bythe sailing packets. By sailing packet, for instance, the charge for a cabin passenger had been one guinea, by steam packet it was £1:5s.; for a horse the steam packet charge was £1:10s. as against one guinea by sailing packet, and for a coach £3:5s. as against three guineas.
These charges, which were fixed with the express object of not exposing the company to undue competition, had not been long in force before Parliament intervened. The Select Committee on Irish Communication protested in the interests of the public against the raising of the fares, and the Post Office was constrained to submit. The substitution of steam packets for sailing packets bore immediate fruit. The number of passengers carried by the Post Office between Holyhead and Dublin, which in 1820 had sunk to 7468, rose in 1821 to 13,737 and in 1822 to more than 16,000; and for some years the Holyhead packets were not only self-supporting but produced a clear gain to the revenue of more than £6000 a year.
The change which had been made at Holyhead was not long in extending itself to other packet stations from which there was communication with Ireland. Between Milford and Waterford sailing packets were replaced by steam packets in April 1824, and between Portpatrick and Donaghadee in May 1825. By sailing packet the average duration of voyage between the last-mentioned stations had been seven hours and forty-eight minutes. During the winter of 1825-26, a winter unexampled for the derangement of sea-communication, the average time which the little Post Office steamersArrowandDashertook to perform the voyage was less than three hours and a half.
And yet, despite these exertions to maintain its superiority, the Post Office was not to remain in undisputed possession of the Irish traffic. Private steamers had begun to ply between Liverpool and Dublin, and the fares by these steamers were lower than by the Post Office packets from Holyhead. As a natural consequence, the passenger traffic to which the Post Office looked to recoup itself for the heavy expense to which it had been put in replacingsailing packets by steam packets was diverted to Liverpool.
Nor was it only in the matter of passengers that the Post Office lost by the competition. Its reputation also suffered. The mails for Ireland left Liverpool at three o'clock in the afternoon, before the Exchange was closed, and reaching Holyhead by way of Chester and Llangollen at six o'clock on the following morning, did not arrive in Dublin until the afternoon. The private steamers, on the contrary, did not leave Liverpool until the business of the day was over, and arrived in Dublin on the following morning. Hence comparisons were drawn not favourable to the Post Office; and it by no means tended to allay dissatisfaction that the owners of the private steamers were refused permission to carry the mails. This they had offered to do, in one case for nothing more than exemption from harbour and light dues; but at that time, strange as it may appear to us with our present experience, it was a fixed principle with the Post Office that private firms even of the highest eminence were not to be entrusted with the carriage of the public correspondence. Accordingly it was decided that between Liverpool and Dublin the Post Office should run its own packets, and the new service began on the 29th of August 1826. The opening was marred by a lamentable disaster. Early in September theFrancis Freelingpacket, a recently-built cutter named after the secretary, and reputed to be the finest vessel of its kind afloat, foundered during a heavy gale and all the passengers and crew were lost.
The new service, while an unquestionable convenience to the public, did not altogether satisfy the Post Office. It is true that, as a consequence of the increased accommodation, the letters for Ireland passing through Liverpool nearly doubled in number; but this satisfactory result was not without alloy. During the past few years the art of building as applied to steamboats had made rapid progress; and not only were the packets on the Liverpool station larger than those stationed at Holyhead, the horse-power ofthe engines being 170 in the one case as against 40 in the other, but they were altogether better equipped. The fares by the Liverpool route as fixed by the Post Office were also relatively lower, and to any one proceeding from London or the large manufacturing towns of the North the distance to be travelled by road was shorter. As a consequence, the diversion of traffic from Holyhead to Liverpool, notwithstanding the longer sea voyage, proceeded still more rapidly than when the steamers from the latter port were in private hands; and the Holyhead service, which had for some years produced a clear profit of many thousand pounds a year, was now carried on at a loss.
To the Post Office authorities, indeed, there was in connection with the four packet stations in communication with Ireland only one thing which gave them unqualified satisfaction. It was this—that to the Post Office belonged the credit of being first to demonstrate by practical experience that, to use Freeling's words, "steam vessels could force their way at all seasons of the year and in weather in which no sailing vessel, be her qualities what they might, would attempt to put to sea." Whether the claim is well founded or not we have no means of judging; we only know that it was made.
By land, at the beginning of the present century, communication with Ireland was in a more backward state than it was by water; and since the Union a very general opinion had prevailed that this communication should be improved. It would perhaps be too much to say that the British Post Office proved obstructive in the matter; but there can be no doubt that it did not lend the assistance it might have done, and the reasons are obvious. In the first place, a little soreness existed. No sooner had the Act of Union passed than the Government decided that between London and Dublin there must be an express in both directions daily. This, as the postmasters-general pointed out, would cost more than £4000 a year, and, as it was not required for Post Office purposes, the Post Office should not bear the cost. Accordingly the question as to the sourcefrom which the cost should be defrayed was reserved for future consideration; but after the express was well established, the Post Office received notice that it must defray the cost itself, and it continued to do so for twenty years and more. This was always a sore point with Freeling, and he constantly adduced it as an instance of unremunerative work.